talwabatal - kiser 1903

Henry Ford

(July 30, 1863 – April 7, 1947) was an American industrialist and business magnate. He was the founder of Ford Motor Company, and chief developer of the assembly line technique of mass production. Ford created the first automobile that middle-class Americans could afford, and his conversion of the automobile from an expensive luxury into an accessible conveyance profoundly impacted the landscape of the 20th century.

Ford was born on a farm in Michigan's Springwells Township to a Belgian family, leaving home at age 16 to work in Detroit. It was a few years before this time that Ford first experienced automobiles, and throughout the later half of the 1880s, Ford began repairing and later constructing engines, and through the 1890s worked with a division of Edison Electric. He officially founded Ford Motor Company in 1903, after prior failures in business but success in constructing automobiles.

Ford's 1908 introduction of the Model T automobile revolutionized both transportation and American industry. As the Ford Motor Company sole owner, he became one of the richest and best-known people in the world. He is credited with "Fordism", the mass production of inexpensive goods coupled with high wages for workers. Ford was also among the pioneers of the five-day work week. Ford had a global vision, with consumerism as the key to peace. His intense commitment to systematically lowering costs resulted in many technical and business innovations, including a franchise system that put dealerships throughout North America and major cities on six continents.

Ford was widely known for his pacifism during the first years of World War I. In the 1920s Ford promoted antisemitic content through his newspaper The Dearborn Independent, and the book, The International Jew. After his son Edsel died in 1943, Ford resumed control of the company but was too frail to make decisions and quickly came under the control of subordinates. He turned over the company to his grandson Henry Ford II in 1945. He died in 1947 after leaving most of his wealth to the Ford Foundation, and control of the company to his family.

The Ford Quadricycle

was the first vehicle developed by Henry Ford. Ford's first car was a simple frame with a gas-powered engine and four bicycle wheels mounted on it.[3]

The earliest cars were hand built, one by one, and very expensive. The peculiar machines were seen as toys for the rich.[3] In the 1890s, the "horseless carriage" was a relatively new idea, with no one having a fixed, universal idea of what a car should look like or how it should work. Most of the first car builders were inventors, rather than businessmen, working with their imaginations and the parts they had on hand.[3] Thus, the invention of the Quadricycle marks an important innovation as a proto-automobile that would lay the foundation for the future, with more practical designs to follow.

On June 4, 1896, in a tiny workshop behind his home on 58 Bagley Avenue, Detroit,[2][4] where the Michigan Building now stands, Ford put the finishing touches on his pure ethanol-powered motor. After more than two years of experimentation, Ford, at the age of 32, had completed his first experimental automobile. He dubbed his creation the "Quadricycle," so named because it ran on four bicycle tires, and because of the means through which the engine drove the back wheels.[5] The success of the little vehicle led to the founding of the Detroit Automobile Company in 1899, followed by the Henry Ford Company in 1901 and then later the Ford Motor Company in 1903.[6]

The two cylinder engine could produce 4 horsepower.[7] The Quadricycle was driven by a chain. The transmission had only two gears (first for up to 10 mph (16 km/h), 2nd for up to 20 mph (32 km/h)), but did not have a reverse gear. The tiller-steered machine had wire wheels and a 3 US gal (11 L) fuel tank under the seat.[2] Ford test drove it on June 4, 1896, after various test drives, achieving a top speed of 20 mph (32 km/h).[2] Ford would later go on to found the Ford Motor Company and become one of the world's richest men.[3]

The original Quadricycle resides at The Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan.

Fordism

is an industrial engineering and manufacturing system that serves as the basis of modern social and labor-economic systems that support industrialized, standardized mass production and mass consumption. The concept is named after Henry Ford. It is used in social, economic, and management theory about production, working conditions, consumption, and related phenomena, especially regarding the 20th century.[1] It describes an ideology of advanced capitalism centered around the American socioeconomic systems in place in the post-war economic boom.

Henry Ford sits in his first automobile, the Ford Quadricycle, in 1896.

Henry and Clara Ford in his first car, the Ford Quadricycle

Ford cars (Model A shown) became a symbol of effective mass production. Efficiency both decreased the price of the cars and allowed Ford to increase his workers' wages. Hence, common workers could buy their own cars.

Ford assembly line, 1913

Photo by Fred Hartsook, c. 1919

Henry Ford with Thomas Edison and Harvey Firestone. Fort Myers, Florida, February 11, 1929.

A 1926 Ford T Roadster on display in India

Time magazine, January 14, 1935

Ford grave, Ford Cemetery

1903

The Ford Model T

is an automobile that was produced by the Ford Motor Company from October 1, 1908, to May 26, 1927.[10] It is generally regarded as the first affordable automobile, which made car travel available to middle-class Americans. The relatively low price was partly the result of Ford's efficient fabrication, including assembly line production instead of individual handcrafting.[11] It was mainly designed by an American (Childe Harold Wills) and two Hungarian engineers (Joseph A. Galamb, Eugene Farkas). The Model T was colloquially known as the "Tin Lizzie", "Leaping Lena" or "flivver".[12][13]

The Ford Model T was named the most influential car of the 20th century in the 1999 Car of the Century competition, ahead of the BMC Mini, Citroën DS, and Volkswagen Beetle.[14] Ford's Model T was successful not only because it provided inexpensive transportation on a massive scale, but also because the car signified innovation for the rising middle class and became a powerful symbol of the United States' age of modernization.[15] With 15 million sold, it was the most sold car in history before being surpassed by the Volkswagen Beetle in 1972,[16] and still stood eighth on the top-ten list, as of 2012.[17]

The red star is a symbol commonly used to represent communism

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

The presidium of the 9th Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks). 1920. Sitting (from left): Abel Yenukidze, Mikhail Kalinin, Nikolai Bukharin, Mikhail Tomsky, Mikhail Lashevich, Lev Kamenev, Evgeny Preobrazhensky, Leonid Serebryakov, Vladimir Lenin and Alexei Rykov. Standing: Nikolay Krestinsky, Vladimir Milyutin, Ivar Smilga

Leon Trotsky, Vladimir Lenin and Lev Kamenev

Bolshevik, Boris Kustodiev, 1920

"Down with Bolshevism. Bolshevism brings war and destruction, hunger and death", anti-Bolshevik German propaganda, 1919

Portrait of Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin from the Order of Lenin medal.

Trotsky in exile in Siberia, 1900

The leaders of the Trotskyist Left Opposition in Moscow, 1927 (sitting: Leonid Serebryakov, Karl Radek, Leon Trotsky, Mikhail Boguslavsky and Yevgeni Preobrazhensky; standing: Christian Rakovsky, Yakov Drobnis, Alexander Beloborodov and Lev Sosnovsky)

Trotsky with Vladimir Lenin and soldiers in Petrograd

Vladimir Lenin, who led the Bolshevik faction within the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party

Tsar Nicholas II addressing the two chambers of the Duma at the Winter Palace after the failed 1905 Russian Revolution which exiled Lenin from Imperial Russia to Switzerland

At his death on 21 January 1924, Lenin's political testament ordered the removal of Stalin as General Secretary because of his abusive personality.

In establishing state atheism in the Soviet Union, Stalin ordered in 1931 the razing of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow.

Flag with the faces of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin

Mao Zedong with Anna Louise Strong, the American journalist who reported and explained the Chinese Communist Revolution to the West

Guerrillas of the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War

Che Guevara and Fidel Castro (leader of the Republic of Cuba from 1959 until 2008) led the Cuban Revolution to victory in 1959.

Daniel Ortega led the Sandinista National Liberation Front to victory in the Nicaraguan Revolution in 1990.

In Apartheid South Africa, a trilingual sign in English, Afrikaans and Zulu enforces the segregation of a Natal beach as exclusively "for the sole use of members of the white race group." The Afrikaner Nationalist Party cited anti-communism as a reason for the treatment of the black and coloured populations of South Africa.

Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, who sought to end the Cold War between the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact and the United States-led NATO and its other Western allies, in a meeting with President Ronald Reagan

The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989

Map of current and former Communist states, most of which followed, as party or state–party ideology, or were inspired by Marxist–Leninist ideology and development: Current Former

The Tower of Juche Idea was completed in 1982 to commemorate Kim Il Sung's 70th birthday. The Juche Idea, the official state ideology, developed by the man himself, is a blend of Marxism-Leninism and Autarky.

Up-close view of the Juche Tower and the accompanying monument to the Workers' Party of Korea

1903

The Bolsheviks

(Russian: Большевики́, IPA: [bəlʲʂɨvʲɪˈkʲi], from большинство́ bol'shinstvó, 'majority'),[a] also known in English as the Bolshevists,[b] were a far-left, revolutionary Marxist faction founded by Vladimir Lenin that split with the Mensheviks [c] from the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP), a revolutionary socialist political party formed in 1898, at its Second Party Congress in 1903.[5]

After forming their own party in 1912, the Bolsheviks took power during the October Revolution in the Russian Republic in November 1917, overthrowing the Provisional Government of Alexander Kerensky, and became the only ruling party in the subsequent Soviet Russia and later the Soviet Union. They considered themselves the leaders of the revolutionary proletariat of Russia.[citation needed] Their beliefs and practices were often referred to as Bolshevism.

Bolshevism

(from Bolshevik) is a revolutionary socialist current of Soviet Marxist–Leninist political thought and political regime associated with the formation of a rigidly centralized, cohesive and disciplined party of social revolution, focused on overthrowing the existing capitalist state system, seizing power and establishing the "dictatorship of the proletariat".[1][2]

Bolshevism originated at the beginning of the 20th century in Russia and was associated with the activities of the Bolshevik faction within the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party – and first of all, the founder of the faction, Vladimir Lenin. Remaining on the soil of Marxism, Bolshevism at the same time absorbed elements of the ideology and practice of the revolutionaries of the second half of the 19th century (Sergey Nechaev, Pyotr Tkachev, Nikolay Chernyshevsky) and had many points of contact with such domestic left–wing radical movements as populism.[3][4] The main theorist of Bolshevism was Vladimir Lenin; besides him, the theoreticians of Bolshevism include Leon Trotsky, Nikolai Bukharin and Yevgeni Preobrazhensky.[2]

In October 1917, the Bolshevik faction organized an armed uprising against the Provisional Government, formed by other (including socialist) parties and seized power (see the October Revolution).

Some researchers[5] attribute to Bolshevik theory the program of Joseph Stalin, who headed the All–Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and at the same time possessed full state power in the Soviet Union. However, others (both Stalin's contemporaries and later) do not confuse "Bolshevism" and "Stalinism" proper, considering them to be multidirectional (revolutionary and thermidorian) phenomena.[6]

The expression "Bolshevism", as well as "communism" later, has become established in Western historiography in the sense of a certain set of features of Soviet power in a certain political period. At present, the very name "Bolsheviks" is actively used by various groups of Marxist–Leninists and Trotskyists.

Marxism–Leninism

is a communist ideology that was the main communist movement throughout the 20th century.[1] Developed in Russia by the Bolsheviks, it was the state ideology of the Soviet Union,[2] Soviet satellite states in the Eastern Bloc, and various countries in the Non-Aligned Movement and Third World during the Cold War,[3] as well as the Communist International after Bolshevisation.[4] Today, Marxism–Leninism is the ideology of the ruling parties of China, Cuba, Laos and Vietnam (all one-party socialist republics),[5] as well as many other Communist parties. The state ideology of North Korea is derived from Marxism–Leninism[6] (although its evolution is disputed). Marxist–Leninist states are commonly referred to as "communist states" by Western academics.[7][8] Marxist–Leninists reject anarchism and left communism, as well as reformist socialism and social democracy. They oppose fascism, imperialism, and liberal democracy. Marxism–Leninism holds that a two-stage communist revolution is needed to replace capitalism. A vanguard party, organized through democratic centralism, would seize power on behalf of the proletariat and establish a one-party socialist state, called the dictatorship of the proletariat. The state would control the means of production, suppress opposition, counter-revolution, and the bourgeoisie, and promote Soviet collectivism, to pave the way for an eventual communist society that would be classless and stateless.[9]

Marxism–Leninism was developed from Bolshevism by Joseph Stalin in the 1920s based on his understanding and synthesis of orthodox Marxism and Leninism.[10][11][12] After the death of Vladimir Lenin in 1924, Marxism–Leninism became a distinct movement in the Soviet Union when Stalin and his supporters gained control of the party. It rejected the common notion among Western Marxists of world revolution as a prerequisite for building socialism, in favour of the concept of socialism in one country. According to its supporters, the gradual transition from capitalism to socialism was signified by the introduction of the first five-year plan and the 1936 Soviet Constitution.[13] By the late 1920s, Stalin established ideological orthodoxy in the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), the Soviet Union, and the Communist International to establish universal Marxist–Leninist praxis.[14][15] The formulation of the Soviet version of dialectical and historical materialism in the 1930s by Stalin and his associates, such as in Stalin's text "Dialectical and Historical Materialism", became the official Soviet interpretation of Marxism,[16] and was taken as example by Marxist–Leninists in other countries; according to the Great Russian Encyclopedia, this text became the foundation of the philosophy of Marxism–Leninism.[17] In 1938, Stalin's official textbook History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks) popularised Marxism–Leninism.[18]

The internationalism of Marxism–Leninism was expressed in supporting revolutions in other countries, initially through the Communist International and then through the concept of socialist-leaning countries after de-Stalinisation. The establishment of other Communist states after World War II resulted in Sovietisation, and these states tended to follow the Soviet Marxist–Leninist model of five-year plans and rapid industrialisation, political centralisation, and repression. During the Cold War, Marxism–Leninism was a driving force in international relations.[vague][19] With the death of Stalin and the ensuing de-Stalinisation, Marxism–Leninism underwent several revisions and adaptations such as Guevarism, Ho Chi Minh Thought, Hoxhaism, Maoism, socialism with Chinese characteristics, and Titoism. More recently Nepalese communist parties have adopted People's Multiparty Democracy. This also caused several splits between Marxist–Leninist states, resulting in the Tito–Stalin split, the Sino-Soviet split, and the Sino-Albanian split. The socio-economic nature of Marxist–Leninist states, especially that of the Soviet Union during the Stalin era, has been much debated, varyingly being labelled a form of bureaucratic collectivism, state capitalism, state socialism, or a totally unique mode of production.[20] The Eastern Bloc, including Marxist–Leninist states in Central and Eastern Europe as well as the Third World socialist regimes, have been variously described as "bureaucratic-authoritarian systems",[21] and China's socio-economic structure has been referred to as "nationalistic state capitalism".[22]

Criticism of Marxism–Leninism largely overlaps with criticism of Communist party rule and mainly focuses on the actions and policies of Marxist–Leninist leaders, most notably Stalin and Mao Zedong. Marxist–Leninist states have been marked by a high degree of centralised control by the state and Communist party, political repression, state atheism, collectivisation and use of labour camps, as well as free universal education and healthcare, low unemployment and lower prices for certain goods. Historians such as Silvio Pons and Robert Service stated that the repression and totalitarianism came from Marxist–Leninist ideology.[23][24][25][26] Historians such as Michael Geyer and Sheila Fitzpatrick have offered other explanations and criticise the focus on the upper levels of society and use of concepts such as totalitarianism which have obscured the reality of the system.[27] While the emergence of the Soviet Union as the world's first nominally Communist state led to communism's widespread association with Marxism–Leninism and the Soviet model,[19][28][29] several academics say that Marxism–Leninism in practice was a form of state capitalism.[30][31]

Trotskyism

is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky and some other members of the Left Opposition and Fourth International. Trotsky described himself as an orthodox Marxist, a revolutionary Marxist, and Bolshevik–Leninist, a follower of Marx, Engels, and Vladimir Lenin, Karl Liebknecht, and Rosa Luxemburg. He supported founding a vanguard party of the proletariat, proletarian internationalism, and a dictatorship of the proletariat (as opposed to the "dictatorship of the bourgeoisie", which Marxists argue defines capitalism) based on working-class self-emancipation and mass democracy. Trotskyists are critical of Stalinism as they oppose Joseph Stalin's theory of socialism in one country in favour of Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution. Trotskyists criticize the bureaucracy and anti-democratic current developed in the Soviet Union under Stalin.

Vladimir Lenin and Trotsky, despite their ideological disputes, were close personally prior to the London congress of social democrats in 1903 and during the First World War. Lenin and Trotsky were close ideologically and personally during the Russian Revolution and its aftermath, and Trotskyists and some others call Trotsky its "co-leader".[note 1][1] Trotsky was the Red Army's paramount leader in the Revolutionary period's direct aftermath. Trotsky initially opposed some aspects of Leninism[2][3] but eventually concluded that unity between the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks was impossible and joined the Bolsheviks. Trotsky played a leading role with Lenin in the October Revolution. Assessing Trotsky, Lenin wrote: "Trotsky long ago said that unification is impossible. Trotsky understood this and from that time on, there has been no better Bolshevik."[4]

In 1927, Trotsky was purged from the Communist Party and Soviet politics. In October, by order of Stalin,[5] Trotsky was removed from power and, in November, expelled from the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks). He was exiled to Alma-Ata (now Almaty) in January 1928 and then expelled from the Soviet Union in February 1929. As the head of the Fourth International, Trotsky continued in exile to oppose what he termed the degenerated workers' state in the Soviet Union. On 20 August 1940, Trotsky was attacked in Mexico City by Ramón Mercader, a Spanish-born NKVD agent, and died the next day in a hospital. His murder is considered a political assassination. Almost all Trotskyists within the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) were executed in the Great Purges of 1937–1938, effectively removing all of Trotsky's internal influence in the Soviet Union. Nikita Khrushchev had come to power as head of the Communist Party in Ukraine, signing lists of other Trotskyists to be executed. Trotsky and the party of Trotskyists were still recognized as enemies of the USSR during Khrushchev's rule of the Soviet Union from 1956.[6]

Trotsky's Fourth International was established in the French Third Republic in 1938 when Trotskyists argued that the Comintern or Third International had become irretrievably "lost to Stalinism" and thus incapable of leading the international working class to political power.[7] In contemporary English language usage, an advocate of Trotsky's ideas is often called a "Trotskyist". A Trotskyist may be called a "Trotskyite" or "Trot", especially by a critic of Trotskyism.[8]

1903

The Baghdad railway

, also known as the Berlin–Baghdad railway (Turkish: Bağdat Demiryolu, German: Bagdadbahn, Arabic: سكة حديد بغداد, French: Chemin de Fer Impérial Ottoman de Bagdad), was started in 1903 to connect Berlin with the then Ottoman city of Baghdad, from where the Germans wanted to establish a port on the Persian Gulf,[2] with a 1,600-kilometre (1,000 mi) line through modern-day Turkey, Syria, and Iraq.

The line was completed only in 1940. By the outbreak of World War I, the railway was still 960 km (600 miles) away from its intended objective. The last stretch to Baghdad was built in the late 1930s and the first train to travel from Istanbul to Baghdad departed in 1940.

Funding, engineering and construction was mainly provided by the German Empire through Deutsche Bank and the Philipp Holzmann company, which in the 1890s had built the Anatolian Railway (Anatolische Eisenbahn) connecting Istanbul, Ankara and Konya. The Ottoman Empire wished to maintain its control of the Arabian Peninsula and to expand its influence across the Red Sea into the nominally Ottoman (until 1914) Khedivate of Egypt, which had been under British military control since the Urabi Revolt in 1882. If the railway had been completed, the Germans would have gained access to suspected oil fields in Mesopotamia,[note 1] as well as a connection to the port of Basra on the Persian Gulf. The latter would have provided access to the eastern parts of the German colonial empire, and avoided the Suez Canal, which was controlled by British and French interests.

The railway became a source of international disputes during the years immediately preceding World War I.[3][4] Although it has been argued that they were resolved in 1914 before the war began, it has also been argued that the railway was a manifestation of the imperial rivalry that was the leading cause of World War I.[5][6][page needed][7] Technical difficulties in the remote Taurus Mountains and diplomatic delays meant that by 1915 the railway was still 480 kilometres (300 mi) short of completion, severely limiting its use during the war in which Baghdad was captured by the British while the Hejaz railway in the south was attacked by guerrilla forces led by T. E. Lawrence. Construction resumed in the 1930s and was completed in 1940.

A history of this railway in the context of World War I describes the German interest in countering the British Empire, and Turkey's interest in countering their Russian rivals.[8][page needed] As stated by a contemporary 'on the ground' at the time, Morris Jastrow wrote:[9]

"It was felt in England that if, as Napoleon is said to have remarked, Antwerp in the hands of a great continental power was a pistol leveled at the English coast, Baghdad and the Persian Gulf in the hands of Germany (or any other strong power) would be a 42-centimetre gun pointed at India."

Chemin de Fer Impérial Ottoman de Baghdad -

German Baghdad Railway.

Share of the Baghdad railway, issued 31 December 1903[1]

Baghdad Central Station, 2012

This anti-Russian satirical map was produced by a Japanese student at Keio University during the Russo-Japanese War. It follows the design used for a similar map first published in 1877.[6]

Kurino Shin'ichirō

Battlefields in the Russo-Japanese War

After the Battle of Liaoyang: Transport of wounded Russians by the Red Cross (Angelo Agostini)

Bombardment during the siege of Port Arthur

Japanese infantry during the occupation of Seoul, Korea, in 1904

Japanese assault on the entrenched Russian forces, 1904

Getsuzō's woodblock print of "The Battle of Liaoyang", 1904

Japanese Empire's territorial expansion

Japanese general, Kuroki, and his staff, including foreign officers and war correspondents after the Battle of Shaho (1904)

Negotiating the Treaty of Portsmouth (1905). From left to right: the Russians at far side of table are Korostovetz, Nabokov, Witte, Rosen, Plancon; and the Japanese at near side of table are Adachi, Ochiai, Komura, Takahira, Satō. The large conference table is today preserved at the Museum Meiji-mura in Inuyama, Aichi Prefecture, Japan.

Japan-Russia Treaty of Peace, 5 September 1905

Ratification of the Peace Treaty between Japan and Russia, November 25, 1905

Punch cartoon, 1905; A cartoon in the British press of the times illustrating the Russian Empire's loss of prestige after the nation's defeat. The hour-glass represents Russia's prestige running out.

1904

The Russo-Japanese War

(Japanese: 日露戦争, romanized: Nichiro sensō, lit. 'Japanese-Russian War'; Russian: Ру́сско-япóнская войнá, romanized: Rússko-yapónskaya voyná) was fought between the Empire of Japan and the Russian Empire during 1904 and 1905 over rival imperial ambitions in Manchuria and the Korean Empire.[4] The major theatres of military operations were in Liaodong Peninsula and Mukden in Southern Manchuria, and the Yellow Sea and the Sea of Japan.

Russia sought a warm-water port on the Pacific Ocean both for its navy and for maritime trade. Vladivostok remained ice-free and operational only during the summer; Port Arthur, a naval base in Liaodong Province leased to Russia by the Qing dynasty of China from 1897, was operational year round.

Russia had pursued an expansionist policy east of the Urals, in Siberia and the Far East, since the reign of Ivan the Terrible in the 16th century.[5] Since the end of the First Sino-Japanese War in 1895, Japan had feared Russian encroachment would interfere with its plans to establish a sphere of influence in Korea and Manchuria.

Seeing Russia as a rival, Japan offered to recognize Russian dominance in Manchuria in exchange for recognition of the Korean Empire as being within the Japanese sphere of influence. Russia refused and demanded the establishment of a neutral buffer zone between Russia and Japan in Korea, north of the 39th parallel. The Imperial Japanese Government perceived this as obstructing their plans for expansion into mainland Asia and chose to go to war. After negotiations broke down in 1904, the Imperial Japanese Navy opened hostilities in a surprise attack on the Russian Eastern Fleet at Port Arthur, China on 9 February [O.S. 27 January] 1904.

Although Russia suffered a number of defeats, Emperor Nicholas II remained convinced that Russia could still win if it fought on; he chose to remain engaged in the war and await the outcomes of key naval battles. As hope of victory dissipated, he continued the war to preserve the dignity of Russia by averting a "humiliating peace". Russia ignored Japan's willingness early on to agree to an armistice and rejected the idea of bringing the dispute to the Permanent Court of Arbitration at the Hague. After the decisive naval battle of Tsushima, the war was concluded with the Treaty of Portsmouth (5 September [O.S. 23 August] 1905), mediated by US President Theodore Roosevelt. The complete victory of the Japanese military surprised international observers and transformed the balance of power in both East Asia and Europe, resulting in Japan's emergence as a great power and a decline in the Russian Empire's prestige and influence in Europe. Russia's incurrence of substantial casualties and losses for a cause that resulted in humiliating defeat contributed to a growing domestic unrest which culminated in the 1905 Russian Revolution, and severely damaged the prestige of the Russian autocracy.

1905

The Battle of Mukden

(奉天会戦, Hōten kaisen), one of the largest land battles to be fought before World War I and the last and the most decisive major land battle of the Russo-Japanese War,[7] was fought from 20 February to 10 March 1905 between Japan and Russia near Mukden in Manchuria. The city is now called Shenyang, the capital of Liaoning province in China.

Involving 610,000 combat participants and 164,000 combatant casualties, it was the largest modern-era battle fought prior to World War I, and possibly the largest battle in world history at that point.[8] The scale of the battle, particularly in the amount of ordnance being expended, was unprecedented in world history. The Japanese side alone fired 20.11 million rifle and machine gun rounds and 279,394 artillery shells in just over ten days of fighting (yet the Russians still fired more), matching the ammunition consumption of the German army in the entire 191-day Franco-Prussian War.[9] The battle was a decisive strategic victory for the Japanese and, coupled with their victory at the Battle of Tsushima four months later, proved critical in ending the war in their favor.

Russian field gun firing during the battle of Mukden

Russian Cavalry under Reconnaissance Mission during the Battle of Mukden

Formation of a Japanese division

Retreat of Russian soldiers towards the Sino-Russian border after the battle

Admiral Tōgō Heihachirō on the bridge of the Battleship Mikasa. Left to right: messenger Yamazaki Genki, navigator Second Lieutenant Edahara Yurikazu, staff Major Iida Hisatsune, chief navigator Lieutenant Colonel Nunome Mitsuzō, aide-de-camp of gunnery officer Lieutenant Imamura Nobujirō, captain of Mikasa Captain Ijichi Hikojirō, gunnery officer Major Abo Kiyokazu, 4th grade sailor Noguchi Shinzō, chief of staff Rear-Admiral Katō Tomosaburō, measurement officer Cadet Lieutenant Hasegawa Kiyoshi, Commander-in-chief of the Combined Fleet Tōgō Heihachirō, staff Lieutenant Colonel Akiyama Saneyuki, 1st grade sailor Miura Tadashi, cadet Tamaki Shinsuke

Routes taken by the Russian fleets from the Baltic to the Battle of Tsushima. Dobrotvorsky unit[c] and Fölkersahm detachment in purple, Rozhestvensky fleet in blue, and Nevogatov's 3rd Pacific Squadron in green.[21]

Map of the Korea Strait and Tsushima Strait, either side of the Tsushima Islands

Routes of the Russian and Japanese fleets in the days leading up to the battle

Departure of the Japanese Combined Fleet in the morning of 27 May 1905.

Damaged Oryol at Maizuru Naval Arsenal.[o]

Russian battleship Oslyabya, the first warship sunk in the battle

Battle damage to the cruiser Nisshin

Battle damage to the cruiser Aurora.

Battle damage to the cruiser Oleg.

Aurora, preserved as a museum ship in Saint Petersburg, Russia

The battleship Mikasa, Admiral Tōgō's flagship at the battle of Tsushima, preserved as a memorial in Yokosuka, Japan

1905

The Battle of Tsushima

(Japanese: 対馬沖海戦, Tsushima oki Kaisen, Russian: Цусимское сражение, Tsusimskoye srazheniye), also known as the Battle of Tsushima Strait and the Naval Battle of Sea of Japan (Japanese: 日本海海戦, Nihonkai-Kaisen) in Japan, was a major naval battle fought between Russia and Japan during the Russo-Japanese War. It is the only decisive sea battle ever fought by modern steel battleship fleets[3][4] and the first naval battle in which wireless telegraphy (radio) played a critically important role. It has been characterized as the "dying echo of the old era – for the last time in the history of naval warfare, ships of the line of a beaten fleet surrendered on the high seas".[5]

The battle was fought on 27–28 May 1905 (14–15 May in the Julian calendar then in use in Russia) in the Tsushima Strait located between Korea and southern Japan. The Japanese fleet under Admiral Tōgō Heihachirō destroyed the Russian fleet, under Admiral Zinovy Rozhestvensky, which had traveled over 18,000 nautical miles (33,000 km) to reach the Far East. In London in 1906, Sir George Sydenham Clarke wrote, "The battle of Tsu-shima is by far the greatest and the most important naval event since Trafalgar";[6] decades later, historian Edmund Morris agreed.[7]

The destruction of the fleet caused a bitter reaction from the Russian public, which induced a peace treaty in September 1905 without any further battles. Conversely, in Japan it was hailed as one of the greatest naval victories in Japanese history, and Admiral Tōgō was revered as a national hero.[b] The battleship Mikasa, from which Tōgō commanded the battle, has been preserved as a museum ship in Yokosuka Harbour.

Prior to the Russo-Japanese War, countries constructed their battleships with mixed batteries of mainly 6-inch (152 mm), 8-inch (203 mm), 10-inch (254 mm) and 12-inch (305 mm) guns, with the intent that these battleships fight on the battle line in a close-quarter, decisive fleet action. The Battle of Tsushima conclusively demonstrated that faster battleships and big guns[8] with longer ranges were superior to batteries of mixed size guns.[9]

1905

The Treaty of Portsmouth

is a treaty that formally ended the 1904–1905 Russo-Japanese War. It was signed on September 5, 1905,[1] after negotiations from August 6 to August 30, at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine, United States.[2] U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt was instrumental in the negotiations and won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts.

1905

The first Partition of Bengal

Was a territorial reorganization of the Bengal Presidency implemented by the authorities of the British Raj. The reorganization separated the largely Muslim eastern areas from the largely Hindu western areas. Announced on 20 July 1905 by Lord Curzon, the then Viceroy of India, and implemented on 16 October 1905, it was undone a mere six years later. The nationalists saw the partition as a challenge to Indian nationalism and that it was a deliberate attempt to divide the Bengal Presidency on religious grounds, with a Muslim majority in the east and a Hindu majority in the west.[1] The Hindus of West Bengal complained that the division would make them a minority in a province that would incorporate the province of Bihar and Orissa. Hindus were outraged at what they saw as a "divide and rule" policy,[2][3]: 248–249 even though Curzon stressed it would produce administrative efficiency. The partition animated the Muslims to form their own national organization along communal lines. To appease Bengali sentiment, Bengal was reunited by Lord Hardinge in 1911, in response to the Swadeshi movement's riots in protest against the policy.

Curzon—procession to Sanchi Tope, 28 November 1899.

Curzon and Madho Rao Scindia, Maharaja of Gwalior, pose with hunted tigers, 1901.

George, Lord Curzon, Viceroy of India.

Dr. Sun Yat-sen together with the members of the Singapore Branch of Tongmen Hui, (front row from left) Lin Ganting, Zhang Yongfu, Chen Chunan, Sun Yat-sen, You Lie, Liou Jinsheng, Lin Yishun; (back row from left) Wu Wusou, Zhang Huadan, Zhang Ji, Chen Ruhe, Deng Ziyu, Huang Yaoting, Zhang Binggeng. Sun Yat-sen is the father of China and died in 1925, therefore the photo must be in public domain.…

Credential of Tongmenghui.

A letter with Sun's seal commencing the Tongmenghui in Hong Kong

Marker of the Reception Centre of the Tongmenghui along the Dr Sun Yat-sen Historical Trail in Hong Kong

1905

The Tongmenghui of China

(or T'ung-meng Hui, variously translated as Chinese United League, United League, Chinese Revolutionary Alliance, Chinese Alliance, United Allegiance Society, Chinese: 中國同盟會; pinyin: zhōngguó tóngménghuì) was a secret society and underground resistance movement founded by Sun Yat-sen, Song Jiaoren, and others in Tokyo, Empire of Japan, on 20 August 1905, with the goal of overthrowing China's Qing dynasty.[1][2] It was formed from the merger of multiple late-Qing dynasty Chinese revolutionary groups.

1907

The Triple Entente

(from French entente [ɑ̃tɑ̃t] meaning "friendship, understanding, agreement") describes the informal understanding between the Russian Empire, the French Third Republic, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland as well as Romania, which joined later. It was built upon the Franco-Russian Alliance of 1894, the Entente Cordiale of 1904 between Paris and London, and the Anglo-Russian Entente of 1907. It formed a powerful counterweight to the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy. The Triple Entente, unlike the Triple Alliance or the Franco-Russian Alliance itself, was not an alliance of mutual defence.

The Franco-Japanese Treaty of 1907 was a key part of building a coalition as France took the lead in creating alliances with Japan, Russia, and (informally) with Britain. Japan wanted to raise a loan in Paris, so France made the loan contingent on a Russo-Japanese agreement and a Japanese guarantee for France's strategically vulnerable possessions in Indochina. Britain encouraged the Russo-Japanese rapprochement. Thus was built the Triple Entente coalition that fought World War I.[1]

At the start of World War I in 1914, all three Triple Entente members entered it as Allied Powers against the Central Powers: Ottoman Turkey, Germany and Austria-Hungary.[2] On September 4, 1914, the Triple Entente issued a declaration undertaking not to conclude a separate peace and only to demand terms of peace agreed between the three parties.[3] Historians continue to debate the importance of the alliance system as one of the causes of World War I.

1908

The Xuantong Emperor

puyi

born Aisin-Gioro Puyi (Chinese: 溥儀; 7 February 1906 – 17 October 1967), courtesy name Yaozhi (曜之), was the last emperor of China as the eleventh and final Qing dynasty monarch. He became emperor at the age of two in 1908, but was forced to abdicate on 12 February 1912 during the Xinhai Revolution. His era name as Qing emperor, "Xuantong" (Hsuan-t'ung, 宣統), means "proclamation of unity". He later became the ruler of the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo in the 1930s until its collapse in 1945 with the regnal name of Kangde.

He was briefly restored to the throne as Qing emperor by the loyalist General Zhang Xun from 1 July to 12 July 1917. He was first wed to Empress Wanrong in 1922 in an arranged marriage. In 1924, he was expelled from the Forbidden City and found refuge in Tianjin, where he began to court both the warlords fighting for hegemony over China and the Japanese who had long desired control of China. In 1932, after the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, the puppet state of Manchukuo was established by Japan, and he was chosen to become the chief executive of the new state using the era name of "Datong" (Ta-tung, 大同).

In 1934, he was declared emperor of Manchukuo with the era name "Kangde" (K'ang-te, 康德) and reigned over his new empire until the end of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1945. This third stint as emperor saw him as a puppet of Japan; he signed most edicts the Japanese gave him. During this period, he largely resided in the Salt Tax Palace, where he regularly ordered his servants beaten. His first wife's opium addiction consumed her during these years, and they were generally distant. He took on numerous concubines, as well as male lovers. With the fall of Japan (and thus Manchukuo) in 1945, Puyi fled the capital and was eventually captured by the Soviets; he was extradited to the People's Republic of China in 1950. After his capture, he never saw his first wife again; she died of starvation in a Chinese prison in 1946.

Puyi was a defendant at the Tokyo Trials and was later imprisoned and reeducated as a war criminal for 10 years. After his release in 1959, he wrote his memoirs (with the help of a ghost writer) and became a titular member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and the National People's Congress of the People's Republic of China. His time in prison greatly changed him, and he expressed deep regret for his actions while he was an emperor. He died in 1967 and was ultimately buried near the Western Qing tombs in a commercial cemetery.

Titular emperor Puyi in the Forbidden City

Puyi as an adult, after his reign as the Xuantong Emperor

Puyi's letters to Joseph Stalin

Puyi's tutor, Sir Reginald Johnston

Emperor Puyi shakes hands with Emperor Hirohito at Tokyo Station on 26 June 1940

Puyi in the 1960s with Li Shuxian and Pujie in Beijing.

1908

The Young Turk Revolution

(July 1908) was a constitutionalist revolution in the Ottoman Empire. The Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), an organization of the Young Turks movement, forced Sultan Abdul Hamid II to restore the Ottoman Constitution and recall the parliament, which ushered in multi-party politics within the Empire. From the Young Turk Revolution to the Empire's end marks the Second Constitutional Era of the Ottoman Empire's history. More than three decades earlier, in 1876, constitutional monarchy had been established under Abdul Hamid during a period of time known as the First Constitutional Era, which lasted for only two years before Abdul Hamid suspended it and restored autocratic powers to himself.

The revolution began with CUP member Ahmed Niyazi's flight into the Albanian highlands. He was soon joined by İsmail Enver and Eyub Sabri. They networked with local Albanians and utilized their connections within the Salonica based Third Army to instigate a large revolt. Various coordinated assassinations by Unionist Fedai also contributed to Abdul Hamid's capitulation. With a Constitutionalist revolt in the Rumelian provinces instigated by the CUP, Abdul Hamid capitulated and announced the restoration of the Constitution, recalled the parliament, and called for elections.

After an attempted monarchist counterrevolution known as the 31 March Incident in favor of Abdul Hamid the following year, he was deposed and his brother Mehmed V ascended the throne.

1910

Edward VII

(Albert Edward; 9 November 1841 – 6 May 1910) was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India, from 22 January 1901 until his death in 1910.

The second child and eldest son of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, and nicknamed "Bertie", Edward was related to royalty throughout Europe. He was Prince of Wales and heir apparent to the British throne for almost 60 years. During the long reign of his mother, he was largely excluded from political influence and came to personify the fashionable, leisured elite. He travelled throughout Britain performing ceremonial public duties and represented Britain on visits abroad. His tours of North America in 1860 and of the Indian subcontinent in 1875 proved popular successes, but despite public approval, his reputation as a playboy prince soured his relationship with his mother.

As king, Edward played a role in the modernisation of the British Home Fleet and the reorganisation of the British Army after the Second Boer War of 1899–1902. He re-instituted traditional ceremonies as public displays and broadened the range of people with whom royalty socialised. He fostered good relations between Britain and other European countries, especially France, for which he was popularly called "Peacemaker", but his relationship with his nephew, the German Emperor Wilhelm II, was poor. The Edwardian era, which covered Edward's reign and was named after him, coincided with the start of a new century and heralded significant changes in technology and society, including steam turbine propulsion and the rise of socialism. He died in 1910 in the midst of a constitutional crisis that was resolved the following year by the Parliament Act 1911, which restricted the power of the unelected House of Lords. Edward was succeeded by his only surviving son, George V.

Portrait by Sir Luke Fildes, 1901

The marriage of the Prince of Wales with Princess Alexandra of Denmark, Windsor, 10 March 1863

The lying-in-state of King Edward VII in Westminster Hall, 17–19 May 1910.

Procession of the Nine Kings, an artist's impression by Harry Payne.

Edward (right) with his mother (centre) and Russian relations: Tsar Nicholas II (left), Empress Alexandra and baby Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna, 1896

The Nine Sovereigns at Windsor for the funeral of King Edward VII, photographed on 20 May 1910. Standing, from left to right: Haakon VII of Norway, Ferdinand of Bulgaria, Manuel II of Portugal, Wilhelm II of Germany, George I of Greece and Albert I of Belgium. Seated, from left to right: Alfonso XIII of Spain, George V of the United Kingdom and Frederick VIII of Denmark.

Portrait by Fildes, 1911

The King and Queen at the Delhi Durbar, 1911

1910

George V

(George Frederick Ernest Albert; 3 June 1865 – 20 January 1936) was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India, from 6 May 1910 until his death in 1936.

Born during the reign of his grandmother Queen Victoria, George was the second son of Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, and was third in the line of succession to the British throne behind his father and his elder brother, Prince Albert Victor. From 1877 to 1892, George served in the Royal Navy, until the unexpected death of his elder brother in early 1892 put him directly in line for the throne. George married his brother's fiancée, Princess Victoria Mary of Teck, the following year, and they had six children. Following the death of Queen Victoria in 1901, George's father ascended the throne as Edward VII, and George was created Prince of Wales. He became king-emperor on his father's death in 1910.

George's reign saw the rise of socialism, communism, fascism, Irish republicanism, and the Indian independence movement, all of which radically changed the political landscape of the British Empire, which itself reached its territorial peak by the beginning of the 1920s. The Parliament Act 1911 established the supremacy of the elected British House of Commons over the unelected House of Lords. As a result of the First World War (1914–1918), the empires of his first cousins Nicholas II of Russia and Wilhelm II of Germany fell, while the British Empire expanded to its greatest effective extent. In 1917, George became the first monarch of the House of Windsor, which he renamed from the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha as a result of anti-German public sentiment. He appointed the first Labour ministry in 1924, and the 1931 Statute of Westminster recognised the Empire's dominions as separate, independent states within the British Commonwealth of Nations.

George suffered from smoking-related health problems throughout much of his later reign. On his death in January 1936, he was succeeded by his eldest son, Edward VIII. Edward abdicated in December of that year and was succeeded by his younger brother Albert, who took the regnal name George VI.

1910

Japan–Korea Annexation Treaty

Also known as the Japan–Korea Annexation Treaty, was made by representatives of the Empire of Japan and the Korean Empire on 22 August 1910.[1] In this treaty, Japan formally annexed Korea following the Japan–Korea Treaty of 1905 (by which Korea became a protectorate of Japan) and the Japan–Korea Treaty of 1907 (by which Korea was deprived of the administration of internal affairs).

Japanese commentators predicted that Koreans would easily assimilate into the Japanese Empire.[1]

In 1965, the Treaty of Basic Relations between South Korea and Japan confirmed this treaty is "already null and void".[2]

Ye Wanyong (Prime Minister of the Korean Empire)

Count Terauchi Masatake (Resident General of Korea; Empire of Japan)

General power of attorney to Yi Wan-yong signed and sealed by the last emperor, Sunjong of the Korean Empire (Yi Cheok, 이척 李坧). The last emperor's first name '坧' used as signature.

Puyi as an adult, after his reign as the Xuantong Emperor

Father of the Republic of China Eternal Premier of the Kuomintang[1] Sun Yat-sen

Fushun War Criminals Management Centre

The Sun Yat-sen Museum in George Town, Penang, Malaysia, where he planned the Xinhai Revolution.[72]

The Revolutionary Army of the Wuchang uprising fighting in the Battle of Yangxia

(L-R): Liao Zhongkai, Chiang Kai-shek, Sun Yat-sen and Soong Ching-ling at the founding of the Whampoa Military Academy in 1924

Sun Yat-sen (seated) and Chiang Kai-shek

Chinese generals at the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum in 1928 after the Northern Expedition. From right: Cheng Jin (何成浚), Zhang Zuobao (張作寶), Chen Diaoyuan (陳調元), Chiang Kai-shek, Woo Tsin-hang, Yan Xishan, Ma Fuxiang, Ma Sida (馬四達), and Bai Chongxi.…

Statue of Sun's Mausoleum in Nanjing, with a Kuomintang flag on the ceiling

Sun Yat-sen tribute in Tiananmen Square in front of the Monument to the People's Heroes, 2021

1911

Xinhai Revolution

The 1911 Revolution, also known as the Xinhai Revolution or Hsinhai Revolution, ended China's last imperial dynasty, the Manchu-led Qing dynasty, and led to the establishment of the Republic of China. The revolution was the culmination of a decade of agitation, revolts, and uprisings. Its success marked the collapse of the Chinese monarchy, the end of 2,132 years of imperial rule in China and 276 years of the Qing dynasty, and the beginning of China's early republican era.[2]

The Qing dynasty had struggled for a long time to reform the government and resist foreign aggression, but the program of reforms after 1900 was opposed by conservatives in the Qing court as too radical and by reformers as too slow. Several factions, including underground anti-Qing groups, revolutionaries in exile, reformers who wanted to save the monarchy by modernizing it, and activists across the country debated how or whether to overthrow the Qing dynasty. The flash-point came on 10 October 1911, with the Wuchang Uprising, an armed rebellion among members of the New Army. Similar revolts then broke out spontaneously around the country, and revolutionaries in all provinces of the country renounced the Qing dynasty. On 1 November 1911, the Qing court appointed Yuan Shikai (leader of the powerful Beiyang Army) as Prime Minister, and he began negotiations with the revolutionaries.

In Nanjing, revolutionary forces created a provisional coalition government. On 1 January 1912, the National Assembly declared the establishment of the Republic of China, with Sun Yat-sen, leader of the Tongmenghui (United League), as President of the Republic. A brief civil war between the North and the South ended in compromise. Sun would resign in favor of Yuan Shikai, who would become President of the new national government, if Yuan could secure the abdication of the Qing emperor. The edict of abdication of the last Chinese emperor, the six-year-old Puyi, was promulgated on 12 February 1912. Yuan was sworn in as president on 10 March 1912. Yuan's failure to consolidate a legitimate central government before his death in 1916, led to decades of political division and warlordism, including an attempt at imperial restoration.

The revolution is named Xinhai because it occurred in 1911, the year of the Xinhai (辛亥) stem-branch in the sexagenary cycle of the traditional Chinese calendar.[3] The Republic of China on the island of Taiwan and the People's Republic of China on the Chinese mainland both consider themselves the legitimate successors to the 1911 Revolution and honor the ideals of the revolution including nationalism, republicanism, modernization of China and national unity. In Taiwan, 10 October is commemorated as Double Ten Day, the National Day of the Republic of China. In mainland China, the day is celebrated as the Anniversary of the 1911 Revolution.

1912

The Republic of China

(ROC), between 1912 and 1949,[a] was a sovereign state recognised as the official designation of China when it was based on Mainland China, prior to the relocation of its central government to Taiwan as a result of the Chinese Civil War. At a population of 541 million in 1949, it was the world's most populous country. Covering 11.4 million square kilometres (4.4 million square miles),[2] it consisted of 35 provinces, 1 special administrative region, 2 regions, 12 special municipalities, 14 leagues, and 4 special banners. The People's Republic of China (PRC), which rules mainland China today, considers ROC as a country that ceased to exist since 1949; thus, the history of ROC before 1949 is often referred to as Republican Era (simplified Chinese: 民国时期; traditional Chinese: 民國時期) of China.[3][4][5][6] The ROC, now based in Taiwan, today considers itself a continuation of the country, thus referring to the period of its mainland governance as the Mainland Period (traditional Chinese: 大陸時期; simplified Chinese: 大陆时期) of the Republic of China in Taiwan.[7]

The Republic was declared on 1 January 1912 after the Xinhai Revolution, which overthrew the Manchu-led Qing dynasty, the last imperial dynasty of China. On 12 February 1912, regent Empress Dowager Longyu signed the abdication decree on behalf of the Xuantong Emperor, ending several millennia of Chinese monarchical rule.[8] Sun Yat-sen, the founder and its provisional president, served only briefly before handing over the presidency to Yuan Shikai, the leader of the Beiyang Army. Sun's party, the Kuomintang (KMT), then led by Song Jiaoren, won the parliamentary election held in December 1912. However, Song was assassinated on Yuan's orders shortly after and the Beiyang Army, led by Yuan, maintained full control of the Beiyang government, who then proclaimed the Empire of China in 1915 before abolishing the short-lived monarchy as a result of popular unrest. After Yuan's death in 1916, the authority of the Beiyang government was further weakened by a brief restoration of the Qing dynasty. The mostly powerless government led to a fracturing of the country as cliques in the Beiyang Army claimed individual autonomy and clashed with each other. So began the Warlord Era: a decade of decentralized power struggles and prolonged armed conflict.

The KMT, under the leadership of Sun, attempted multiple times to establish a national government in Canton. After taking Canton for a third time in 1923, the KMT successfully established a rival government in preparation for a campaign to unify China. In 1924 the KMT would enter into an alliance with the fledgling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as a requirement for Soviet support. General Chiang Kai-shek, who became the Chairman of the Kuomintang after Sun's death and subsequent power struggle in 1925, began the Northern Expedition in 1926 to overthrow the Beiyang government. In 1927, Chiang moved the nationalist government to Nanking and purged the CCP, beginning with the Shanghai massacre. The latter event forced the CCP and KMT's left-wing into armed rebellion, marking the beginning of the Chinese Civil War and the establishment of a rival nationalist government in Wuhan under Wang Jingwei. However, this rival government soon purged the communists as well and reconciled with Chiang's KMT. After the Northern Expedition resulted in nominal unification under Chiang in 1928, disgruntled warlords formed an anti-Chiang coalition. These warlords would fight Chiang and his allies in the Central Plains War from 1929 to 1930, ultimately losing in the largest conflict of the Warlord Era.

China experienced some industrialization during the 1930s but suffered setbacks from conflicts between the Nationalist government in Nanjing, the CCP, remaining warlords, and the Empire of Japan after the Japanese invasion of Manchuria. Nation-building efforts yielded to fight the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937 when a skirmish between the National Revolutionary Army and Imperial Japanese Army culminated in a full-scale invasion by Japan. Hostilities between the KMT and CCP partially subsided when, shortly before the war, they formed the Second United Front to resist Japanese aggression until the alliance broke down in 1941. The war lasted until the surrender of Japan at the end of World War II in 1945; China then regained control of the island of Taiwan and the Pescadores.

Shortly after, the Chinese Civil War between the KMT and CCP resumed with full-scale fighting, leading to the 1946 Constitution of the Republic of China replacing the 1928 Organic Law [9] as the Republic's fundamental law. Three years later, in 1949, nearing the end of the civil war, the CCP established the People's Republic of China in Beijing, with the KMT-led ROC moving its capital several times from Nanjing to Guangzhou, followed by Chongqing, then Chengdu and lastly, Taipei. The CCP emerged victorious and expelled the KMT and ROC government from the Chinese mainland. The ROC later lost control of Hainan in 1950, and the Dachen Islands in Zhejiang in 1955. It has maintained control over Taiwan and other smaller islands.

The ROC was a founding member of the League of Nations and later the United Nations (including its Security Council seat) where it maintained until 1971, when the People's Republic of China took over its membership. It was also a member of the Universal Postal Union and the International Olympic Committee.

1912

Five Races Under One Union

was one of the major principles upon which the Republic of China was founded in 1911 at the time of the Xinhai Revolution.[1][2][3][4] Its central tenet was the harmonious existence under one nation of what were considered the five major ethnic groups in China: the Han, the Manchu, the Mongols, the Hui (including the Uyghurs), and the Tibetans.[5]

National flag, 1912–1928 (used again by the Provisional Government, 1937–1940 and Reformed Government, 1938–1940)

A rare image of the three flags of the Republic of China together. At center, the first national flag (see Image:Flag of the Republic of China 1912-1928.svg), at left the army flag (see Image:Chinese-Army-Wuhan-Flag-1911-1928 dots19.svg), and at right the Sun Yat Sen flag (now the flag of Taiwan) (see Image:Flag of the Republic of China.svg). Underneath the picture is the slogan "Long live the republic!" (共和萬歲, in traditional right-to-left single-character column order).…

Painting of the Qing army against Panthay Rebellion in Yunnan. Military of the Qing dynasty used the five color flag.

The picture above is Nanjing Road after the Shanghai Uprising, hung with the Five Races Under One Union flags then used by the revolutionaries in Shanghai and whole China.

1912

The Balkan Wars

refers to a series of two conflicts that took place in the Balkan states in 1912 and 1913. In the First Balkan War, the four Balkan states of Greece, Serbia, Montenegro and Bulgaria declared war upon the Ottoman Empire and defeated it, in the process stripping the Ottomans of its European provinces, leaving only Eastern Thrace under the Ottoman Empire's control. In the Second Balkan War, Bulgaria fought against the other four original combatants of the first war. It also faced an attack from Romania from the north. The Ottoman Empire lost the bulk of its territory in Europe. Although not involved as a combatant, Austria-Hungary became relatively weaker as a much enlarged Serbia pushed for union of the South Slavic peoples.[9] The war set the stage for the Balkan crisis of 1914 and thus served as a "prelude to the First World War".[10]

By the early 20th century, Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro and Serbia had achieved independence from the Ottoman Empire, but large elements of their ethnic populations remained under Ottoman rule. In 1912, these countries formed the Balkan League. The First Balkan War began on 8 October 1912, when the League member states attacked the Ottoman Empire, and ended eight months later with the signing of the Treaty of London on 30 May 1913. The Second Balkan War began on 16 June 1913, when Bulgaria, dissatisfied with its loss of Macedonia, attacked its former Balkan League allies. The combined forces of Serbian and Greek armies, with their superior numbers repelled the Bulgarian offensive and counter-attacked Bulgaria by invading it from the west and the south. Romania, having taken no part in the conflict, had intact armies to strike with and invaded Bulgaria from the north in violation of a peace treaty between the two states. The Ottoman Empire also attacked Bulgaria and advanced in Thrace regaining Adrianople. In the resulting Treaty of Bucharest, Bulgaria managed to regain most of the territories it had gained in the First Balkan War. However, it was forced to cede the ex-Ottoman south part of Dobruja province to Romania.[11]

The Balkan Wars were marked by ethnic cleansing with all parties being responsible for grave atrocities against civilians and helped inspire later atrocities including war crimes during the 1990s Yugoslav Wars.[12][13][14][15]

Mehmed V Ottoman Caliph Amir al-Mu'minin Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques Khan , Photograph by Carl Pietzner, June 1915

Ferdinand I of Bulgaria in 1912

A Bulgarian postcard depicting the Battle of Lule Burgas.

Map of the Ottoman Empire in 1900, with the names of the Ottoman provinces.

A Punch cartoon of October 2, 1912, by English cartoonist Leonard Raven-Hill depicting Britain, France, German, Austria-Hungary, and Russia sitting on a lid on top of a pot marked "Balkan Troubles", satirizing the situation in the Balkans leading up to the First Balkan War

Bulgarian forces waiting to start their assault on Adrianople

Territorial changes as a result of the First Balkan war, as of April 1913 showing the prewar agreed line of expansion between Serbia and Bulgaria

Boundaries on the Balkans after the First and the Second Balkan War (1912–1913)

The apple of discord: King George I of Greece and Tsar Ferdinand of Bulgaria at Thessaloniki, December 1912. Despite their alliance, Greco-Bulgarian antagonism over the city and Macedonia did not abate.

Cholera was common among the soldiers of the combatant nations

Ottoman cannon captured by the Royal Serbian Army displayed in front of a church in Kumanovo, 1912

Nazım Pasha, the chief of staff of the Ottoman army, was assassinated in January 1913 by Young Turks due to his failure.

Greek lithograph of the Battle of Kilkis–Lachanas

The inaugural meeting of the National Assembly in April 1913.

Sung Chiao-jen

1912

Chinese National Assembly elections

, held in December 1912 to January 1913, were the first elections for the newly founded National Assembly of the Republic of China, which was a bicameral parliament with a Senate and a House of Representatives.

The election was indirect, as voters chose some 30,000 electors who chose about 2,000 members of the provincial assemblies and 596 members of the House of Representatives. This system caused instances of bribery.

The 274-member Senate were elected by the provincial assemblies who themselves had been elected in 1909 during the Qing dynasty.

Adult males over the age of 21 who were educated or owned property and paid taxes, and who could prove a two-year residency in a particular county, could vote.[1] An estimated 40 million or 4-6% of China's population were registered for the election.[2] This was an increase from the size of the electorate in the 1909 Chinese provincial elections, when less than 1% of the population was enfranchised.

The president had to pick the 64 members representing Tibet, Outer Mongolia, and Overseas Chinese due to the fact that the government in Beijing did not exercise enough control over these populations to organize elections. Despite the compromises, this election had the participation of over 300 civic groups and was the first and most competitive nationwide election in Chinese history.

The Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist Party) led by Song Jiaoren won a plurality in both houses of the assembly, and Song was expected to become the Premier of China.[2] After losing the election, the Republican, Unity, and Democratic (formerly Constitutionalist) parties merged into the Progressive Party with Liang Qichao as leader. The Progressive Party became the main rival to the Nationalists.

Song was assassinated on 20 March 1913 in Shanghai. When the assembly convened for the first time on April 8 amid heated debate over the assassination, the Nationalists were divided over solutions on how to deal with Yuan Shikai, the provisional president, who was suspected of ordering the assassination. On 12 July, Sun Yat-sen led the Nationalists and a faction of provinces into armed rebellion against Yuan, coined the Second Revolution. However, the Second Revolution was completely defeated within two months by Yuan's forces.

The National Assembly members were compromised by threats and bribes from Yuan. He confined the National Assembly and forced them to elect him as the formal president in the October presidential election. Yuan quickly outlawed the Nationalists and expelled them from the assembly. Without a quorum, the National Assembly could not convene, so Yuan disbanded it on 10 January 1914.

Song Jiaoren

(Chinese: 宋敎仁; Chinese: 宋教仁; pinyin: Sòng Jiàorén; Wade–Giles: Sung Chiao-jen, [sʊ̂ŋ tɕjâʊɻə̌n]; Given name at birth: Liàn 鍊; Courtesy name: Dùnchū 鈍初) (5 April 1882 – 22 March 1913) was a Chinese republican revolutionary, political leader and a founder of the Kuomintang (KMT). Song Jiaoren led the KMT to electoral victories in China's first democratic election. He based his appeal on the upper class gentry, landowners, and merchants. Historians have concluded that provisional president, Yuan Shikai, was responsible for his assassination on March 20, 1913.[1]

1913

Yuan Shikai

(simplified Chinese: 袁世凯; traditional Chinese: 袁世凱; pinyin: Yuán Shìkǎi; 16 September 1859 – 6 June 1916) was a Chinese military and government official who rose to power during the late Qing dynasty and eventually ended the Qing dynasty rule of China in 1912, later becoming the Emperor of China. He first tried to save the dynasty with a number of modernization projects including bureaucratic, fiscal, judicial, educational, and other reforms, despite playing a key part in the failure of the Hundred Days' Reform. He established the first modern army and a more efficient provincial government in North China during the last years of the Qing dynasty before forcing the abdication of the Xuantong Emperor, the last monarch of the Qing dynasty in 1912. Through negotiation, he became the first President of the Republic of China in 1912.[1] This army and bureaucratic control were the foundation of his autocratic rule. In 1915 he attempted to restore the hereditary monarchy in China, with himself as the Hongxian Emperor (Chinese: 洪憲皇帝). His death in 1916 shortly after his abdication led to the fragmentation of the Chinese political system and the end of the Beiyang government as China's central authority.

Yuan in 1915

Yuan Shikai in Qing dynasty uniform, 1912

Yuan Shikai sworn in as Provisional President of the Republic of China, in Beijing, 10 March 1912.

Yuan Shikai and Te Lan in 1910.

Yuan Shikai was pictured with ambassadors from foreign countries on 10 October 1913.

A banknote from the early Republic of China depicting the face of President Yuan Shikai.

Hongxian Emperor

The Twelve Symbols national emblem, which was used by the Republic of China under the Beiyang government (1912-1928), and also during the Empire of China under Yuan Shikai (1915-1916).

Siege of Adrianople (1912-13).

Siege artillery arriving before Adrianople, 3 November 1912.

Serbian artillery at siege.

Edirne people living under siege, 1913

17 March 1912 Austria Consulate visiting Agram Nun's bombed residence at Adrinople

Bulgarian soldiers invaded Selimiye mosque

Left Turkish artillery

Cholera epidemic near Tundzha River

Bulgarian major's residence after conquer of Adrinople

Adrianople view from Kirkkilise road

Prisoner camp near Tundzha River during cholera epidemic

1913

The siege of Adrianople

(Bulgarian: oбсада на Одрин, Serbian: oпсада Једрена, Turkish: Edirne kuşatması), was fought during the First Balkan War. The siege began on 3 November 1912 and ended on 26 March 1913 with the capture of Edirne (Adrianople) by the Bulgarian 2nd Army and the Serbian 2nd Army.

The loss of Edirne delivered the final decisive blow to the Ottoman army and brought the First Balkan War to an end.[8] A treaty was signed in London on 30 May. The city was reoccupied and retained by the Ottomans during the Second Balkan War.[9]

The victorious end of the siege was considered to be an enormous military success because the city's defenses had been carefully developed by leading German siege experts and called 'undefeatable'. The Bulgarian army, after five months of siege and two bold night attacks, took the Ottoman stronghold.

The victors were under the overall command of Bulgarian General Nikola Ivanov while the commander of the Bulgarian forces on the eastern sector of the fortress was General Georgi Vazov, the brother of the famous Bulgarian writer Ivan Vazov and of General Vladimir Vazov.

The early use of an airplane for bombing took place during the siege; the Bulgarians dropped special hand grenades from one or more airplanes in an effort to cause panic among the Ottoman soldiers. Many young Bulgarian officers and professionals who took part in this decisive battle would later play important roles in Bulgarian politics, culture, commerce and industry.[citation needed]

1914

Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand

Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife, Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, were assassinated on 28 June 1914 by Bosnian Serb student Gavrilo Princip. They were shot at close range while being driven through Sarajevo, the provincial capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina, formally annexed by Austria-Hungary in 1908.

Princip was part of a group of six Bosnian assassins together with Muhamed Mehmedbašić, Vaso Čubrilović, Nedeljko Čabrinović, Cvjetko Popović and Trifko Grabež coordinated by Danilo Ilić; all but one were Bosnian Serbs and members of a student revolutionary group that later became known as Young Bosnia. The political objective of the assassination was to free Bosnia and Herzegovina of Austria-Hungarian rule and establish a common South Slav ("Yugoslav") state. The assassination precipitated the July Crisis which led to Austria-Hungary declaring war on Serbia and the start of World War I.

The assassination team was helped by the Black Hand, a Serbian secret nationalist group; support came from Dragutin Dimitrijević, at the time chief of the military intelligence section of the Serbian general staff, as well as from Major Vojislav Tankosić and Rade Malobabić, a Serbian intelligence agent. Tankosić provided bombs and pistols to the assassins and trained them in their use. The assassins were given access to the same clandestine network of safe-houses and agents that Malobabić used for the infiltration of weapons and operatives into Austria-Hungary.

The assassins and key members of the clandestine network were tried in Sarajevo in October 1914. In total twenty-five people were indicted. All six assassins, except Mehmedbašić, were under twenty at the time of the assassination; while the group was dominated by Bosnian Serbs, four of the indictees were Bosnian Croats, and all of them were Austro-Hungarian citizens, none from Serbia. Princip was found guilty of murder and high treason; too young to be executed, he was sentenced to twenty years in jail, while the four other attackers also received jail terms. Five of the older prisoners were sentenced to be hanged.

Black Hand members were arrested and tried before a Serbian court in Salonika in 1917 on fabricated charges of high treason; the Black Hand was disbanded and three of its leaders were executed. Much of what is known about the assassinations comes from these two trials and related records. Princip's legacy was re-evaluated following the breakup of Yugoslavia, and public opinion of him in the successor states is largely divided along ethnic lines.

Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria

Photograph of the Archduke and his wife emerging from the Sarajevo Town Hall to board their car, a few minutes before the assassination

The first page of the edition of the Domenica del Corriere, an Italian paper, with a drawing by Achille Beltrame depicting Gavrilo Princip killing Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in Sarajevo.

Chart of the assassination in Sarajevo. Note that it may not be entirely accurate because of the lack of accuracy of the chart it is based on.

A map showing the route of Archduke Franz Ferdinand's motorcade

Crowds on the streets in the aftermath of the Anti-Serb riots in Sarajevo, 29 June 1914

The 1911 Gräf & Stift 28/32 PS Double Phaeton in which Archduke Franz Ferdinand was riding at the time of his assassination, Museum of Military History, Vienna (2003)

Princip's FN Model 1910 pistol, displayed at the Museum of Military History, Vienna, 2009

Gavrilo Princip outside the courthouse

Arrest of a suspect in Sarajevo during the aftermath of the assassination[92]

Grave implications of the assassination were immediately recognized, as in this 29 June article with subtitles "War Sequel?" and "War May Result", and stating the assassination was "engineered by persons having a more mature organizing ability than that of the youthful assassins".[169]

The Sarajevo trial in progress. Princip is seated in the center of the first row.

Indictees at the Salonika trial, after the verdict

The site of the assassination is marked by a small plaque, written in both Serbo-Croatian and English.[182]

1914

World War I

Woodrow Wilson

Portrait by Harris & Ewing, 1919