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Modern China was forged in the crucible of war and revolution between 1895 and 1949. This course looks at the role of war and revolution in shaping politics, culture, society, and economics in the first half of China’s twentieth-century. This period saw the crumbling of the Qing empire after the Sino-Japanese War and Boxer Rebellion, the rise of Han nationalism, the establishment of Asia’s first republic, and the transformation of Chinese subjects into Chinese citizens. China’s young republic then experienced debates about federalism and constitutionalism, suffered the continued humiliation of imperialism, and rejected the restoration of  monarchism, which quickly devolved into a bloody period of warlordism.

At the same time, China entered a new period that Frank Dikötter has called ‘an age of openness’ towards new ideas. Intellectuals discussed these ideas in the New Culture Movement. Merchants and consumers absorbed them through China’s integration into the global economy, and activists combined them with nationalism to launch a cultural revolution, the May Fourth Movement, following widespread disappointment about China’s treatment at the hands of its own allies during the World War I peace talks at Versailles.

In the 1920s, new players like the Communist Party and the re-organised Nationalist Party arose. Their subsequent on-and-off-again cooperation was pivotal during the warlord conflicts, colonial suppression, and imperial encroachment of the 1920s, and their conflict shaped ideas in the public sphere as China faced Japanese aggression in the 1930s, which became part of a global war in 1939. The confrontation between the Nationalists and Communists then became part of an even wider conflict between 1946 and 1949 when the parties contended for total control over China as the chill of a new cold war order enveloped the earth.  

Throughout the tumultuous period of war and revolution in China from 1895–1949, the foundation for a nation was born as a growing number of Chinese citizens joined the growing debate about government institutions, political ideals, the rights and obligations of citizens, education, literature, philosophy and science. However, these debates were often settled on the battlefield. This course adopts a multi-disciplinary approach from the social sciences, cultural studies, and history to study the role of war and revolution in the making of modern China in the early twentieth century.

The Watershed—Confucian Radicalism in the Wake of the Sino-Japanese War

The Republican Revolution—Prologue, Phase, or Conservative Social Change

The End of Empire—From Qing Reform to the Rise of Han Nationalism

The Rise of the Warlords—From Yuan Shikai to the Warlords

The Troubled Countryside—From Resistance and Rebellion to Revolution

The Melting Pot—New Social Forces in Cities Press for Change

A New Culture—From Subjects to Citizens

The First Cultural Revolution—May Fourth and the Rise of Isms

The United Front—Guomindang and Communists Take on Feudalism and Imperialism

The Fractured Alliance—The Northern Expedition and the White Terror

The Nanjing Decade—The Nationalists and their Conservative Revolution

The Guerilla War—Communists Go to the Countryside

The Existential Struggle—China versus Japan in the Second Sino-Japanese War

The Final Showdown—Nationalists versus Communists in the Chinese Civil War

The Founding of a Nation—Communist Victory and New China