The French and Chinese Revolutions

Paper Summary:

This paper analyzes the fragility of new revolutionary governments. It compares and contrasts two revolutions in order to explain its points. It looks at the French Revolution of 1789 and the Chinese Revolution of 1911. The paper discusses each revolution and shows why the new government in each case was a fragile and unstable political environment.

From the Paper:

"From outside China, Sun and other revolutionaries attempted to form a new revolutionary party. Sun, having noted that Shikai had out manoeuvred the revolutionaries at every turn, decided to consolidate the various factions into one larger group that could respond better to the President's actions. Sun was to be in total control of this confederation of rebel organizations. Thus even the revolutionaries of China had reverted to an authoritarian model, one that many of the smaller revolutionary sects considered completely wrong. It was during this time of tenuous and dispirited rebel planning to topple Shakai that World War I erupted, and parts of China were occupied by Japan, completely disrupting the revolutionary process and leaving Shakai more or less completely unopposed."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Nee, Victor. "Towards a Social Anthropology of the Chinese Revolution Journal" Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars. Vol. 11, 1979.
• Baker, Lee. "The French Revolution as Local Experience: The Terror in Dijon" The Historian. Vol. 67, 2005.
• Nicolson, Nigel. Napoleon: 1812. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1985.
• Baily, Paul John. "China in the twentieth century" Historical Association Studies. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2001.
• Burke, Edmund. Reflections on the French Revolution and Other Essays. Dent, 1910.

More papers on The French and Chinese Revolutions:

• Analytical Essay # 139785 : "Comparative Revolutions: France, Russia, China, Mexico, Iran, and Nicaragua"
• Essay # 68668 : "The French and Haitian Revolutions"
• Term Paper # 93518 : "European History"

APA Citation:

MLA Citation: