On October 10, 1911, the Wuchang Uprising broke out, and the previously crumbling Qing Dynasty finally came to the end of history, and all that remained was to survive for a few more days.
At this time, the leader of the revolution, Mr. Sun Yat-sen, was not in China, but when he got the news of the Wuchang uprising, he did not choose to return to China as soon as possible.
So why didn't Sun Yat-sen return to China as soon as possible? What did he do again? Was his decision right or wrong?
On October 11, 1911, Sun Yat-sen, Huang Yunsu and others arrived in Denver, Colorado, USA. In the past few days, Sun Yat-sen has been speaking among overseas Chinese all over the United States, raising funds for the revolution, running around and traveling tiringly. That night, Sun Yat-sen and the others were very tired, and they fell asleep after finishing their work.
At noon the next day, after Sun Yat-sen and the others had lunch, they received a telegram.
Wuchang was occupied by the revolutionary party.
When Sun Yat-sen saw this information, he was surprised and delighted in his heart. Originally, everyone thought that he would return to China as soon as possible to preside over the overall situation, but they didn't expect Sun Yat-sen to send a telegram to Huang XingHowever, he said that he was not ready to return to China immediately, but that he would carry out diplomatic activities in Europe and the United States and strive for loans from various countries.
Why did Sun Yat-sen think this?
The reason for such a plan lies in Sun Yat-sen's thinking about the Chinese revolution at this time. At that time, Sun Yat-sen's view was that in order for the Chinese revolution to succeed, it had to gain the support of Western countries.
This point cannot be said to be completely unreasonable, but Sun Yat-sen regarded this point as the key to the success or failure of the Chinese revolution, and it is inevitable that the cart before the horse will be reversed. Also based on this point of view, Sun Yat-sen said"I should do my best for the revolutionary cause, not on the field, but on the bottlebetween
Sun Yat-sen believed that the key to the success of the revolution was to win the support of the West through a series of diplomatic activities.
Therefore, Sun Yat-sen did not choose to return to China immediately, but embarked on a diplomatic journey.
Sun Yat-sen's first target was naturally the United States**, and on October 13 Sun Yat-sen arrived in Chicago to celebrate the success of the Wuchang Uprising with the local Chinese. Then he immediately rushed to Washington, hoping to make contact with the United States. He wrote to then-U.S. Secretary of State Knox, hoping to meet him.
But after waiting for several days in Washington, Sun Yat-sen did not wait for any reply. In desperation, he had no choice but to prepare for London via New York on the 20th. Before going to London, he also asked Japan** to visit Japan in a public capacity, but this effort was fruitless.
When Sun Yat-sen arrived in London, he wrote to British Foreign Secretary Gray through his friends, hoping that Britain and the United States could support the revolutionaries and borrow 1 million pounds from the revolutionaries. Sun Yat-sen rewarded this after the victory of the revolution"Give Britain and the United States certain priority rights in China".
Sun Yat-sen's hopes were once again disappointed, and Gray did not agree to Sun Yat-sen's requestIt only said that "Britain ** will remain neutral" and did not object to Sun Yat-sen's "short stay in the British colonies, as well as Hong Kong and other places".
After leaving England, Sun Yat-sen arrived in France, where he was warmly welcomed and met with a group of French parliamentarians. Sun Yat-sen expressed the hope that the parliamentarians would support the newly established country in the future, and the parliamentarians agreed"Will do its best".
In France, Sun Yat-sen also met with people in the financial circles, and the core issue was to obtain loans from France. But this request was also refused, and the French replied yes"If the revolutionaries can establish a legitimacy acceptable to all of China and recognized by the Great Powers, they (the Four Nations Bank Group) will have no objection to giving these revolutionaries monetary help."
With no tangible results in France, Sun Yat-sen cancelled his planned trip to Germany, and on November 24 Sun Yat-sen departed from Marseille to return home.
On December 21, 1911, Sun Yat-sen arrived in Guangzhou, and rushed to Shanghai by ship with Hu Hanmin and others that night.
Sun Yat-sen finally returned to China, and his diplomatic efforts in Europe and the United States for more than a month did not yield any substantive results, and the loan came to naught.
It can be said that Sun Yat-sen's trip was a failureBut the bigger problem was the negative impact of Sun Yat-sen's failure to return to China immediately on the revolutionary situation in China.
After the Wuchang cannon, the revolutionary situation in China developed with astonishing speed, and within a month, 14 provinces declared their independence and the Qing court collapsed. But this is only the first step, and there is still a long way to go before the success of the revolution.
On the one hand, the revolutionaries had Yuan Shikai's Beiyang Army eyeing them; On the other hand, the struggle for power within the revolutionary camp never ceased, and for the bourgeois revolutionaries there was no leading core in the country, so that a strong unified ideology was not formed within the revolutionary party, and the fruits of the revolution were stolen by the old bureaucracy and constitutionalists.
At that time, the Japanese Consul General in Shanghai pointed out the revolutionaries in his report to China"The absence of a central figure raises doubts about the will of the revolutionaries as a collective."
Yu Gong, if Sun Yat-sen can return to China in time, this core figure will naturally be Sun Yat-sen. At the very least, Sun Yat-sen can change the situation of the internal division of the revolutionaries and promote the early establishment of the provisional party.
In private, Sun Yat-sen's delay in returning to China also caused him to miss the early command of the Wuchang Uprising, and gave his opponents a pretext that he was just coming back to pick peaches, which affected his popularity.
In short, Sun Yat-sen's move was not right. But our descendants cannot criticize our predecessors from the perspective of God, after all, everyone has their own limitations of the times.