This paper examines the historiography on links between Overseas Chinese of the not-so-distant Southeast Asia (especially Singapore and Malaya) and the tumultuous 1911 Revolution which had led to the downfall of the Qing dynasty and ending of 2000 years of imperial rule. As unveiled, the exiled Sun Yat Sen and his band of republican revolutionaries were forced to operate primarily around the edges of the Chinese empire. Hence, although the Overseas Chinese in one strand of Kuomintang orthodox writings had been centred as the “Mother of the Chinese Revolution”, this exalted position and the perceived magnitude of their contributions from the margin have come under challenge in revisionist writings from the 1970s to 1990s.