The
damaging defeats inflicted on China by the British during the first
half of the nineteenth century were part cause and part consequence of
China’s own growing domestic instability. Many of the elements of
that instability have been discussed above: the growing population that
put new pressures on the land, the difficulty
the educated elite found in gaining official employment, the mounting
incidences of opium addiction and the outflow of silver that widespread addiction entailed, the waning abilities of the regular
banner armies, the demoralization in the bureaucracy caused by Heshen
and his faction, the wide-scale suffering that accompanied the spread
and eventual suppression of the White Lotus rebellion.
Other
abuses, already apparent in the late eighteenth century, [such as
neglect of the Yellow River dike works and the Grand Canal, as well as
inefficiencies and corruption in the government monopoly on salt,]
became more serious in the early nineteenth century. ... By the end of
Daoguang’s reign [1821-1850], a series of popular uprisings began
that were to last for twenty-three years and were almost to bring about
the fall of the Qing dynasty. (SMC, 164-165)
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Hong [Xiuquan] was born in 1814, the
fourth of five children in a hard-working rural family of Guangdong.
His parents were from the Hakka minority (the so-called “guest
peoples” who had migrated southward from central China), and they
sacrificed to get Hong a decent education that would win him a place in
the local elite. But even though he passed the initial examinations
permitting him to quality for the licentiate’s shengyuan
degree, in the early 1830s he failed at his first two attempts to
obtain the degree, which would have given him the right to wear the
scholars’ robes, to be exempt from physical punishment, and to
receive a small stipend from the state.
 For any ambitious young Chinese, such failure was
humiliating, but for Hong it seems to have been unusually so. He took
solace in the chance to travel and study in Canton itself. In 1836 Hong
was just about to enter the examination hall yet again in pursuit of
the elusive degree when a Chinese Protestant evangelist pressed a
collection of translated passages from the Bible called “Good Words for Exhorting the Age”
[see DC,
114-118] into Hong’s hands. Such a moment was possible, and such tracts
were available, because of many new historical circumstances that were
to distinguish Hong’s uprising from all those that had come before.
Western Protestant missionaries — mainly British and American — had
been working since the early 1800s to translate the entire Bible into
Chinese, and had printed numerous copies, which they distributed while
traveling up the coast and in the interior. They and their Chinese
converts also tried to distill the message of the scriptures into
simple tracts like the “Good Words,” which reached even more readers.
Hong Xiuquan neither studied the tracts nor
threw them away. Instead he seems to have glanced at them quickly and
then kept them at home. He initially made no connection between these
tracts and a strange dream and delirium he experienced after a third
examination failure in 1837. In those visions, Hong conversed with a
bearded, golden-haired man who gave him a sword, and a younger man who
instructed him on how to slay evil spirits and whom Hong addressed as
“Elder Brother.”
 In his visions he was taken up to Heaven. In the dazzling light he was received by beautiful maidens, but “cast no sidelong glances at them.” He was washed to cleanse him of the
filth of the world. His belly was cut open and his internal
organs
replaced by new, clean ones. Then he was led before a magnificent
divine figure with a long golden beard, who lamented that the people of
the world had lost their “original hearts”
and were deluded by malicious demons. They no longer worshipped
him,
and they drank wine, smoked opium, and lived lives of debauchery and
worldly
vanity. Hong was eager to assist in chastising the demons and soon was
allowed to do so, driving from Heaven the Dragon Demon of the Eastern
Sea. Hong belonged
in Heaven and had his own beautiful palace. It now was clear that the
gold-bearded figure was his heavenly father, and he had a heavenly
elder brother who assisted him in some of his battles. His heavenly
mother and heavenly younger sisters brought him beautiful fruit to eat,
and the younger sisters sometimes chanted sacred texts with him or
joined him in his attacks on the demons. He was
given
a demon-slaying sword and a golden seal that forced demons to flee.
Once
he watched his father and elder brother chastise Confucius as one who
had
done the most to delude the people of the world. ( Mountain of Fame, 265) |
For six years after his visions, Hong worked as a
village schoolteacher, and tried once again to pass the examinations.
But after he failed the shengyuan
examinations for the fourth time, he opened the Christian tracts and
read them fully. In a sudden shock of realization, Hong saw that the
two men in his vision must have been the God and Jesus of the tracts,
and that therefore he, Hong, must also be the Son of God, younger
brother to Jesus Christ. (SMC, 168-169) |
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The Rebellion
In December 1850, Qing government forces sent to
oust Hong from the Thistle Mountain area [in Eastern Guangxi province]
were badly defeated, and their Manchu commander killed. On January 11,
1851, Hong Xiuquan assembled his God worshipers and declared himself
the Heavenly King of the Taiping Tianguo, “Heavenly Kingdom of
Great Peace” (commonly abbreviated to Taiping). Forced out of
their base by larger government armies, the Taiping campaigned on the
Guangxi-Guangdong border until autumn 1851, when they swung north and
seized the city of Yongan along with great stores of cash, food, and
new recruits, who swelled their numbers to 60,000 or more. ...
A
breakthrough came in December 1852, when almost
unopposed the Taiping army entered Yuezhou on the east side of Dongting
Lake. Yuezhou was a wealthy, long settled town, unlike the poorer areas
through which the Taiping had hitherto ranged, and here they seized
vast amounts of booty, 5,000 boats, and stockpiles of arms and
gunpowder. ... Thereafter an incredible string of successes followed:
Hankou fell in December and Wuchang in January 1853, bringing Hong a
further large fleet of boats and 1.6 million taels from the provincial
treasury. Anqing fell almost without opposition in February 1853,
bringing 300,000
taels more, 100 large cannon, and huge stores of food. In March the
great center of Nanjing, defended by only a small force, its walls
undermined by explosive charges, its center bombarded by artillery, its
streets infiltrated by Taiping soldiers disguised as Buddhist or Daoist
priests, fell to the rebels.
Nanjing’s Manchu population of some 40,000,
of whom about 5,000 were combat troops, retreated into the city’s
inner citadel, but were overwhelmed by the charges of wave after wave
of Taiping troops. All Manchus who did not die in the battle — men,
women, and children — were rounded up and systematically killed by
burning, stabbing, or drowning. It was Hong’s way of showing
that the devils would be driven from the face of China. At the end of
March, wearing a crown and an embroidered dragon robe, Hong was carried
into the city in a golden palanquin on the backs of sixteen men, and
took up residence in a former Ming dynasty imperial palace. (SMC, 170-171)
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The Heavenly Kingdom
 The Taiping ruled their Nanjing-based Heavenly
Kingdom for eleven years (1853-1864) under the formal authority of Hong
Xiuquan as Heavenly King. The policies of the Taiping remained, on
paper and often in practice, startlingly radical. One facet of their
rule was an asceticism that required segregation of the sexes and
absolute bans on opium smoking, prostitution, dancing, and drinking of
alcohol. Money was held in a common treasury, theoretically to be
shared by all; and since the Taiping had acquired more than 18 million
taels along their route of march and within Nanjing itself, their
prosperity seemed assured. Examinations were reinstituted, based now on
Chinese translations of the Bible and on the transcribed versions of
Hong Xiuquan’s religious revelations and literary works. Women,
organized into special residential and administrative units, were
allowed to hold supervisory offices in the bureaucracy and to sit for
their own special examinations.
Most remarkable was the Taiping land law, which,
linked to a local system of military recruitment, constituted perhaps
the most utopian, comprehensive, and authoritarian scheme for human
organization ever seen in China up to that time. All land was to be
divided among all families of the Taiping and their supporters
according to family size, with men and women receiving equal shares.
After keeping the produce they needed for their own sustenance, each
family would place the rest in great common granaries. (SMC, 171-172)
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All the men in the world are brethren, and all
the women in the world are sisters. Among the sons and daughters of the
celestial hall the males are on one side and the females on the other,
and are not allowed to intermix. Should either men or women practice
lewdness they are considered outcasts, as having offended against one
of the chief commands of Heaven. The casting of amorous glances, the
forbearing of boastful imaginations, the smoking of foreign tobacco
(opium), or the singing of blasphemous songs must all be considered as
breaches of this command. (DC, 124). |
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The Defeat
Zeng Guofan (1811-1872),
born in Hunan, rose from a humble background to become one of the most
influential officials of the mid-nineteenth century. He gained renown
as the commander of the Hunan Army, which defeated the Taipings in
1864. In his later career, he promoted a series of forward-looking
reforms on behalf of the Qing court. ... In both government service and
private life, Confucian teachings and morality were central to Zeng
Guofan’s view of the world. (DC, 128-9) A Proclamation Against the Bandits of Guangdong and Guangxi
Zeng Guofan, 1854
 It
has been five years since the rebels Hong Xiuquan and Yang Xiuqing
started their rebellion. They have inflicted bitter sorrow upon
millions of people and devastated more than 5000 li of chou
[regions] and xian [counties]. Wherever they pass, boats of all sizes, and
people rich and poor alike, have all been plundering and stripped bare;
not one inch of grass has been left standing. The clothing has been
stripped from the bodies of those captured by these bandits, and their
money has been seized. Anyone with five taels or more of silver who
does not contribute it to the bandits is forthwith decapitated. Men are
given one he [1/10th
pint] of rice per day, and forced to march in the forefront in battle,
to construct city walls, and dredge moats. Women are also given one he
of rice per day, and forced to stand guard on the parapets at night,
and to haul rice and carry coal. The feet of women who refuse to unbind
them are cut off and shown to other women as a warning. The corpses of
boatmen who secretly conspired to flee were hung upside down to show
other boatmen as a warning. The Yue [i.e. Guangdong and Guangxi] bandits
indulge themselves in luxury and high position, while the people in our
own Yangtze provinces living under their coercion are treated worse
than animals. This cruelty and brutality appalls anyone with blood in
his veins.
Ever since the times of Yao,
Shun, and the Three Dynasties, sages, generation after generation, have
upheld the Confucian teachings, stressing proper human relationships,
between ruler and minister, father and son, superiors and subordinates,
the high and the low, all in their proper place, just as hats and shoes
are not interchangeable. ... Peasants are not allowed to till the land
for themselves and pay taxes for they say that the fields all belong to
the Tian Wang [Heavenly King]. Merchants are not allowed to trade for
profit, for they say that all the goods belong to the Tian Wang.
Scholars may not read the Confucian classics, for they have their
so-called teachings of Jesus and the New Testament. In a single day
several thousand years of Chinese ethical principles and proper human
relationships, classical books, social institutions, and statutes have
all been completely swept away. ... Since ancient times, those with
meritorious accomplishments during their lifetimes have become spirits
after death; the Kingly Way governs the living and the Way of the
Spirits governs among the dead. Even rebellious ministers and wicked
sons of the most vicious and vile sort show respect and awe towards the
spirits. When Li Zicheng reached Qufu [Confucius’ birthplace in
Shandong province], he did not molest the Temple of the Sage. ...
But
the Yue bandits burned the school at Shen-chou, destroyed the wooden
tablet of Confucius, and wildly scattered the tablets of the Ten
Paragons in the two corridors all over the ground. Afterwards, wherever
they have passed, in every district, the first thing they have done is
to burn down the temples, defiling the shrines and maiming the statues
even of loyal ministers and righteous heroes such as the awesome Kuan
Yu and Yue Fei. Even Buddhist and Taoist temples, shrines of guardian
deities and altars to local gods have all been burned, and every statue
destroyed. The ghosts and spirits in the world of darkness are enraged
at this, and want to avenge their resentment. (DC, 129-130) |
Execution of Taiping Rebels at Canton
French Account, 1851
In
the course of the year 1851, more than 700 unfortunate persons were
executed at Canton. The severity of the mandarins seems to increase in
the same proportion as the extension of the insurrection; and every day
some arrest took place, and some unhappy wretch, shut up in a bamboo
cage, or shackled like a wild beast, was brought from the province of
Guangxi or the revolted districts of the Guangdong. Generally they had
not to wait for their sentence; since, in case of insurrection, the
superior authority of the province has a right to inflict capital
punishment, and makes abundant use of this sanguinary privilege. An
execution is a horrible thing in any country, but in China its horror
is doubled by its attendant circumstances. ...
“Then
arrived the criminals. They were fifty-three in number, each shut up in
a basket, with his hands tied behind his back, his legs chained, and a
board inscribed with his sentence hanging from his neck. ... I examined
these unfortunate wretches with attention: they were worn out with
hunger, and looked more like skeletons than living beings. It was
evident that they had suffered the most dreadful privations. ... Many
of these unfortunate persons were very young: some were not sixteen
years of age; while others had gray hair. ... A mandarin who closed the
cortege, then entered the
enclosure. He was adorned with the white ball, and held in his hand a
board, inscribed with the order for execution. ... The execution of
these fifty-three wretches only lasted some minutes. ...” (DC, 119-121) |
Yet for all their military and ideological
passion, and their utopian dreams of perfect governance, the Taiping
failed to overthrow the Qing and were ultimately eliminated, with
terrible slaughter. Why did the Taiping not succeed, after achieving so
many triumphs with such speed in the name of such a utopian ideology? (SMC, 172)
Leadership?
Popular Support in Nanjing and the Countryside?
Coordination with other rebel groups?
Western sympathy?
Foreigners,
especially missionaries, had been initially excited by the prospect of
a Christian revolutionary force that promised social reforms and the
defeat of the moribund and intransigent Manchus. But the eccentricities
of Hong Xiuquan’s Christianity eventually became apparent to the
missionaries, and traders came to fear the Taiping’s zealous
hatred of opium. Finally, the Western powers decided to back the Qing
in order to prevent a Taiping seizure of Shanghai, which might threaten
the West’s newly won treaty gains. (SMC, 173)
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One
of the many factors that helped the Qing
overthrow the Taiping was the assistance of foreigners in the early
1860s. ... The reasons for that support had mainly to do with
international affairs, in which, once again, the primary actors were
the British. Disappointed at the results of the Nanjing treaty and
frustrated by continued Qing intransigence, the British reacted with
scant sympathy when the Qing were threatened by the spread of the
Taiping rebellion. Instead the British made the highly legalistic
decision to invoke the most-favored-nation clause in the Nanjing
supplementary treaty of 1843 in response to the American treaty
of 1844, which had stipulated that the treaty be renegotiated in twelve
years. By applying that renewal stipulation to their own agreements
with the Chinese, British authorities forced them to renegotiate in
1854. ...
The British finally took advantage of an
allegedly illegal Qing search of a ship formerly of Hong Kong registry,
the Arrow, to recommence military actions at Canton in late
1856. ...  Sailing north in a near repeat of the 1840 campaign, they took
the strategic Dagu forts in May 1858 and threatened to seize Tianjin.
In June, with the way to Peking now open to the British forces, the
Qing capitulated and agreed to sign a new treaty.
This “Treaty
of Tianjin” of 1858 imposed extraordinarily strict terms on China. A
British ambassador was henceforth to reside in Peking, accompanied by
family and staff, and housed in a fitting residence. The open preaching
of Christianity was protected. Travel anywhere inside China was
permitted to those with valid passports, and within thirty miles of
treaty ports without passports. Once the rebellions currently raging in
China were suppressed, trade was to be allowed up the Yangzi as far as
Hankou, and four new Yangzi treaty ports (Hankou, Jiujiang, Nanjing,
and Zhenjiang) would be opened. An additional six treaty ports were to
be opened immediately: one in Manchuria, one in Shandong, two on
Taiwan, one in Guangdong, and one on Hainan Island in the far south.
... A supplementary clause accompanying the various commercial
agreements stated explicitly: “Opium will
henceforth pay thirty taels per picul [approximately 130 pounds] Import
Duty. The importer will sell it at the port. It will be carried into
the interior by Chinese only, and only as Chinese property; the foreign
trader will not be allowed to accompany it.” This condition was imposed
despite the prohibition in the Chinese penal code on the sale and
consumption of opium. Virtually the only British concession was to pull
back from Tianjin and return the Dagu forts to Qing control.
The British evidently expected China’s
rulers to abandon the struggle at this point, but the Qing would not,
and showed no intention of following the treaty clause that permitted
foreign ambassadors to live in Peking. ... Determined now to teach the
Qing a lesson they could not ignore, Lord Elgin, Britain’s chief
treaty negotiator, ordered his troops to march on Peking. On October
18, 1860, following Elgin’s orders, the British burnt to the
ground the Yuan Ming Yuan — the exquisite summer palace in the
Peking suburbs built for Qianlong’s pleasure using the plans of
Jesuit architects. The British, however, spared the Forbidden City
palaces within Peking, calculating that destruction of those hallowed
buildings would be a disgrace so profound that the Qing dynasty would
inevitably fall. (SMC, 175-157)
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