Causes Of The Taiping Revolution

The first entry for the definition of a revolution in the Oxford Dictionary is “an overthrow or repudiation and the thorough replacement of an established government or political system by the people governed”. Well, the revolution that I am about to talk about now was not successful- in fact it was a rebellion, an unsuccessful one, which was crushed ruthlessly by the ruling government. But what else does the Oxford Dictionary define a revolution as? “A radical and pervasive change in society and the social structure, especially one made suddenly and often accompanied by violence.” The Taiping Revolution surely did make changes and impacts on China, or at least tried to at the most. Hong Xiuquan, the leader of the Taiping Revolution, was the …show more content…
He denounced the feudal system upon his failure and instead turned to Christianity and the Western thoughts, where he had a vision from the Christian God that instructed him to create a “Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace” to replace the ruling Qing Dynasty. The Taiping Rebellion occurred soon after Hong Xiuquan began spreading his ideas to the peasants of Guangdong and gathered a large number of followers, from which where Hong Xiuquan proclaimed his Heavenly Kingdom and issued edicts considering the Confucian principles that China had followed since the Han Dynasty as heretical and wrong and encouraging people to live a more western, Christian life by converting to Christianity and living by the Bible. This was revolutionary as there was never this type of rebellion before in China and of such a large scale, in this case referring to the fact that no one had ever challenged Confucian ideals with so much success or led a large-scale religious rebellion in China …show more content…
The ethnic Chinese were also very annoyed towards the foreign rule by the Manchus, the ethnic group that dominated the best part of society after the fall of the Ming dynasty and Hong Xiuquan offered to help the ethnic Chinese overthrow the Manchu and to restore the rule of the ethnic Chinese, being the first to express a sort of nationalist identity in Qing China for the ethnic Han Chinese. Large numbers of the Chinese people rejected foreign rule by the Manchus, and these peasants would gather to Hong Xiuquan’s nationalist cause to return the ethnic Chinese to ruling China. Therefore, the Taiping Rebellion was revolutionary as it was key in the duplicating of a new philosophy, Chinese nationalism, which was a great change from the feudal mindsets of the Qing