Daily Lives Of Civilians In Wartime Asi The Taiping Rebellion In China

The Taiping Rebellion was a revolt that lasted over a decade. Many people lost their lives and the exact number of deaths continues to be a topic for debate. The Taiping rebellion had a strong impact on all those involved as well as those in the wake of the main conflicts. The Taiping Rebellion posed a threat to china both militarily and also as a direct impact to their way of life. This revolt was led by a man named Hong Xiuquan (Rowe p. 186). This conflict was mainly a battle of religion. In the book, Daily Lives of Civilians in Wartime Asia: From the Taiping Rebellion to the Vietnam War, which was edited by Stewart Loan, the impact of the rebellion is emphasized with an excerpt from the first chapter: “The Taiping Rebellion was

As mentioned earlier it was sparked by Hong receiving the Christian message on a pamphlet translated into Chinese from a Christian missionary (Rowe 187). From there it escaladed quickly ranging from destruction of temples and idols to military battles (Spence p.11). The Taiping leaders began storing and collecting arms and in “1853 they seized the huge city of Wuchang on the Yangzi River…, a very strategic, rich city” (Spence p. 12). There is a shift from just worshipping who they want how they want to becoming violent. Many battles begin taking place. In order to gain more followers Taiping officials promised adequate compensation for good the military needed (Lone p. 5). Taiping leaders also thought of the people when an abundance of goods were seized from “the homes of fugitive landlords…” they would be distributed among the local people (Lone p. 5). These ideals were popular among the peasants the poorer classes. “The Heavenly Army gained over 20,000 ‘new brethren’ in Hunan, drawn mainly from among the poor peasant, laborers, bandits, Triads, and other marginal” (Lone p.

“In March 1853, [the Taiping] captured the large and strongly fortified city of Nanjing… it became the seat of the Taiping administration for the next 11 years” (lone p. 5-6). The “ideologically committed Taiping army” began to “expose the weakness of the Qing government and capture a number of large cities and small towns along the way” (Lone p. 5). Along the conquering of these small towns and cities the Taiping had developed an entirely new economic system. “They had devised a millenarian belief system and a revolutionary program for a radical socioeconomic reorganization. Under this system, all money and valuables were pooled in a central ‘sacred treasury’” (Lone p. 5-6). Their ideas are very similar to that of the communal system. “According to the utopian Taiping treatise, The Land System of the Heavenly Dynasty, all land was to be dived according to family size, with men and woman aged 16 years or older receiving equal shares” (Lone p. 6). Although some of the ideas behind the Taiping rebellion sound fine and dandy the Taiping movement was eventually put to