Yuan Shikai: A Reappraisal by Patrick Fuliang Shan (review)

According to Patrick Fuliang Shan, the author of Yuan Shikai: A Reappraisal, many previous research works on and assessments of the life and work of Yuan Shikai have suffered from two deficiencies: they either were affected by politico-ideological tendencies that made an objective evaluation of the Republic of China’s (中華民國 Zhonghua minguo) second provisional and first regular president impossible or they suffered from insufficient access to primary sources that would have allowed for a better understanding of Yuan’s motives and actions. For these reasons, Shan sees “an urgent need for a twenty-first-century biography of Yuan Shikai” (7) that presents a “fair appraisal and an objective assessment” (9) of this important figure of Chinese history. Accordingly, Shan’s book is largely based on primary sources taken from the recently published comprehensive Yuan Shikai quanji (袁世凱全集 Complete works of Yuan Shikai), a collection that also encompasses hitherto unknown or inaccessible material,¹ and he draws heavily upon the Chinese-language scholarship of roughly the last 30 years that—as Shan emphasizes—has already become free from past ideological dictates to condemn Yuan.²

Shan presents the life and work of Yuan Shikai in chronological fashion. The first two chapters of his book are dedicated to Yuan’s family background and his youth, chapters 3, 6–8, and 10–12 focus on his political career from his time in Korea (beginning in 1881) to his demise as disgraced would-be emperor in June 1916, while chapters 4, 5, and 9 concentrate on Yuan Shikai’s actions when tasked with modernizing the Chinese armed forces and when faced with the challenges of the Hundred Days’ Reform (戊戌變法 Wuxu bianfa; June to September 1898) and the 1911 Revolution (辛亥革命 Xinhai geming), respectively.

Throughout his book, Shan argues that the combination of a reliable social network (as well as often-positive foreign opinion) and his considerable individual talents propelled Yuan’s career: family connections facilitated his entry into the military profession in 1881 and his deployment to Korea, and it was due to the endorsement of prominent [End Page E-3] figures like Zhang Zhidong (張之洞 1837–1909) and Liu Kunyi (劉坤一 1830–1902) that Yuan, in 1895, became the organizer and commander of the future Newly Established Army (新建陸軍 Xinjian lujun). During both the Hundred Days’ Reform and the 1911 Revolution, Yuan Shikai was regarded by leading personnel across the political spectrum as a capable intermediary and leader, and he rose to the presidency of the Republic for the same reason. Whenever he held a responsible position, Shan stresses, Yuan dutifully and capably performed his tasks and promoted political, administrative, educational, and economic reforms.

Nonetheless, as Shan reiterates throughout, Yuan’s career was also often marred by controversy: officials begrudged him his quick political rise, his opponents blamed him for the First Sino-Japanese War (甲午戰爭 Jiawu zhanzheng; 1894–1895), the 1898 reformers declared him guilty of thwarting the Hundred Days’ Reform, he was regularly denounced by other officials during his time in Shandong (1899–1901) and Zhili (1901–1909), and he was intensely disliked by the Qing regent, Zaifeng (載灃 1883–1951). In addition, doubts regarding the sincerity of his allegiance to the Republic began to be voiced soon after his ascendancy to the presidency in 1912. Nonetheless, argues Shan, it was above all the last chapter of Yuan’s political career, the ill-fated attempt to restore the monarchy in China in 1915–1916, that caused the decades-long condemnation of his personality and his life’s work as an egotist’s ruthless pursuit of absolute power.

In his book, Shan questions this narrative by proposing a different interpretation of Yuan’s actions and motives. Even his purportedly most nefarious acts—among them the creation of an army that allegedly was only loyal to him (66–71), his supposed betrayal of the 1898 reformers (81–86), the repression of the Boxers in Shandong (89–93), the undermining of the parliamentary system in 1913–1914 (188–94), the signing...