A Guangdong examination candidate who, after visions and a missionary tract, declared himself the younger brother of Jesus Christ (1843–1850)
Hong Xiuquan, who founded the God Worshipping Society in Guangxi.
History · Revolutions & empires
The Taiping Rebellion
1850–1864
Millenarian civil war against the Qing dynasty, and the deadliest civil conflict on record
A vast civil war in southern and central China, fought between the Qing dynasty and the Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace founded by Hong Xiuquan, a failed examination candidate from Guangdong who, after visions and a reading of Protestant missionary tracts, came to believe he was the younger brother of Jesus Christ. His God Worshipping Society grew into an army that took Nanjing in 1853 and ruled much of the Yangtze valley for a decade, imposing a puritan regime of shared property, separated sexes and bans on opium and foot-binding. Its suppression by provincial armies raised by Zeng Guofan, assisted by a foreign-officered force, cost an estimated twenty to thirty million lives.
How to spot them
- ▸A failed examination candidate who believed himself the younger brother of Jesus
- ▸A Heavenly Capital established at Nanjing in 1853
- ▸A foreign-officered force commanded first by an American adventurer and then by a British officer
- ▸Provincial armies raised in Hunan and Anhui rather than by the imperial banners
- ▸A death toll usually put at twenty to thirty million, running alongside the second Opium War
What happened
The capture of Nanjing in March 1853 and its renaming as the Heavenly Capital (1853)
Nanjing became Tianjing, capital of the Heavenly Kingdom, for eleven years.
A foreign-officered force raised in Shanghai, led by Frederick Townsend Ward and then by Charles George Gordon (1860–1864)
The Ever Victorious Army; Gordon's service here earned him the nickname Chinese Gordon.
The Hunan Army raised by a Confucian scholar-official outside the regular banner system (1852–1864)
The Xiang Army of Zeng Guofan, which eventually took the rebel capital.
The bloodletting of 1856 in which the Eastern King and thousands of his followers were killed (1856)
The Tianjing Incident; the killing of Yang Xiuqing badly weakened the movement.
The fall of the rebel capital in July 1864, weeks after its leader's death (1864)
Nanjing fell to Zeng Guoquan's forces; Hong Xiuquan had died in June.
Quick-fire facts
- •Hong Xiuquan repeatedly failed the imperial civil service examinations at Canton before his visions
- •The movement's name, Taiping Tianguo, means Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace
- •Its programme included land held in common, the banning of opium, alcohol, gambling and foot-binding, and the strict separation of men and women
- •Women served in its armies and sat its own examinations
- •Yang Xiuqing, the Eastern King, claimed to speak with the voice of God the Father, and was killed with his followers in 1856
- •The Qing relied on provincial armies under Zeng Guofan, Li Hongzhang and Zuo Zongtang rather than the Eight Banners
- •The Ever Victorious Army was commanded by the American Frederick Townsend Ward until his death in 1862, then by Charles George Gordon
- •Estimates of the death toll are usually given as twenty to thirty million, which would make it the deadliest civil war in history
- •The conflict overlapped with the second Opium War, the Nian Rebellion and Muslim risings in the north-west
- •Sun Yat-sen later claimed inspiration from it, and Mao Zedong's regime treated it as a peasant revolution
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Sources
- Stephen R. Platt — Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom: China, the West, and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War
- Jonathan D. Spence — God's Chinese Son: The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan