ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how the Russians aimed at dominating Manchuria, coming into collision with Japan’s rival ambitions there and in Korea – all at the expense of China. By the end of October 1911 a truce was declared between the imperial forces and the revolutionaries, who were then in control of all the South, but not of Peking and the North. Sun Yat-sen returned to China and was elected President by a convention held at Nanking; but in order to avoid bloodshed, he refused to accept the position. The British organized the Japanese navy and helped to build railways. The French legal system was largely copied, and French and Germans were both concerned with army training. Americans were busy organizing education and the postal service. The revolution in China in 1911 brought to an end the oldest empire in the world. It had lasted for 3,500 years. A Republic was established in 1912.
