L29 The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom
The stresses within Chinese society that were growing in the early 19 th century led some Chinese to search for radical new ways to deal with the world around them. Christian missionaries from the West began to make greater headway in seeking Chinese converts. In this context, one of the more intriguing episodes in Chinese history unfolded. This lecture will trace the course of the Taiping Rebellion, in which a tiny cult begun by Hong Xiuquan, who believed himself to be the younger brother of Jesus Christ, blossomed into a mass movement of tens of millions and nearly brought the Qing dynasty to an end. By the time imperial troops destroyed the last of the Taiping forces in the mid1860s, some 20 million people had died as a result of war and related disasters. The dynasty survived but never fully recovered from this trauma.
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