He was sent to Joseon to head a Qing garrison in Seoul and was appointed imperial resident and supreme adviser to the Korean government after thwarting the Gapsin Coup in 1885.

After brief fighting, he entered into negotiations with Sun Yat-sen's revolutionaries and arranged for the abdication of the child emperor Puyi, leading to the fall of the Qing dynasty.

He died of uraemia in June at the age of 56, leaving behind a significantly weakened Beiyang government and a fragmented political landscape, which soon plunged China into a period of warlordism.

Though hoping to pursue a career in the civil service, he failed the imperial examinations twice, leading him to decide on an entry into politics through the Huai Army, where many of his relatives served.

[4] In the early 1870s, Korea under the Joseon dynasty was in the midst of a struggle between isolationists under King Gojong's father Heungseon Daewongun, and progressives, led by Empress Myeongseong, who wanted to open trade.

Under the Treaty of Ganghwa, which the Koreans signed with reluctance in 1876, Japan was allowed to send diplomatic missions to Hanseong, and opened trading posts in Incheon and Wonsan.

Amidst an internal power struggle which resulted in the queen's exile, the Viceroy of Zhili, Li Hongzhang, sent the 3,000 strong Qing Brigade into Korea.

Another more radicalised group, the Donghak Society, promoting an early nationalist doctrine based partly upon Confucian principles, rose in rebellion against the government.

[12] The Qing Court at the time was divided between progressives under the leadership of the Guangxu Emperor, and conservatives under Empress Dowager Cixi, who had temporarily retreated to the Summer Palace as a place of "retirement".

Making a political alliance with the Empress Dowager, and becoming a lasting enemy of the Guangxu Emperor, Yuan left the capital in 1899 for his new appointment as Governor of Shandong.

In June 1902 he was promoted to Viceroy of Zhili, the lucrative commissioner for North China Trade, and Minister of Beiyang (北洋通商大臣), comprising the modern regions of Liaoning, Hebei, and Shandong.

[16] Having gained the regard of foreigners after helping crush the Boxer Rebellion, he successfully obtained numerous loans to expand his Beiyang Army into the most powerful force in China.

[17] In the hunting-park, three miles to the south of Peking, is quartered the Sixth Division, which supplies the Guards for the Imperial Palace, consisting of a battalion of infantry and a squadron of cavalry.

By his strategic disposition Yuan Shi Kai completely controls all the approaches to the capital, and holds a force which he may utilize either to protect the Court from threatened attack or to crush the Emperor should he himself desire to assume Imperial power.

Contrary to treaty stipulations made at the settlement of the Boxer trouble, the Chinese have been permitted to build a great tower over the Chien Men, or central southern gate, which commands the foreign legations and governs the Forbidden City.

In a field a couple of hundred yards away is the long pole of a wireless telegraph station, from which he can send the message that any day may set all China ablaze.

The public reason for Yuan's resignation was that he was returning to his home in the village of Huanshang (洹上村), the prefecture-level city of Anyang, due to a foot disease.

During his three years of effective exile, Yuan kept contact with his close allies, including Duan Qirui, who reported to him regularly about army proceedings.

The revolutionaries had elected Sun Yat-sen as the first Provisional President of the Republic of China, but they were in a weak position militarily, so they negotiated with the Qing, using Yuan as an intermediary.

One of Song's main political goals was to ensure that the powers and independence of China's Parliament be properly protected from the influence of the office of the president.

Song's goals in curtailing the office of the president conflicted with the interests of Yuan, who, by mid-1912, clearly dominated the provisional cabinet and was showing signs of a desire to hold overwhelming executive power.

He dissolved the national and provincial assemblies, and the House of Representatives and Senate were replaced by the newly formed "Council of State", with Duan Qirui, his trusted Beiyang lieutenant, as prime minister.

When these demands were made public, hostility within China was expressed in nationwide anti-Japanese demonstrations and an effective national boycott of Japanese goods.

The emperor's sons publicly fought over the title of "Crown Prince", and formerly loyal subordinates such as Duan Qirui and Xu Shichang left him to create their own factions.

Yuan formally abdicated and restored the Republic on 22 March after being emperor for only 83 days; primarily due to these mounting revolts as well as declining health from uraemia.

Yuan financed his regime through large foreign loans, and is criticized for weakening Chinese morale and international prestige, and for allowing the Japanese to gain broad concessions over China.

[35][36] Jonathan Spence, however, notes in his influential survey that Yuan was "ambitious, both for his country and for himself", and that "even as he subverted the constitution, paradoxically he sought to build on late-Qing attempts at reforms and to develop institutions that would bring strong and stable government to China."

There was a short-lived effort in 1917 to revive the Qing dynasty led by the loyalist general Zhang Xun, but his forces were defeated by rival warlords later that year.

However, it is not accurate to attribute China's subsequent age of warlordism as a personal preference, since in his career as a military reformer he had attempted to forge a modern army based on the Japanese model.

After his return to power in 1911, however, he seemed willing to sacrifice his legacy of military reform for imperial ambitions, and instead ruled by a combination of violence and bribery that destroyed the idealism of the early Republican movement.