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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 November 2008
Hunan produced the largest number and most able leaders for the Chinese Communist Party. How could this land-locked, sleepy and conservative province produce so many revolutionaries? This article examines the consequences of three consecutive political theatres and their actors that turned Hunan into a laboratory of reform and land of revolution. It focuses on what three generations of Hunanese did that pushed Hunan into and kept the province in the national spotlight. The Hunanese, be they Qing loyalists, constitutional reformers, Han nationalists or communists, dominated China's political stage from the 1850s to the 1980s. They were patriotic and pragmatic in their patriotism. Would the Communist Revolution have been so fundamental and bloody had Champagne liberals or those with no militarist tradition controlled the helm? With the tide of Hunan gone, we must re-examine this province to see how it had shaped and changed the course of modern China.
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4 Charlton M. Lewis, Prologue to the Chinese Revolution.
5 Joseph Esherick, Reform and Revolution in China, pp. 2–3 (Introduction).
6 Angus W. McDonald, Urban Origins of Rural Revolution, p. 6 (Introduction).
7 Stephen Platt, Hunanese Nationalism and the Revival of Wang Fuzhi, 1839–1923.
8 Charlton M. Lewis, The Opening of Hunan, p. 7.
9 This can also be seen from the post-Mao Era when Hunan supplied Guangdong, especially the special economic zones of Shenzhen and Zhuhai with both skilled and unskilled labourers, giving this inland province a better economic edge than others.
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18 Charlton M. Lewis, Prologue to the Chinese Revolution, p. 46.
19 Yi Feizhou, Hunan weixin yundong yanjiu (Hunan jiaoyu chubanshe, 1999), p. 66. Unfortunately, neither the National University of Singapore nor the University of Manchester has the 94th issue of the Xiang Bao.
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23 Chun-tu, Hsueh, Huang Hsing and the Chinese Revolution (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1961), p. 44.Google Scholar Zhang Kaiyun suggested that Tongmeng Hui enrolled 979 numbers in 1905–1906 and the number of Hunanese reached 158. See Zhang Kaiyun, ‘Hunan ren yu xinhai gemin’, in Xinhai gemin zai Hunan lunwen ji (Hunan renmin chubanshe, 1984), pp. 3–15.
24 Li Xisuo, et al., Huang Xin de junshi lilun yu shijian (Renmin chubanshe, 1999), p. 23.
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27 Liu Yanyan, Hunan tongshi, p. 529.
28 Zhang Pengyuan, Hunan xiandaihua de zaoqi jinzhan, 1860–1916 (Yuelu shushe, 2002), p. 190. Zhang's source came from the journal Dongfang Zazhi, issues 8 and 9. Huang Fuqing's research showed that Hunan sent at least eighteen female students to Japan before 1911. See Fuqing, Huang, Qingmo liuri xuesheng (Taipei: Academia Sinica, 1975), appendix 6.Google Scholar
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31 It seems that Mingguo Ribao, ‘Republican Daily’, first broke the news in Shanghai.
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35 Ditto. The Guangzhou Uprising was dominated by Cantonese.
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