Taiping Rebellion

The Taiping Rebellion was a major uprising during the mid-19th century against the ruling Qing Dynasty in China. The rebellion was led by Hong Xiuquan, an unsuccessful candidate in the Imperial examinations, who preached socialist egalitarianism and rigorous spiritual practice based on concepts and symbols adapted from Christianity. Before the rebellion was eventually defeated, it had gained control over a large portion of southern China and established its capital in the captured city of Nanjing.

In 1836, Hong Xiuquan traveled to Guangzhou to take the imperial exams. During his stay there, he met a Protestant Christian missionary and was given evangelical pamphlets written by Liang Fa, the first Chinese Protestant Christian minister. Hong failed the examinations and experienced an illness or nervous collapse during which time he had religious visions. After spending several years as a village school teacher, Hong studied the pamphlets and then announced that his visions indicated that he was the son of God and younger brother of Jesus Christ, charged with ridding China of demon worship and establishing a heavenly kingdom on earth. Hong and his early followers destroyed ancestral tablets at Confucian temples in nearby villages. In 1850, Hong led a successful uprising in Guangxi and founded the Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace. Hong's followers were required to participate in regular religious practice, maintain strict separation between men and women, and share their wealth and property communally. In 1853, the Taiping forces captured Nanjing, calling the city Tianjing and maintaining it as the capital of the movement. The same year, Hong appointed his eldest son, Hong Tianguifu, as his successor. Internal political struggles and overambitious military campaigns weakened the movement.

A military unit of Chinese troops and Western officers organized by Frederick Townsend Ward prevented the Taiping forces from capturing Shanghai. Under the command of Charles George Gordon, this force was given the title Ever Victorious Army and posed the strongest opposition to the Taiping rebels. The Qing emperor appointed Zeng Guofan to form a new army made up of locally organized militias that were funded by local landowners and regional taxes. While the Ever Victorious Army fought the Taiping rebels throughout central China, Zeng besieged the Taiping capital at Nanjing. In 1864, the walls of Nanjing were breached, and the city was taken. Taiping rebels who did not escape either died in the fighting or were executed. The body of Hong Xiuquan, who may have poisoned himself or died of food poisoning, was found wrapped in a yellow cloth and left lying in a city sewer.

The Taiping Rebellion significantly weakened the Qing Dynasty and provided encouragement for other rebellions and uprisings during the following half-century, until the abdication of the final Qing emperor to the republican revolution in 1912. The egalitarian and reform ideas espoused by Hong Xiuquan during the Taiping Rebellion influenced the thought of later Chinese political leaders, including Sun Yat-Sen and Mao Zedong.