The Course of the Taiping Rebellion
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Tien-wang – The Heavenly King – and his Ideas

• Hung Hsiu-ch’uan (1813-1864) came into the scene of unrest and uncertainty
• Radical effect on China
• Even though rebellion failed he started the demise of the Qing Dynasty and the concept of new forms of Government
• Son of a farmer who was a village headsman
• Hung worked as a village school teacher
• Sat imperial examinations twice and failed, 2^nd time in 1937
• Whilst sit exams in Canton, he received Christian material from a missionary
• Had a dream and felt he had been commanded by god to cleanse China of its evils.
• Hung assumed this was gods work
• Hung then sat the imperial examinations again at Canton and failed
• He believed he was prejudiced by the Manchu and be came active in anti-Manchu sentiments
• In 1847 he received his first full translated version of the bible from Issachar Roberts who described him as
• “The most earnest and deeply interested student of Christianity he had ever found in China; but … strongly tinctured with fanaticism …” – Charles Taylor
• Hung gathered support from relatives
• Strong in his convictions and persuasive because of these
• Slight and patchy knowledge of Christianity, and as a result initially interested foreign missionaries denounced him as a heretic

Outbreak of Rebellion

• Hung and follwers armed themselves and the rebellion broke out
• The Manchu order the suppression of the rebellion but this proved very difficult
• The rebels soon captured Yungan in Kwangsi and formed a headquarters where Hung and others developed their political beliefs and strategies
• Programme of Hung based around the eradication of the Manchu and replace with a state to be called Taiping Tien or The Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace.
• Hung was to be Heavenly King
• Five other Kings would form a state council
• Civil and Military administrations would be set up
• Military aspect important to capture territory and then defend it
• Land was to be redistributed
• Opium was banned but the exportation of Tea and silk was encouraged
• Industrialisation and infrastructure improvements were envisaged
• The social programme
• Chinese customs of foot-binding and the keeping of concubines were eradicated
• Monogamy and equality between men and women
• Written language to be simplified
• Formation of hospitals and other institutions
• Taiping leaders disregarded their own regulations and behaved like emperors i.e. above the law
• Peculiar form of Christianity was to be observed by all or face harsh penalties.

Progress of the rebellion

• On the first day of the Chinese new year hung was crowned
• Traditional ceremony reviving customs that had been abolished by the Manchu
• By 1852 the rebels had crossed into Hunan defeating the imperial forces
• Victories resulted from unwillingness of rebel troops and the Taiping understanding of guerrilla warfare
• Parallels between Taiping army and Red army
• Struggled to implement social programmes
• In January 1953, Wuchang and Hangkow were taken
• Nanking fell on march 20 and beame capital for the next 20 years

Nanking, the Taiping Capital

• From relative safety in Nanking Hung began to implement what can be described as relatively socialist reforms
• Power was concentrated in his hands
• Taiping ideas were far in advance of anything that existed in China at that time
• Harassment by imperial armies in the Countryside and poor administrative skills made it impossible to implement reforms
• Like emperors Hung turned away from the people in to a pleasure loving extortionist, quite different from the energetic revolutionary he was at the beginning of the rebellion
• On Nanking’s recapture, Hung committed suicide and his body was wrapped in yellow imperial silk

Lack of Foreign Recognition

• Religious leaders from various nations could not accept Hung’s government
• He had thought that they would support a Christian state
• Whilst the foreigners recognised forms of Christianity it exist outside their beliefs and was deemed heretical
• It was to the political advantage of the foreign powers to keep the Manchu on the throne as they owed huge debts and could control them
• They moved against Taiping to maintain trading rights

The Defeat of Taiping

• After 1853 the success of the rebellion reduced largely due poor leadership and loss of military strength
• Encountered opposition of Gentry class who wanted to presercve their place in a Confucian society
• There was a brief revival under the leadership of a new king Li Hsui-cheng, in the early 1860’s
• The coastal provinces were thrown into panic
• Soochow soon fell to his army

Other Notes in this Category

1. Effects of the Taiping Revolution
2. Factors Behind the 1851 Taiping Rebellion
3. The Course of the Taiping Rebellion

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