Taiping Rebellion

From 1850 to 1864 the Taiping movement under Hong Xiuquan sought to overthrow the Qing dynasty and build a heavenly kingdom of shared property.

Overview

Hong, a failed examination candidate, taught from visions that he was the younger brother of Jesus Christ. His Taiping Heavenly Kingdom captured Nanjing in 1853 and ruled much of the Yangtze valley for a decade. The movement mandated communal land distribution, banned opium, gambling, prostitution, and foot binding, and fielded separate male and female armies. Qing forces, regional militias raised by gentry like Zeng Guofan, and eventually western-officered contingents besieged Nanjing until it fell in 1864. The war killed an estimated twenty million people through combat, famine, and disease, the deadliest conflict of the nineteenth century. Though crushed, the rebellion forced Qing reforms, fatally weakened the dynasty, and foreshadowed 1911.