The word “activism” has a twentieth-century ring, but activism as a form of action taken by those with a committed political stance to bring about political and/or social change had also existed in imperial China, with translation playing a key role in the process. This paper studies the relation between translation and activism in Late-Qing China (1840-1911), a period that was characterized by political instability, social upheavals, intense ideological contestations, foreign aggression, and national weakness. Pressures for change came from all sides, and translation was pressed into service on all fronts. Using a model for classification of social movements borrowed from the anthropologist David Aberle, the author analyses the aspirations of political activists of different predilections and the important role translation played in the realisation of those goals.