Taiping Rebellion

The causes

In the mid-19th century, the Qing dynasty was weakened by its defeat to the British in the Opium Wars, by economic crises and by numerous revolts in the countryside. Hong Xiuquan, a scholar from southern China, failed the civil service examinations several times. After religious visions, he became convinced that he was the younger brother of Jesus and preached a blend of Christianity and Chinese traditions. In 1850, his followers took up arms in Guangxi province.

Guangxi, where the movement is born, is a poor region, where Hakka migrants, who arrived later, compete for land and resources with long-established populations. These clashes push families to band together into militias and mutual-aid networks. The Society of God Worshippers, founded around Hong Xiuquan, thus attracts poor peasants and Hakka families, who see in its doctrine a means of protection. The trigger is repression: in 1850, the local authorities try to disperse the group, which entrenches itself at Jintian, in Guangxi.

The course of the war

In 1851, Hong Xiuquan proclaimed the Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace, and his followers, recruiting many peasants, marched north. In 1853, the Taiping took Nanking, which they made their capital, and imposed a very strict organization there, with men and women separated and opium banned. An expedition sent north failed, however, to seize Peking.

From the mid-1850s, internal struggles among Taiping leaders weakened the movement. The Qing then relied on regional armies, led by scholars such as Zeng Guofan and Li Hongzhang, and on foreign officers, including the British officer Charles Gordon. In 1864, Hong Xiuquan died, and Nanking fell the same year, retaken by imperial troops.

Before reaching Nanjing, the Taiping army crosses Hunan and Hubei, where it fails before Changsha, before taking Wuchang, on the Yangzi. It then travels down the river on junks, which allows it to advance quickly, with its equipment and entire families. As it marches, its ranks swell with recruits from the regions it passes through, which makes the movement harder for the Qing to stop. The Taiping also organize women's units, and the army stands out for its strict discipline, hymns and shared rites.

In 1860, the Taiping take Suzhou and Hangzhou, and threaten Shanghai, a port where foreigners had obtained extensive commercial rights. To defend the city, the American Frederick Townsend Ward forms a small army of Chinese soldiers led by Western officers, the Ever Victorious Army, which fights alongside the Qing. After Ward's death in 1862, Charles Gordon takes command in 1863, and the unit receives modern weapons from the West. Foreign powers, who want to protect their trade, oscillate between neutrality and support for the Qing.

Taiping power splits apart in 1856, in the Tianjing incident: the Eastern King, Yang Xiuqing, who claimed to be the interpreter of the Holy Spirit, is killed along with his associates by rivals. This massacre destroys confidence in the leadership of the movement. For the population, life under Taiping administration is highly regimented: men and women live separately, meals and work are collective, and a text of 1853 on the land system provides for an egalitarian division of the land. In practice, the application of these ideas remains uneven.

The consequences

Estimates of the death toll vary widely, sometimes reaching tens of millions. The areas of the lower Yangtze, around Nanking, were ravaged for a long time. The Qing dynasty survived for several more decades, but its power now depended on provincial armies, which gained influence. The revolt remains a subject of contrasting interpretations in China today.

In China after 1864, the Qing dynasty and the scholar-officials launch the self-strengthening movement, which modernizes arsenals and seeks to imitate Western techniques. The scholars' writings present the revolt as a disorder to be avoided, while Christian missionaries, who had at first seen Hong as an ally, denounce a deviant doctrine. In the twentieth century, the view changes: the People's Republic of China presents the movement as a peasant revolt, and Mao Zedong cites it as a precursor of the revolution. Historians instead stress the religious and authoritarian character of the Taiping regime.

Timeline

1. 1851Hong Xiuquan proclaims the Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace
2. 1853The Taiping take Nanking and make it their capital
3. 1864Death of Hong Xiuquan
4. 1864Fall of Nanking, retaken by imperial troops

Key figures

• Hong Xiuquan, founder of the Taiping movement, who claimed to be the younger brother of Jesus
• Zeng Guofan, scholar who led a regional army against the Taiping
• Li Hongzhang, military leader who supported the Qing, then negotiated with the powers
• Charles Gordon, British officer who commanded an army in the service of the Qing