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The Taiping Rebellion, also known as the Taiping Civil War or the Taiping Revolution, was a massive rebellion and civil war that was waged in China between the Manchu Qing dynasty and the Han, Hakka-led Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. It lasted from 1850 to 1864, although following the fall of Tianjing the last rebel army was not wiped out until August 1871, and the rebellion would inspire further uprisings such as the short-lived Heavenly Kingdom of the Great Mingshun in 1903, which was directly inspired by the Taiping. After fighting the bloodiest civil war in world history, with 20 to 30 million dead, the established Qing government won decisively, although at a great price to its fiscal and political structure.
The Hakka, sometimes also referred to as Hakka Han, or Hakka Chinese, are a Han Chinese subgroup whose ancestral homes are chiefly in the Hakka-speaking provincial areas of Guangdong, Fujian, Jiangxi, Guangxi, Sichuan, Hunan, Zhejiang, Hainan, Guizhou and the island of Taiwan. The Chinese characters for Hakka literally mean "guest families". Unlike other Han Chinese subgroups, the Hakkas are not named after a geographical region, e.g. a province, county or city, in China. Modern day Hakka are generally identified by both full Hakka and by different degrees of Hakka ancestry and usually speak the Hakka language.
Hong Xiuquan, born Hong Huoxiu and with the courtesy name Renkun, was a Chinese revolutionary who was the leader of the Taiping Rebellion against the Qing dynasty. He established the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom over varying portions of southern China, with himself as the "Heavenly King" and self-proclaimed younger brother of Jesus Christ.
Zeng Guofan, Marquis Yiyong, birth name Zeng Zicheng, courtesy name Bohan, was a Chinese statesman and military general of the late Qing dynasty. He is best known for raising and organizing the Xiang Army to aid the Qing military in suppressing the Taiping Rebellion and restoring the stability of the Qing Empire. Along with other prominent figures such as Zuo Zongtang and Li Hongzhang of his time, Zeng set the scene for the Tongzhi Restoration, an attempt to arrest the decline of the Qing dynasty. Zeng was known for his strategic perception, administrative skill and noble personality on Confucian practice, but also for his ruthlessness in repressing rebellions.
The Nian Rebellion was an armed uprising that took place in northern China from 1851 to 1868, contemporaneously with Taiping Rebellion (1851–1864) in South China. The rebellion failed to topple the Qing dynasty, but caused immense economic devastation and loss of life that became major long-term factors in the collapse of the Qing regime in the early 20th century.
The Third Battle of Nanking in 1864 was the last major engagement of the Taiping Rebellion in the Qing Empire. With the fall of Nanking, the capital of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, the rebellion came to an end. The Hunan Army, an unpaid and barely fed militia commissioned by the Qing Empire, lost all their discipline and committed mass-scale random murder, wartime rape, looting and arson against the civilians of Nanjing, seen as "rebels". 100,000 "rebels" were reported dead by Zeng Guofan, the commander-in-chief of the Hunan Army.
The Punti–Hakka Clan Wars were a conflict between the Hakka and Cantonese people in Guangdong, China between 1855 and 1867. The wars were fierce around the Pearl River Delta, especially in Toi Shan of the Sze Yup counties. The wars resulted in roughly a million dead with many more fleeing for their lives.
The Jintian Uprising was an armed revolt formally declared by Hong Xiuquan, founder and leader of the God Worshipping Society, on 11 January 1851 during the late Qing Dynasty of China. The uprising was named after the rebel base in Jintian, a town in Guangxi within present-day Guiping. It marked the beginning of the Taiping Rebellion.
Shi Dakai, born in Guigang, Guangxi, also known as Wing King or phonetically translated as Yi-Wang, was one of the most highly acclaimed leaders in the Taiping Rebellion and a poet.
Feng Yunshan was the South King of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, a distant cousin and early accomplice of Hong Xiuquan, and an important leader during the Taiping Rebellion against the Qing government. He was one of the first Taipings to be baptized and established the first group of God Worshippers during the 1840s. He was killed during the initial stages of the rebellion, prior to the establishment of the Taiping's capital of Tianjing at Nanjing.
The Crippled Tree is a history and biography by Han Suyin. It covers the years 1885 to 1928, beginning with the life of her father, a Belgium-educated Chinese engineer of Hakka heritage, from a family of minor gentry in Sichuan. It describes how he met and married her mother, a Flemish Belgian, his return to China and her own birth and early life..
Zhang Guoliang, born in Guangdong, was a Field Marshal for the Qing dynasty. He was born in Gaoyao, Zhaoqing, Guangdong, China, although Qing state that he is from Meixian, Guangdong. He was originally a bandit in Guangxi but later joined the Qing Army. He raised the Green Standard Army by 250,000 to fight against the Taiping Rebellion in the second rout the Army Group Jiangnan in 1860 and was defeated by Li Xiucheng. Zhang served as a minister to the emperor and a vice commander of Army Group Jiangnan until his death by suicide. Zeng Guofan praised Zhang and said he was Jiangnan's "Great Wall of China."
Qin Rigang, né Qin Richang (秦日昌), was a Hakka military leader of the Taiping Rebellion, known during his military tenure as the King of Yen (燕王). He served under Hong Xiuquan's Taiping Administration and led Taiping forces to many military victories. He was executed by Hong Xiuquan in 1856 because he had killed the family and followers of Shi Dakai during the Tianjing Incident. Chen Yucheng and Li Xiucheng were trained and taught by Qin.
The Battle of Jiangnan (1860), also known as the Second rout of the Jiangnan Battalion was a battle between the Qing government's Green Standard Army and the army of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom during the Taiping Rebellion. The Green Standard Army twice attempted to besiege Nanjing, capital of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, but was unable to break through. To break the siege of Nanjing, the Taiping forces maneuvered to divert Qing forces by sacking Hangzhou, before quickly moving back to Nanjing to counter-encircle the Qing siege forces and routing the Green Standard Army garrison completely, breaking the siege of Nanjing.
The Battle of Shanghai (太平軍二攻上海) was a major engagement of the Taiping Rebellion that occurred from June 1861 to July 1862. British and French troops used modern artillery on a large scale for the first time in China. Cannon fire inflicted heavy casualties on the Taiping forces, whose commander Li Xiucheng was wounded in the left leg by a shot fired from a cannon.
The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, later shortened to the Heavenly Kingdom or Heavenly Dynasty, was an unrecognised rebel state in China and a Chinese Christian theocratic absolute monarchy from 1851 to 1864, supporting the overthrow of the Qing dynasty by Hong Xiuquan and his followers. The unsuccessful war it waged against the Qing is known as the Taiping Rebellion. Its capital was at Tianjing.
The God Worshipping Society was a religious movement founded and led by Hong Xiuquan which drew on his own unique interpretation of Christianity and combined it with Chinese folk religion, faith in Shangdi, and other religious traditions. According to historical evidence, his first contact with Christian pamphlets occurred in 1836 when he directly received American Congregationalist missionary Edwin Stevens' personal copy of the Good Words to Admonish the Age. He only briefly looked over and did not carefully examine it. Subsequently, Hong had supposedly experienced mystical visions in the wake of his third failure of the imperial examinations in 1837 and after failing for a fourth time in 1843, he sat down to carefully examine the tracts with his distant cousin Feng Yunshan, believing that they were "the key to interpreting his visions" coming to the conclusion that he was "the son of God the Father and the younger brother of Jesus Christ who had been directed to rid the world of demon worship."
Hong Xuanjiao, was a Chinese female general and rebel leader during the Taiping Rebellion. She was the sister of the leader of Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, Hong Xiuquan. She acted as co-commander of the Taiping forces during the civil war against the Imperial forces of the Qing dynasty. Xuanjiao and her brother, Xiuquan, established the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom over varying portions of southern China with himself as the "Heavenly King" and self-proclaimed younger brother of Jesus Christ.
Qiu Ersao, was a Chinese rebel and military commander during the Taiping Rebellion. Originally a religious leader within the Tiandihui, she later had 500 female soldiers under her command.
References
- ↑ Pamela Kyle Crossley, The Wobbling Pivot: China Since 1800 105 (2010)
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