ABSTRACT
A young activist’s cigarette got too close to a bomb that a group of revolutionaries was making and set the entire building ablaze. The ensuing explosion attracted the attention of the Qing authorities. Faced with the choice of waiting to be arrested or of going forward with their revolutionary plans, renegade army units seized the government munitions depot on October 10, 1911. Faced with an armed uprising, the Qing governor and governor-general hastily fled, allowing the revolutionaries to gain control of the city. The suddenness of the October 1911 revolution surprised virtually every constituency vying for power within China. Each political group, from the radical revolutionaries to the conservative constitutional monarchists, scrambled to position themselves and profit from the Wuchang Uprising. The aim of the political revolution is to create a constitutional, democratic political system. In the context of the current political situation in China, a revolution would be necessary even if the monarch were a Wuhan.
