Exploring Chinese History: The Taiping Rebellion

At this point in history, the Chinese only wanted fellow Chinese to be ruler of their country. In result of the Manchus not being Chinese, rebellions took place habitually for decades. Nonetheless, this was soon to change. Kangxi was the first emperor of the Qing Dynasty,

Ineffective leadership and very luxurious living of the emperors and government officials also led to the collapse of the Qing Dynasty. Officials were left in charge of the administration of the dynasty because the two emperors of the time, Tongzhi and Guangxu were still children, and this lack of imperial control gave Cixi the ability to ‘rule from behind the curtain’.

Due to the refusal of legal trade and underground trade occurred causing the spread of opium and the decline of prosperity of Chinese citizens due to this epidemic. The mass addiction caused China to allow some trade with foreigners to occur legally ad eventually open their doors. China was unable to easily adapt to western standards and agree to the culture and advancements they were introducing. The Taiping rebellion was between western religion and Confucianism, differing ideas and parties divided the nation. The Nanking treaty was created and signed between China and Britain to decrease conflict with trade, yet inspired more unrest with the Chinese people. The Boxer rebellion in the twentieth century then took place in order to increase Chinese nationalism and deter foreign influence. This caused disturbance in their ability to modernize and did not aid in their success as a nation. The anti-foreign sentiments weakened their country and left them vulnerable to weak governments.

By the time the first opium war broke out, there were rebellions across the land of the Qing dynasty. One of the rebellions was the Taiping Rebellion. Prophet Hong Xiuquan leads the Taiping Rebellion. The uprising promised social reform, land redistribution, liberation for women. It also attacked Confucian values and wanted to create a simpler script for the people with goals were to make literacy more possible for everyone. Nonetheless, local landowners create a military that stops rebellions. The Manchurian government refused to enact these reforms. It created a larger gap in the division of the Manchus and

The Taiping Uprising between 1850-1864. Its leaders rejected Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism alike, finding their ideology in a unique form of Christianity instead. (Original: p. 565; With Sources: p. 883)

Consequently, Hong admitted new followers to the God Worshippers Society, a Christian sect propagating Hong’s religion and also accumulated more followers in various events like the Jintian Uprising. Over time, through means of preaching, Hong had amassed over 20,000 ardent followers, which mainly comprised of peasants. However, there were also some flaws with the Taipings and their leaders. They also burned villages and killed villagers, putting the people against their ways of living. This was one of the main reasons why the Taipings were not able to gain a substantial amount of followers to support their rebellion. Nonetheless, the leaders of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, Hong Xiuquan, Hong Rengan and others, sought out to advocate Hong’s ‘Christian’ religion. Hong Xiuquan himself was the one who had started preaching, but over time had delegated this to his subordinate kings. Hong Xiuquan was the ‘first tier’ advocate and the subordinate Taiping kings were the ‘second tier’ advocates. These men, though with different powers, had one common goal, to ‘Christianize’ China . This ultimately led to war between the Taipings and the Qing Dynasty, now known as the Taiping

The Qing dynasty (1916-1912) is the last imperial dynasty of China, it was consider as the most powerful country during the “golden age” ruled by Kang Xi and Qian Long, and it has over 400 million population and has the 1st ranked GDP in the world at the moment. The Qing has the supreme power at the time and has the significant influence in East Asian. However, the collapse of the Qing Dynasty made a humiliate history of China. The Qing dynasty doesn't fall suddenly, and the collapse of Qing is not just simply because domestic revolution and alien invasion. The failure of the Qing government is worthy to study, we need to take a deep step and explore the root cause of the collapse of Qing.

I agree to a larger extent that the Qing Government was primarily responsible for causing the Taiping Rebellion. However, other underlying factors leading to the Taiping insurrection cannot be ignored. This essay will discuss how corruption in the Qing bureaucracy, the incompetent leadership, the closed mentality of the Qing Government, shortage of land and impact of an alien Manchu regime highlighted the Qing Government as the main cause of the rebellion. The essay would also include the other causes of the rebellion, such as the opium war and natural disasters.

The Han dynasty was a golden era for China. It saw the greatest land confiscation of the nation’s history and economic success. In this paper I will be focusing on the structure of the national government, the monopolizing of iron and salt, the Yumen Pass and the Yellow Turban rebellion. Join me as we take a trip back in time to visit a time in Chinas history that is highly revered.

The Ming Dynasty ruled China from 1368 until the dynasty commenced deterioration. By the beginning of the 1600s, the Ming began to lose power due to “threats from Barbarians on all sides, political in-fighting,” rebellions, and poor loyalty in the military (Ryder). Likewise, the spread of violence in China contributed to the collapse of the Ming Dynasty (Zarrow). In the year 1644, the Chinese rebels overthrew the dynasty (Williams). At this time, the Ming emperor committed suicide as the rebel armies invaded Beijing (Zarrow). After the rebels overthrew the Ming, the Manchu people stepped in to try and gain power.

As many other countries around the world China has its long history of a struggle for equality and prosperity against tyrants and dictatorships. The establishment of People’s Republic of China in 1949 seemed to have put an end to that struggle for a better life. “The Chinese people have stood up!” declared Mao Tse-tung, the chairman of China’s Communist Party (CPP) – a leading political force in the country for the time. The people were defined as a coalition of four social classes: the workers, the peasants, the petite bourgeoisie and the national-capitalists. The four classes were to be led buy the CPP, as the leader of the working class.

After the first Sino-British War, China was forced to accept the western influence and later then the Taiping movement accelerated the progress of China’s modern history and promoted the Westernization movement.

The Qing dynasty has historical background as like many other cultures. In 1644 Manchus, better known as the Qing dynasty, conquered the Ming state and established their own Qing or “Pure” dynasty among men lasting over three hundred years (Metmusem.org). The rise of the Qing dynasty is provided by the story of a man named Li Zicheng. Li Zicheng was an ironworker who lost his job along many other government paid employees. This occurred because the emperor needed money for more troops in battle to defend Beijing against the attacks the powerful attacks of the Manchus, better known as the Qing dynasty today. By the year of 1630 Li had found a job as a soldier; however, since the government couldn’t pay them and provided them what needed, Li decided to quit. After that Li won the trust of several thousand Chinese revels and lead them into the towns capturing them and added young men into their army. Li and his army won support of more people by making powerful promises of ending imperial abuses. With more support in their side they

The 19th century had sparked a time period of bloody revolution, social and political reform, and both economic and financial problems for China. Though the cause of many of these problems could be rooted to internal conflict, foreign influence on Chinese ways proved to be disastrous. During the early 19th century the population was growing, the economy seemed stable and generally people seemed content with China’s economic progress. However these feelings of success would soon end as overpopulation would cause widespread poverty and famine. At that point in time China’s rulers had been Manchu; the Qing dynasty had been in rule but even its

China, while under the Qing dynasty and was being ruled by the Manchus, they lost in the Opium Wars. As the wars led China into financial crisis, corruption led to various forms of protests and reform movements and eventually to the rise of the nationalism, which put an end to the last dynasty. One of the causes of the corruption was the opium trade. There were two most important official concerns about the trade. According to Harry, “one was the damage done to the health and capacity for work of the people using opium, especially the addicts. The other was the economic damage”(Harry, 5). Most importantly, too much silver was being paid to foreign merchants for opium, and thus leaving China. The domestic price of silver was therefore going up. But the price of everyday copper cash remained the same. So tax payments, which had to be made in silver, were effectively tax increases, causing much popular resentment and social unrest (Harry, 8). High taxation and corruption worked only to oppress and worsen the life the poor, which led to various rebellions and the raise of the peasant that worked against the Qing government.