Jottings from the Granite Studio

On this date in 1912, Yuan Shikai produced an official edict proclaiming the abdication of the boy emperor Puyi, marking the official end of the Qing Dynasty. The crafty Yuan had been playing the revolutionaries off against the court and biding his time to maximize his personal power, so when the revolutionaries agreed to let Yuan be president of the new republic, he then turned around and persuaded the regents at court that now was the best time to let it go. The revolutionaries offered Puyi a pretty sweet deal: a huge stipend, run of the palace, and a promise that the Qing tombs would go undisturbed, so as to preserve the dignity of the Manchu rulers. (All of which pretty much fell by the wayside by the 1920s, but by then Yuan was dead, Puyi was living it up in Tianjin, and nobody really cared.) Thus, on February 1, 1912, Yuan went to the palace and convinced the mother of Puyi to give her final assent to abdication, ending 268 years of Manchu rule.

One side note, it’s been 96 years since that day. Just doing some quick bad* math, but in the 96th year after American revolutionaries threw