Rebellion and Restoration 207

10 the branches and offshoots of the Triad Society, whose network was al-
ready widely dispersed among Chinese overseas and in foreign trade.
The fact that the Taiping movement did not join with these estab-
lished agencies of revolt springs from the personality of its founder,
Hong Xiuquan. The faith Hong preached was his own version of Old
Rebellion and Restoration Testament Protestant Christianity, and his Heavenly Kingdom of Great
Peace (Taiping Tianguo) ruled at Nanjing from 1853 to 1864. But many
things doomed it from the start, beginning with its theology. After Hong
had failed a fourth time in the Guangzhou examinations of 1843, he ex-
ploded in rage at the Manchu domination of China and then read some
Christian missionary tracts he had been given. These tracts, which re-
mained Hong’s major source of Christian doctrine, had been written by
the early Cantonese convert Liang Fa, who saw in the Old Testament a
story of a chosen few who with God’s help had rebelled against oppres-
The Great Taiping Rebellion, 1851-1864
sion. Liang stressed the righteous wrath of Jehovah, more than the
After 1850 the Qing regime was almost overwhelmed by widespread re- lovingkindness of Jesus, and gave Hong barely a fingerhold on Christian
bellions. The emperor’s inability to subdue the British barbarians in theology. Nevertheless, the tracts seemed to explain the visions he had
1842, even though the Opium War was fought at only half a dozen during an earlier mental illness: God the Father had evidently called him
places on the seacoast, had shaken imperial prestige. In 1846-1848, to save mankind, and Jesus was his Elder Brother.
moreover, flood and famine were widespread among China’s expanded Hong became a militant evangelist for a moral life to serve the one
population. It is not surprising that a great uprising finally commenced true God. A month with a Baptist missionary with the memorable name
in 1850. of Issachar Jacox Roberts in 1847 gave him examples of how to pray,
It began in the southernmost provinces between the Guangzhou re- preach, sing hymns, catechize, confess one’s sins, baptize, and otherwise
gion and its hinterland. This area had been longest connected with the practice fundamentalist Protestantism. With his first two converts Hong
growing foreign trade and had been last conquered by the Qing. Their created an iconoclastic monotheism potent enough to set up the Taiping
military hold was relatively weak in the very region that had been most theocracy yet too blasphemous to win foreign missionary support, too
fully subjected to the upsetting effect of foreign trade. The local society, intent on the one true God to permit cooperation with secret socie-
as analyzed by Frederic Wakeman, Jr. (1966), was dominated by large ties like the Triads, and too bizarre and irrational to win over Chinese
land-owning clans, whose militia bands in this area of weak government literati, who were normally essential to setting up a new administra-
often carried on armed feuds between clan villages or groups of villages. tion.
Such local wars were fostered by ethnic fragmentation, due to the fact The God-Worshipers® Society, as the sect first called itself, got started
that South China had received infusions of migrants from the north, in a mountain region of Guangxi west of Guangzhou, variously popu-
such as the Hakka people, whose customs set them apart both from the lated by Yao and Zhuang aborigines and Chinese Hakkas like the Hong
earlier Han Chinese inhabitants and from the tribal peoples in the hills. family, that is, migrants from North China several centuries before, who
Finally, as population grew and conditions worsened, the foreign opium retained a northern dialect and other ethnic traits, like opposition to
trade gave a key opportunity to the antidynastic secret societies, whose footbinding. As a minority in South China, the scattered Hakka commu-
sworn brotherhoods, especially on the trade routes, offered mutual help nities were uncommonly sturdy and enterprising, as well as experienced
and a social subsystem to the alienated and adventurous. In the tradi- in defending themselves against their frequently hostile neighbors.
tional pattern the natural candidates to lead rebellion would have been How Hong became the rebel king of half of China is a story like that
of Napoleon Bonaparte or Adolf Hitler, full of drama, the mysteries of

206
 208 LATE IMPERIAL CHINA 1600-19TT
Rebellion and Restoration 209
chance, and personal and social factors much debated ever since. His
converts had the faith that God had ordered them to destroy Manchu in the early years kept to a strict moral discipline, befriended the com-
rule and set up a new order of brotherhood and sisterhood among God’s mon people, and by their dedication attracted recruits and terrified op-
children. Leadership was taken by six activists who became sworn ponents. They carried a multitude of flags and banners, partly for identi-
brothers, among whom Hong was only the first among equals. The chief fication of units. Instead of shaving their foreheads and wearing the
military leader was an illiterate charcoal burner named Yang, who had queue that the Qing dynasty required as a badge of loyalty (such a tan-
the wit to receive God’s visitations and speak with His voice in a way gible symbol!), the Taipings let their hair grow free and became the
that left Hong sincerely speechless. Several of the other leaders were low- “long-haired rebels,” even more startling for establishmentarians to be-
level scholars. None was a mere peasant. They got their political-mili- hold than student rebels of the Western counterculture a century or so
tary system from the ancient classic the Rituals of Zhou. Their move- later.
ment was highly motivated, highly organized, and at first austerely puri-
tanical, even segregating men from women. Civil War
Taiping Christianity half-borrowed and half-recreated for Chinese
purposes a full repertoire of prayers, hymns, and rituals, and preached The war that raged from 1851 to 1864 was tremendously destructive to
the brotherhood and sisterhood of all mankind under the fatherhood of life and property (see Map 21). Some 600 walled cities changed hands,
the one true and only God. Unlike the political passivity of Daoism and often with massacres. While the American Civil War of the early 1860s
the otherworldliness of Buddhism, the Protestant Old Testament offered was the first big contest of the industrial era, when rail and steamship
trumpet calls to a militant people on the march against their oppressors. transport and precision-made arms were key factors, the Taiping-impe-
The original corps of Hakka true believers were the bravest in battle and rialist war in China was the last of the premodern kind. Armies moved
the most considerate toward the common people. And no wonder! on their feet and lived off the land. No medical corps attended them.
Hong’s teaching created a new Chinese sect organized for war. It used Modern maps and the telegraph were lacking. Artillery was sometimes
tried and true techniques evolved during 1,800 years of Christian history used in sieges, but the favorite tactic was to tunnel under a wall, plant
to inculcate an ardent faith in each individual and ensure his or her per- gunpowder, and blow it up. Navies of junks and sampans fought on fhe
formance in its service. Taiping Christianity was a unique East-West Yangzi and its major lakes to the south, but steamships were a rarity.
Muskets were used, but much of the carnage was in hand-to-hand com-
amalgam of ideas and practices geared to militant action, the like of
which was not seen again until China borrowed and sinified Marxism- bat with swords, knives, pikes, and staves. This required motivation
Leninism a century later.
more than technical training.
Guangxi in 1850 was far from Beijing, lightly garrisoned by Manchu An invading army might make up its losses by local recruitment, con-
troops, and strongly affected by the influx of opium runners and pirates scription, or conversion of captives, but a commander could not always
driven inland along the West River by the British navy’s pirate hunting count on such troops’ standing their ground, much less charging the en-
along the coast. The growing disorder inspired the training of local self- emy. Imperial generals brought in Manchu and Mongol hereditary war-
defense forces, including both militia and bandits, with little to choose riors, but the humid South often undid them, and their cavalry was
between them since all lived off the people. The small congregation of no good in rice fields. The struggle was mainly Chinese against .Chi-
God-Worshipers, like other groups, armed for self-defense, but secretly nese. Official reports of armies of 20,000 and 30,000 men, sometimes
and for a larger purpose. By late 1850 some 20,000 true believers an- 200,000 and 300,000, make one wonder how they were actually fed and
swered Hong’s call to mobilize, and they battled imperial troops sent to what routes they traveled by, in a land generally without roads. Troop
disperse them. On January 11, 1851, his thirty-eighth birthday, Hong totals were always in round numbers and should probably be scaled
proclaimed himself Heavenly King of a new dynasty, the Heavenly King- down.
In 1851 the Taiping horde erupted northward, captured the Wuhan
dom of Great Peace.
The militant Taiping faith inspired an army of fierce warriors, who cities, and early in 1853 descended the Yangzi to take Nanjing and make
it their Heavenly Capital. Their strategy was what one might expect of
210 LATE IMPERIAL CHINA 1600-19T1 Rebellion and Restoration 211

an ambitious committee dominated by an illiterate charcoal burner: ig- nuchs. But the Taiping calendar and examination system, using tracts
norant of the outer world, they left Shanghai in imperial hands and and Hong’s writings, were no improvement on the old; the ideal commu-
failed to develop any foreign relations. Dizzy with success, they sent in- nal groupings of twenty-five families with a common treasury never
adequate forces simultaneously north to conquer Beijing and west to re- spread over the countryside; the Westernization program of the last
cover central China. Both expeditions failed. Commanders operated prime minister, Hong’s cousin, Hong Ren’gan, who had spent some
pretty much on their own, without reliable intelligence, communica- years with missionaries, never got off the ground. Meantime, the igno-
tions, or coordination, simply coping with situations that arose. Ab- rance and exclusivity of the Taiping leadership, their lack of an economic
sorbed in religion and warfare, the Taiping leaders were inept in eco- program, and failure to build creatively on their military prowess led to
nomics, politics, and overall planning. the slaughter and destitution of the Chinese populace. Mass rebellion
Lacking trained administrators, they generally failed to take over and had seldom commended itself in China. Now it gave a bad name to
govern the countryside as a base area for supplies of men and food. In- Christianity, too.
stead, they campaigned from city to city, living off the proceeds of loot The Protestant missionaries resented the infringement on their stu-
and requisitions, much like the imperial armies. As Philip Kuhn (in dious monopoly of God’s Word. The more literal-minded were outraged
CHOC 10), remarks, they remained in effect “besieged in the cities” at Hong’s claim to be Jesus’ younger brother and his injection of the
while the local landed elite remained in place in the countryside. All this Chinese family system into the Christian Heaven in the person of God’s
resulted from their narrow religiosity, which antagonized, instead of re- and Jesus” wives. Hong’s adaptations may strike us today as undoubt-
cruiting, the Chinese scholar-gentry class who could have run a govern- edly the best chance Christianity ever had of actually becoming part of
ment for them. the old Chinese culture. What foreign faith could conquer China with-
Meanwhile, a watering down of their original faith and austerity hit out a Chinese prophet? But the few missionaries who ventured to Nan-
the movement. Within Nanjing the leaders soon each had his own army, jing, though well received, got the distinct impression that Taiping
palace, harem, and supporters. They spent much time elaborating sys- Christianity did not look to them for basic guidance. Even the Taiping
tems of nobility, honors, and ceremonies. Missionaries who called upon Chinese viewed themselves as central and superior, though generally po-
the Taiping prime minister in 1860 found him wearing a gold-embroi- lite to all “foreign brothers” (wai xiongdi). Their Sixth Commandment,
dered crown and clad like his officers in robes of red and yellow silk. “Thou shalt not kill or injure men,” used the traditional Chinese gloss,
Egalitarianism had continued for the rank and file only. “The whole world is one family, and all men are brothers.” Hong’s
The original leadership had destroyed itself in a bloodbath in 1856 Three-Character Classic for children to memorize recounted God’s help
when the Eastern King, Yang, the chief executive and generalissimo, to Moses and the Israelites, Jesus’ life and death as the Savior, and the
plotted to usurp the position of the Heavenly King, Hong. Hong there- ancient Chinese (Shang and Zhou) worship of God (here unwittingly
fore got the Northern King, Wei, to assassinate Yang and his supporters, following the Jesuit line). But the rulers of Qin, Han, and Song had gone
only to find that Wei and his supporters, drunk with power, had to be as- astray until Hong was received into Heaven in 1837 and commissioned
sassinated by the Assistant King, Shi, who then felt so threatened that he to save the (Chinese) world by driving out the Manchu demons. This
took off to the west with much of the army, leaving Hong sitting on a was true cultural miscegenation, but few missionaries could stomach it.
rump of his own incompetent kinfolk. Meanwhile, Catholic France had opposed Taiping Protestantism on
Both Nationalists and Communists of a later day have tried to sal- principle as still another outcropping of the evil unleashed by Martin
vage from the Taiping movement some positive prototype of anti- Luther.
Manchu nationalism and social reform. The Taipings were against all The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom went the way of Carthage—only
the usual evils—gambling, opium, tobacco, idolatry, adultery, prostitu- the name survived. The record is biased because the imperialists
tion, footbinding; and they gave special scope to women, who supported destroyed most Taiping writings, except for those preserved mainly by
and sometimes served in the army and ran the palaces in place of eu- foreigners (some were found only in this century in French and British
 212 LATE IMPERIAL CHINA 1600-19TT Rebellion and Restoration 213

libraries). Leaders of ability emerged in the final years, but too late. A the Manchus recognized that their best hope lay in trusting Chinese loyal
cause for.which so many gave their lives must have had much to offer, to the old order, Zeng was able to put his chief lieutenants in as provin-
but only in comparison with the effete old order under the Manchus. cial governors and so mobilize a concerted war effort. He methodically
hemmed the Taipings in from upstream, where the Hubei-Hunan capital
The Qing Restoration of the 1860s of Wuchang had changed hands six times, and from downstream, where
Anglo-French forces finally abandoned neutrality and helped defend the
That the Qing managed to survive both domestic and international at- Shanghai-Ningbo area.
tacks is due largely to the policy and leadership changes known as the By accepting the Western treaty system and supporting the conserva-
Qing Restoration. By 1861 the Manchu dynasty’s mandate seemed truly tive Chinese scholar-generals in the provinces, the new leaders at Beijing
the
exhausted. The dichard anti-Western faction in charge of Qing policy under the regency of the young Empress Dowager (Cixi) achieved
had been defeated by the Anglo-French occupation of Beijing in 1860, suppression of the Taipings by 1864 and gave their dynasty a new lease
ive
which secured final acceptance of the unequal treaty system. Mean- on life. The idealistic picture of this era envisions a genuine conservat
while, a new Taiping commander destroyed the Chinese camp besieging effort at a “Restoration” similar to those that had occurred after the
pi-
Nanjing, invaded the delta, and in early 1862 would threaten Shanghai. founding of the Later Han or after the great mid-Tang rebellion. The
The crisis led to a coup d’etat in Beijing in 1861 that brought into power oneer Western historian of the Restoration, Mary Clabaug h Wright
nts
a new Manchu leadership under the Empress Dowager (Cixi) as regent (1957), has eloquently described how during the 1860s the compone
d to function again: a
m.1d headed by two Manchus, Prince Gong and Grand Councillor Wen- of the traditional Confucian state were energize
chosen by examinat ion in the
xiang. They were dedicated to a dual policy: in foreign relations, to ac- group of high-principled civil officials,
cept the treaty system in order to appease the foreign powers; in domes- classics and loyal to the reigning dynasty, sternly suppressed rebellion
pop-
tic relations, to put more Chinese in positions of real power in order to and tried to minister benevolently to the agrarian economy and the
defeat the rebels. This more flexible policy began a restoration of Qing restored in the central provinces , taxes remitted,
ular welfare. Order was
talent re-
power. (“Restoration”—zhongxing—was a traditional term for a dy- land reopened to cultivation, schools founded, and men of
nasty’s “revival at midcourse.”) civil service, even though more was advocate d by the top
cruited for the
reviving
The new commander against the Taipings was a Chinese Confucian officials than could be actually achieved at the rice roots. While
scholar from Hunan, Zeng Guofan. Sent home from Beijing to organize al order in this fashion, the Restorat ion leaders also began
the tradition
arms, built steam-
militia in 1852, Zeng was appalled by what he saw as the Taiping’s blas- to Westernize. They set up arsenals to supply modern
onal law,
phemous and violent attack on the whole Confucian order. He was de- ships, translated Western textbooks in technology and internati
the form of a special committe e
termined to defeat it in the time-honored way, through moral revival. He and created a prototype foreign office in
Council. Soon their new provincia l
therefore set himself to build an army for defense. He recruited com- (the Zongli Yamen) under the Grand
manders of similar character, personally loyal to himself, who selected arms made peasant uprisings impossi-
and regional armies with modern
of the
their subordinate officers, who in turn enlisted their soldiers man by ble. In these efforts they were aided by the cooperative policy
man, creating in this way a network of leaders and followers personally whose imperiali st rivalries did not become intense until
Wiestern powers,
beholden to one another and capable of mutual support and devotion in the 1870s.
warfare. It was a military application of the reciprocal responsibilities Recent comprehensive appraisals are less upbeat. They note that the
Empress
according to status that animated the family system. And it worked. Sol- Restoration brought into power the ignorant and obscurantist
provincia l au-
diers were carefully selected from proper families and well paid and Dowager. Westernization was left largely to the Chinese
and this put the
trained. thorities where Chinese power had become dominant,
provincia l efforts were
Zeng developed an inland navy on the Yangzi, set up arsenals, and Manchu court on the defensive. However, these
admin-
husbanded his resources. As the Taipings’ original Hakka soldiers from uncoordinated and not backed from Beijing. In the end the Qing
e the inertia of the tradi-
South China became depleted, Zeng’s Hunan Army began to win. Once istration’s renewed vitality could not overcom
 2I4 LATE IMPERIAL CHINA 1600-I911
Rebellion and Restoration 215
tional Chinese polity. It could function only on its own terms, which
were out of date. The Restoration leaders clung conservatively to the
preeminence of agriculture as the basis of state revenue and popular live-
lihood. They had no conception of eccnomic growth or development in
the modern sense but were austerely antiacquisitive; they continued to Beijinge _
disparage commerce, including foreign trade, as nonproductive. Rather, Baoding «
they tried to set before the peasantry and bureaucracy the classical ideals
of frugality and incorruptibility, so that the product of the land could
more readily suffice to maintain the people and the government. To as-
sist agriculture, they tried without much success (as Kwang-Ching Liu
has shown (in CHOC 10) to reduce land taxes in the lower Yangzi re-
gion but did not try to lower rents or limit landlordism. They tried to re-
vive the necessary public works systems for water control but could not
control the Yellow River any better than their predecessors.
The Restoration lost vitality after 1870 for many reasons. Its leaders
were conscientiously reviving the past instead of facing China’s new fu- Shi Dakai caprured
ture creatively. They could not adequately inspire the lower levels of and executed, 1863
their bureaucracy nor handle the specialized technical and intellectual
problems of Westernization. The very strength of their conservative and
restorative effort inhibited China’s responding to Western contact in a
revolutionary way.
Yongfeng /
/ ,# Fuzhou
Suppression of Other Rebellions
The Restoration’s one undoubted success had been in suppressing rebel- Jialing
lions. During Taiping control of the lower Yangzi region there arose on Guangzhou TAIWAN
their north between the Huai and Yellow rivers another movement of re-
bel bands called Nian (see Map 21). Based in fortified earth-walled vil-
lages on the southern edge of the North China plain, they organized cav- South China Sea
alry forces in their own banner system for raiding abroad and controlled
their territorial base by taking over the local militia corps. Though lack- [ [e— by Taiping rebels 18541863 Miao rebellion 1850-1872
ing the dynastic pretensions of the Taipings, the Nian movement from Nian rebellion 1853-1868 Muslim rebellions 1855-1874
1853 to 1868 supplanted the imperial government in a sizable region ——> Taiping northern campaign 18511855
and harassed it with raids to plunder food supplies from neighboring
provinces. ===> Shi Dakais campaign 18571863 o i
Imperial efforts to root the Nian out of their fortified nests repeat- 4 Triad or other secret society uprising H—_—0 i
edly failed. Walls were leveled only to rise again. The scholar-generals R Foret
who had defeated the Taipings tried to deprive the Nian of their popular
support in the villages by promising security to the populace, death to 21. Nineteenth-Century Rebellions
the leaders, and pardon to the followers. Meanwhile, other risings flared
 216 LATE IMPERIAL CHINA T1600-1911

up in several parts of North China. They and the Nian were

11
eventually
put down by new provincial armies with modern weapons.
They cut the
rebel cavalry off from their supplies of food and manpo
wer and eventu-
ally, with blockade lines and counter-cavalry, destro
yed them on the
plain.
In the aftermath of these revolts that convulsed Central
China there were also sanguinary risings of Chines
and North Early Modernization and the
e Muslims in the
southwest and northwest during the 1860s and 1870s—
that are only now beginning to be studied. All in all,
bitter struggles Decline of Qing Power
the movement for
change in modern China began by following the traditional
patterns of
peasant-based rebellions and a Restoration that suppre
ssed them. In the
process many millions of hapless people were killed. The
fighting eventu-
ally ran out of steam. Modern estimates are that China’
s population had
been about 410 million in 1850 and, after the Taipin
g, Nian, Muslim, Self-Strengthening and Its Failure
and other smaller rebellions, amounted to about 350 millio
n in 1873.
Thus, the coercion of China by Western gunboats and even the During the decades following the Qing Restoration of the 1860s, leaqmg
An- personalities, both Manchu and Chinese, tried to adapt Western devices
glo-French occupation of Beijing in 1860 were
brief, small, and mar-
ginal disasters compared with the mid-century rebellions and institutions. This movement, studied by Albert Feuerwerk_er,
that swept over
the major provinces. The Europeans and Americans Kwang-Ching Liu and others, was posited on the attractive though mis-
who secured their
special privileges in China’s new treaty ports were on leading doctrine of “Chinese learning as the fundamental structure,
the fringe of this
great social turmoil, not its creators. For some Chines Western learning for practical use®—as though Wesr.efn arms, steam-
e at the time they
represented a new order and opportunity, but for the majori ships, science, and technology could somehow be utilized to preserve
ty they were
unimportant. Confucian values. In retrospect we can see that gunboats and steel mills
Nevertheless, an informal British-Qing entente took bring their own philosophy with them. But the generation of 1860-1900
shape in the
early 1860s. Britain wanted stability for trade and clung to the shibboleth that China could leap halfway into modern
so, for example,
helped Beijing buy a fleet of steam gunboats (the ultima times, like leaping halfway across a river in flood.
te weapon of the
day), although the deal broke up over the question of Under the classical and therefore nonforeign slogan of “self-strength-
who would com-
mand it. Robert Hart and his Maritime Customs Service ening,” Chinese leaders began the adoption of Westem arms and ma-
, working as
Qing officials, spearheaded the British encouragemen chines, only to find themselves sucked into an inexorable process in
t of modern fiscal
administration and facilitation of trade. At the same time, which one borrowing led to another, from machinery to technology,
by helping to
maintain Qing stability, they played a role in China’s from science to all learning, from acceptance of new ideas to change of
domestic politics
that patriots later could attack. institutions, eventually from constitutional reform to republnca.n revolu-
tion. The fallacy of halfway Westernization, in tools but not in values,
was in fact apparent to many conservative scholars, who therefore chose
alternative of opposing all things Western.
= The leaders in r:l’f-srrfngth:nmg were those who had crushefi the
Taipings, scholar-officials like Zeng Guofan and his younger cpad]utor,
Li Hongzhang (1823-1901), who set up an arsenal at Shanfihan to make
guns and gunboats. As early as 1864 Li explained to Be.|1|r.1g that th.e
foreigners® domination of China was based on the superiority of their

217
 218 LATE IMPERIAL CHINA 1600-1911
Early Modernization and the Decline of Qing Power 219
weapons, that it was hopeless to try to drive
them out, and that Chinese used by Zeng Guofan as an agent to buy machiner}r and as an interpreter
society therefore faced the greatest crisis since
its unification under the and translator. Yung Wing’s proposal to send Chinese students abroad
First Emperor in 221 Be. Li concluded that in order
to strengthen hersel
f was not acted upon unil fifteen years after his return. In 1872 he headed
China must learn to use Western machinery,
which implied also the an educational mission that brought some 120 long-gowned Chnngse
training of Chinese personnel. This simple line of reaso
ning had been students to Hartford, Connecticut. Old-style Chinese tfzachers came wnt.h
mediately self-evident to the fighting men of
Japan after Perry’
s arrival them to prepare these prospective Westernizers .oi Chma- for the exami-
in 1853. But the movement for Westernization
in China was obstructed nations in the classics, a preparation still essential to their begommg of-
at every turn by the ignorance and prejudice of
the Confucian literati. ficials. Yung Wing was also given as colleague an obs_cumnust scho_lar
This lack of responsiveness in China, durin
g the decades when Japan whose mission was to see to it that Western contact did not undermine
was being rapidly modernized, provides one
of the great contrasts of the students’ Confucian morals. In 1881 the whole project was aban-
history.
China’s difficulties were repeatedly illust doned. o )
rated. To make Western Similar attitudes handicapped early industrialization. Conservatives
learning available, for example, some eight
y Jesuit missionaries during feared that mines, railroads, and telegraph lines would upset the har-
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had produ
ced Chinese transla- mony between man and nature (fengshui) and create all sorts of proll)-
tions of over 400 Western works, more than
half on Christianity and lems—by disturbing the imperial ancestors, by assembling unruly
about a third in science. Protestant missionari
es of the early nineteenth crowds of miners, by throwing boatmen and carters out of work., by ab-
century published about 8o items, but nearl
y all as religious tracts or sorbing government revenues, by creating a z.iependence on foreign ma-
translations of scripture, mainly directed in
simple parlance at the com- chines and technicians. Even when modernizers could overcome such
mon man, not the Chinese literati. At the
Shanghai arsenal during the fears, they still faced enormous practical diffi.culnes such as the lack oj
last third of the century, one gifted Englishman
(John Fryer) collaborated entrepreneurial skills and capital. Major projects }lad to be sponsore
with Chinese scholars to translate more than
a hundred works on sci- by high officials, usually under the formula Aof official supervision
ence and technology, developing the necessary
terminology in Chinese as and merchant operation.” This meant in practice that enterprises were
they went along. But the distribution of
all these works was limited, hamstrung by bureaucratism. Merchant managers remained under t_he
rather few Chinese scholars seem to have
read them, and their produc- thumb of their official patrons. Both groups milked the new companies
tion depended on the initiative of foreigners
or of a few officials con- of their current profits instead of reinvesting them. An ongoing process
cerned with foreign affairs, not under guida
nce from the throne. of self-sustaining industrial growth through reinvestment was never
At the capital an interpreters’ college had
been set up in 1862 as a achieved. o
government institution to prepare youn
g men for diplomatic negotia- Thus, China’s late-nineteenth-century industrialization proved gen-
tion. With an American missionary as head
and nine foreign professors erally abortive in spite of the early promise of many officia}ly s.ponsored
and with Robert Hart’s prompting and
Customs support, this new col- projects. For example, the China Merchants’ Steam Navngano_n Cflom-
lege soon had over 100 Manchu and Chine
se students of foreig n lan- pany founded by Li in 1872 was subsidized to carry the tr.nbute rice from
guages. Yer antiforeign literati objected
to the teaching of Western sub- the Yangzi delta to feed the capital. A]mo§r every year since 1415 long
jects. The erroneous excuse had to be
offered that “Western sciences flotillas of grain junks had moved these shlpmen.ts up .(he"Grand Canal.
borrowed their roots from ancient Chinese mathe
matics . . . China in- Now they could go quickly by sea from Shanghai to Tianjin. To provide
vented the method, Westerners adopted
it.” coal for the steamer fleet the Kaiping coal mines were opened nor.th of
The jealousy of a scholar class whose fortu
nes were tied to Chinese Tianjin in 1878. To transport this coal, China’s first permanent railway
learning was most vigorously illustrated in
the case of a Chinese student, was inaugurated in 1881. Yet by the end of the century 4these murually:
Yung Wing, who had been taken to the Unite
d States by missionaries in supporting enterprises had made little progress. The China Merchalms
1847 and graduated from Yale in 1854. When he returned
after eight years abroad, he had to wait almos to China Company, plundered by its patrons, managers, and em!)lo?'e:s, lost
t a decade before he was ground to British steamship lines. The Kaiping mines, heavily in debt to
 2 Peasant Rebellions in the Mid-Nineteenth
Century

Partly as a result of the increase in population and a whole series of

natural disasters, but above all because of a dynastic crisis of power,
agrarian unrest, which had been muted in the seventeenth century,
broke out again all over the country after the beginning of the nine¬
teenth, with local incidents, secret society activities and armed
risings. They were no more, however, than dispersed and marginal
expressions of peasant discontent, and gave way, between 1850 and
1870, to a major wave of peasant rebellions of exceptional size.
Several million peasants were involved; nearly all the eighteen
provinces were affected; many of them, between 1855 and i860,
were totally or partially out of the control of the central government.
Rebellions continued for almost twenty years, and constitute what
was probably the greatest wave of peasant wars in history. But once
more the rebellions of the Taipings, the Nien, the Moslems, and the
risings led by the old secret societies, were separate movements,
incapable of effectively coordinating their efforts. Consequently the
Manchu dynasty was able, in extremis, to make an unexpected
recovery.
It was no mere coincidence that this powerful peasant outburst
occurred in the period of the Opium Wars and the ‘opening’ of
China by the Western powers. The age-old contradictions between
the peasants and the feudal holders of power, land and learning were
deepened and brought to a climax by a combination of exceptional
circumstances. The political and social crisis, which had been fer¬
menting in the Chinese countryside since the beginning of the nine¬
teenth century, was brutally exacerbated by the First Opium War
and the Treaty of Nanking (1842). The Manchu dynasty was dis¬
credited by its readiness to give in to Western demands. The opium

23
 4 Hung
Hsiu-ch’iian
(1814-64), mystic
leader of the
Taiping rebellion,
an agrarian and
nationalistic
uprising against the
Manchu dynasty.

traffic, illicit before the war, and then legalized, drained China of a
large part of her reserves of silver, and changed, to the disadvantage
of the peasants, the exchange rate between silver and copper. The
opening of other ports in the east of the country deprived Canton
of much of the commerce which had been concentrated there
when it had been the only port open to foreign trade. Hundreds of
thousands of boatmen and porters in central and southern China
were thrown out of work, and it was from among this army of
unemployed that several of the leaders of the Taiping rebellion
emerged.
This most spectacular and exceptional of the great peasant move¬
ments of the mid-nineteenth century was more profoundly 'pre¬
conditioned’ than peasant risings in general throughout the history
of China. It occurred at the point when the traditional social crisis
coincided with the penetration of China by the Western powers.
This fusion of archaic and modern elements is shown in the geogra-

24
phical area where the movement originated and in the personality of
its founder. Though Kwangsi may seem to have been no more than
a typical province of old China, where for centuries peasants, gentry
and secret societies confronted each other, it constituted the hinter¬
land of Canton - the point of contact for more than a century
between China and the West, the port frequented by Western
merchants and missionaries. This influence was felt as far as Kwangsi.
Hung Hsiu-ch’iian, the Taiping leader, shows the same combination
of influences. He was an educated man from a family of poor
peasants, who had not succeeded in gaining admission to the ranks
of the ruling class. He had also been a pupil of a Protestant missionary
in Canton. He had visited the great port and had experienced the
historical ‘gap’ which existed between China and the ‘barbarians’. In
about 1845 Hung Hsiu-ch’iian began to preach a new faith in the
mountains of Kwangsi. Into the ‘Society of God-worshippers’ which
he formed, he welcomed landless peasants, coolies, miners, char¬
coal burners and disbanded soldiers. Initially his movement enjoyed
the assistance of the Triad lodges which were very powerful in this
area, and were the traditional meeting points for dissident elements.
But he soon broke with the secret societies for ideological reasons:
they refused to follow his attempted Christian syncretism. For his
part, he disapproved of their dream of restoring the Ming dynasty,
and in 1851 founded his own dynasty - ‘The Celestial Kingdom of
Great Peace’ (T’ai-ping T’ien-kuo). Soon the Taiping armies, swelled
by thousands of rebellious peasants, began their march to the north¬
east, and in 1853 arrived at Nanking, which remained the rebel
capital for eleven years.
The Taiping movement was fundamentally an agrarian one, a
revolt of the peasants against their ‘natural’ enemies within Chinese
society, against landlords, gentry and officials. But at the same time
it had a strong colouring of nationalism or proto-nationalism, and
shows certain unique elements of modernization.
Its peasant character is reflected in the personality of its leaders,
who gave themselves the archaic title of wang (king); many of them
came from the poor peasantry of the south-west. As they advanced
through central China and the Yangtze valley, the Taiping troops

25
5 A Taiping army moves into action, an illustration from Lm-le’s record of the
rebellion. Lm-le (an Englishman named Lindley) was one of the few Westerners

were supported by spontaneous peasant risings; officials, wealthy and

unpopular landlords were put to death, tax registers, land registers
and loan receipts were burned, government offices sacked. A contem¬
porary chronicler wrote, ‘Each time they entered into a rich house,
or into that of a great family, they would dig three feet into the
ground [to find buried treasure]. But not only did they not plunder
the peasants, on the contrary, wherever they passed they distributed
clothes and other things they had taken to the poor, and announced
a remission of taxes for three years, thus winning the gratitude of the
villagers.’

26
active in the Taiping cause; he was strongly critical of British intervention on
behalf of the imperial forces.

In the same year that they set up their capital at Nanking, the
Taipings promulgated their ‘Land System of the Celestial Dynasty’,
the primitive collectivism of which places it in the direct tradition
of Chinese peasant utopianism.

All lands under Heaven shall be farmed jointly by the people under
Heaven. If the production of food is too small in one place, then
move to another where it is more abundant. All lands under
Heaven shall be accessible in time of abundance or famine. If there
is a famine in one area move the surplus from an area where there

27
 6, 7 Imprints of
the state seal of the
Taiping Heavenly
Kingdom.

is abundance to that area. . . . Land shall be farmed by all; rice,

eaten by all; clothes, worn by all; money, spent by all. There shall
be no inequality, and no person shall be without food or fuel. No
matter whether man or woman, everyone over sixteen years of
age shall receive land.

The same primitive collectivism, never widely enforced, however,

was to govern industrial production, by means of ‘artisans’ batta¬
lions’, the products of which went into ‘state treasuries’ and were
shared among all.
The elements of proto-nationalism in the Taiping movement
linked it with peasant revolts of the past, with the risings against
Mongol power in the fourteenth century, for instance, led by the
peasant Chu Yuan-chang, the founder of the Ming dynasty. The
Taipings wished to liberate China from the domination of the
Manchus. They accused the dynasty of being incapable of governing
China, of wanting to drain the country of its wealth, of being
responsible for the internal and external misfortunes of China.
Symbolically the Taipings cut oft their queues, imposed upon the

28
Chinese in the seventeenth century as a sign of humiliation, and
allowed their hair to grow - hence the contemporary epithet ‘long¬
haired rebels’ (ctiang-mao tsei). This nationalistic element explains the
recruitment by the Taipings of a number of educated and relatively
wealthy people who had no particular reason to support the social
struggle of the peasantry, but whose anti-Manchu patriotism gave
them some sympathy for the rebel cause. They helped to draw up
proclamations, undertook administrative functions, and made
possible the creation of a real rebel state which survived for eleven
years and controlled extensive territories.
The activities of the Taipings took place in a context which was
no longer purely Chinese, for the shadow of the West had lain over
China since the humiliating defeat in 1842. The Taipings were not
indifferent to the challenge of the West; for instance, they adopted
a semi-solar calendar in place of the old lunar calendar; they
envisaged modern reforms, the construction of a network of rail¬
ways, a postal service, hospitals and banks. Above all they attempted
to penetrate the ‘secret’ of the Westerners in borrowing elements of
their religion. They professed a militant monotheism; they accepted
the Ten Commandments and the divinity of Christ, whose younger
brother Hung Hsiu-ch’iian claimed to be; they practised baptism
and gave the Old and New Testaments a place among their canonical
books. These Christian elements were combined with popular tradi¬
tional religions, with peasant cults and with Buddhist and Taoist
elements. The Taipings thus created a complete politico-religious
system, which combined spiritual salvation and obedience to the will
of God with the political and military defence of the rebel state.
Like many other peasant rebels in history, the Taipings were
subject to the contradictions inherent by definition in a rebel order.
Should they be content with harassing the enemy, exposing its
decadence, fighting and overthrowing the imperial regime, or should
they, as others had done, attempt to construct new social machinery
with its own forms of subordination and obligation ? Could the
revolt transform itself into a stable social structure without becoming
a prisoner of the exigencies of such a structure ? The Taipings began
by conducting mobile warfare, all the way from the mountains of

29
Kwangsi to the city of Nanking. This was a real people’s war, and
the peasants rose in response. But once established in Nanking, the
Taipings created the apparatus of government, with a capital, a
political system, a bureaucratic administration and a group of
leaders which soon became a privileged class. Many of the leaders
had large harems, though in the army the Taipings preached mono¬
gamy and the separation of the sexes. To make this governmental
machinery work involved increasing demands upon the peasantry,
who ceased to be the motive force of a movement and became the
subjects of a government. They had to pay taxes, suffer requisitions
and give corvee services. This is why the peasantry became increas¬
ingly disaffected in the last years of the Celestial Kingdom of Great
Peace. The rebel dynasty suffered the same withdrawal of allegiance
in the rural areas under its control as had undermined the regime it
sought to replace.
The disaffection of the peasantry, the main cause of the failure of
the Taipings, was accompanied by certain other unfavourable factors.
The movement never succeeded in controlling more than a fairly
limited region. It was restricted in the first instance to the south-west,
from which it detached itself soon after 1850, and then established
more durable roots in Anhwei, Kiangsu and Chekiang in the lower
Yangtze valley. Two expeditions against Peking, sent out in 1853
and 1854, did not succeed in mobilizing the peasants of the north and
were utterly defeated. Moreover, the Taipings were weakened by
dissension between ruling cliques. The two principal colleagues of
Hung Hsiu-ch’uan, together with thousands of their followers, were
killed in an outbreak of mutual slaughter in Nanking in 1856.
Another gifted leader, Shih Ta-k’ai, preferred to flee Nanking with
his troops and campaign on his own in the south-west. In 1859 the
rebel king’s cousin, Hung Jen-kan, a former catechist of Protestant
missionaries in Canton and a capable administrator, arrived in
Nanking. But he was soon ousted by powerful military men or
incapable courtiers who had the fickle favour of Hung Hsiu-ch’iian.
In contrast to the weakening of the rebel regime, its enemy proved
capable of vigorous recovery. From the beginning of the rebellion,
imperial generals had been easily defeated. Since then, the gentry and

30
8 Taiping leaders, an idealized portrayal in a late nineteenth-century print.

landlords of the provinces had taken over the defence of their own
economic interests. They organized disciplined and well-paid provin¬
cial militia and gradually established a blockade of rebel territory.
The imperial government was also assisted in the reconquest of the
empire by the Western powers, France and England, who, having
once again imposed their will upon the Manchu dynasty in the
Second Opium War and the Treaty of Tientsin (1858-60), preferred
to maintain a conservative and docile government in Peking rather
than see it swept away by rebels. Western aid, though not decisive,
contributed to the defeat of the Taipings; Western officers helped
to train imperial troops, steamships were put at their disposal for
the transport of armies to the front in the lower Yangtze, foreign
detachments sometimes even engaged directly in the hostilities and
capable foreign officers, such as C.G. Gordon, commanded certain
mixed units. Nanking was finally taken in the summer of 1864, and
thousands of Taipings killed themselves with their leaders.
The peasant revolt of the Nien, which lasted from 1853 to 1868,
took place in the sandy region of north China between the Yangtze

3i
9 Imperial troops attack Nanking; on the battlements above the city’s entrance
Taiping leaders, among them Hung Hsiu-ch’iian, survey the battle. Nanking,
Taiping capital from 1853 to 1864, finally fell to imperial troops, assisted by General
Gordon, in September 1864, after a lour months' siege.

basin and the Yellow River. It was less sophisticated than that of
the Taipings and closer to the traditional model of peasant defiance.
This poor region north of the Hwai River was inhabited by robust
and belligerent peasants. There were vast expanses of land unsuitable
for rice cultivation and, exceptionally for China, there was an
abundant supply of horses. Being close to the sea, there was a
vigorous salt-smuggling trade, which provided a supplementary
occupation for many people. Cart drivers and salt-smugglers played
an important role in the Nien movement. In addition, this region
was a kind of administrative no-man’s land, overlapping parts of the
provinces of Kiangsu, Honan, Shantung and Chihli - an ‘under¬
administered’ area far from the political centres and the bases from
which repression was launched in the interior of each of these
provinces.

32
 The Nien, as a secret association of peasants, was possibly a branch
of the White Lotus. The word Nien means a twist or roll, and was
used to denote the cells of the organization, which became openly
subversive in 1853, when the Taipings arrived at Nanking. The Nien
benefited from the fact that the imperial forces were for several years
preoccupied with the greater rebellion.
In the Hwai region there was little economic diversification, no
large cities and few literati. The social composition of the Nien bands
was consequently more homogeneous than that of the Taipings.
Poor peasants predominated, and the recurrence of the same sur¬
names in official government sources shows that whole villages and
whole lineages rallied to the rebellion. The Nien behaved in much
the same way as peasant rebels had done in preceding centuries: they
attacked convoys of rich merchants, opened prisons, raided yamen
and the houses of rich landlords. In the tradition of brigand justice
they distributed goods to the poor and inscribed on their banners the
words, ‘Kill the officials, kill the rich, spare the poor!’
Peasant folksongs handed down for over a century, and recently
collected by specialists in folk literature from Peking, reflect the class
character of the Nien struggle:

As the moon goes round the sun,

The poor rebel with the Nien.
Poor turn to poor, rich to rich.
As clearly different as black and white. . . .

Shining red rises the sun;

Lao-lo is a fine banner-leader.
The poor men s hearts are happy to see him,
And the moneybags’ bones go soft with terror.

... the paupers have overrun the whole land;

as time goes by we’ll see that you can do nothing. ■

The fighting methods of the Nien armies were also much more in
harmony with the peasant temperament than those of the Taipings,

33
io, ii Two illustrations, taken from a Chinese picture book for children first
published in 1963, show an imperial spy being arrested and summarily executed by
Nien troops.

who quickly raised enormous armies of tens of thousands of men.

The Nien, on the other hand, fought in small guerilla units, very
mobile thanks to their horses, but still remaining close to the village
population. Their code of conduct, forbidding looting or taking
food from poor people, foreshadowed that of the Chinese Commu¬
nists in the same region eighty years later, when their peasant
guerillas and the Eighth Route Army were fighting the Japanese.
But the predominance of poor peasants in the ranks of the Nien
did not preclude other elements from joining, such as salt-smugglers
and ‘black-sheep’ from prosperous families. The chief leader of the
Nien, Chang Lo-hsing, was himself a salt-smuggler.
The Nien organization was decentralized. Unlike the Taipings,
they did not feel the need to establish a unified rebel state to challenge
the imperial regime; at most their chiefs met in council to coordinate
their actions. Nor did they attempt to win over the literati; they had

34
neither the need, nor the taste, for administrative red-tape or docu¬
ments. Unlike the Taipings, they did not leave behind an imposing
collection of edicts, canonical books or administrative statutes; so
our knowledge of them is almost entirely based on what officials
responsible for their suppression wrote about them. These sources
nevertheless tell us something about their discipline, their dynamism,
their fighting skill, the quality of their intelligence system, and about
the support they enjoyed from the population. Such people as junior
employees of the yamen, low-ranking officers in the imperial armies
and merchants worked secretly for them and gave them immediate
information about enemy troop movements.
The Nien movement is a typical example of what E.J.Hobsbawn
has called ‘social banditry’. But it also had a political character. A
council of Nien chiefs, which met at Chih-ho in 1856, adopted anti-
Manchu, anti-dynastic proclamations and called upon their followers

35
to fight for the ‘Great Han Kingdom’ - for a Chinese dynasty as
opposed to the ‘barbarian’ regime of the Manchus. Chang Lo-hsing,
the former salt-smuggler, was nominated ‘Great Han Prince with
the Ming Mandate’. It is clear that the Nien movement was influ¬
enced by Ming loyalism and anti-Manchu proto-nationalism. In
engaging in salt-smuggling on a grand scale and setting up its own
inland customs posts, it fought against the monopolies of the imperial
state, supplanting them and encouraging the development of local
commerce.
The history of the Nien movement can be divided into three
phases. Until 1855 they were assembling and consolidating their
forces. Then, until 1864, they profited from the existence of the
Taiping regime to the south of them and cooperated militarily with
it. But after the defeat of the Taipings in 1864 the imperial forces
turned their attention to the Nien who, reinforced by Taiping
survivors, continued vigorous resistance against the government. In
1865 they defeated and killed the government’s best general, the
Mongol cavalry commander Seng-ko-lin-ch’in. With their mobile
guerilla bands they were still a powerful fighting force, and cam¬
paigned over much of north China. Unlike the Taipings, their
relations with the peasants and with the villages remained excellent.
But their very success, the fact that they survived for fifteen years,
accelerated their downfall. In 1867 they chose to organize great
regiments, as the Taipings had done. The ‘Eastern Nien’ moved into
Shantung while the ‘Western Nien’ sought to join up with the
Moslem rebels who were then at the height of their activity in the
north-west. From now on, the Nien were much more vulnerable
and could no longer melt away into the villages as they had
previously done in times of danger. The two great armies were
encircled, divided and wiped out, and the movement came to an
end in 1868.

Apart from the major rebellions of the Taipings and the Nien,
Chinese peasants took part in many other movements against the
established order in the third quarter of the nineteenth century. The
great Moslem rebellions of Yunnan (1853-73) and north-west China

36
12 Official seal of Tu Wen-hsiu, leader of the rebel Moslem forces in Yunnan; the
inscriptions are in Arabic (left) and Chinese.

(1863-73) were ethnic and religious in character, but their social base
was nevertheless a peasant one. The same is true of the rebellion of
the Miao minority in the province of Kweichow (1854-72). In these
regions inhabited by minority peoples, ethnic antagonism did not
replace poor peasant opposition to the landlord-official alliance, but
exacerbated it. The peasants of these minorities paid their Chinese
landlords rents which were even higher than in the rest of China,
and suffered treatment at the hands of officials which was even more
severe. They were also exploited by Chinese merchants who sold
them necessities such as tea and salt at high prices, but gave them
little for their goods, such as furs, wool and the products of the
forests, which were much in demand elsewhere.
The secret societies had supported the Taiping rebellion only at
the beginning; their influence upon the Nien was remote. In spite

37
of certain similarities, the Nien did not constitute a secret society in
the strict sense of the term. But these ancient subversive groups took
advantage of the weakening of central power to organize a whole
series of minor risings, very scattered to be sure, but which in fact
involved as many peasants as the Taipings and the Nien. In Szechuan,
for instance, about i860, the Red Band (Hung-pang) led a revolt of
more than 30,000 peasants. The Red Turban rebellion of Canton
(1854), led by the Triads, involved peasants, smugglers, vagabonds
and bandits. The peasants of the Canton region sought the support
of the secret societies against the officials and landlords; they formed
village defence corps and practised the art of Chinese boxing. Once
the Triads succeeded in coordinating the actions of the peasant bands
of the plain with those of the ‘professional’* outlaws from the moun¬
tains, the rebel force was strong enough to lay siege to important
market towns near Canton. Fatshan and Shunte were even occupied
for a time, but the rebels were not able to hold them for more than
a few weeks.
In spite of a crisis lasting twenty years, the imperial government
was able to survive all these major and minor rebellions. There had
been occasional attempts at strategic cooperation among the rebels;
the Taipings had campaigned with the Nien and had contact with
the Moslems and even certain secret societies towards the end, but
there was never any real coordination between the rebel forces.
Indeed it was impossible; it would have made no sense in the
historical context of the traditional Chinese order. All the peasant
movements and secret society risings between 1850 and 1870, all
expressions of peasant violence, were the result of local conditions
and circumstances. By their very nature, they each presented a
different social and ideological profile, out of which it was not
possible to create a ‘united front’. The Ming loyalism of the secret
societies could not be reconciled with the claims of the rebel ‘Celestial
Kingdom’ at Nanking, nor did the Nien have the same motives and
perspectives as the Moslem peasants.
The forces of suppression triumphed in the end, but at the cost of
tremendous slaughter. Even in the middle of the twentieth century,
cities such as Nanking and Soochow, the main urban bases of the

38
Taipings and until then flourishing centres of commerce and manu¬
facture, still showed traces of the destruction which had occurred
when they were recaptured by the imperial forces. In the countryside
the effects of suppression were even more brutal. Certain provinces,
according to the most recent Chinese census (1953), had not yet
recovered, a century later, from that terrible bloodletting. The
victims of these great peasant risings, and above all of the process of
suppression which finally brought them to an end, have been
estimated in tens of millions.

39
 2 apspvlh
\e an /O
‘3’ g O A~
N

Taiping rebellion (1850-64) @ \

The taiping uprising was a very powerful revolt that took place in the mid 19" century in
China. This movement was the first modern attempt on the part of the Chinese to
overthrow the Manchu dynasty and to replace it with an indigenous government. It was a
socio, religious and politically oriented movement which had far reaching consequences
on China.

At the time of the taiping rebellion China was in a deplorable condition. The weak
condition of the Manchus was very apparent, the officials were corrupt, and the economic
condition of the nation was deteriorating, especially that of the peasants under the heavy
taxation system. With its loss at the first opium war China had lost its sovereignty and the
western powers were rapidly extending their control over the Chinese territory. The
situation was ripe for the revolts to take place and this was witnessed in the form of the
taiping movement.

The taiping uprising was caused by the general decline of the Manchus, who were
considered outsiders in China. The extremists in China had always pleaded that the
Manchus should be overthrown. By the 19" century the Manchu rulers had become weak
and they were not able to defend China against Western aggression. The weak position of
the Manchus was further exposed with China’s defeat in the first opium war. There was
administrative corruption, economic sufferage; opium addiction, weak military and the
Manchus were held responsible for all this.

The major part of Chinese population was agrarian and its condition was miserable.
Peasants were taxed heavily and the taxation increased further, with China’s loss at the
opium war. The Manchu government had to pay a huge war indemnity and this resulted
in further increasing the tax burden of the peasantry. While they were forced to pay high
taxes there was no increase in the production levels, thus their condition became
miserable. The peasants were forced to take debts or to sell their land, ultimately turning
 m in
{0 landless peasants or laborers. On the other hand the
0o 2
Manchu emperor and the
and
wer e lea din g a life of lux ury . This caused widespread discontentment
{g;ldfl] lords to
ngs t the mass es, enc our agi ng the m to join the revolutionaries in order
resentment amo
fight the Manchus.

ese trad ers were also very disc onte nted . After the treaty of Nanking, the trade
The Chin al
they were the ones profiting from it. Industri
had shifted towards the westerners as with their mass
ble d the wes ter n nat ion s to flood the Chinese markets
revolution had ena ble
rabl e bala nce of trad e had bec ome totally unfavoura
produced cheap goods. Their favo as
merc hant s held the Manc hus responsible for their miseries
due to the opium trade. The
opium trade.
they were unable to keep a check on

of weak
nt in ter ms of mili tary org anization in the wake
China was totally incompete
The feudal lords who were required to maintain
rulers and corrupt administration.
money for personal
e eve n pai d for it, did not do so. They us ed this
soldiers and wer d. This
s flaw could not be checke
no regular inspections thi
purposes and since there were The weak
als o pro ved adv ant age ous for the revolt to take place.
weakness of the army of the
on and mil ita ry fai led to protect life, liberty and honour
and corrupt adm inistrati financed by
age d the sec ret soc iet ies to fl ourish, which were
our
Chinese masses. This enc the Manchus and
se sec ret soc iet ies had a co mmon aim of over throwing
the traders. The
own rule.
they wanted to establish their

features
rebe llio n ori gin ate d in the Gua ngx i province, and there were specific
The taiping land
was a region wit h dense population and intensive
of this region which provoked it. It
problem,
suffered from land and population ratio
cultivation was practiced here. This area
the people living there. Majority of
land was
as the land available was not enough for
worked as agricultural laborers on land.
owned by the landlords and the poorer sections
in search of jobs. However the
Slowly people started migrating towards the cities
settlement. With the five new
situation in the cities was also no better after the first treaty
of trading activities instead
ports being opened for trade Shanghai became the new centre
d as dockyard laborers were left
of Canton. As a result of this many Cantonese who worke
 %\'Lstem historians Ii ;
“Dynastic cycle meorys{:l:;fif;rr:h.ex: ey lrpfismg SN
Dl e T;c feVOltti were an indication that the mandate
STt Pk s er thus showx.ng thz?t it was time for the Manchus to

o o place frequently u'l 'Chma. A trend on general level was

years a small peasant uprising took place in China and after
100 years a large scale peasant uprising took place. 'l)figtvas considered }hat by these
uprisings nature maintained the balance of land population ratio. It was believed that with
the establishment of every dynasty a stable period of law and order was maintained. This
M\fsl] society experienced population growth which ultimately led to land population
ratio, “é’]arge scale peasant uprisings resulted in loss of human life in large numbers
thus recreating the balance between the land and population.

cycle theory by arguing that the rise

Fairbank introduced another aspect to this dynastic
this cycle was a proof that there had
and fall of dynasties in China in accordance with
His argument was that similar kinds of
been a changeless chain of events in China.
process of each dynasty like weak rulers,
conditions could be witnessed in the decline
etc.
corrupt administration, weak military

d as well as
ng has ref ute d this and poi nts out that this explanation is prejudice
Tan Chu d attitude
Chu ng acc use d wes ter n his torians of ‘maintaining a prejudice
inadequate. Tan
on revolving ina
Asi an nat ion s, whe reb y the y fe& that in Asia events keep
towards the iety
thi ngs kee p on g ett ing repeated, thus making the soc
cyclic manner that is, same would be
ve lo pm en t tak es pl ac e. Tan Chung argues that it
changeless where no de
 Western historians ar
gued that the causes
for the taiping uprising
Within the internal fram should be searched
ework of China. This vi,
ew ignores the role of op
western im perialism in the outbre
ium war and
ak of this mement. West
ern historians argue tha
t the

that the even before 1842, opi

um had created a lot of problems
in China at social and
administrative level. Chinese handic
rafis faced tough competition with the
opening up of
China, financial burden on natives as
well as the government increased tre
mendously
after the first treaty settlement. Theref
ore, these factors should be taken into acc
ount
while looking at the causes of the taiping upris
ing.

The taiping movement was headed by

Hung-Hsin-Chuan who came from a peas
ant
family of Guangxi province in southern
China. In this atmosphere of discontentme
nt and
chaos Hung started this movement. He came from
a minority community referred to as
“Hakkas” which had migrated to this region
from central Asia. The hakkas were not
accepted or absorbed in the Chinese society and
there were frequent clashes between
them and the Hans (the bulk of Chinese popu
lation was comprised of the Hans).
 Gy s
off ici al th ro ug h the civ il service examination
to become an
/ng:-Hin-Chuan wanted ation he worked as a
teacher. His repeated
aring for the examin
pr'ooedu,.e‘ While prep d an d he fel ll. He claims that
e ex am in at io n lef t i de pr es se
failure at the civil selirvriicous condition he had certain visions, but they were not very clear
while he was in a de
nt ac t wi th the Ch ri st ia n missi onaries, and it was
recovery he came in co
to him. After ehis si i ons he saw that he
then that thos vi ons became clear to him. He claimed that in his vis
younger
d an d Je su s Chr ist , wh o referred to him as his
he saw Go
was in heaven and d thehirem to protect mankind from evil. Hung became a Christian convert,
brother. They aske
it io na l Ch in es e bel ief s. At the same time he
s oftrad
howeysle :o} &? {0 som lement beliefs including ido!
worship,
condemned aspects of the traditio nal Chinese
sm.
anc est ral shri nes, and also crit iciz ed some elements of Confuciani
worship of
the
phi los oph y of Chr ist ian ity and Chinese religion, he organized
With his combined
The ant i tra dit ion al act ivi tie s £ this society caused
1847.
Society of God worshippers in ociates to move 10 Kwangtse
als for ced Hu ng and his ass
opposition and the offici en the state authorities
Here also, nu me ro us peo ple joined his society and wh
province.
(in respon : se to ano the r vision of his) announced
Hung
tried to persecute them, aad then
Manchu dynasty and e sta
blish a Taiping society-
that he would overthrow the

to a political movement.
from a religious movement
With this the taiping transform ed and his
new dyn ast y wou ld be kno wn as the Taiping dynasty
Hung announced that the ld be the Tien-
be refe rred to as Tai pin g Tien Kuo and he himself wou
_kingdom would Tien Kuo
The wes ter n hist oria ns int erpreted that the word taiping
Wang of this kingdom.
venly ruler.
kin gdo m of grea t pea ce, and Tien wang meant the hea
meant heavenly
erpreted as “Great
the word taiping should be int
However Tan Chung argues that
ablishment of
He arg ues that the taip ing mov ement stressed more on the est
equality”. ping
Tan Chu ng furt her cite s that the reform programme of the tai
equality than on peac e.
g equal rights to the peasants.
movement laid great emphasis on providin

marched from southern China towards the

After Hung’s declaration the taiping armies
stop them. By 1853, the taiping had seized
North and the Manchu forces were unable to
 anking and established their headquarters over here. They wanted to advance further
towards Peking, In the following years they came to control many provinces in China. It
is believed that the taiping movement affected 16 out of 18 provinces till its suppression
in 1864,

There were virtually two parallel governments running in China, Machus with their
capitala:Pekinganduxemiping with their headquar
at Nanking.ters
The Manchu
government was unable to receive any revenue from the provinces under the control of
the taipings.

Hung now became the political head of the taiping movement and in this dual aspect be
embarked upon a very comprehensive reform programme. This then turned taiping into a
S0Cio-economic movement as well.

The taiping movement

The taiping revolutionaries remained in power from 1853-64.
worked at achieving various aims, the most important being the overthrow of the
rnment
Manchus replaced by the taiping rule. They were desirous of establishing a gove
gn traders
which could regain China’s lost prestige and which could deal with the forei
an end to China’s
and aggression in a more effective manner. They wanted to bring
introduced various reform
economic and social problems. With these aims the taiping
measures in the social, economic and religious sphere.

modernist
Socially the taipings wanted to establish equality in the social order. The
outlook of the taipings can be noticed in the fact that they argued that men and women
were equal, This was a radical ideology whereby women were given equal opportunity in
military campaigns as well as administrative examinations. They forbade the practice of
foot binding as well as discouraged prostitution. Opium, tobacco smoking, were declared
punishable by death. Gambling and adultery were forbidden as sins. Thus we notice that
these measures were a huge attempt towards reforming the Chinese society.
 cording to the taiping rule all land belonged to the state and all % healthy men and
rs. They believed in
women between the ages of 16-50 were required to work as cultivato
of the taiping kingdom
the concept of universal brotherhood, believing that the members
were like members of a big family. Lands of big landlords were confiscated and brought

under common use. Peasants were expected to hold back only that amount of crop which
was essential for their existence. The rest went to the state treasury, and the state was to
take care of the old and disabled. Land was divided into various grades according to the

of the family
fertility of land. Each family was allotted land depending on the age
members. Certain handicraft industrics were also encouraged to increase the income of
state. The products produced by these industries went to the state treasury and it was
the policy of nationalization of
utilized for common use. The taiping regime followed
property and tried to establish equality.

consisted of
Taiping administration was run through 6 committees; these committees
took care of an area.
units of families. 25 families formed a cooperative society which
All surplus food was
The head of the society helped in cultivation and harvesting.
, for men to cultivate and women
| deposited in the government storages. It was compulsory
| were supposed to take care of animals, and silk worms
. In the taiping administrative
combined into a single
system civil, military and religious functions were all
administrative system.

in its main aim, still it has a very

Although the taiping uprising was not successful
of the taiping uprising and its reforms
important place in Chinese history. The relevance
accounts of this period have unanimously
can be ggtged by the fact that even the foreign
women, prohibiting opium, adultery
praised it, especially its features like emancipating
e movements of China. The
etc. the taiping rebellion prepared the ground for the futur
Liang-Chi-Chao, the founder
leaders of Hundred Days Reform movement Kang-Yu-Wei,
communists were all in
of the Chinese Republic Sun-Yat-Sen, the future socialists and
elements from its
some way or the other inspired by the taiping movement and borrowed
des the key
reform programme. According to Li Chien-Nung “the taiping rebellion provi
to several critical changes in China in the subsequent decades”. The Chinese communists
o} y
Pefer ’t*\e Ta\pmc& ot theivy vedsectable
tob 2
5?013 “FURALYFS 0DA e
Conai dex theom o Yeyvelwhor ax

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d
 Nature of theTaiping movement
Although the taiping rebellion was crushed after sustained efforts it left behind its legacy
and memories. It was the first serious attempt towards change which heralded China
towards a modern era. It shook the imperial structure of the Manchus to its foundations

and jolted them in such a manner that they could never overcome it. Their power,
prestige and financial situation was further eroded and destroyed. The taiping rebellion
revealed the weakness of the central authority and its inability to carry out its primary
duty of maintaining law and order in the empire. The whole administrative machinery
was affected to such an extent that it led to a major rise in robbery, anarchy and
lawlessness. .

The taiping rebels had tried to introduce far reaching reforms such as equal distribution of
land, modernization of education, equality of status in context of men and women,
modernization of industries, ban on opium consumption. Although they were not able to
carry out these reforms successfully but it left profound impressions in the memory of the
Chinese masses. They were now aware as to what are the changes required in order to
modernize their nation as well as improve their economy and society. The taiping
rebellion paved the way for the future politico-economic set-up of China. The leaders of
the hundred days reform movement Kang-Yu-Wei, Liang Chi-Chao, and the founder of
the Chinese Republic Sun-Yat-Sen, the nationalists, the socialists, and the communist all

were to a large extent indebted to the Taiping movement and borrowed one or the other
programme of the Taipings.

There is a debate amongst the historians with regard to the nature of the taiping
movement, whether to view it as a rebellion or as a revolution. The western historians
argue that the taiping rebellion was like all other peasant rebellions that use to take place
in China from time to time. Tan Chung refutes this and says that it would be unfair to
view the taiping rebellion like any other peasant movement because taipings were not
only trying to address the peasant’s grievances but were aiming towards changing the
political, social and economic structure as well. The taipings wanted to overthrow the
Manchu dynasty and set up a new ruling power. The taiping movement had a radical
 @
ideology, a revolutionary program, and large scale participation, All this clearly
distinguisiit from the other peasant’s rebellion.

Karl Marx described the taiping movement as a revolution in China. “The Times” one of
the leading newspapers of that time described the taiping movement as a “revolutionary
event of tremendous importance” These references were overlooked by the western

historians in general, and scholars like Berington Moore Jr., Vincent Shih, and Franz
Michael term it as a rebellion. They sirk the literal meaning of the term revolution as that
event which replaces the ruling power and brings about changes politically, socially and
economically, While a rebellion is an unsuccessful attempt to change the existing
political structure. Their basic argument i that since the taipings were unable to
overthrow the Manchus hence it should be termed as a rebellion. They further argue that
amass participation was not witnessed and the leaders of the taiping movement were not
committed to their cause. Once the taipings established a stronghold at Nanking the
leaders of this movement themselves got engaged in self indulgence. The taiping
movement in its program talked of equal distribution of land and treating men and
women on equal terms however after their acquisition of Nanking the taiping leaders
themselves showed feudalistic tendencies. Hung Hsin Chuan the leader of the taiping
movement himself became more concerned with the establishing himself as a ruler
instead of doing serious work to implement their reform program. Thus these historians
argue that it would be inappropriate to term it as a revolution.

However the pro taiping movement scholars point out that since it did make an attempt
towards overthrowing the Manchus as well as reforming the social and economic
structure, thus it is more appropriate to term it as an unsuccessful revolution but not a
mere rebellion. Ssu-Wu-Eeng divides the taiping movement into two parts, whereby the
first half should be viewed as a revolution because of its ideology, reforms. While the
latter half suffered from various kinds of weaknesses and thus its revolutionary reform
program could not be implemented, the leaders lost track of the real cause and thus it
failed.
 &)
While élscussing the nature of the taiping movement it is important to look into the
extent it influenced the future communist movement of China, particularly under the
leadership of Mao-Tse-Tung. The taiping uprising for the first time demonstrated the
power of the peasantry class as a revolutionary force. Later on Mao-Tse-Tung organized
the communist movement with the peasantry as the leading force. The communists also
was no
adopted the land program of the taipings, whereby land was state owned and there
were to be
scope for private ownership. Land, its produce, and all other industrial output
state. These ideas were
considered as the common property of the whole community or
The similarity between the two
first adopted by the taipings and then by the communists.
and peasant welfare program.
can be seen in their modern approach, anti feudal nature,
of the communist movement.
Thus the taiping movement is considered as the fore runner
g movement as an important
Communist leaders like Mao-Tse-Tung referred to the taipin
against feudalism as well as
change in the continuous struggle of the peasantry
20" century.
imperialism. This struggle achieved success in the

ssing the peasant’s desire for

The taiping uprising is referred to as a social crusade expre
against the Manchus who were
equality by Jean Chesneaux. It was a national revolution
t the westerners in the 9"
considered foreigners responsible for China’s poor fate agains
by the Chinese against the
century. They believed th at it was an ethnic revolution
discrimination subjected by the Manchus.

ate to term taiping

In the light of the arguments given above it would be inappropri
of its long term
movement as a rebellion, its true nature should be gauged in terms
effects.

(* Refer to the IGNOU material also on this topic.)