The Taiping Rebellion In China During The 19th Century

China has 5000 years of history which experienced wars, collapses, failures and successes. The Opium War in the year 1839 and 1856 marked the changing point of China’s trade policy with foreigners, especially with British in opium and tea. China changed from getting tributes to being forced to sign the Nanjing Treaty and Tianjing Treaty with British and French. Due to China’s over confidence and unwelcome attitude toward foreigners and opium, it caused the British to declare the Opium War to China which made Chinese suffer for many years, but at the same time it also forced China to open its doors to the foreigners.

In the 19th Century British planned to invade China for economic reasons. It had no motives to conquer the state rather entice it to accept a free trade. The country was rich in tea which was in high demand not only in Britain but all over the world. China also had porcelain and silk which the Britons envied. The intruders did not have enough silver to buy the commodities thus opted for a barter system. Consequently, a war between the two states occurred. It was fought between 1848 and 1852 with China becoming unsuccessful due advanced military competence of Britons. The signing of an agreement between them then followed, and British was additionally awarded extraterritorial rights by China. However, the imperialism in China was a positive thing to the natives because it introduced trade and much education in the region which opened up opportunities.

The Qing empire ruled China with Confucianism as the main imperial system used until the very end. However, the beginning of Qing downfall result of the exam system became corrupted and filled with bribery. Instead of the fair examination on the knowledge of Confucianism, the wealthy use their power to get their ways, result in not the most qualified politicians. Additionally, it shows the lack of Confucius value in the Qing system. On the other hand, bureaucracy meant to improve the lives of the wealthy not the poor. Also, the money was given to the people with power and wealth, not to infrastructure.

A picture of the Chinese naval fleet being destroyed shows us that the Chinese chose to go to war due to the opium trade with England. Depending on who made the picture, either the British were trying to show their naval power or the Chinese were attempting to show how much damage Britain was inflicting on their country. Imperial China’s government responded violently and politically to British trade, doing everything they could to get the merchants out of their country.

The increase of production and use of opium created many problems for China. An issue that resulted of the opium trade was the illegal opium trade with Britain. While most goods and products were legally traded, opium had increased in the illegal market. Previously China’s emperor had written to Britain’s monarchy about the encroachment of their demand of goods and land within China. The emperor Qianlong, in his letter, states that “porcelain which the Celestial Empire produces are absolute necessities to European nations and to yourselves” (Document 1). This shows that European countries often wanted the products of China. It also provoked the illegal trade of opium a very valued

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 first opium war negatively affected China politically because the Qing dynasty did not have a military force that was not strong enough to defend

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.

In the early eighteen hundreds, Britain and other European countries demanded more and more Chinese commodities, especially tea and silk. However, only the port in Canton was opened to foreign countries, and Chinese would not take any other form of payments besides silver. The desire to make China into a free market that foreigners have more access to and the increasing, though illegal, European opium import to China eventually created tension between the European countries, especially Britain, and the Chinese government (Allingham Par. 1-2). The two battles fought and won by European powers were known as the Opium Wars. China’s politics, economy, and intellects were both positively and negatively

The Manchu people were a, “federation of various tribes living in what is today China’s provinces of Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang”who belonged to the Tungus branch of the Atlantic people (Theobald, “The Manchus”). The Manchus replaced the Ming Dynasty in China after the decline of the Ming in 1644.

China has been in a state of revolution and reform since the Sino-Japanese war of 1895. As a result of Japan’s victory over Russia in 1905, China’s constitutional reform movement gathered momentum. This forced the Manchu government by public opinion to make gestures of preparation for a constitutional government, an act to which reformers in exile responded enthusiastically by establishing a Political Participation Society (Cheng-wen-she) (1, pg.84).

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

The Communist Party was first formed to dispose of the warlords who were preventing China from establishing a strong central government as well as the dangerously increasing population. The massive growth of the population did more than impoverish the country as a whole:

The Qing Dynasty led by the Manchus was in midst of a chaotic time from 1850 to 1864. The Taiping Rebellion was one of the rebellions the dynasty had to face against during this time period, however this rebellion almost caused the dynasty to collapse. One of the contributing factors that helped the Manchu led dynasty stayed in power in China was an American mercenary turned Chinese commander, Frederick Townsend Ward. Frederick T. Ward was a man of questionable motives as many historians have wrote about him, such as Ralph D. Paine and Jonathan Spence in their respective writings of Ships and Sailors of Old Salem and Ward and Gordon: Glorious Days of Looting. Paine and Spence’s readings about Frederick Townsend Ward have some contradicting