The History of China - #214 - History's Most: "History's Worst Civil War," with Alexander Clifford & Peter Daisley

Episode Date: April 17, 2021

A great conversation with Alex & Peter of "History's Most" about the worst civil war many have *still* never heard of - the Taiping Rebellion! Check out their great show at: https://historysmost.libsyn.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. Hi everyone, this is Scott. If you want to learn about the world's oldest civilizations, find out how they were rediscovered, follow the story of Mark Antony and Cleopatra's descendants over ten generations, or take a deep dive into the Iron Age or the Hellenistic era, then check out the Ancient World Podcast. Available on all podcasting platforms or go to ancientworldpodcast.com. That's the Ancient World Podcast. Hey everyone, what we've got for you today is a little bit different from the norm in

terms of our episodes. I had the pleasure of being able to converse with Alex and Peter from the History's Most podcast about one of the wars in history that quite often gets left off the radar for many, especially in the Western world, the Taiping Rebellion that ripped through the Qing Dynasty right in the middle of the two also terrible opium wars in the 1850s and 1860s. It's a great conversation, and I hope you will check it out. Also, be sure to pop on over and look at their other episodes over at History's Most Podcast. They've got about 35 out right now, ranging from conspiracy theories to the greatest imposters in history to forgotten fighters and so much more. It's really great. And now, on with the interview. In fact, he believes himself to be the brother of Jesus Christ.

Not only that, but his generals include people who claim to channel both the voices of God and Jesus. His enemy, the Qing Dynasty, in his mind are literal demons who must be cleansed from the world, seemingly because God told him to in a dream. This is the bizarre yet tragic story of the Taiping Rebellion, history's worst civil war. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another very special episode of History's Most. My name is Peter. And I'm Alex, and it's our pleasure today to be joined by Chris Stewart of the History of China podcast. Hey, everybody. And Chris is joining us to talk about something that actually one of our listeners got in touch and asked us to do an episode on. And that is the Taiping Rebellion. Before we get into the chat, I just to um set the scene a little bit here we are doing a

three time zone zoom call um between shanghai the uk and the east coast of the united states so i it's i think that's a first for history's most i think it's the first tri-continental um history's most certainly yeah so you already... We're all certainly making history, I agree. Yeah. So today's topic, the Taiping Rebellion, is something that I must admit I did not and do not know a great deal about, which is why we've reached out to Chris.

And if you're sitting there like me and wondering what all this is about, well, it's a civil war in 19th century China. So Chris, I want to start by asking you to set the scene for our listeners. China in the mid-19th century, what sort of a country is it? What sort of government does it have? What sort of regimes in place? What's going on, basically? Yeah, well, that certainly is the place to start. China in the mid to late 19th century was a rather chaotic place to be. It had been going through a lot of turmoil, internal rebellion, as well as external both invasion and conflict. In fact, today, to this day, in China, it is referred to as really the outset or the major part of what they call the century of humiliation,

where the Chinese even to this day feel as though, with a lot of reason, that they were sort of brought down and, it's right there on the name, isn't it? Humiliated as a country and a nation and as a people, largely due to external powers. That began actually several decades prior to the Taiping Rebellion, culminating in the first opium war and then the second opium war, around which the Taiping Rebellion was also a part of. So it kind of takes place in this whole major international and intranational conflict, where there's both this pulling apart of the nation and the dynasty from within, and also this imperialist multinational force from without sort of ripping apart itself at its outsides. To that same effect, the Qing dynasty itself, even though it had been the controlling power of China since the mid-17th

century, it had never, oh, how to put it, it had never gotten over the fact, I wanted to say, but it had never tried to get over the fact as well, that it was an outsider or a foreign dynasty, a conquest dynasty to begin with. The Qing dynasty was based on the Manchurian Aisin Gioro clan from what is today northeastern China, but they're not ethnically Chinese. And so they had come in, conquered, and then ruled for several hundred years at that point, but had never integrated themselves into the larger Chinese society. So as a, just a baseline, at least that's where China stands pulled apart from within and from without. It's a pretty bleak picture, I suppose. And in terms of, so we've got the colonial powers beginning to, well, more than just getting

involved in China, quite playing a kind of active role in shaping Chinese history by now, and quite a benevolent one at that. In terms of the actual society then, I presume that China at that time was still quite underdeveloped, if that's the right word to use. Or you can prove me wrong there. Was the societal, you know. Oh, no, no, no, no. That's an accurate depiction.

Go on. So it's, yeah. Oh, sorry. No, I was just saying, no, that's an accurate depiction. China, you would be very accurate in characterizing it as an agrarian, unindustrialized, feudalistic society in most, if not all respects. Yes. And what was there, because I know this is going to play a big part in the Taiping Rebellion, in terms of religion and faith, what was the role of that and once both a great anomaly within Chinese society and history. And also, and this seems really, really strange, it's also part of a much longer tradition. So what I mean by that is that the Taiping Rebellion itself

takes on large elements of Christianity. The leader of the Taiping Rebellion, a guy named Hong Xiuquan, he purports himself to be or has visions of being the younger brother of Jesus Christ. And that he has had visions of meeting with God the Father in the Judeo-Christian purview. But at the same time, that's his vision that begins this movement. But at the same time, it taps into this much larger underlying network of sects, which has actually gone back centuries prior to this, the White Lotus, the Red Turbans, all of these groups of outsider, sectarian, and highly religious dogmatic groups come together and split apart and then come together again. Um, so in terms of belief, it is both an infusion of an outsider foreign belief system, but then syncretized with a longstanding tradition of using outsider traditions and beliefs to further internal reform, change, and revolution. Yeah, and I think that's, you know, you're seeing it goes back centuries in Chinese history. It's also fairly common, you could say, in world history that, you know, the politics and religion

can't really be separated out until, you know, in the West. There's probably the second half of the 19th century anyway. So, you know know religious and political movements going hand in hand is hardly anything um distinctly chinese but what i do want to think about with with this um this movement this kind of quasi-christian um movement i I presume the Christian elements have come from Westerners, missionaries spreading, you know, trying to spread the Christian faith to the East. But it's not quite Christianity, is it? No, it is not quite Christianity in any of its forms.

And probably if you asked them at the time themselves, they would not trulyorshipping society, where the tenets of Western Christianity didn't truly apply to them, where essentially, as with any new faith, as with any new faith or what have you, it was sort of the old doctrines are the old doctrines, and those are well and good but now is the time that we have a new prophet a new holy individual and through him we receive a new word and understanding and that is the new tenant of the faith and that that is kind of the basis around which um hong xiaoquan built his society, his rebellion, and for a time period, at least, his nation. Can you tell us a bit about this character then, Hou Xingcheng? What was his background? How did he come to, obviously, believe he was leading this Brother of Christ movement? Sure. Well, this guy, Hong Xiuquan, he was from southeastern coastal China.

He was of an ethnic minority, actually. So he wasn't Han Chinese per se. He was a minority called the Hakka, which are still of a very large percentage of the population many of the time period and before and far after even to today what he wanted to do was sort of a an up-and-coming young man was to take and pass the imperial civil service examination the imperial civil service examination was the test is sort of like the act or the sat or i don't know what you guys have in england that's similar to that but it's the um the test that you take to determine whether or not you get to move up into the official class and become an actual Imperial government officer.

So he took it. And as with many of these people who try, he failed and he failed multiple times, which is again, not uncommon. The imperial examination was designed to be extremely difficult and to have the majority of its applicants fail. I heard there was like a 1% pass rate. And there was also, you know, murmurings of some bribery possibly going on in the background. Things like that. So, yeah. Sounds like it was pretty tough to pass. Oh, my goodness.

Bribery? In China? What? I've never heard of such a thing. No, I'm kidding you, of course. No, that was endemic. And it is endemic. It happens all the time. And it did at that point as well. my brain is still stuck many centuries before this, but I know that at least in the Tang and the Song dynasties, in the 8th to about 13th centuries, at least at the initial levels,

it was about a 75% fail rate. Right. So this goes back a long time. Oh, goodness, yes. Yes. It was initially codified and put into official practice during the Tang Dynasty in the 8th century.

Right. And it had been going on usually for the subsequent thousand years. So I get a sense that this failing of an exam and those life prospects being stolen or taken away is probably going to have an influence on people. I'm trying not to think of an obvious example of someone failing an exam, going into a political movement.

But anyway, so I presume then this is the basis of a kind of religious conversion and then he clearly already had some aspirations to move up in the world politically as well. Well, yeah, it's hard to say for sure. How much of it was, I mean, how much of it is actually just sort of, oh, I couldn't pass the exam, and so I will find some other method, and how much of it might have been some sort of actual inspiration, if you want to call it that, or perhaps holy guidance, or what have you. What we know of it is that he seems to have been sickly his entire life.

He seems to have gone through long periods, especially of his early life, of being bedridden, of going through, I don't know if we would call it sort of comatose periods or what have you, but certainly periods where he would just sort of be out of it um and so it seems like he had um been given some information about uh from from european christians about christianity so he'd been given this sort of pamphlet or whatever and and he'd read it. And then he kind of, after his latest failed examination in the late 1830s, early 1340s, I forget exactly.

He's read this information. He's kind of taken it into his own mind and purview. And then he falls into one of these fugue states or these these sick periods of his um and he comes out of it having had what he purports at least to be a vision from god which is that um he now he gets it he understands it he's just he's boom it's like a beam of light from the heaven directly into his brain i now have the answer the answer is not to um take a test again because that sucks and i'm bad at it the answer is not to try to go through the system the answer is to make my own system. And my system says that I'm the guy in charge. And I am the guy right underneath the main guy, who's Jesus, who's actually my older brother.

And so you guys should follow me because we're gonna upend this whole situation. We're gonna upend this whole corrupt state that I can't get through on my own merits. And I don't have the money to pay or bribe to get through on that methodology. So let's just overthrow the whole thing and let's create a new situation that will be better. For me, at least. So how does he go from springing out of bed, believing to be the younger brother of Jesus,

and believing that it's his role, his kind of holy ordained role to overthrow the system? How does he go from one man who has this idea to leading a gigantic scale rebellion? How does he actually convince millions of people to follow both his political and religious kind of cause yeah that's a really good question and i would say that a lot of it is that he taps into a an undercurrent that has been a part of his society for a long time before, which is a seething nativist resentment against the powers that be.

Like I said before, his is a country ruled by people who are not his own. And that's one thing. But the imperial Qing Aizen clan have never so much as tried to make themselves more natively Chinese. They have sealed themselves off in Beijing, largely. They have imposed strict standards on the wider native Chinese population, such as the haircut edict, which says that they must keep their hair in the long ponytail queue style, which is what you see in a lot of Kung Fu movies of the period,

to the point where if a man was caught by authorities not having that hairstyle, they would be liable to lose their heads in punishment unless they could provide a very good reason, such as they were a Taoist priest, for instance. They were exempt from that, but otherwise it was a death penalty if you were caught without that tonsure. So there was a lot of under undercurrents of resentments and and rage the other thing that he taps into is i think i mentioned this again before um is a is a the the word itself is a little bit inapplicable but it functions well enough that I think we could use it.

Millenarianism, sort of this, this ideology that the end of the world is nigh, or at least a fundamental change to the, the very, the very aspects of being is about to come around. This actually is the very basis of the preceding dynasty. In fact, the Ming dynasty,

which is what I'm looking at and doing in my own show right now, which ends up overthrowing the Mongol Yuan dynasty in the 14th century. And all of this is a syncretic movement where they start blending different faiths and different ideas together, both indigenous beliefs like Taoism and Confucianism, but then also infusing that with external elements in the Yang dynasty with the Red Turban Rebellion and the rise of the Ming, that was this sort of Melanarian ideology of Buddhism called Maitreyaism, and then also even stuff all the way as far away as Persia, which was Manichaeism. But now in the time of Hong Xiuquan, he's blending in this sort of

Protestant Christianity. And I'm sure that all three of us know that Protestant Christianity can itself be pretty millenarian and pretty apocalyptic when it wants to be. It's easy enough to find those aspects in it. Yeah. So it's, yeah, it starts stirring the pot, starts mixing all these elements in together, and taps into that undercurrent of just screw this system. This system is against all of us, so let's just blow it all up. And it's not that hard to find a sizable portion of the population who say, yeah, let's do it. So you've got, well, kind of a variety of forces kind of ripping society apart, I suppose,

and at the very top being a foreign oppressive elite, which is pretty easy to have. It's a pretty ideal enemy for a rebellion, a foreign oppressive elite. Then you can say, yeah, let's get rid of them. So as Hong Xiong-Chang is turning his message into a rebellion, what's the reaction of the powers that be the authorities the you know the Qing dynasty right Napoleon Bonaparte rose from obscurity to become the most powerful and significant figure in modern history over 200 years after his death

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populated with remarkable characters. I hope you'll join me as I examine this fascinating era of history. Find The Age of Napoleon wherever you get your podcasts. Well, obviously they don't like it. They commit themselves to suppressing this, at virtually any cost um during the gosh what is it 14 15 years of this rebellion yeah about that yeah i think i'm somewhere i think it's about 15 years long around that 15 years long yeah you've got these two uh foreign invasions the two opium wars basically bookending the whole thing and in each of those wars against a foreign enemy even on the Qing

dynasty's side you've you're looking at several thousand people lost total, and usually on the British side, several dozen or maybe a couple hundred. That's both of them together. But ice cream sandwiched in the middle of that is this internal war, and that is what it is. It's a full-on war where you get somewhere between, the numbers are fuzzy, as these things tend to be, somewhere between 20 and 30 million people dead. Now, not all of them are combatants. A lot of them are innocent civilians who just get caught up in the, oftentimes they get caught up in the governmental response and crackdown to the goings on of the God following society, the Taiping movement. But it is a tremendous, it is an unbelievably tremendous loss of life. It dwarfs anything else in China going on at the point, at least up until the Boxer Rebellion, decades later. And so you get, like you say, a proper full-on war develops between the imperial regime and what calls itself the heavenly kingdom, which obviously is this

variant mishmash kind of faith. What's the kind of nature of the war? Is this kind of like a conventional war with fronts and things like that, or is this more a guerrilla conflict? Well, there are elements of both in that I think what you're – when we say a guerrilla conflict, we're looking at a very flowing conflict with very few set borders. And, I mean, that's very much in the style of the Chinese Civil War that would come later on. And there are definitely elements of that because there are segments of the populace all throughout the empire that agree with or act as agents of the Taiping heavenly kingdom. Um, and just incidentally, uh,

the, that name itself, the Taiping kingdom, um, or the Taiping, the Taiping Tianwo would be its full name, which means the, the heavenly kingdom of great peace, which is very ironic and kind of funny in

its own way um so there are certainly elements of it being a guerrilla style conflict of hit and run secret attacks striking by night that sort of thing. But at the same time, the goal of this kingdom is, again, it's kind of right there in the name as well. They establish their own borders. They establish their own nation within the larger Qing empire. And they fortify that and make to some extent at least to a large extent control those borders for a time period so so to that extent at least it's it is um something of a more conventional conflict as it were of there is a place place and a capital and a person whom they are trying to stake out a position for. So I guess it's both at once in a certain way. And just to this question about it being so bloody, you know, like you you say tens of millions dead it is difficult with

any statistics before the 20th century isn't it but um how and why is that is that the case you know does this provoke um does does the disruption of war cause wider kind of societal breakdown and that sort of thing? Or are the both sides we kind of talked about before, the mid to late 19th century China is a rather chaotic place, both in terms of sort of the situation on the ground, in terms of disasters happening, crop failures and what have you, the foreign intervention on the outside disrupting that sort of thing. But a lot of this was sort of a calculated cruelty, this sort of idea that if we just crack down hard enough on these rebels, then the, then they'll, they'll, they'll learn that they can't do that. They'll just, they'll, they'll learn that they can't do that.

The ones who are still alive, they'll figure out that they can't rebel against us and they will stop doing it. And as you know, as princess Leah said to grand Moff Tarkin, the more you tighten your grip, the more they'll the more intransigent these movements tend to become, which then facilitates even harsher crackdowns by the government. It's a pretty bleak picture. It is. So if obviously the Qing dynasty is using all means necessary, as it sees it, to crush this uprising, which, as you say, is probably going to have a counterproductive very significant portion of the population still support the imperial regime, that the rebellion imperial capitals and would be the capital of China again later on. It had made its own capital Nanjing as of about 1853 or so.

It managed to capture the city. And that had become its focal point, and they had said – and this brings very – what I mean to say is that it has a lot of weight and a lot of import that this rebel movement had been able to capture one of the fundamental capitals of the country to the point where what that does is it lends a level of legitimacy to the movement that it might not have had before. What this also allows in staking out a territory, in staking out a position, in declaring an imperial capital of their own, it allows the Qing government to essentially say, okay, that's an exclusion zone. You either are there and you are part of them and therefore are a legitimate target, or you are out of there and you're safe from us for the most part, at least.

Which is kind of an iffy prospect at best. These Qing imperial writers and war parties, they would, if there was even a prospect that you might be a part of one of these god societies, there was very little appeal process going on. It's you just sort of, well, you, you believe in this, this Jesus God stuff where he got nailed to a cross. Well, we might do the same to you. Um, we might just cut your head off and put it on a pike. We, we, they, they were not shy about making very public, grisly examples.

Both the Ming and the Qing were very much into making very overt examples of anyone who might question their authority. And at scale, for that matter. So as to your question, how did that how did that affect it well it certainly caused some level of movement people who could uh and did not want to be in the taiping kingdom would have left um people who could not or sorry people who also could move but wanted to be a part of it might have did, in many cases, go in or otherwise form separate communities outside of it. But there was still going to be a large segment of the population who either didn't know, didn't care, or didn't have the means to move in or out of wherever they were at the time. So there's still this really fungible

border of the populace. And a lot of times they're the ones who get caught up and suffer the most. In terms of then the military aspect of this rebellion, obviously in the end, as we've kind of alluded to, the Qing Dynasty triumphs. They do crush the Heavenly Kingdom. How does that come about? Is there particularly kind of military victories?

Is there just superior kind of fighting force? Why is it that they triumph? Okay, so as it happens is that the Taiping Kingdom decides that one of the places it wants to take is one of the most important cities in China, where I live, Shanghai, for pretty obvious reasons, trade and what have you. So they try to take it around about 1860. But as it's one of the more important areas, it's been heavily

reinforced. And the attack is repulsed by a lovely army by the name of the Ever Victorious Army. Which is, you know, a better name. Yeah. By the name of the ever victorious army. Which is. You know. A great name. A better name.

Yeah. This is. Actually commanded even by a non-Chinese. Officer. And they wind up not only repulsing. The Taiping. Army. But.

Pushing it back. And and they'll ultimately become pretty significant in its ultimate defeat. As it so happens, around about the same time, the old emperor of Qing dies, and the new one takes its place. And so the Taipings think that this is going to be a great time. They're in the chaos of succession. They're going to be able to really take advantage of this. So they try out for another expedition

and that one fails as well. there are some gains um but ultimately it is it is pushed back this means that uh the major portion of that sort of that regular imperial army that not imperial army sorry that regular sort of army that the taipings had amassed versus the ongoing uh subterranean uh rebel movements were uh had kind of exhausted themselves in this effort so round about two or three years later this this means that with their offensive movement having kind of petered out um elements began surrendering in 1863 the the the taiping element around chengdu in Sichuan surrenders to the Qing, and it's not great for him.

He gets executed with some of his other members escaping. But at that point, especially with the Shanghai expedition repulsed, it kind of becomes a matter of time. I wanted to ask, what is going through Hong's mind right now? Because I would assume that, is it fair to say that Hong is a man who's not exactly in the best mental state already?

I'm assuming that these defeats are having an impact on his mental state as well. And I think I remember hearing that there was a lot of internal struggles within the heavenly kingdom at this time as well. So I can only, you know, imagine the kind of paranoia that's building up in his mind. Oh gosh. Yes. Now I, I cannot speak as to what was in his mind and I'm, I would say, I'm glad I can't. Yeah. I wouldn't want to know. Neither would I. would say i'm glad i can't yeah absolutely yeah i wouldn't want to know uh neither would i um but you're i think you are absolutely right the the paranoia the the level of um

sort of self-inflicted solitude and isolation and just being able to trust nobody that that is absolutely building up in him over and over and over again because he is repeatedly as as happens uh in any sort of uh rebel movement especially but even you know any political movement in general there there's going to be um betrayals or perceived betrayals or turnabouts or whatever and especially when it's something as consequential as a war or an offensive any setback any turnaround is it's very easy to perceive as being someone must have turned against me and that's especially so when you believe, and I believe that he did believe this.

I don't think he was bullshitting through this whole thing. I believe that he believed it. Believed that he was divinely tapped and inspired and chosen to lead this new world order. So if God himself has said that you are the guy and you will lead this world into a new divine stage of whatever, and then things keep going wrong, you're going to start pointing fingers. and he he does and it just and it only makes things worse of course because you start pointing fingers at your your top people getting rid of them and then you're left with the not top people which only exacerbates things yeah um so by the end stages of the rebellion um

his cap his city where he is is under direct siege by the qing government they're right outside the walls they're're not getting in yet. They won't be getting in for quite a while. The city's well provisioned, but obviously something's gone wrong. So something didn't go quite to plan. And as such, he decides that, you know what, maybe it's somebody else's turn,

and he chooses his teenage son, Hong Tiangfu. He says, okay, you're the emperor now, son. Good luck. It's quite the inheritance, isn't it? While the enemy's at the gates. Your turn. I salute you. Good luck, my boy.

Oh, yeah. This, again, this goes back millennia in Chinese history of what do you do when your dynasty is about to fall? Promote some little kid to take the fall for you um and that's what happens at the very end of of the Qing dynasty as well with Puyi I mean absolutely a child you know coming to to the to the throne oh it's a long-standing

tradition you I mean it's you're-standing tradition. You, I mean, you're hard-pressed to find a Chinese dynasty that doesn't do that. Because it's virtually, you run out of competent, if it's a good dynasty, let's say, eventually you run out of competent adults, and so you start putting children onto the throne who are then controlled by either regents or their mothers, the Empress Dowagers.

And then one of the officials gets it in their heads that, hey, I could do a better job than that guy. So they put another child on the throne and say, okay, now give the throne to me. Yeah, there's almost a rule book by which you do this thing. It's crazy, but it makes a lot of sense. One other aspect of the Civil War, and like a lot of civil wars, I believe the Taiping Rebellion also features foreign intervention. So I believe it's primarily the colonial British and French decide that this isn't something they can just sit out. Well, never let a good crisis go to waste, right?

Well, right. well right yeah they um it's it's sort of it's but it's an opportunistic sort of thing it's kind of in the middle of these two um what will be the the two um opium wars so britain and france and the rest of the colonial powers very much feel like they can step in and interject whenever they feel like and then it's also a matter of

kind of protecting their investment a bit, isn't it? of, well we have a deal with the Qing government, they owe us this money. And if by some way they're overthrown and supplanted by this Taiping regime, well, they don't have any truck with us, nor us with them. And we might have to do this whole shin dig over again um so so it's very self-serving uh it's of course but you know it it's kind of um one foot in one foot out they're not really stepping in to try to mess with it too much because as i see it they kind of understood that ultimately time was on the chain dynasty side.

They were going to get this under control, but if they didn't, they could always sort of nudge the, nudge the old meter in the correct direction, which is what they wanted to do because there was also a, a real strong, I'm not even sure i'd call it undercurrent current both in the wider cheng chines society but especially so the the taiping movement of anti-foreign anti-interventionist um ideology which one very much sympathizes with um

and as tone deaf as the imperial forces could be about such things. I think that even at the time, they largely understood that if they put too much of their hand into that particular situation, they would probably only make things worse for themselves. So while they were willing to kind of put their thumb on the scale here and there, they weren't going to commit to any kind of a full-scale intervention unless it really needed to happen, which at least in their perspective, which ultimately it did not. So more of a kind of touch on the rudder, keep it going in the right direction

because we don't want to be seen to be intervening because we know it will be counterproductive for the Qing if they seem to just be the kind of agents of foreign powers yeah I think it was it was um you know what why we've already made ourselves the enemies before and they'll certainly have no problem doing so again in the future. But at the moment, the war at this point is engaged with the foreign occupying rulers of this country. And if the British Empire was good at anything, it was at touching off internal conflicts and then just sort of letting it, letting different countries fight against themselves and just sort of pulling back and saying, I don't know. It's not me. It's you guys.

Fight it out, figure it out. And we see that at play here as well. I'm not saying the British hushed off typing rebellion, but I think they certainly saw the currents and the different forces at work and said, hey, we'll get involved if we need to, but

why not just let them pull themselves apart? So then, well, in our narrative, we're quite clearly reaching towards the point where this is all going to collapse and it's going to result in the Qing victory that we've alluded to pretty much the whole episode. So how then does that actually come about?

How is it that it's finally crushed the Taiping Rebellion? And what happens to Hong? Well, he doesn't live to the end he he doesn't make it um probably best i mean it's really best for him it's not best for his son but it's best for him he like i said i think at the beginning he's been sick his whole life he's kind of going in and out of these sort of semi-comatose vision fugue states. He goes into another one roundabout the time he promotes his son and falls sick and winds up dying. for him. Very good timing. Well done. By the following year, the siege of Nanjing has gone as

any siege that doesn't have outside support ultimately goes, which is that eventually the city runs out of supplies and has no choice but to capitulate. That is in 1864. And with that, you get the forcible destruction of the Taiping regime.

At least its nexus. There are still elements outside of the Capitol who continue the fight who just are not prepared to give up. They're true believers. This is especially in the Southeast. This is sort of the heartland where the whole movement began, and so they're the ones who have been part of it the longest. And in fact, it's going to last for,

oh gosh, eight, for another six or seven years after the fall of Nanjing until the, the last major elements of the, the Taiping never say dyers, finally throw in the towel. And it does not go well for them when they give up. They are, the ones who surrender are largely publicly executed in excruciating fashion. I mean, this is the time period where the death by a thousand cuts is very much in fashion,

where those sorts of torturous executions are just the sort of the go-to thing in the regime, and where punishment is not even limited to you. It can also be extended to your family and your family's family and your work associates and stuff like that. So these sorts of purges and bloodletting goes on for a long time thereafter. But other elements, probably better for them. They just refuse to give up and they die fighting. It spills over into the south, into Indochina, Southeast Asia as well. But it all wraps up around 1870 or so.

Yeah. Sorry, what happens to the son then when the city falls? They're all put to death. As is typical. Anyone remotely connected with the Hongs, with Hong Xiuquan, or anyone directly related to him is ignominiously put to death, as an example.

They are not treated with any sort of imperial favor. They are not given any sort of honor, either in life or posthumously. They're treated as rebel leaders and executed as such. Which is about the worst possible fate. No, go ahead. What's then, you say it all kind of wraps up by about 1870. What's the legacy, I suppose, of this huge civil war for Chinese society, for the Qing dynasty? What are the long-lasting effects?

From Fort Sumter to the Battle of Gettysburg, from the Emancipation Proclamation to Appomattox Courthouse, from the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Compromise of 1877, from Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman, to Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. The Civil War and Reconstruction was a pivotal era in American history. I'm Rich. And I'm Tracy. And we're the hosts of a podcast that takes a deep dive into that era,

when a war was fought to save the Union and to free the slaves. And when the work to rebuild the nation after that war was over turned into a struggle to guarantee liberty and justice for all Americans. Look for The Civil War and Reconstruction wherever you find your podcasts. Well, what it does is, in terms of its legacy and its long-lasting effects, is in itself, for its own methods and means and motivations, not a lot. It doesn't achieve much in the way of any of the goals that it wanted to for Chinese society. It doesn't reform or change the Qing government. In fact, in many ways, it does the opposite of that.

It forces the Qing government into a much more hardline, anti-Western anything stance, anti any sort of movement that might be against the baseline Qing power. It pits the North against the South again in China, which is a longstanding tradition, almost, where you have the political base of power in the North and then this rebel power in the South. So it makes the Northern regime much more distrustful of the South. In terms of Chinese power and military ability overall, it is a real stumbling block in that they were forced to devote the vast majority

of China's military power towards fighting this internal rebellion while at the same time also trying to deal with external colonial powers. And that's not to say that the result would have been different. If there somehow had not been a Taiping Rebellion at the same time, I'm not convinced that there would have been a significant difference in the outcome of the wars against the Western imperial powers, uh, because most of China's military forces were land-based. Whereas most of the conflict between China and the West was naval,

which is something that, um, the Chinese military was just fundamentally unprepared for and would not have been more prepared for without the Taiping Rebellion. Like I said before, I think it calcifies this sort of anti-foreign sentiment within especially the elite,

the Qing royal family and government, which will ultimately make them much more open to the idea of siding with the boxers about a half century later, which is an adamantly anti-foreign, anti-Christian movement aimed at expelling all foreign presence from China and making Qing great again. So that's what I would say would be its major um legacies unfortunately at least from

the perspective of the taipings themselves we can just see them as kind of the the one of the last or at least last so far, elements of that syncretic, millennialist, cultist movement, which from time to time has bubbled up and really challenged the ruling regime when times get tough, and is often, and often very bloodily, put down. I'm interested in then the extent to which the Taiping Rebellion is remembered today in China. Is it still a significant event or is it very much overshadowed by the Chinese Civil War about 100 years later? Is it still something that has a resonance or is it just a kind of forgotten chapter of history? It's not forgotten. But it's also, I don't think it's some, it's not remembered as some defining chapter either. In spite of its huge loss of life and in spite of its tremendous scope and scale, it is overshadowed.

Overshadowed. Not by the Chinese Civil War per se, but from the – it's actually overshadowed much more by the foreign wars and occupations that both bookended that rebellion itself and then came after in the form of the, the, the nine national alliance that invaded China at the end of the 19th century as well. So that has been the, the narrative which has been most suitable in the last century plus to remember and to push.

An indigenous rebellion that took elements of both native and foreign beliefs and combined them together into a new sort of ideology that was anti-Manchurian. Just, it doesn't have the same sort of oomph that fighting the good fight against the western imperialist powers um has so you know as i we all know uh history and historiography is a process of writing and rewriting the narrative as it's um deemed fit by the society that's writing it. So for China itself, that has been the tact which it has taken. Peter, I don't know if at this point you had any other questions for any aspects of it. I guess less of a question and more just of a kind of discussion point in general is I find it fascinating how this is the second, if I remember correctly, this is the second bloodiest conflict in all of human history just after World War II, right?

It's right up there. And yet, at least in the west it's incredibly unknown you know it's a it's a very very little known thing and i guess i don't i don't really understand why because in and of its own right it's such a fascinating and important piece of history. I absolutely agree with you. And I hear the question stated there, even though it's unstated. Why is that? And insofar as I can really give any kind of an answer, it's that for a very long period of time, and I think we're doing a good service here today, for instance, in trying to rectify that. But for a very long period of time, the internal squabbles of natives in far off places was simply not worthy of documenting, um,

for proper historians as it were, you know? So it's, um, it, it's, it's, uh, Euro Western centric. It's, it's, it's, uh, there's a large degree of racism to it that yeah there's no reason that it shouldn't be it absolutely should be one of the central events that we study when we look at the 1800s and the fact that it isn't is um is it i don't think there's an excuse for it and i think it should be yeah and i i think also you know it's it's a very interesting kind of look at the way cult mentality can have a huge impact on the societies that,

you know, it takes place in, or in just in society in general, I suppose. I mean, because this started out as, as unfeasible, you know,

it was, it was one, it was a man who, who in his mind had ascended to heaven and a dream yeah in a dream came back to earth read a pamphlet like you said and then i mean in a remarkably short amount of time raises a massive army and then before you know it there's so many lives lost and and i i think it's i think it's uh it's an important kind of look at at cult thinking absolutely i think that's it is absolutely incredible and i think the fact that it happens relatively close to our own time makes a dream in a cave that he's heard an angel and then goes on a quest and um founds islam and takes you know near asia western asia by storm

these things do happen um and we could look even closer to the modern day itself of uh for instance um uh another tragedy of a much smaller scale um jim jim jones and um that whole uh tragedy as well but you're absolutely right that it really does speak to the way that a cult operates, the way that it inculcates people, allows people to give up their own, perhaps give up their own individuality or individual will to something that they perceive as being greater than that. Because you see it not only in the Taiping Kingdom, but even before in the Red Turban Rebellion that precedes the Ming, of people knowing, going in, knowing full well that it will mean their deaths. They are not blind to it.

They know what it means to join this sort of movement. And they're a-okay with that because they believe in it. And to someone like me, that's, I can't put my head around that. I don't know. But you have to, I guess, I have to take them at their word that that is something that they truly do go the human psyche, doesn't it? About the human condition. And as you say, we kind of, to ancient and medieval history, we kind of write it off almost as, oh, those people a very long time ago could somehow be influenced by ideas.

And yet, I think that's a really interesting point about this being not even 200 years ago. Yeah, I mean, yeah, this was happening kind of not quite concurrent. Well, actually, was it happening concurrently with the American Civil War? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Again, even, you know, I sometimes tend to think about, you know, things, different events in history that happen at the same time that you wouldn't think happen at the same time. This is one of them. Right. No, it's kind of funny to think, you know, in the U.S., you know, the Civil War is, oh, my gosh, it's some seminal event. It's the the the most devastating conflict that the country ever went through with the most casualties the

most uh deaths of any war the u.s has ever been in both world wars included and if you put that in the context of the thing going on on the other side of the world at the same moments that's it's almost a rounding error it's it's kind of crazy so with the heavenly kingdom i think you know from my knowledge there were people who outside of the core group who you know believed what uh on was saying there were people who came along with it just because of you know they felt safety in numbers uh they felt like it was better for them than staying in their hometown because you know they were already in a in a war-torn place so why not go with this or that absolutely you see that in um you know rebel rebel torn or war-torn regions all the time as well of um you know i might i might get in trouble with the distant authority six months from now when when they arrive if they arrive but i'll get

in trouble tomorrow if i don't uh you know give my allegiance over to the rebels who control this region today yeah there's certainly a lot of that element. And then there's also the element of people who say, listen, I don't know about this whole religion stuff, but I know that I don't like the chain government. I know that I think they're screwing us all over. And I think, you know know they should get out and so if if you want to say that you're the son of god and the brother of jesus or whatever and you're gonna help us take back

our country whatever man yeah okay i'll join you so just, yeah, it's just really this confluence of, of factors. It's, it's not just one religious movement. It's just kind of all under the same umbrella a lot of the times. Yeah. And I know that like in, within heavenly kingdom itself, there are already some, like, um, I, I alluded to this earlier. There were some divides between like even the leadership like there was a there was a a guy who was who was hung's essentially right hand man and he was i think he was the voice of god um i don't remember his name but he was he was the voice of god and he he basically like wanted to kind of make power plays and there was this whole thing there was a really weird interesting dynamic because part of it was like hong was

trying to figure out is he actually is it actually god speaking through him if it's not can i say that will that disenfranchise people who follow me right and yeah and especially with these sort of with these sort of um profit based movements um that it does tend to be this really delicate balancing act or juggling act of even the people in power, they're constantly having to weigh where they stand, what they say, against what the people expect them to say. So it's even though I am the heavenly king, and I have all the power per se, really, even the guy at the top has to worry about whether he's going to make the wrong step or whether or not his voice of God, as it were, might contradict him, in which case it might all rapidly crumble right underneath his feet. It's no wonder that these sorts of movements tend to not hold together very long a lot of the time, which makes it very remarkable in the case like the Taiping Rebell rebellion uh for instance that it was able to um endure as long as it did and even under the stresses that it had uh by towards the end of

the conflict it was still able to kind of essentially hold itself together right up until the enemy was battering down the gates yeah i think in think in the end, he did, uh, Hong did end up killing the, uh, supposed voice of God, his right hand man. And that, that sounds right. That sounds like something that would happen.

And I think, I think he did like, I think he honored him even in death because again, he was afraid that it would disenfranchise people who followed him. So yeah. Oh, oh, I found him. Okay. Yang Xiuqing.

Yes, there he is. The Eastern King. Yes. The naming conventions for the Heavenly Kingdom are really interesting because they always name them, there's like the Peace King, there was the Eastern King,

there's the North King, the South King. And part of that is the, the fact that it doesn't translate awesomely. Yeah. It's not, it's not, it's never a one-to-one thing really. Yeah.

Cause it's, it's all in Chinese. It's all going to be Wong, which translates variously depending on how you want to use it. It can be used as King, but it can also be used as king but it can also be used as prince or so it's um yes so he was the the eastern king or the eastern prince however one wants to render it young xiaoqing he was murdered as part of a purge and and then but yeah you're absolutely right um after death honored and given

you know posthumous titles and what have you because of course he's no threatened death yes so let's elevate him yeah uh interesting how that works. Yes, markedly unlike someone like Stalin who would kill you and then erase you from all of time. Thinking of Trotsky, thinking of Trotsky. Who? Who? I've never heard of that. I don't know. Have I said something wrong? The king of Mexico. That's right. That's right. Well, thank you so much, Chris for coming on the show, it's been a really fascinating

discussion We'd love it if all of our listeners would go check out his podcast The History of China There'll be a link to that down in the description So thank you, Chris Well, it's been my pleasure, guys, thank you so much for inviting me on And from us here at History's Most

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