The Historical World and Spiritual Ethos of the Radical Intellectuals in Late Qing

At the turn of the century in late Qing, a group of radical revolutionaries gradually emerged from the traditional scholars. There were two reasons for their appearance. First, before and after the abolition of the Imperial Examination system, due to the failure of the uprising of the Self-supporting Army, the stimulation of the Boxer Indemnity, and a succession of students’ movements in Late Qing, the marginal intellectuals eventually segregated from the imperial institutions and then changed their status from reformists to revolutionaries. Second, these marginal intellectuals abandoned the ideology of Confucianism and converted to integrate nihilism, destructionism, radical utopianism from anarchism, and the consciousness of anti-Manchu nationality in mind. Catalyzed by voluntarism, this kind of integration of thoughts produced the chivalrous spirit and then started the first wave of revolution of the 20th century.