Exploration Pack 3: Taiping Rebellion
Throughout my reading of this week’s material, especially of my chosen exploration pack, it is astounding to me that the Taiping rebellion is not something that is covered in all history classes extensively. The death toll alone from the altercation, around 20 million individuals perished in the rebellion, merits major coverage for the massive historical event. But this just isn’t the case, these readings were the first time I had ever even heard about the rebellion let alone read material on it and gain the scope of what happened and why.
The massive rebellion against the Qing dynasty was started by Hong Xuquan, previously a man who strived to be apart of the Qing bureaucracy but could not pass his exams to do so. As a result, he turned to Christianity, ultimately coming to the conclusion he was the brother of Jesus and thus the King of the Kingdom of Heavenly Peace, but his kingdom was quite the opposite of peaceful. Xuquan began the Taiping rebellion and his kingdom by capturing the city of Nanjing with his large amount of followers and killing all of the Manchu inside the city, his kingdom would grow to cover 5 provinces at its height while still maintaining its anti-Manchu sentiments. The ramifications for the people living in these provinces as well as the provinces nearby were astronomical, additionally, the Taiping rebellion was disastrous, to say the least for the Qing dynasty itself.
The readings from the exploration pack showed just how gruesome this rebellion got for the everyday people who had to live through it and fight to survive. Extreme violence was commonplace as there were 3 competing militant groups that were ravaging the land and its people, they would be the long hairs which were the Taiping, the short hairs which were a militant group that was supposed to fight the Taiping and the imperial troops. While these groups did combat each other the brunt of their destruction was laid upon the citizens of the land resulting in horrific losses. The amount of dead bodies seems indescribable, they were said to have littered the sides of every street, cover every inch of a town square to where you had to walk on them to pass, or even block rivers stopping the flow of water and turning them red. The 3 groups would come to villages and either wipe them out, siege them or rob them for all of their belongings resulting in the impoverishment, death, and malnutrition of many many people.
This extremely chaotic time not only destroyed many Chinese people and their way of life but I also believe it lead to the destruction of the Qing. Not only did the people of the Qing lose faith in their leaders not only for allowing such a rebellion but also for so inadequately putting an end to it allowing militant groups to plundered the country. But this rebellion also made the Qing look terribly weak and incapable in a time when they were receiving massive pressure from foreign powers, specifically from Britain. Therefore, I believe that the rebellion not only caused disaster for the people of the Qing dynasty but for the dynasty itself by exposing the inability of the Qing which gave foreign powers the confidence for their overall imperialism over China later in history.
Bibliography:
Meyer-Fong, Tobie S. “4. Bones and Flesh.” In What Remains: Coming to Terms with Civil War in 19th Century China. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2013.
Spence, Jonathan. God’s Chinese Son: The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan, pp. 203-204. New York: W.W. Norton, 1997.
Zhang, Daye. “Part 2.” In The World of a Tiny Insect: A Memoir of the Taiping Rebellion and Its Aftermath. Translated by Xiaofei Tian. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2013.
