ABSTRACT
One year after the collapse of the Qing court, Sun Zhongshan led the Revolutionary Alliance to reconfigure itself as the Kuomintang, the National People’s Party (the Nationalist Party). In 1913, the first Chinese Parliament was formed, its core members drawn from the Nationalist Party. Before it started functioning, however, Song Jiaoren, the leading engineer of this Chinese version of electoral politics, was assassinated at the Shanghai railroad station. The republican forces proved to be ineffective and held no real military power. The country was sliding toward political chaos while the Western powers including Japan furthered their encroachments. Years of extreme violence were to erupt, during which militarists of different factions scorched the land as they fought to control China and its human geography. Many who partook in the 1911 Revolution suffered from a combination of demoralizing disillusionment and a painful lack of direction.3
