Taiping Rebellion

The terms which writers use for the conflict and its participants often represent their different opinions. During the 19th century, the Qing did not describe the conflict as either a civil war or a movement, because doing so would have lent credibility to the Taiping. Instead, they referred to the tumultuous civil war as a period of chaos (亂; luàn), rebellion (逆; nì) or military ascendancy (軍興; jūnxìng). They often referred to it as the Hong-Yang Rebellion (洪楊之亂; Hóngyáng zhī luàn), referring to the two most prominent leaders. It was also dismissively referred to as the Red Sheep Rebellion (紅羊之亂; Hóngyáng zhī luàn) because the two names sound similar in Chinese.

In modern China, the war is often referred to as the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement (太平天國運動; Tàipíng tiānguó yùndòng), due to the fact that the Taiping espoused a doctrine which was both nationalist and communist, and the Taiping represented a popular ideology which was based on either Han nationalism or protocommunist values. The scholar Jian Youwen is among those who refer to the rebellion as the "Taiping Revolutionary Movement" on the grounds that it worked towards a complete change in the political and social system, rather than working towards the replacement of one dynasty with another.

Many Western historians refer to the conflict in general as the "Taiping Rebellion". In 2013, scholars such as Tobie Meyer-Fong and Stephen Platt argued that the term "Taiping Rebellion" is biased, because it insinuates that the Qing government was a legitimate government which was fighting against the illegitimate Taiping rebels. Instead, they argue that the conflict should be called a "civil war". Other historians such as Jürgen Osterhammel term the conflict the "Taiping Revolution" because of the rebels' radical transformational objectives and the social revolution that they initiated.

Little is known about how the Taiping referred to the war, but the Taiping often referred to the Qing in general and the Manchus in particular as some variant of demons or monsters (妖; yāo), representing Hong's proclamation that they were fighting a holy war to rid the world of demons and establish paradise on earth. The Qing referred to the Taiping as "Yue Bandits" (粵匪; Yuèfěi or 粵賊; Yuèzéi) in official sources, a reference to their origins in the southeastern province of Guangdong.

More colloquially, the Chinese called the Taiping some variant of Long-Hairs (長毛鬼, 長髪鬼, 髪逆, 髪賊), because they did not shave their foreheads and braid their hair into a queue as Qing subjects were obligated to do, allowing their hair to grow long.

During the 19th century, the Qing dynasty experienced a series of famines, natural disasters, economic problems and defeats at the hands of foreign powers. Farmers were heavily overtaxed, rents rose dramatically, and peasants started to desert their lands in droves. The Qing military had recently suffered a disastrous defeat in the First Opium War, while the Chinese economy was severely impacted by a trade imbalance caused by the large-scale and illicit importation of opium. Banditry became common, and numerous secret societies and self-defense units formed, all of which led to an increase in small-scale warfare.

Meanwhile, the population of China had nearly doubled between 1766 and 1833, while the amount of cultivated land remained the same. The government, commanded by ethnic Manchus, had become increasingly corrupt, and was weak in southern regions where local clans dominated. Anti-Manchu sentiment was strongest in southern China among the Hakka community, a Han Chinese subgroup. Meanwhile, Christian missionaries were active.

In 1837, Hong Huoxiu, a Hakka from a poor village in Guangdong, failed the imperial examination for the third time, frustrating his ambition to become a scholar-official in the civil service and leading him to a nervous breakdown. While recovering, Hong dreamed of visiting Heaven, where he discovered that he possessed a celestial family distinct from his earthly family. His heavenly father lamented that men were worshiping demons rather than himself and informed Hong that his given name violated taboos and had to be changed, suggesting "Hong Xiuquan", the moniker ultimately adopted by Hong. In later embellishments, Hong declared that he saw Confucius being punished by his celestial father for leading the people astray.

In 1843, Hong failed the imperial examinations for the fourth and final time. It was only then, prompted by a visit by his cousin, that Hong took time to carefully examine Christian pamphlets he had received from a Protestant Christian missionary several years earlier. After reading these pamphlets, Hong came to believe that they had given him the key to interpreting his visions: his celestial father was God the Father, the elder brother that he had seen was Jesus Christ, and he had been directed to rid the world of demons, including the corrupt Qing government and Confucian teachings.

In 1847, Hong went to Guangzhou, where he studied the Bible with Issachar Jacox Roberts, an American Baptist missionary. Roberts refused to baptize him and later stated that Hong's followers were "bent on making their burlesque religious pretensions serve their political purpose".

In 1844, soon after Hong began preaching across Guangxi, his follower Feng Yunshan founded the God Worshipping Society, a movement which followed Hong's fusion of Christianity, Taoism, Confucianism and indigenous millenarianism, which Hong presented as a restoration of the ancient Chinese faith in Shangdi. The Taiping faith, says one historian, "developed into a dynamic new Chinese religion ... Taiping Christianity".

In the late 1840s, the movement at first grew by suppressing groups of bandits and pirates in southern China. Suppression by Qing authorities led it to evolve into guerrilla warfare and subsequently a widespread civil war. Eventually, two other God Worshipers claimed to possess the ability to speak as members of the "Celestial Family", the Father in the case of Yang Xiuqing and Jesus Christ in the case of Xiao Chaogui.

The Taiping Rebellion began in the southern province of Guangxi when local officials launched a campaign of religious persecution against the God Worshipping Society. In early January 1851, following a small-scale battle in late December 1850, a 10,000-strong rebel army organized by Feng Yunshan and Wei Changhui routed Qing forces stationed in Jintian (present-day Guiping, Guangxi). Taiping forces successfully repulsed an attempted imperial reprisal by the Green Standard Army against the Jintian uprising.

On January 11, 1851, Hong declared himself the Heavenly King of the Heavenly Kingdom of Peace, or Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, from which comes the term "Taipings" commonly used for them in English-language studies. In September 1851, the Taipings began marching north to escape Qing forces closing in on them. The Taiping army pressed north into Hunan following the Xiang River, besieging Changsha, occupying Yuezhou, and capturing Wuchang in December 1852 after reaching the Yangtze River. At this point the Taiping leadership decided to move east along the Yangtze River. In February 1853, Anqing was captured.

Taiping leaders may have reached out to Triad organizations, which had many cells in South China and among government troops. Taiping titles echoed Triad usage, whether consciously or not, which made it more attractive for Triads to join the movement. In 1852, Qing government troops captured Hong Daquan, a rebel who had assumed the title Tian De Wang (King of Heavenly Virtue). Hong Daquan's confession claimed that Hong Xiuquan had made him co-sovereign of the Heavenly Kingdom and given him that title, but was more likely an echo of an earlier but unconnected White Lotus Rebellion. However, the capture of Nanjing in that year led to a deterioration of relations between the Taiping rebels and the triads.

On March 19, 1853, the Taipings captured the city of Nanjing and Hong renamed it "Tianjing", or the 'heavenly capital' of his kingdom. Since the Taipings considered the Manchus to be demons, they first killed all the Manchu men, then forced the Manchu women outside the city and burned them to death. Shortly thereafter, the Taiping launched concurrent Northern and Western expeditions, in an effort to relieve pressure on Nanjing and achieve significant territorial gains. The Northern expedition was a complete failure but the Western achieved limited success.

In 1853, Hong Xiuquan withdrew from active control of policies and administration to rule exclusively by written proclamations. He lived in luxury and had many women in his inner chamber, and often issued religious strictures. He clashed with Yang Xiuqing, who challenged his often impractical policies, and became suspicious of Yang's ambitions, his extensive network of spies and his claims of authority when "speaking as God". This tension culminated in the 1856 Tianjing Incident, with Yang and his followers slaughtered by Wei Changhui, Qin Rigang, and their troops on Hong Xiuquan's orders.

Shi Dakai's objection to the bloodshed led to his family and retinue being killed by Wei and Qin with Wei ultimately planning to imprison Hong. Wei's plans were ultimately thwarted and he and Qin were executed by Hong. Shi Dakai was given control of five Taiping armies, which were consolidated into one. Fearing for his life, he departed from Tianjing and headed west towards Sichuan.

With Hong withdrawn from view and Yang out of the picture, the remaining Taiping leaders tried to widen their popular support and forge alliances with European powers, but failed on both counts. The Europeans decided to stay officially neutral, though European military advisors served with the Qing army.

Inside China, the rebellion faced resistance from the traditionalist rural classes because of hostility to Chinese culture and Confucian values. The landowning upper class, unsettled by the Taiping ideology and the policy of strict separation of the sexes, even for married couples, sided with government forces.

In Hunan, the local irregular Xiang Army under the personal leadership of Zeng Guofan, became the main force fighting the Taiping on behalf of the Qing. Zeng's Xiang Army proved effective in gradually turning back the Taiping advance in the western theater of the war and ultimately retaking much of Hubei and Jiangxi provinces. In December 1856 Qing forces retook Wuchang for the final time. In May 1858, the Xiang Army captured Jiujiang and then the rest of Jiangxi by September.

In 1859, Hong Rengan, Hong Xiuquan's cousin, joined the Taiping forces in Nanjing and was given considerable power by Hong. Hong Rengan developed an ambitious plan to expand the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's boundaries.

In May 1860, the Taiping defeated the imperial forces that had been besieging Nanjing since 1853, eliminating them from the region and opening the way for a successful invasion of southern Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, the wealthiest region of the Qing Empire. The Taiping rebels were successful in taking Hangzhou on March 19, 1860, Changzhou on May 26, and Suzhou on June 2 to the east. While Taiping forces were preoccupied in Jiangsu, Zeng's forces moved down the Yangtze River.

An attempt to take Shanghai begun in June 1861 was repulsed after 15 months by an army of Qing troops supported by European officers under the command of Frederick Townsend Ward. This army would become known as the "Ever Victorious Army", a seasoned and well-trained Qing military force commanded by Charles George Gordon.

In 1861, around the time of the death of the Xianfeng Emperor and ascension of the Tongzhi Emperor, Zeng Guofan's Xiang Army captured Anqing with help from a naval blockade imposed by the Royal Navy on the city. Near the end of 1861 the Taipings launched a final Eastern Expedition. Ningbo was easily captured on 9 December. Hangzhou was besieged and captured on 31 December. In January 1862, Taiping troops surrounded Shanghai, but were unable to capture it.

in 1862, the Ever-Victorious Army repulsed another attack on Shanghai and helped to defend other treaty ports such as Ningbo, reclaimed on 10 May. They also aided imperial troops in reconquering Taiping strongholds along the Yangtze River.

In 1863, Shi Dakai surrendered to the Qing near the Sichuan capital Chengdu and was executed by slow-slicing. Some of his followers escaped or were released and continued the fight against the Qing.

Qing forces were reorganized under the command of Zeng Guofan, Zuo Zongtang and Li Hongzhang, and the Qing reconquest began in earnest. Zeng Guofan had initially failed so badly that he attempted suicide, but he then adopted the teachings of the 16th-century Ming general Qi Jiguang. He bypassed the professional regular armies and recruited from local villages, paying and drilling them well. Zeng, Zuo and Li led personally loyal soldiers. By early 1864, Qing control in most areas had been reestablished.

In May 1862, the Xiang Army besieged Nanjing. Attempts to break the siege by the numerically superior Taiping Army failed. Hong Xiuquan declared that God would defend the city. The city's food supplies ran low. Hong contracted food poisoning from eating wild vegetables; the intent may have been suicide. He died in June 1864 after a 20-day illness.

Hong was succeeded by his eldest son Hong Tianguifu, who was 15 years old. The younger Hong was inexperienced and powerless; Nanjing fell in July 1864 to the imperial armies after protracted street-by-street fighting in the Third Battle of Nanjing. Tianguifu and few others escaped but were soon caught and executed. Most of the Taiping princes were executed.

On 1 August, Zeng Guofan ordered Hong's body exhumed for verification, and desecrated as spiritual punishment. After exhumation, it was dismembered, cremated, and its ashes were fired from a cannon to scatter them irretrievably.

A small remainder of loyal Taiping forces had continued to fight in northern Zhejiang, rallying around Tianguifu. After Tianguifu's capture on 25 October 1864, Taiping resistance was gradually pushed into the highlands of Jiangxi, Zhejiang, Fujian and finally Guangdong, where one of the last Taiping loyalists, Wang Haiyang, was defeated on January 29, 1866.

Although the fall of Nanjing in 1864 marked the destruction of the Taiping regime, the fight was not yet over. There were still several hundred thousand Taiping troops continuing the fight, with more than a quarter-million fighting in the border regions of Jiangxi and Fujian alone. In August 1871, the last Taiping army led by Shi Dakai's commander, Li Fuzhong (李福忠), was completely wiped out by government forces in the border region of Hunan, Guizhou and Guangxi.

Taiping wars also spilled over into Vietnam with devastating effects. In 1860, Wu Lingyun (吳凌雲), an ethnic Zhuang Taiping leader, proclaimed himself King of Tingling (廷陵國) in the Sino-Vietnamese border regions. Dingling was destroyed during a Qing campaign in 1868. His son Wu Yazhong, also called Wu Kun (吳鯤), fled to Vietnam. He was killed in 1869 in Thái Nguyên by a Qing-Vietnamese coalition headed by Feng Zicai.

Wu Kun's troops broke up and became marauding armies such as the Yellow Flag Army led by Huang Chongying (黃崇英) and the Black Flag Army led by Liu Yongfu. Liu Yongfu became a prominent warlord in Upper Tonkin and later helped the Nguyễn dynasty to engage against the French during the Sino-French War in the 1880s. He later became the second and last leader of the short-lived Republic of Formosa.

Other "Flag Gangs" armed with the latest weapons, disintegrated into bandit groups that plundered remnants of the Lan Xang kingdom. They were then engaged in the Haw wars (misnamed due to conflation with Chinese Muslims) against the forces of King Rama V until 1890, when the last of the groups eventually disbanded.

With no reliable census at the time, estimates of the death toll of the Taiping Rebellion are speculative. The most widely cited sources estimate the total number of deaths during the almost 14 years of the rebellion to be approximately 20 to 30 million civilians and soldiers. Most of the deaths were attributed to plague and famine. Some analysts have claimed that the death toll may have reached 100 million.

The Nian Rebellion (1853–1868), and several Chinese Muslim rebellions in the southwest (the Panthay Rebellion, 1855–1873) and the northwest (Dungan revolt, 1862–1877) continued to pose considerable problems for the Qing dynasty.

Occasionally, the Nian rebels collaborated with Taiping forces, for instance, they collaborated during the Northern Expedition. As the Taiping rebellion lost ground, particularly after the fall of Nanjing in 1864, former Taiping soldiers and commanders like Lai Wenguang were incorporated into Nian ranks.

After the failure of the Red Turban Rebellion (1854–1856) to capture Guangzhou, their soldiers retreated north into Jiangxi and joined forces with Shi Dakai. After the defeat of the Li Yonghe and Lan Chaoding rebellion in Sichuan, remnants combined with Taiping forces in Shaanxi. Remnant forces of the Small Swords Society uprising in Shanghai regrouped with the Taiping army.

Du Wenxiu, who led the Panthay Rebellion in Yunnan, was in contact with the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. He was not waging his rebellion against Han Chinese, instead, he was anti-Qing and he wanted to destroy the Qing government. Du's forces led many non-Muslim forces, including Han Chinese, Li, Bai, and Hani peoples. They were assisted by non-Muslim Shan and Kachin people and other hill tribes in the revolt.

The other Muslim rebellion, the Dungan revolt, was the reverse: it was not aiming to overthrow the Qing dynasty because its leader Ma Hualong had accepted an imperial title. Instead, it erupted as a result of intersectional fighting between Muslim factions and Han Chinese. During the Dungan revolt, various groups fought against each other without any coherent goal. According to modern researchers, the Dungan rebellion began in 1862, not as a planned uprising but as a coalescence of local brawls and riots triggered by trivial causes. Among these causes were false rumors that the Hui Muslims were aiding the Taiping rebels. The Hui Ma Xiaoshi claimed that the Shaanxi Muslim rebellion was connected to the Taiping. Jonathan Spence claims that a key reason for the Taiping's defeat was its inability to coordinate its rebellion with other rebellions.