Politics20 August 1905

Founding of the Tongmenghui

Also called: Chinese Revolutionary Alliance, Chinese United League

On 20 August 1905 revolutionary groups including Sun Yat-sen’s Revive China Society and Huang Xing’s China Arise Society joined in Tokyo to form the Tongmenghui (Chinese Revolutionary Alliance), calling for the overthrow of the Manchu dynasty and a republic under the Three Principles of nationalism, democracy and the people’s livelihood.

Monument at the birthplace of the Tongmenghui in Akasaka, Tokyo
Takeo Tamashiro · CC BY 4.0 · Source

When constitutional Japan beat autocratic Russia, more and more Chinese students in Tokyo concluded that reform alone would not do. Back from Europe in July 1905, Sun Yat-sen met Huang Xing, Song Jiaoren and others and agreed to merge the revolutionary groups; on 20 August the Tongmenghui was launched in Akasaka, Tokyo, with Sun as its leader.

Its programme was “expel the Tartars, revive China, found a republic and equalise land rights”. In the first issue of its journal Minbao that November, Sun summed this up as the Three Principles of the People. The alliance argued in print with constitutionalists such as Liang Qichao while launching one rising after another on the southern border and in Guangdong.

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States and rulers at the time: Qing — Guangxu Emperor
Japan · place of exile — Emperor Meiji
Places: Tokyo

People

Sun Yat-sen1866 – 1925
key figure · 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
Huang Xing1874 – 1916
key figure · Revolutionary from Hunan who founded the China Arise Society and led the Tongmenghui with Sun Yat-sen, commanding the 1911 Guangzhou uprising and the defence of Hanyang
Song Jiaoren1882 – 1913
participant · Revolutionary from Hunan who founded the Kuomintang, won China’s first parliamentary election in 1913 and called for cabinet government, but was shot at Shanghai station that March

Before and after

Earlier: 1905 Currency Reorganization Project
Later: 1905 Eulsa Treaty

Themes that include this event

The 1911 Revolution1894 – 1916
From the Revive China Society to the death of Yuan Shikai — twenty-two years in which, amid debt and failed reform, revolutionaries and the New Army brought down the Qing and founded Asia’s first republic, which passed through dictatorship and a short-lived monarchy into the age of the warlords