The Taiping Rebellion: everything you wanted to know

Summary

History Extra Podcast: The Taiping Rebellion – Everything You Wanted to Know

Release Date: May 10, 2025

The History Extra podcast, hosted by Immediate Media and produced by the team behind BBC History Magazine, delves into the extensive and devastating Taiping Rebellion in this comprehensive episode titled "The Taiping Rebellion: Everything You Wanted to Know." Professor Stephen R. Platt, a distinguished historian from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, serves as the expert guest, guiding listeners through the complexities of one of history's bloodiest conflicts.

---

Introduction to the Taiping Rebellion

Timestamp: 02:43

Rob Attar opens the discussion by highlighting the often-overlooked Taiping Rebellion, labeling it "the bloodiest civil war in history" yet noting its relative obscurity outside China. Professor Stephen R. Platt introduces the rebellion, which raged from 1850 to 1864, resulting in over 20 million deaths and significantly weakening the Qing Dynasty.

China's Pre-Rebellion State

Timestamp: 03:34

Professor Platt sets the stage by describing China's economic turmoil in the mid-19th century. Following the First Opium War (1839-1842), China faced severe economic distress, particularly in South China. The war had disrupted traditional trade routes, shifting foreign commerce from Canton to the newly opened Shanghai. This shift left many laborers unemployed and exacerbated a currency crisis fueled by silver outflows due to opium smuggling. As Platt explains:

"There's a real economic crisis in South China. Huge levels of unemployment, just economic misery." (03:34)

Hong Xiuquan: The Rebellion's Leader

Timestamp: 06:04

The focus then shifts to Hong Xiuquan, the charismatic leader of the Taiping Rebellion. Originating from a poor Hakka farming family, Hong aspired to become a civil official but failed the rigorous imperial examinations multiple times. After a severe nervous breakdown and a transformative period of visions, Hong came to believe he was the younger brother of Jesus Christ, tasked with overthrowing the Qing Dynasty and establishing a Christian kingdom in China.

"Hong Xiuquan had this epiphany that he was the younger brother of Jesus Christ and that God had put him on earth in China to destroy the Qing Dynasty." (10:06)

Formation and Growth of the Taiping Movement

Timestamp: 11:43

Hong Xiuquan's religious visions inspired him to form the Society of God Worshippers, initially a faith-healing sect that promised protection and a better future. As the Qing government cracked down on this movement, it evolved into a formidable military force known as the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. The rebellion quickly gained momentum, attracting tens of thousands of Hakkas and other disaffected Chinese, fueled by promises of equality and religious salvation.

"The Taiping army... they are calling themselves the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom... Taiping means great peace." (11:52)

Challenges Faced by the Qing Dynasty

Timestamp: 17:47

Professor Platt outlines the structural weaknesses of the Qing military, which hindered effective suppression of the rebellion. The Qing maintained two separate militaries: the elite Banner Armies loyal to the Manchu rulers and the less trusted Green Standard Armies composed of Han Chinese. The Green Standards suffered from low morale, poor equipment, and fragmentation, often leading to defections to the Taiping side.

"The Green Standard kind of works like a whole lot of constabulary spread across the whole vast region of the Qing Empire." (17:47)

International Involvement: Britain and France

Timestamp: 27:23

The rebellion's scale eventually drew international attention, particularly from Britain and France. Initially maintaining neutrality, the outbreak of the Second Opium War (1856-1860) diverted British and French military resources, weakening the Qing's ability to combat the Taiping forces effectively. However, by the early 1860s, economic pressures from the US Civil War and shifting missionary support led Britain and France to intervene militarily on behalf of the Qing Dynasty.

"Ultimately, the British decided to intervene in China rather than intervening in the United States at the same time and sort of feeding into this..." (27:37)

Key Figures in Suppressing the Rebellion: Zeng Guofan and Charles Gordon

Timestamp: 42:14 & 29:56

The episode delves into the pivotal roles played by regional leaders like Zeng Guofan and the British officer Charles Gordon. Zeng, a Confucian scholar and loyalist, marshaled a formidable Hunan army, emphasizing personal loyalty and cohesive command structures. Meanwhile, Charles Gordon led the Ever Victorious Army, a mercenary force trained in Western military tactics, which proved instrumental in countering the Taiping forces despite internal conflicts and eventual disagreements with Chinese commanders.

"Zeng Guofan... had risen to the very top ranks of the imperial hierarchy... he starts organizing these militias." (42:12)

The Fall of the Taiping and Aftermath

Timestamp: 48:00

The rebellion concluded with the brutal suppression of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's capital, Nanjing, in 1864. The Qing Dynasty, though victorious, emerged significantly weakened and reliant on regional armies led by Han Chinese generals. The aftermath saw widespread devastation, with most casualties resulting from starvation and disease rather than direct combat. The Qing's diminished authority paved the way for increased foreign intervention and internal strife, setting the stage for China's eventual decline.

"The legacy of this internally in China, it's going to be a devolution of power and authority from the capital to the provinces..." (39:45)

Legacy and Modern Perception

Timestamp: 50:06

Professor Platt addresses the rebellion's relative obscurity in global historical narratives. He attributes this to the vastness of Chinese history, the exoticism associated with China, and a lack of comprehensive education on the subject outside China. Within China, the Taiping Rebellion remains a contentious topic, with shifting perspectives over time—from being hailed as heroes during the Mao era to being dismissed as religious zealots in more recent decades.

"I think the Taiping Rebellion should be much better known." (50:06)

Conclusion

Timestamp: 55:46

In wrapping up, Professor Platt emphasizes the global significance of the Taiping Rebellion, urging for greater recognition and understanding of its impact on both Chinese history and international relations. The episode concludes with reflections on the lasting scars left by the rebellion and its role in shaping modern China.

---

Notable Quotes:

• "There's a real economic crisis in South China. Huge levels of unemployment, just economic misery." – Stephen R. Platt (03:34)

• "Hong Xiuquan had this epiphany that he was the younger brother of Jesus Christ and that God had put him on earth in China to destroy the Qing Dynasty." – Stephen R. Platt (10:06)

• "The Taiping army... they are calling themselves the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom... Taiping means great peace." – Stephen R. Platt (11:52)

• "The Green Standard kind of works like a whole lot of constabulary spread across the whole vast region of the Qing Empire." – Stephen R. Platt (17:47)

• "The legacy of this internally in China, it's going to be a devolution of power and authority from the capital to the provinces..." – Stephen R. Platt (39:45)

• "I think the Taiping Rebellion should be much better known." – Stephen R. Platt (50:06)

---

Final Thoughts

This episode of the History Extra podcast provides an in-depth exploration of the Taiping Rebellion, shedding light on its origins, progression, and enduring legacy. Through Professor Stephen R. Platt's expert analysis, listeners gain a nuanced understanding of how this monumental conflict reshaped China and influenced global dynamics in the 19th century. Despite its catastrophic toll, the Taiping Rebellion remains a pivotal yet underrepresented chapter in world history.

Transcript

[Rob Attar]

This History Extra podcast is sponsored by NordVPN.

[Stephen R. Platt]

For centuries, travellers have worried about keeping their belongings and their identity secure while seeking out new places.

[Rob Attar]

Medieval pilgrims needed letters of safe conduct to get them past city guards and local officials. They didn't want to lose those letters, so they used special bags and sometimes.

[Stephen R. Platt]

Got priests to bless them too. You don't necessarily need spiritual protection these.

[Rob Attar]

Days, but you do need to make sure your data is safe if you.

[Stephen R. Platt]

Like knowing that no matter where you are in the world, all your data is protected, whether it's exploring Pompeii or climbing Machu Picchu.

[Rob Attar]

NordVPN keeps your sensitive data secure, protecting.

[Stephen R. Platt]

You from viruses, malicious malware and phishing sites. One NordVPN account can be used on up to 10 devices and offers the.

[Rob Attar]

Fastest VPN in the world, meaning no more buffering. To get your best discount off your.

[Stephen R. Platt]

NORDVPN plan, go to nordvpn.com hepod Our.

[Rob Attar]

Link will also give you four extra months on the two year plan.

[Stephen R. Platt]

There's no risk with Nord's 30 day money back guarantee. The link is in the podcast Episode Description box. Join Target Circle360 and get a free bouquet of flowers for Mom Right on.

[Rob Attar]

Time for Mother's Day.

[Stephen R. Platt]

From the trendiest styles to the sweet, sweetest Treats, with Target Circle 360 you can get all her gifts delivered the same day. Hurry join before Mother's Day and make her day extra special with Target Circle360 and a bouquet of fresh flowers on us only at Target. Membership required. Subject to terms and conditions Applies to orders over $35. Member week is here at Lowe's. Don't miss your chance to get up to 40% off hundreds of items like paint, outdoor and home essentials and more. Shop our exclusive deals happening in store and online now through May 14th. Not a rewards member. Join for free today and get ready to save more Lowes. We help you save loyalty programs subject to terms and conditions. Details@lowe's.com Terms subject to change this episode is brought to you by Indeed. When your computer breaks, you don't wait for it to magically start working again. You fixed the problem, so why wait to hire the people your company desperately needs? Use Indeed sponsored jobs to hire top talent fast and even better, you only pay for results. There's no need to wait. Speed up your hiring with a $75 sponsored job credit@ Indeed.com podcast. Terms and conditions apply.

[Rob Attar]

Welcome to the History Extra Podcast. Fascinating historical conversations from the makers. BBC History Magazine it's considered to be the bloodiest civil war in history, but there's a fair chance you've never heard of it. The Taiping Rebellion convulsed China from 1850 to 1864, leading to over 20 million deaths and severely weakening the Qing Dynasty. But it remains little known outside of China today. In this Everything youg Wanted To Know episode, Professor Stephen R. Platt takes us through the key events of the rebel and explains why it hasn't received the attention it deserves. He speaks to Robert. The Taiping Rebellion breaks out in 1850. What can you tell us about the state of China at this point?

[Stephen R. Platt]

The state of China is economic malaise, especially in South China, where the Taiping Rebellion begins. This is coming less than a decade after the end of the Opium War, Britain's first war with China. And one of the results of the Opium War was that prior to the war, from 1760 all the way up until 1840 or so, all of the British and American trade was restricted to Canton, in the very south of China. It was extremely inconvenient to get goods to Canton. Most of the tea and the silk and the other products that the foreigners were buying were produced along the Yangtze river, which is in Central China. So one of the results of the Opium War was the opening up of Shanghai, which is in the lower Yangtze Delta, to foreign trade. So after the Opium War, a lot of the foreign business moves up to Shanghai, and Canton, which had been sort of artificially propped up by this imperial decree that it was the center of foreign trade, lost that status. And you have huge numbers of menial laborers out of work who had employment in some way tangentially related to foreign trade in the south. You have that on top of an ongoing currency crisis that's a result of the opium smuggling trade and silver pouring out of the country. Long story short, there's a real economic crisis in South China. Huge levels of unemployment, just economic misery.

[Rob Attar]

Does this then mean that the Qing Dynasty is already under some kind of pressure even before this rebellion breaks out?

[Stephen R. Platt]

Absolutely. And one of the factors that ultimately sparked the Opium War was the Qing confronting this crisis of the silver drain to illegal opium smugglers. For the Daoguang Emperor, who was the emperor at the time of the Opium War, opium as a moral issue was very important to him, but equally, or possibly even more important, was the economic problems. So what happened is that as silver went out of the country, it became much more valuable within China, and people started hoarding it. But when it came time to collect taxes, each district was responsible for a fixed amount of silver that they had to pay to the capital, which meant that the peasants who live their lives, they farm their farms at tax time, they have to cough up more and more and more of the copper currency that they have in order to pay their taxes. So there's this dramatic rise of taxation for reasons that nobody really understood at the time. So the Qing is really starting to lose control economically in South China at this point.

[Rob Attar]

Could we now introduce Hong Xiuchan, who's the leader of this rebellion? What do we know about his early life?

[Stephen R. Platt]

So Hong Xiuchan was a Hakka. In Mandarin that's Kejia, and in English it means sort of the guest people. And this was a sort of a sub ethnic minority in that was sort of constantly being forced to move around. They're sort of the gypsies of China in a certain sense. And hakas were generally poor. They lacked land rights. But in the case of Hong Xiuquan, who was from a poor Hakka farming family, if somebody had a son who turned out to be really bright and smart, then even though they didn't have much money, a whole clan with the same surname could take up a collection in order to pay for that kid to have tutors so he could for the Imperial civil service examinations and hopefully someday become an official. And I should say that at this point in the Qing Dynasty, that if you could become an official, that was the ticket to prestige, to wealth. It elevated your entire extended family. So Hong Xiuquan was a Hakka boy who was born in South China not far from Canton, grew up in the period leading up to the Opium War, and he wanted to be a civil official. Like that was his goal in life. He was identified early on as being extremely smart. He had tutors who worked for him for free at times because they believed that he was so brilliant that he would pass the examinations and become a great official and then their reward would come later. So he was this extremely promising young man from a marginalized minority in South China dreaming of serving the empire. And the great irony of him is that he's going to be the man who brings it the closest to complete collapse by the end. So what happens to Hong Xiaochen is that he studies and he studies and he goes into the provincial capital. These exams were brutally difficult. The civil service exam in the provincial capital at Canton, it was only given every three years. If you qualified, you would go in. It was a three day long exam in a compound there. Usually only about 1 in 100 would be able to pass. So he would go in, he would take the examination, he would do well on the first day or two, and then he would slide, and his name would fall out of the circle of winners. So he kept failing the exam over and over as the years went by. And finally it came to a point where he failed. I believe it was his fourth attempt. And think of the pressure on this man, this young man going into the examination hall. The hopes of his entire extended family are riding on his shoulders, hoping that he will pass this examination. He knows that he's failed it in the past. So ultimately he goes in for his fourth attempt, he fails yet again, and then he has a nervous breakdown. He slips into a coma. He has to be carried back to his home village, where he spends about a month in a coma in his bedroom. And during this time, he would occasionally wake up and say completely incoherent things and leap around the room waving an imaginary sword and shouting about killing demons. He became known as sort of the madman of the village. And children would come and look in the window to try to get a glimpse of him when he was, you know, in one of these moments when he was awake. In any case, after this long period of collapse, he wakes up again. He comes out of his coma. Really all we know about him from this time is an account from his cousin, Hong Rengan, who's also going to play a big role in the Taiping Rebellion. But according to Hong Rengan, when Hong Xiuchuan came out of his coma, he was taller and he was better looking, and he had a richer voice, and he had this sort of new gleam in his eye, and he was sort of possessed. And he went right back into Canton to take the examination again the next time it was given, and he failed it again. And that was the point where he read a Christian tract in Chinese. So this is in the 1840s. This is the very early period of the Protestant missionary movement to China. And the Western Protestant missionaries, the first one was from England, Robert Morrison. Their goal was to somehow learn the Chinese language, get the Bible into Chinese, and then somehow distribute it in China. And really the hope of the missionaries was that if you could just get the Bible in Chinese into the hands of Chinese people, they could become Christians. So it's. After failing yet again, Hong Xiuquan, he reads one of these Bible tracts, and suddenly all of these dreams that he had while he was in his coma start to make sense, I should say what a few of these dreams were. While he was in his coma, he had These recurring dreams where there was an old man and a young man who were giving him lectures. At one point, the old man and the young man were criticizing Confucius, who apologized for deluding the Chinese people. It sort of went on and on. And after Hong Xiuquan read these Christian tracts, he finally realized who the old man in his dreams was, and that was God. And the young man in his dreams was Jesus Christ. And Hong Xouchen had this epiphany that he was the younger brother of Jesus Christ and that God had put him on earth in China to destroy the Qing Dynasty and to destroy Confucianism and to build a Christian kingdom in China.

[Rob Attar]

So he has these visions and then he creates this movement. What are the aims of his rebellion or his movement?

[Stephen R. Platt]

So his movement, it begins with just him converting his cousins and other relatives and then traveling to other Hakka villages in South China and sort of preaching this religion. They call themselves the Society of God Worshippers, and it's sort of a modification of the Christian God, but Hong Xiuquan is the prophet. And initially people joined this organization because it's sort of a faith healing sect. And if you subscribe to this religion and if you pray to this God, the rumors say that you're going to be protected. At one point, there was an epidemic of disease in South China, and the rumor went around that the God worshipers were immune to the disease. And so a lot of Hakkas join this religion in hopes that it's simply going to give them a long life and give them a better future. It's when the government starts to crack down on this organization that it sort of metastasizes and turns into an army. And he's going to gather an army of several tens of thousands of Hakkas in South China, which will be laid under siege by Qing imperial forces, who now are alarmed that this could be a real rebellion. And at the outset of the rebellion in 1851, they're going to just smash through the Qing lines and start march north with a real snowball effect, and they start calling themselves the Taiping. The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom is the name for what they are. Taiping means great peace. And Hong Xiuquan at this point is promising them that they will sweep away the corrupt world of the Manchus who rule the Qing Dynasty. They will bring God's kingdom to China, and really there will be no going back home again until they find their new Jerusalem. So one of the leading Taiping generals left an account of joining this peasant rebellion as it moved through the area where he lived. And he said the Taiping army came through. They took all of the food, but they said that anyone who joined them could sit and have an equal share. This man felt that he really didn't have anything in his life that was worth holding on to. You know, he was extremely poor. He had no real future to look forward to. And here are the typings promising this sort of beautiful future with God's blessings. So he joined the Taiping army, and when he did, they told him that he had to burn his own house down as sort of the final move to show that again, there would be no going home. So by 1851, this army is on the march. It's moving north into Hunan province in central China. And the original goal, which they're not actually going to be able to fulfill, is to keep going to Beijing and cut the head off of the Qing Dynasty.

[Rob Attar]

We had a question sent in by Weistrad history, and they wanted to know how many of the followers really believed that Hong was the son of God or were actually some of them joining for other reasons.

[Stephen R. Platt]

That's a wonderful question, because it's something that historians have a very hard time figuring out. I should say as a side note here that when the Taiping was ultimately suppressed, the Qing tried to destroy every last vestige of it. So records are limited. As far as we can tell, the core of the army and the core of the Taiping were hardcore believers in Hong Xouchuan's religion. They had this religious fervor. As they moved north, they started drawing in people from all different kinds of backgrounds. So the core of the movement was Hakka, but they're going to draw in all kinds of other Chinese. They're going to bring in out of work miners and out of work farmers and people who don't necessarily have a connection to this religion. By the time they have conquered the lower Yangtze region, they're going control an area with millions of people. They're going to try to make them all go to church. But it's a very tough question. How many of those people under typing control actually believed any of this versus going through the motions? Because they would be executed if they didn't. So I think you could say that the core of the typing movement were very fervent believers. But the further you move away from that and the bigger it gets, the more it turns into really less of a religious uprising than an ethnic uprising, that it's Han Chinese trying to destroy the Qing Dynasty, which is ruled by Manchus from the north who are not ethnically Chinese.

[Rob Attar]

And on a related note, were there other similar messianic figures around at this time, or was Hong really unique?

[Stephen R. Platt]

There were other messianic figures and there were, you know, messianic strains of Buddhism, and there were various uprisings led by all kinds of different religious sects at the time of the Taiping. I mean, this is the one that just exploded and took on real momentum and nearly toppled the dynasty. While the Taiping was going on, there was another rebellion just to their north called the Nian Rebellion, which, you know, the Nian rebels had a horseback army of about 30,000 soldiers or something. The Nian Rebellion, it was separate from the Taiping Rebellion. Basically what you have is a collapse of imperial control. And since the Qing can't contain the Taiping, then you have a vacuum of power elsewhere in the empire. So there are Muslim rebellions out in the west where they're independence from the Qing Dynasty, their miners, insurrections in the south. But these Nian rebels, who were also extremely destructive, in contrast to the Taipings, they didn't really have an ideology, they didn't have a religion behind them. They're generally just sort of remembered as a bandit uprising. But sometimes they would make alliances with the Taipings and sometimes they would fight separately. But as far as having a sort of a unified ideological message, it was really the Taipings versus the Confucianism of the Qing.

[Rob Attar]

Why did the Qing find it so difficult to contain this rebellion? I mean, considering it started from fairly lowly origins, a few kind of peasants against this mighty empire, why was it so difficult for them to get a handle on it?

[Stephen R. Platt]

Isn't it amazing? I mean, these were farmers. Their weapons initially were just farming implements. So how is it that they had managed to move their way through China? The answer to this lies in the structure of the Qing Dynasty's military at the time. As I've said, the Qing Dynasty was founded by Manchus. It was founded in 1644 by Manchus who conquered the Ming Dynasty and who viewed most of the Han Chinese as being their subjects. And the Manchus who ruled the Qing Dynasty didn't really trust the Han Chinese, especially the ordinary Han Chinese. So the Qing Dynasty had two separate militaries. They had an elite military called the Banner Armies, which were Manchus and Mongols and Han Chinese who come over to the side of the Manchus before the conquest of the Ming. So these they saw as like the truly loyal troops. They got the lion's share of the military budget. So most of the military budget went to the Banner armies. Most of the Banner armies were concentrated around Beijing to protect the Dynasty. And then there were pockets of them around the empire. In the largest cities, they would have a permanent garrison of maybe 20,000 troops at the largest, who would live there with their families. All of the rest of China is in the hands of what was called the Green Standard Armies, which were Han Chinese armies, which were viewed as subordinate to the Banner Armies. The origin of the Green Standard was surrendered Ming Dynasty troops who came over to the Qing. And the Qing didn't trust them, so they kept them in their own units. So it's when the Taiping starts out, it's the Green Standard that are trying to hold them back. And then you look at what the situation is for the Green Standard armies, which is that because the Qing does not trust the Han Chinese armies, they've built them with this structure of control that makes it pretty much impossible to unify different units of them, because they're afraid that if the Green Standard can work with each other, then they could unify and overthrow the dynasty. So the Green Standard kind of works like whole lot of constabulary spread across the whole vast region of the Qing Empire. So they weren't able to coordinate easily with each other, which meant that if the Taiping kept on the move, they kept sort of leaving units behind, or they would encounter units that weren't prepared for their arrival. Furthermore, in the Green Standard, the soldiers were paid very, very little. They were responsible for maintaining their own weapons, which at this point could be a sword that was 80 years old that they had gotten from their grandfather. So they had low morale. And as it turned out, a lot of them just went over to the side of the Taipings. So the Taipings were able to succeed in the initial part of their rebellion by moving constantly, by smashing through the lines of the Green Standard, when they tried to stop them, by winning a lot of the Green Standard over to their side, and they're not going to really have a chance of being contained until they get to the city of Nanjing, which is going to be their capital. But even there, when they Capture Nanjing in 1853, they slaughter the entire Banner population there. All of the Manchu military and Nanjing are executed along with their families and thrown into the river. So by the time you get to sort of the mid-1850s, the Taiping have succeeded in establishing a capital at Nanjing, which is on the Yangtze River. They're controlling really the sort of the wealthiest and most populous areas of central and eastern China, the Qing Dynasty's Green Standard armies have not been able to contain them. Still, the Qing have the very best of their forces based around Beijing. The cream of the Banner armies are based around Beijing. And here is where it's crucial that in the middle of all of this, all of these rebellions breaking out throughout China, in the middle of all of this, Britain and France go to war against the Qing. This is the Second Opium War, and it's going to end in 1860, with them scattering the Banner troops in the north, smashing through their lines, invading the capital and burning down the Emperor's summer palace. So all of these things are layering on top of each other, leaving the Qing incredibly weak. So the Taipings have routed the Green Standard armies, the Banner armies have been routed by the British and French, and the Qing just isn't left with much at that point.

[Rob Attar]

We had a question, actually, that came in from Sweden, Hungary, which was how the international community reacted to the Taiping Rebellion. But it sounds like initially, Britain and France exacerbated the situation for the Qing by launching the Second Opium War.

[Stephen R. Platt]

Yeah. So once news of this rebellion got out, foreigners weren't really sure what they should think of it. On the one hand, there was great sympathy for the idea of a rebellion where the Chinese were standing up and trying to take over their country from the Manchus. So there was this one point of view that the Taipings represented the people of China against their overlords, the Manchus. And so there was a sympathy on that basis. There was a sympathy based on them being Christians. And, you know, in a certain sense, this is what the Protestant missionaries had dreamed of, that if you can get the Bible into China, in the Chinese language, lo and behold, here's this massive rebellion. You, you know, half a million strong by the time they reach Nanjing, and they are declaring that this is going to be a Christian kingdom. So initially, there was hopefulness about what the Taiping might do in terms of making China friendlier to foreign relations, et cetera, et cetera. But ultimately, the British and the French and the Americans stayed hands off at the beginning of the war. They maintained neutrality for a whole decade of this, and they made it illegal for British or American citizens to get involved in the war in any way. So there were foreign mercenaries who went and joined and either fought on the side of the Taipings or fought on the side of the Qing Dynasty. But up until the very early 1860s, they did that illegally. And so, like their own militaries would try to arrest them if they could get their hands on them. So the world really sat up and watched when this began happening, but nobody knew where it was going to lead. Actually, interestingly enough, there is a Marxist analysis of the Taipings, a literal Marxist analysis, because Karl Marx was a reporter at the time, and he reported on the Taiping Rebellion while it was unfolding. His view of what was happening in China. He saw the Taiping Rebellion as being the inevitable result of the Opium War. And he said because the British had sort of cracked China open with the Opium War, it had led to this instability. And he described it like cracking open, like the sarcophagus of some ancient mummy. And as soon as it's exposed to the fresh air, it starts to decompose inside. So his view was that this was really sparked by this war that Britain fought against China, and that now it's turned into this massive rebell predicted that this was going to spread rebellion all the way to the ends of Europe, and that this was going to be the beginning of the general uprising, which, of course, did not exactly happen the way he expected. But one of the reasons why I became most interested in the Taiping and wound up writing a book about it was when I had read about it, it was always treated as something that really only mattered to China. Here it is. It's the largest civil war in human history. 20 to 30 million people are thought to have died in the course of this. But in all the textbooks and how it's written about it, it's like it's just a Chinese issue. And really, my own research was sparked by a question from a student when I was teaching about this at the University of Massachusetts. And he said, well, if this was a rebellion and it took place within China, and then it ends with the Qing dynasty still in power and no real change, he's like, why did it matter? And I realized I did not have a good answer to that question. And that's why I went looking and found that actually this really did matter globally. At the time, China was very much tied into trade routes, especially for Great Britain, that ultimately the British are going to decide to intervene in this war and break with the neutrality that they had for the first decade that is going to help decide the outcome of it. But initially, at least, yeah, there was real hope for the typing that in the end, never panned out. You chose to hit play on this podcast today. Smart Choice Progressive loves to help people make smart choices. That's why they offer a tool called Auto Quote Explorer that allows you to compare your Progressive Car Insurance quote with rates from other companies so you save time on the research and can enjoy savings when you choose the best rate for you. Give it a try after this [e-mail] Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates not available in all states or situations. Prices vary based on how you buy.

[Rob Attar]

If you've shopped online, chances are you've bought from a business powered by Shopify. You know that purple shop pay button.

[Stephen R. Platt]

You see at checkout?

[Rob Attar]

The one that makes buying so incredibly easy? That's Shopify. And there's a reason so many businesses sell with it. Because Shopify makes it incredibly easy to start and run your business. Shopify is the commerce platform behind 10% of all e commerce in the U.S. sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com promo.

[Stephen R. Platt]

Go to shopify.com prom McCrispy strips are now at McDonald's. I hope you're ready for the most dippable chicken in McDonald's history. Dip it in all the sauces. Dip it in that hot sauce in your bag. Dip it in your McFlurry. Your dip is your business. McCrispy strips at McDonald's so I guess.

[Rob Attar]

We hear we should start talking about the ever victorious army Charles Gordon and this British intervention. So you said how the Western powers initially weren't really getting involved in this rebellion. Why does that change in the early 1860s?

[Stephen R. Platt]

One of the things that changes in the early 1860s is that there's the outbreak of the US Civil War, which creates a special kind of economic crisis for Great Britain because Britain had been buying so much cotton from the US south and it lost access to that with the US Civil War. It had been processing it in Lancashire and elsewhere and then selling cotton textiles in China, but they'd lost the China market because of all the chaos from the Taiping Rebellion. So on the one hand, there is sort of a new decisiveness in the British government that they have to restore their markets. The US And China were their two largest external markets at that point, and they've both descended into chaos. And ultimately the British decided to intervene in China rather than intervening in the United States at the same time and sort of feeding into this, you have humanitarians in the British government. I don't know if they had been reading Marx's reports, but following that same reasoning, who believe that this whole thing is partly Britain's fault for having fought the Opium War and for having fought the second Opium War and destabilizing the government, I Mean, I should say, in 1860, when they invade the capital, they burn down the Emperor's summer palace, the Emperor goes into hiding in Manchuria, and he's going to die there without ever coming back to his throne. So the arguments are made that even if we've been trying to be neutral in China by fighting the Manchus, we have inevitably helped the Taipings, and so we should help fight the Taipings in order to balance that out. And then finally, the Protestant missionaries, who had been very supportive of the Taiping at the outset of the war, by the early 1860s, they've decided that the Taipings are nothing but blasphemers. They refuse to let go of their view that Hong Xiuquan is the Son of God. And so, in the eyes of the foreign Protestant missionaries, the Taiping are in fact, even worse than sort of the godless Manchus of the Qing Dynasty. And all of this comes together to justify, within the British government, an intervention on the side of the Qing Dynasty. And it's sort of shocking to the public at the time. And you have, you know, members of Parliament saying, well, we just fought two opium wars against the Qing Dynasty, and now you're saying that we're going to be allies and we're going to help them put down this rebellion. But that's how it played out.

[Rob Attar]

And what was the nature of the British military intervention there?

[Stephen R. Platt]

The most helpful part of the British intervention was through Charles Gordon. He used to be this towering figure in the Victorian pantheon. Charles Chinese Gordon. So Charles, he was sort of the face of the British intervention. There had been a mercenary army called the Ever Victorious army that was founded by an American illegally who died in 1862. But that army, it was based right near Shanghai and it was an army of about 5,000 Chinese troops who had been trained in a European style of drill. They were armed with European and American weapons, they had European and American officers, and they were extremely effective against the Taipings, who still had really rudimentary weapons. The Taiping had huge numbers of people, but the Ever Victorious army, even if there's only 5,000 of them, they had cutting edge naval cannons that could smash through the walls of occupied cities. They had steamships that could go upriver against the current with unimaginable speed at the time. So the Ever Victorious army, which had been this mercenary army, when the British intervene, they send Charles Gordon to be the chief officer of the Ever Victorious Army. So Gordon views his job as sort of coordinating with a Chinese commander, Li Hongzhang, who's the commander of one of these regional armies which I can talk about later, which have risen up to support the Qing from within China. So Charles Gordon coordinates with Li Hongzhang where his ever victorious army with their hundred pounder naval cannons and whatnot, will attack a Taiping city on a river, smash through the walls, come blasting in with repeating weapons and et cetera, et cetera, drive the Taipings out and then after them will come Li Hongzhang's army, which has the numbers to be able to occupy and hold the city, and then they move on to the next target. So Gordon viewed his role as basically showing the Chinese how to fight, that's really how he understood it and showing them in his vision, an honorable way of winning this war using British ingenuity, etc. Etc. However, Li Hongzhang did not view him as leading anything. Li Hongzhang very much viewed him as a mercenary who had been hired because he had certain skills and talents that the Chinese officers didn't have. And Gordon's going to be very successful. But the whole thing is going to unravel at the city of Suzhou, this massive city that was held by the Taipings. And there's an incident there where Charles Gordon, they're laying siege to the city of Suzhou. Charles Gordon enters into negotiations with some of the Taiping kings who are part of the occupation there, gets a group of lower level Taiping kings to betray their senior leader and open the gates of the city with an agreement that they'll be spared for having done this. And Gordon gives his word as an Englishman, et cetera, et cetera. They come sweeping into the city, Li Hongzhang's army comes in and almost the first thing Li Hongzhang does is execute all of them. And that's the point when Gordon is sort of faced with the reality that he's actually functioning as a mercenary and he's not actually setting any example and he just explodes in rage and he quits and he writes these horrible things about Li Hong Zhang, but in the end his leadership of the ever victorious army is going to be really the most helpful part of all of this for the Qing. Interestingly enough, another way in which the British tried to help the Qing was by building them a war fleet. They built a cutting edge naval fleet which they shipped off to China under a British officer, Sherrard Osborne, which was going to dramatically increase the Qing dynasty's naval power on the Yangtze River. But that too fell apart over an issue of command that Osborne refused to take commands from a Chinese officer and wound up quitting, and they sort of dissolved the fleet. So the British intervention was inept, and it absolutely did not win the war on its own. But in the final years of this war, the balance between the regional armies from Central China that were now leading the fight against the Taiping and the continued strength of the Taiping, it was all really on a razor's edge. And the British intervention served to just sort of tip the balance in the favor of the Chinese regional armies, I should say. The other major service that the British did was that Li Hongzhang's army had been they came from a region upriver in the Yangtze, where in order to get them to Shanghai, they would have to pass Nanjing, which was the capital of the Taipings, which was very heavily defended. So the British transported Li Hongzhang's entire army on British ships, knowing that the Taiping rebels would not dare to fire on a British vessel. So it's not like the Royal Navy came in guns blazing on the side of the Qing. Actually, in the grand scheme of things, this was pretty small, but it was enough to help tip the balance.

[Rob Attar]

Did the Taiping also face much opposition from within China? Apart from the kind of imperial forces, were there ordinary Chinese people who took against them?

[Stephen R. Platt]

That's an interesting question. There were. I mean, there are certainly accounts of people in areas under Taiping control who refused to go to the church or to grow their hair in a certain way, but they were usually killed. There wasn't an organized opposition from within, like Confucian scholars who lived under typing occupation. If you look at their diaries, generally, they just sort of of sit around in misery rather than trying to organize anything against them. I should say that hair played a big role in all of this. If you were a subject of the Qing Dynasty, you had to shave your head every 10 days, keep a nice shiny bald head, and grow a braid in the back, which was known as the queue. And that was a sign of your loyalty to the dynasty. The Taiping rebels were known as the long hair rebels. And so they grew out their hair and they had this sort of like wild, flowing hair. And so you could tell immediately from looking at somebody which side they were on. And what historians have found is that for peasants who generally don't care who's on the throne, they just want their crops to come up. They don't want their kids to be conscripted and sent off to fight. They want a peaceful life. So the way that many people endured life under the Taiping. Even if they didn't care or support about the Taiping cause, when the Taiping came through, they would have to start growing their hair out, but there's no choice about that. But they would often keep that braid in the back, the queue, and they would coil it up and sort of hide it under their hair, so they would grow out the long hair. They would have their braid secretly coiled up behind. And then if the Imperial forces managed to come through the area and drive back the Taipings, they could immediately let down their cue and shave their head, because if they didn't, they'd be executed by the Imperial troops. The problem was sometimes then the imperials would in turn get turned back by the Taipings, and having just freshly shaved your head, you would then be executed by the Taiping. So there was really no way out in this period. I mean, the incredible, incredible casualty figures for this, those numbers of 20 to 30 million, that's not the number who were killed in battle, huge numbers were killed in battle, but the vast majority of people who died during this war died of starvation. You have marauding armies of 100,000, 200,000 troops moving across the landscape, eating everything they can get their hands on, peasants, out of fear, being driven away from their farms and hiding in the mountains for years at a time. And by the end, there just simply was nothing for anybody to eat. So it's going to take generations for China to recover from this war.

[Rob Attar]

The Taiping rebellion goes on for close to 15 years, and the Taiping over this time controlled large swathes of China. How far were they able to actually live up to the ideals they preached in the areas that they ruled over?

[Stephen R. Platt]

Almost none at all. The main leaders of the Taiping were quite corrupt. The religion didn't really seem to catch on very well. They were not able to project their ideology in any way. I mean, here's where, if they had successfully been able to capture Beijing, they might have established themselves as the leaders of China. But as long as the Qing endured, even if in a very weakened state, they still laid claim to the mandate of Heaven and to sort of leadership of a Confucian civilization that the Taipings were against. So as long as the Qing were still in power, all of the Confucians in the empire generally wanted to be on that side, even if, by virtue of where they lived, they couldn't be. So there's no evidence that the Taiping religion caught on widely. A lot of the followers who came in it was out of anger at the dynasty And I think this is really better understood as an ethnic conflict. The Han Chinese versus the Manchus who ruled the Qing. I should say that the Han Chinese generals who served the Qing in this, by the end of the 19th, early 20th century, they are going to be just excoriated by historians as being traitors to their race who crushed an ethnic Chinese uprising. This is their own people, and killed their own people in order to preserve the rule of the Manchus who were aliens.

[Rob Attar]

As we've discussed, the Taiping Rebellion is eventually defeated. But how weakened was the Qing Empire and its kind of prestige by the fact this rebellion had happened and gone on for so long?

[Stephen R. Platt]

Dramatically weakened. I mean, the war is going to end with the Qing Dynasty continuing, but the reason that it continues is not because it won the war. The war is going to be won for it by these regional armies from Hunan and from Anhui Province that rise up independently and fight on the side of the dynasty, but without taking clear direction from it. And these are Han Chinese armies with Han Chinese generals leading them. So this was a tremendous humiliation for the Manchus of the Qing Dynasty. It's going to be like 20 years or something before they commission big battle paintings to celebrate the victories of this war because simply the Manchus failed. So the legacy of this internally in China, it's going to be a devolution of power and authority from the capital to the provinces as the Han Chinese generals who suppressed the Taiping take on inordinate amounts of power in the post war era. So those victorious generals from the regional armies, they're going to be the most powerful civil officials after the war in terms of weakness internationally. After two Opium wars, it's the Taiping Rebellion that convinces the British that they have a vested interest in seeing the Qing Dynasty continue and if possible, thrive. The British have no desire whatsoever to try to colonize China like they have done in India, but they worry that if China collapses, that the French will try to do that and so the British would have to get involved too. So the British government basically comes to the conclusion that it is better to treat the the Qing as allies and as a friendly power. So after the war, Americans and British start selling China weapons, loaning them advisors, teaching them how to build steam powered gunships, helping them really strengthen their military in hopes of them staying in power. Because as long as the Qing is in power, then the British and the Americans and the French and the Russians still have all those treaties that they got from the Opium wars giving them preferential trade. And that's what they want. They want the trade. They don't want to have to govern the country. So the Qing comes out of this with support from foreign powers helping to prop it up. But the prestige within China is really, really damaged.

[Rob Attar]

And just coming back to those regional armies that you talked about, why did they then decide to take on the Taiping rebellion?

[Stephen R. Platt]

So the leading figure in these regional armies is a man named Zeng Guofan. He was the leader of the Hunan army. Tsun Guo Fan was a talented Confucian scholar. He had passed the examinations, you know, all the things that Hong Xiuchan had failed to do. He had risen to the very top ranks of the imperial hierarchy. And when the rebellion broke out, he happened to be at home in Hunan Province. I should preface this by explaining that there was a long standing policy in Imperial China called the law of avoidance, where officials of the imperial bureaucracy were not allowed to serve in their home regions. They could not serve in their home provinces because of the fear of corruption. If a government official like a provincial governor, was serving in an area where his family lived and his friends and their friends, et cetera, there was the possibility of some sort of regional power base arising there that would threaten the dynasty. So the only time that an official would be back home for an extended period of time usually was if one of their parents had died. And that was the case for Zeng Guofan. So he was from Hunan Province. He had been serving in the capital, his mother died, and so he was home. He was supposed to observe three years of mourning and so retiring from public life for three years to mourn the death of his mother. When the Taiping came through the province, out of absolute desperation, the emperor asked him to come out of his retirement and start taking charge of these informal militias that had started cropping up in central China, where wealthy landowners who saw the breakdown of imperial order would raise their own little armies to protect their town or their village or their land. So Zeng Guifan ultimately decided that the crisis to the empire was threatening enough that it was worth violating the Confucian rule that he should be mourning his mother. So he comes out of retirement, he starts organizing these militias, and ultimately he's going to build an army of 120,000 soldiers who are loyal to him. This is an absolute violation of that long standing law of avoidance. How Hunanese was this army? Zenglefan chose his own brothers and his scholarly friends to be the generals under him. They chose their own officers from among their friends and acquaintances. At all levels of this army, recruitment was done through entirely personal pathways all the way down to the very bottom level, where the foot soldiers of the Hunan army came from the same villages as each other. And they had been recruited by an officer who they had grown up nearby, who they felt a personal bond with. So at every single level of this army, their loyalty was to each other and to the officer just above them. And Zeng Guofan held to this to the point that if an officer was killed in battle, the whole pyramid of the army below him would either just be dissolved and sent back home to Hunan, or if they had ways of being recruited into other units, they could do that. So it's a largely self funded and self directed army. And the top is Zeng Guofan. He's like a God to this army. And it's absolutely crucial that he is loyal to the dynasty, because there are times when he defies the instructions of Beijing if he thinks he knows better what to do. But ultimately what it comes down to is that Zeng Guofan viewed this war with the Taipings as being even bigger than just a threat to the dynasty, because dynasties fall, that's just the nature of things. The Qing had already been around for 200 years, and maybe this was its destined time. What really triggered Zeng Guofan and became sort of the basis of his appeal to his own soldiers and his fundraising was that this was a war of civilization, that the Taipings were not just Chinese rebels trying to establish a new dynasty, they in fact were foreign influenced Christians with a completely foreign doctrine and ideology, and they were fighting a war against Confucian civilization. So Zenggufan's view was that more than just threatening the dynasty, this was threatening the entire civilization of China. So that went into the building of this army. And the army, this is, you know, literally a band of brothers. And whereas in the Taiping armies you could run away if your army was defeated, if you were in the green standard, if you were attacked by a larger force, you could just disappear and desert. In the Hunan army, you were fighting alongside other young men who had come from your home village, and if you deserted them in battle, you probably could never go home again. Everyone knew who you were and what you had done. So there's going to be this incredible cohesiveness for the Hunan army, and it's Zeng Guofan who is really going to lead the way, not just in the suppression of the Taipings, but in the reconstruction era that comes after. But I should say that by the end of this war in 1864, Zeng Guofan is going to lead the crushing of the rebel capital at Nanjing. At that point, his own officers are calling on him to overthrow the dynasty and set himself up in Nanjing as the new emperor of China. The British officials in China were expecting this as well. Zheng Guofan, the head of this regional army, had become the most powerful man in China. And if he had wanted to, he pretty easily could have established himself as emperor. But he didn't. And his loyalty led him to disband his army and relinquish his military power and go back into the service of the dynasty, which is going to make him a really lasting model of Confucian virtue in China, the absolute example of what a loyal official should be.

[Rob Attar]

So after the rebellion had been defeated, what kind of retribution was handed out to the leaders of the Taiping?

[Stephen R. Platt]

Those leaders who were caught would be cut into pieces. There were many gradations of capital punishment in China, and the lowest of the low, which was reserved for rebels and revolutionaries, was that so called lingering, being cut into pieces while they're still alive. The dynasty tried to extinguish any lasting sign that the Taipings had even existed. Many people who were followers of the typing were able to slip back into the regular population. So there's going to be typing sympathizers all the way up into the 20th century in South China, people who went home. But in Nanjing, it's just absolute scorched earth. They kill all the men they can get their hands on, they burn the city and the women. In Nanjing, many of them are hauled back to Hunan as brides of the Hunan army officers and soldiers. But the ending of this war is just destruction on an unimaginable scale. The area that the Taiping controlled had been the most fertile and prosperous and populous region of China for a long time by the end of the war. There are accounts where you could go overland for miles and not see a single vestige of a human being. There are accounts of British ship captains steaming up the Yangtze river and describing the banks of the river as being completely white with the bones of the dead. They would drop anchor and go ashore and they would find villages where there were no living people left. There were just dried up corpses in the streets. There were tigers and wild pigs roaming it with impunity. So it's almost unthinkable how China will recover from this in 1864 when it ends. But they do and they do with a lot of help.

[Rob Attar]

We had a question sent in by Adam Kirpel Fronius, and he says this was such a seismic event with millions and millions of victims. So why is it not better known today?

[Stephen R. Platt]

I wish I knew why it wasn't better known today. In fact, I was talking to a US historian yesterday who had never heard of this before. I think it's because of that exoticism that attaches to China and sort of the mystery of it. I mean, China is a big country with a very, very long history, and it can be extremely daunting to somebody who has not studied it before or lived there before. I think just the sheer size and weight and expanse of China's history and civilization is such that for an outsider, it's really hard to know, like, where do you dip your toe in? Where do you start if you want to learn something about it? And something as big as the Taiping Rebellion, when you hear it in English, people hear it and they're what? What, you mean like people who use typewriters? The Typing Rebellion again, I mean, I remember what it felt like to first get started trying to learn something about China. I had gone all the way through high school and all the way through college having no interest in China whatsoever. It was just. I accepted it as just this huge blank spot on the map. And that's one of the reasons why I went there after college to go and be a teacher there. And you start to realize all of these huge, as this person said, seismic events that have taken place there that just weren't taught to you previously. In my case, in my American upbringing and the education I got here, I don't think I'd even heard anything about the Opium War before. So I think the Typing Rebellion should be much better known. And I think also part of the reason why it isn't is this sort of lingering belief that sort of what happens in China stays in China, that the Typing Rebellion. Oh, yeah. Well, it's just this big, huge thing that happened in China, and then a lot of people died. And there you are. But one of the things that I try to argue, I argued in the book that I wrote about this is that this was very much a global event, and people in the United States, while this was happening, were much more aware that the Taiping Rebellion was happening than people in the United States in 2025 are aware that it ever happened. So it's something that should be much better known than it is.

[Rob Attar]

And then in China today, how is the rebellion remembered?

[Stephen R. Platt]

That is a wonderful question because it is extremely controversial. Ever since the ending of the war, the views of this war in China have been controversial. When the Communists came to power in China in 1945, Mao Zedong really viewed himself as being the spiritual descendant of Hong Xiaochan and viewed the Communist revolution as finishing the work that the Taiping Rebellion had tried to start in the 19th century. For that reason, through the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, the Taiping were the heroes of this war. And every kid in China learned about the Taipings and all the glorious things that. That they had done. So Guo Fan, who was the Han Chinese general who suppressed them, was a villain. He was a traitor to his race. He was a running dog of the capitalist class, whatever you want to call him. This changes, however, once you get into the more contemporary era. By the time you get to the 1980s, there's a shift, and actually it's Zeng Guo Fan who becomes the hero. And there's this Zeng Guofan fever in China in the 1980s, and everyone's reading books about Zeng Guofan, and they're reading his family letters to his. His sons. And the typings start getting sort of pushed aside. And the view of the typing today is basically that they were a bunch of religious lunatics who killed a lot of people because of some crazy idea they had of religion. And they're viewed as being much more like Falun Gong or something like that. And you can see why this would be. It's because by the 1980s and the 1990s, especially into the 21st century, the communist Party of China is not revolutionary anymore. The revolution is in the past. And they are wary of celebrating angry peasants who were dissatisfied with their government and rose up against them. They don't want to celebrate that anymore because they don't want people to do that. There are a lot of unhappy peasants in China. There are a lot of unhappy people in the countryside, and they don't want to be telling them that this is the model for your behavior. So the amazing thing about all of this, and maybe this also feeds into that previous question of why such a seismic event isn't better known. It's because China has never really been able to settle on how this war should be remembered. And for that reason, I don't know if you've been around small towns in New England in the United States, like, I live in Massachusetts, and every little town here has a little town green where they have a memorial for the US Civil War. And there will be a little roster of the local boys who went often fought in the Civil War. And maybe they have a cannon or something like that. That's all over the north. They have them all over the South. I mean, I don't think you can count how many Civil war commemoration sites there are for the US Civil War that took place at the same time in China. There is one museum for the Taiping Rebellion and it's not very well funded and it's in Nanjing. But this has never been commemorated on that sort of society wide scale that the US Civil War has been remembered as. And I think that's partly because politically in China, one side always has to be right and either the typing were correct and Zengguofan was a traitor to his race, or Zheng Guo Fan is a model of being a loyal citizen and a loyal minister, and the Taipings were just crazy troublemakers who killed many people.

[Rob Attar]

That was Stephen R. Platt, professor of History at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, speaking to Rob Attar. Stephen's book on this subject is Autumn in the Heavenly China, the West and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War. Stephen also appeared on the History Extra podcast to answer listener questions on the Opium wars, and you can find that wherever you listen that thanks for listening. This podcast was produced by Daniel Kramer Arden.