I read a good book on it a while ago.
Whether read for its powerful account of the largest up…
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It wasn't quite the history of the Taiping Rebellion I thought it'd be but it providing a great narrative explanation of Jesus' Chinese Brother Hong Xiuquan, the culture and society he grew up in (shockingly life for most Chinese was quite miserable in this time period
) and how he developed his beliefs and it spreading across that part of China. What's interesting is how the evolution of their form of Christianity was so radically different from other sects that when his Heavenly Kingdom actually established contacts with Western Christians, he was wholly confident in being the Heavenly King but sent a letter to some random Western merchants asking very basic questions on Christian theology... and of course they responded... and of course... it's discussed in the book.
There's a lot of that going on. It's so much more then just a "Christian Rebellion." He's not just a fraud. It's not just a revolutionary movement either. What would become the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was both a Millenerian movement, like those you have seen in all religions, but perhaps most notably Christianity, even in the mid-19th century. But it was also a revolutionary movement, one against a corrupt and decadent and foreign influenced Qing Dynasty. It wanted to bring about land reform and social changes like separation of the genders but also attracted pirates and bandits and criminal filth.
And ironically the Qing Dynasty would bring in foreign mercenaries, Christians, to fight the Heavenly King. British and Filipinos... the Qing Dynasty would also hire pirate lords to attempt to contain them.
What's interesting about the story is a few months later I read about the
Communist Long March. Not in ideology, but the miserly existence the ChiComs were in, the corrupt state, and how the Communists were motivated by an almost religious revolutionary fervor to engage in their own epic campaign across China... and all of the death and misery that followed in its wake.
And this is beyond the book, but the British General, Charles Gordon who would later get the moniker "Chinese" Gordon would later face another religious revivalist and revolutionary almost two decades later. A self styled Islamic 'Mahdi' in Sudan who threatened to overrun all of North Africa. It gives a lot of perspective.
The Taiping Rebellion resulting in tens of millions of death... but it's not an exceptional achievement even in Chinese history. And the Mahdist War in Sudan... it only killed a few million people at most... but that was half of the population of Sudan at the time.🤷♀️
