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Socially and economically, the Taiping rebels came almost exclusively from the lowest classes. Many of the southern Taiping troops were former miners, especially those coming from the Zhuang. Very few Taipings, even in the leadership caste, came from the imperial bureaucracy. Almost none were landlords and in occupied territories landlords were often executed. Generals In fact, the military ability of the generals of the Taiping Rebellion was higher than that of the Qing government's generals, for example: Early (1851–1854): Xiao Chaogui, Wei Changhui, Shi Dakai, Qin Rigang, Lin Qirong, Lai Hanying, Zeng Tianyang, Li Kaifang, Luo Dagang, Tang Zhengzai Middle (1855–1859): Li Xiucheng, Chen Yucheng, Yang Fuqing, Wei Jun, Li Shixian, Ye Yunlai, Huang Chengzhong, Liu Chunlin Late (1860–1864): Li Rongfa, Lai Wenguang, Chen Kunshu Imperial Army A scene of the Taiping Rebellion Opposing the rebellion was an imperial army with a size over a million regulars with unknown thousands of regional militias and foreign mercenaries operating in support. Among the imperial forces was the elite Ever Victorious Army, consisting of Chinese soldiers led by a European officer corps (see Frederick Townsend Ward and Charles Gordon), backed by British arms companies like Willoughbe, Willoughbe & Ponsonby. A particularly famous imperial force was Zeng Guofan's Xiang Army. Although keeping accurate records was something imperial China traditionally did very well, the decentralized nature of the imperial war effort (relying on regional forces) and the fact that the war was a civil war and therefore very chaotic meant that reliable figures are impossible to find. The destruction of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom also meant that any records it possessed were destroyed. Zuo Zongtang from Hunan province, who was also known as General Tso, was another important Qing general who contributed in suppressing the Taiping Rebellion. The organization of the Qing Imperial Army was thus: Eight Banners Army: 250,000 soldiers[22] Green Standard Army: ~610,000 soldiers[23] Xiang (Hunan) Army: 130,000 soldiers[24] Huai (Anhui) Army: 70,000 soldiers[24] Chu Army: 40,000 soldiers[24] Ever Victorious Army: 5,000 soldiers[25] Village Militias (T'uan-lien): unknown thousands Total war Extent of Taiping control in 1854 (in red) The Taiping Rebellion was the first instance of total war in modern China. Almost every citizen of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was given military training and conscripted into the army to fight against Qing imperial forces. During this conflict both sides tried to deprive each other of resources to continue the war and it became standard practice to destroy agricultural areas, butcher the population of cities and in general exact a brutal price from captured enemy lands in order to drastically weaken the opposition's war effort.[citation needed] This war was total in the sense that civilians on both sides participated to a significant extent in the war effort and in the sense that armies on both sides waged war on the civilian population as well as military forces. This resulted in massive civilian death toll with some 600 cities destroyed[26] and other bloody policies resulting. Since the rebellion began in the province of Guangxi, Imperial forces allowed no rebels speaking its dialect to surrender.[27] Reportedly in the province of Guangdong, it is written that 1,000,000 were executed.[28] These policies of mass civilian murder occurred elsewhere including in Anhui,[29][30] and Nanjing.[31] In art and popular culture Art The rebellion is featured on the Tiananmen Square Monument to the People's Heroes and many other public places in Beijing and Nanjing. On the pedestal of the tablet there are eight huge bas-reliefs carved out of white marble covering the revolutionary episodes, which are depictions of Chinese struggle from the First Opium War in 1840 to the founding of the People's Republic in 1949. The reliefs can be read in chronological order in a clockwise direction from the east: 1) Burning opium during the Opium War in 1840. 2) The Jintian Uprising during the Taiping Rebellion in 1851. Popular culture Globe icon. The examples and perspective in this article deal primarily with Western culture and do not represent a worldwide view of the subject. Please improve this article and discuss the issue on the talk page. (May 2014) The Taiping Rebellion has been referenced in many different artistic mediums. For instance in novel form Robert Elegant's 1983 book Mandarin depicts the time of the Taiping Rebellion from the unusual point of view of a Jewish family living in Shanghai at the time. In Flashman and the Dragon the fictional Harry Paget Flashman recounts his adventures during the Second Opium War and the Taiping Rebellion. Lisa See's novel Snow Flower and the Secret Fan takes place in China during the reign of Emperor Xianfeng; the title character is married to a man who lives in Jintian and the characters get caught up in the revolution. Amy Tan's novel The Hundred Secret Senses takes place in part during the time of the Taiping Rebellion. Rebels of the Heavenly Kingdom by Katherine Paterson is a young adult novel set during the Taiping Rebellion. The civil war has also been documented in various television shows and films. In 2000, China's CCTV produced Taiping Tianguo, a 46 episode television series about the Taiping Rebellion. In 1988, Hong Kong's TVB produced Twilight of a Nation, a 45 episode television drama about the Taiping Rebellion. The Warlords is a 2007 historical film set in the 1860s concerning the Taiping Rebellion showing that General Pang Qinyun, leader of the Shan Regiment, is the man responsible for the capture of Suzhou and Nanjing. Richard Berg created the boardgame Manchu which covers the entire rebellion. See also Wikimedia Commons has media related to Taiping Rebellion. Boxer Rebellion Christianity in China Chinese sovereign List of revolutions and rebellions List of wars and disasters by death toll Miao Rebellion (1854–73) References Jump up ^ Heath, pp. 11–16 ^ Jump up to: a b Heath, p. 4 Jump up ^ Stephen R. Platt. Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom: China, the West, and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War. (New York: Knopf, 2012). ISBN 9780307271730), p. xxiii. ^ Jump up to: a b Taiping Rebellion, Britannica Concise Jump up ^ Collected Writings of Chairman Mao — Politics and Tactics p.125 (2009) Jump up ^ "The Hakker Chinese preview". Poseidonbooks.com. Retrieved 2014-02-28. Jump up ^ Jonathan Spence, God's Chinese Son: The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan (1996), pp. 25–26. Jump up ^ Jonathan Spence, God's Chinese Son, pp. 97–99. Jump up ^ Teng, Yuah Chung "Reverend Issachar Jacox Roberts and the Taiping Rebellion" The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol 23, No. 1 (Nov 1963), pp. 55–67 Jump up ^ Spence 1996, p. 243 Jump up ^ Richard J. Smith, Mercenaries and Mandarins : The Ever-Victorious Army in Nineteenth Century China (Millwood, N.Y.: KTO Press, 1978), passim. Jump up ^ Glenn S. (March 15, 2012). "ฮ่อ Haaw" (Dictionary). Royal Institute – 1982. Thai-language.com. Archived from the original on April 5, 2012. Retrieved April 5, 2012. Jump up ^ "Necrometrics." Nineteenth Century Death Tolls cites a number of sources, some of which are reliable. Jump up ^ Michael Dillon (1999). China's Muslim Hui community: migration, settlement and sects. Richmond: Curzon Press. p. 59. ISBN 0-7007-1026-4. Retrieved 2010-06-28. Jump up ^ David G. Atwill (2005). The Chinese sultanate: Islam, ethnicity, and the Panthay Rebellion in southwest China, 1856–1873. Stanford University Press. p. 139. ISBN 0-8047-5159-5. Retrieved 2010-06-28. Jump up ^ International Arts and Sciences Press, M.E. Sharpe, Inc (1997). Chinese studies in philosophy, Volume 28. M. E. Sharpe. p. 67. Retrieved 2010-06-28. Jump up ^ Albert Fytche (1878). Burma past and present. C. K. Paul & co. p. 300. Retrieved 2010-06-28. Jump up ^ Garnaut, Anthony. "From Yunnan to Xinjiang:Governor Yang Zengxin and his Dungan Generals". Pacific and Asian History, Australian National University. Retrieved 2010-07-14. Page 98 Jump up ^ Lipman (1998), p. 120–121 Jump up ^ Sir H. A. R. Gibb (1954). Encyclopedia of Islam, Volumes 1–5. Brill Archive. p. 849. ISBN 90-04-07164-4. Retrieved 2011-03-26. Jump up ^ Ramsey, Robert, S. (1987). The Languages of China. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. pp. 167, 232–236. ISBN 0-691-06694-9. Jump up ^ Heath, p. 11 Jump up ^ Heath, pp. 13–14 ^ Jump up to: a b c Heath, p. 16 Jump up ^ Heath, p. 33 Jump up ^ Purcell, Victor. CHINA. London: Ernest Benn, 1962. p. 168 Jump up ^ Ho Ping-ti. STUDIES ON THE POPULATION OF CHINA, 1368–1953. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959. p. 237 Jump up ^ Purcell, Victor. CHINA. London: Ernest Benn, 1962. p. 167 Jump up ^ Quoted in Ibid., p. 239. Jump up ^ Chesneaux, Jean. PEASANT REVOLTS IN CHINA, 1840–1949. Translated by C. A. Curwen. New York: W. W. Norton, 1973. p. 40 Jump up ^ Pelissier, Roger. THE AWAKENING OF CHINA: 1793–1949. Edited and Translated by Martin Kieffer. New York: Putnam, 1967. p. 109 Further reading Contemporaneous foreign accounts Lindley, Augustus, Ti-ping Tien-Kwoh: The History of the Ti-Ping Revolution (1866, reprinted 1970) OCLC 3467844 Google books access Hsiu-ch°êng Li, translator, The Autobiography of the Chung-Wang (Confession of the Loyal Prince) (reprinted 1970) ISBN 978-0-275-02723-0 Thomas Taylor Meadows, The Chinese and Their Rebellions, Viewed in Connection with Their National Philosophy, Ethics, Legislation, and Administration. To Which Is Added, an Essay on Civilization and Its Present State in the East and West. (London: Smith, Elder; Bombay: Smith, Taylor, 1856). American Libraries eBook text Documents Franz H. Michael, ed.The Taiping Rebellion: History and Documents (Seattle,: University of Washington Press, 1966). 3 vols. Volumes two and three select and translate basic documents. Modern monographs and surveys Jonathan Spence, God's Chinese Son: The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan (1996) ISBN 0-393-03844-0 Jonathan D. Spence The Search for Modern China. New York: Norton (1999). Standard textbook. Jack Gray, Rebellions and Revolutions: China from the 1800s to the 1980s (1990), ISBN 0-19-821576-2 Ian Heath. The Taiping Rebellion, 1851–1866. London ; Long Island City: Osprey, Osprey Military Men-at-Arms Series, 1994. ISBN 1-85532-346-X (pbk.) Emphasis on the military history. Immanuel C. Y. Hsu, The Rise of Modern China (1999), ISBN 0-19-512504-5. Standard textbook. Youwen Jian, The Taiping Revolutionary Movement (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973). Translated and condensed from the author's publications in Chinese; especially strong on the military campaigns, based on the author's wide travels in China in the 1920s and 1930s. Philip A. Kuhn, Rebellion and Its Enemies in Late Imperial China; Militarization and Social Structure, 1796–1864 (Cambridge, Mass.,: Harvard University Press, 1970). Influential analysis of the rise of rebellion and the organization of its suppression. Philip A. Kuhn, "The Taiping Rebellion," in John K. Fairbank, ed., Cambridge History of China Vol Ten Pt One (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ Press, 1970): 264–350. Tobie S. Meyer-Fong. What Remains: Coming to Terms with Civil War in 19th Century China. (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013). ISBN 9780804754255. A study of the victims, their experience of the war, and the memorialization of the war. Stephen R. Platt. Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom: China, the West, and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War. New York: Knopf, 2012. ISBN 978-0-307-27173-0. Detailed narrative analysis. Thomas H. Reilly, The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom: Rebellion and the Blasphemy of Empire (2004) ISBN 0-295-98430-9. Focuses on the religious basis of the rebellion. Caleb Carr, The Devil Soldier: The Story of Frederick Townsend Ward (1994) ISBN 0679411143. Rudolf G. Wagner. Reenacting the Heavenly Vision: The Role of Religion in the Taiping Rebellion. (Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, China Research Monograph 25, 1982). ISBN 0912966602. Mary Clabaugh Wright. The Last Stand of Chinese Conservatism: The T'ung-Chih Restoration, 1862–1874. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1957; rpr. 1974 ISBN 0804704767. Account of the Han Chinese/ Manchu coalition which revived the dynasty and defeated the Taipings. Fiction Hosea Ballou Morse, In the Days of the Taipings, Being the Recollections of Ting Kienchang, Otherwise Meisun, Sometime Scoutmaster and Captain in the Ever-Victorious Army and Interpreter-in-Chief to General Ward and General Gordon (Salem, MA: The Essex institute, 1927; Reprinted: San Francisco: Chinese Materials Center, 1974). George Macdonald Fraser. Flashman and the Dragon. New York: Knopf, 1986. ISBN 0394553578. A volume in the Flashman series. |
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