The panel on 'Rethinking the 1911 Revolution: Interrogating the Chinese Republic' presented three new case studies of the revolution and the kind of republic it created. The papers focused on the revolution's effects on gender, shaping the political culture, and its narrativization in contemporary accounts. Collectively, the papers suggest that in spite of decades of intensive research on Xinhai, new perspectives and research topics can illuminate aspects of the 1911 revolution—a political event or series of events the historical significance of which remains extremely controversial.
Louise Edward's paper on 'Gender and the "Virtue of Violence": Creating a new vision of public engagement' highlighted women's participation in violent actions of the revolutionary armies, going beyond the famous case of Qiu Jin �� to make several new arguments. The female soldiers of 1911 were able to take advantage of the 'woman warrior' role already accepted in Chinese culture in order to demand fundamental change: that is, full equality as citizens. Edwards argues that in previous episodes of violence, a discourse of 'crisis femininity' allowed women to emerge to dramatize the specific crisis and shame men into fighting, with the expectation that soon enough the status quo ante could be restored. However, the 1911 Revolution was prosecuted in the name of fundamental political change, and women regarded themselves as fighting, at least in part, for their own rights. In the event, male leaders of post-1911 China, including revolutionary male leaders, expected women to return to the 'inner chambers', which led some women to commit further violence. At the same time, Edwards points out, the militarization of femininity occurred in tandem with the militarization of Chinese masculinity. The 1911 Revolution thus led to a new esteem for violence as a cultural value: it reshaped the self-image of elites. Republican male elites were still able to exclude women from their numbers, but a longer struggle for women's liberation had begun.
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