Volta
Person1866 – 1925

Sun Yat-sen

Also called: Sun Wen, Sun Zhongshan

Leader of the Chinese revolution who led the Tongmenghui under the Three Principles of the People and became provisional president of the Republic of China after the Xinhai Revolution

Educated in Western schools in Hawaii and Hong Kong, he trained as a doctor. After a failed uprising in Guangzhou in 1895 he wandered abroad preparing for revolution. Having handed the provisional presidency to Yuan Shikai, he fought Yuan’s dictatorship and in 1919 founded the Kuomintang. In 1924 he formed the First United Front with the Communists under the policy of alliance with the Soviets, admission of Communists and support for workers and peasants, but died of illness in Beijing the next year. He is honoured as "Father of the Nation" in Taiwan (ROC) and as "forerunner of the revolution" in the People’s Republic.

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3 related events

  1. 1
    1911 – 1912Xinhai Revolution and the Founding of the Republic of Chinaleader

    Beginning with the Wuchang Uprising, revolution spread until the Republic of China was founded and the Qing fell. Over two thousand years of imperial rule ended, and China’s first republic was born.

  2. 2
    1913 – 1916Yuan Shikai’s Dictatorship and the Warlord Erarelated figure

    Having taken over the provisional presidency, Yuan Shikai crushed the Nationalist Party and tried to make himself emperor; after his failure and death China fell into an age of rival regional warlords.

  3. 3
    1924 – 1927First United Frontleader

    In 1924 Sun Yat-sen’s Nationalist Party adopted the policies of “alliance with the Soviet Union, admission of communists, and support for peasants and workers”, letting Communists join as individuals, and founded the Whampoa Military Academy to prepare to overthrow the warlords.

People who appear alongside

  • Yuan Shikai1859 – 1916

    Late-Qing master of the Beiyang Army who meddled in Joseon affairs after the 1882 Imo Incident; in the 1911 Revolution he secured the emperor’s abdication and became president of the Republic, but his bid to make himself emperor failed

  • Chiang Kai-shek1887 – 1975

    Leader of the Chinese Nationalist Party who unified China through the Northern Expedition and led the Nanjing government through the war with Japan; after losing the civil war he moved to Taiwan and ruled the Republic of China there

  • Zhou Enlai1898 – 1976

    First premier of the People’s Republic of China (1949–1976), long in charge of diplomacy, who arranged Nixon’s 1972 visit

Themes this person appears in

  • Imperialism and the Partition of the World1839 – 1914

    From the Tanzimat to Sarajevo — seventy-five years in which the powers carved up West Asia, India, Southeast Asia, Africa and the Pacific, and the peoples there answered with reform and resistance

  • Republican China and Imperial Japan1912 – 1949

    The age when the Republic of China, born of the 1911 Revolution, passed through warlord division, the May Fourth Movement, the United Front and the Northern Expedition, fought Japan’s invasion and split in civil war — as Japan moved from Taishō democracy through the Manchurian Incident and military coups to the war in China and the Co-Prosperity Sphere, and colonized Korea resisted through the March First Movement and armed struggle