ABSTRACT
This chapter draws a balance sheet of the disequilibrium of 1911, using the same categories as were used to analyse the equilibrium of 1898. In 1898, Szechwan appeared to observers both Chinese and foreign as the high point of a traditional civilization. In 1898, the main task of the province’s armed forces had been to protect lowland Szechwan against highland Szechwan, the world of terraced, irrigated agriculture, regular civilian magistracies and waterborne trade from the world of pasture and forests, native banditry and foreign principalities, mountain trails and pack-animals. In the summer of 1912 Yin Ch’ang-keng, the province’s second tu-tu or military governor went to the relief of the Chinese garrison at Chamdo besieged by the Khamba and P’eng Jih-sheng succeeded in holding out there, with intermittent assistance from Szechwan, till April 1918. Between 1898 and 1911 Chengtu lost and Chungking gained. To the Szechwanese ruling class European imperialism by contracting had intensified to threaten their vital interests.
