The Birth of a RepublicChina's 1911 Revolution ended the rule of both the 267 year old Manchu Qing dynasty and the more than 2,000 year old imperial system, establishing Asia's first, if not lasting, republic. Because war correspondence was not an established profession in China and the camera was a rare apparatus in Chinese life at the time, photographs of the revolution are rare. Francis E. Stafford (1884 1938), an American working as a photographer for Asia's largest