The 1911 Revolution ended dynastic rule in China and paved the way for the founding of Asia’s first republic. Triggered by an accidental bomb explosion in Wuchang (modern-day Wuhan), the revolution marked the culminating point of decades of internal rebellion, foreign aggression and political decline; its leaders drew on a ferment of reformist and revolutionary ideas produced by some of China’s greatest modern thinkers. Although the 1911 Revolution did not resolve China’s problems, it changed the country for ever, clearing a path for modernization, and making possible the more decisive revolution of 1949.
From the Opium War to the Warlord Era assembles a remarkable survey of historical photographs from leading collections around the world. The images stretch from the Second Opium War to the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, from the Boxer Rebellion to the Russo-Japanese War and the outbreak of revolution, through the rise and fall of Yuan Shikai and the ensuing
Warlord Era.
Accompanying an introductory essay by the editor Liu Heung Shing are essays from three scholars of revolutionary China – Joseph Esherick of UC San Diego, Max K. W. Huang of the “Academia Sinica”, and Zhang Haipeng of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences – reflecting on the causes, achievements and failures of the 1911 Revolution, and its enduring meaning.
Liu is a former foreign correspondent and photojournalist whose postings took him from Beijing to Los Angeles, New Delhi to Seoul, and to Moscow for the Associated Press. During that time he photographed major world events from the Soviet military occupation of Afghanistan to civil war in Sri Lanka and China’s burgeoning economic reforms.
He was also on hand to capture the fall of the USSR: in 1992, Liu shared a Pulitzer Prize for Spot News and an Overseas Press Club Award for his coverage of the Soviet Union’s collapse. In 1989, Liu was honored with the award of Picture of the Year by the School of Journalism at the University of Missouri. In the same year, Liu was named Best Photographer by the Associated Press Managing Editors.
Liu is the author of the widely acclaimed photographic documentation China After Mao and Soviet Union: Collapse of an Empire. He is the editor of China, Portrait of a Country, which has been published in six languages. The book was selected by Britain’s Sunday Times as the Best Picture Book 2008.
In 2010, Liu co-authored with Karen Smith Shanghai: A History in Photographs, 1842-Today. In 2004, Paris Photo named Liu as one of the hundred most influential people in contemporary photography.
Liu graduated from Hunter College, City University of New York in 1975. He lives and works in Beijing.
