Circle of Willis
Well-known member
The Taiping Rebellion was one of modern history's strangest civil wars, and certainly one of its bloodiest & most destructive as well. A farmer named Hong Xiuquan supposedly had a religious vision while in the midst of a nervous breakdown caused by failing the imperial exams one too many times, possibly influenced by pamphlets he picked up from a missionary and his Chinese translator, where God revealed that he was in fact the Chinese younger brother of Jesus who had orders from above to cleanse the world of demons.
Long story short, this resulted in him leading a 14-year-long rebellion against the extremely unpopular Qing dynasty (wracked by famines, natural disasters, the spread of opium and defeat at the hands of incoming Westerners at this time) which coincided with a bunch of other rebellions, such as the Nian Rebellion in central & southern China and the Dungan Revolt in the northwest, only to be narrowly defeated with the support of those very same foreigners at the cost of 20-30 million lives. While they were around, the 'Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace' also implemented a slew of policies which bore some resemblance to much later Maoist policies, as well.
However, there were points where it seemed like the Taipings might have won their holy war. They really did come close to taking the Qing capital in 1853 and Hong Xiuquan's cousin Hong Rengan, who actually directly worked with & was educated under Christian missionaries, had some ideas to win Western support over the Qing. The Taiping commanders attacking Beijing immediately instead of marching on Tianjin and dithering in wait for reinforcements who would never reach them in time, while Hong Rengan achieves greater success in realizing his policy goals and moderating the excesses of the more extreme & revolutionary-minded Taipings, seems like a good way to turn the Heavenly Kingdom's ship around.
So. How might the world react if by 1864, it is not the Qing dragon which still flies over China, but the smiling one of Christ's supposed Chinese brother and nephew? Could they hold China together (I doubt the Muslim insurgents in the northwest would be particularly interested in kneeling before the heterodox Christian regime in Nanjing/Tianjing, to start with, and the Nian rebels were never fully cooperative with the Taipings...) or even pull a Meiji? And if they somehow won European backing against the Qing thanks to Hong Rengan's efforts, would they be able to retain such support for long between their zealous opposition to opium and the contrast of their decidedly eccentric beliefs with the orthodox Christian ones?
Long story short, this resulted in him leading a 14-year-long rebellion against the extremely unpopular Qing dynasty (wracked by famines, natural disasters, the spread of opium and defeat at the hands of incoming Westerners at this time) which coincided with a bunch of other rebellions, such as the Nian Rebellion in central & southern China and the Dungan Revolt in the northwest, only to be narrowly defeated with the support of those very same foreigners at the cost of 20-30 million lives. While they were around, the 'Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace' also implemented a slew of policies which bore some resemblance to much later Maoist policies, as well.
However, there were points where it seemed like the Taipings might have won their holy war. They really did come close to taking the Qing capital in 1853 and Hong Xiuquan's cousin Hong Rengan, who actually directly worked with & was educated under Christian missionaries, had some ideas to win Western support over the Qing. The Taiping commanders attacking Beijing immediately instead of marching on Tianjin and dithering in wait for reinforcements who would never reach them in time, while Hong Rengan achieves greater success in realizing his policy goals and moderating the excesses of the more extreme & revolutionary-minded Taipings, seems like a good way to turn the Heavenly Kingdom's ship around.
So. How might the world react if by 1864, it is not the Qing dragon which still flies over China, but the smiling one of Christ's supposed Chinese brother and nephew? Could they hold China together (I doubt the Muslim insurgents in the northwest would be particularly interested in kneeling before the heterodox Christian regime in Nanjing/Tianjing, to start with, and the Nian rebels were never fully cooperative with the Taipings...) or even pull a Meiji? And if they somehow won European backing against the Qing thanks to Hong Rengan's efforts, would they be able to retain such support for long between their zealous opposition to opium and the contrast of their decidedly eccentric beliefs with the orthodox Christian ones?