The years immediately following the Revolution of 1911, when Yuan Shih-k'ai was president of the first Chinese republic (1912–16), can be approached in two quite different ways. One emphasizes the beginnings of warlordism: the breakdown of political unity, the emergence of military rule, and the spread of an amoral and treacherous spirit of sauve qui peut among those in authority. In this view, the triumph of the Revolution was rendered meaningless even at the very moment of victory. When the formal mandate to govern was passed from the child Manchu emperor and his court to Yuan Shih-k'ai in February 1912, China lost her powerful monarchical symbols of political integration with a history of over two thousand years. In exchange, an unscrupulous and reactionary militarist occupied the central post, with neither programme nor imperial potency; the new republican forms meant little. The result, according to this view, was a rapid slide into warlordism under Yuan Shih-k'ai's aegis.

The second approach stresses the continuities with the pre-revolutionary years and sees the Revolution of 1911 not as another episode in the weakening of China's polity, but as an early climax in a nationalist movement to invigorate politics and society. In this view, the aftermath of the revolution witnessed a testing in practice of the two competing ideas of self-government and administrative centralization, that had been winning adherents during the previous decade. It was a time of energetic political experimentation. Along with experiment went conflict, as the expansion of political participation collided with efforts to centralize authority.