...originating in Guangxi and Guangdong provinces of southern China, began in December 1850, when Hong Xiuquan, a Hakka leader of a syncretic Christian sect, defeated local forces sent to disperse his followers. Hong then proclaimed the establishment of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, after which the rebellion spread to several other provinces with amazing speed.
In 1853 the Taiping captured Nanjing and for a while it seemed that Beijing would fall next. Because the Manchu troops were unsuccessful and ineffective, Xianfeng dispatched several prominent ethnic Chinese mandarins, such as Zeng Guofan; and other non-Manchu forces, such as the Mongol general Sengge Rinchen, to crush the rebellions.
Hong established the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom with its capital at Nanjing, whence he controlled large parts of southern China, at one point ruling about 30 million people. The rebel agenda included social reforms such as shared property, equality for women, and the replacement of Confucianism, Buddhism and Chinese folk religion with their form of Christianity. Because of their refusal to wear the queue, Taiping troops were termed "Longhairs" by the Qing government. Due to internal disputes, poor organization and ineffective administration, the rebellion began to falter. The government eventually crushed the rebellion with the aid of native Han, Mongol, French and British forces.
Origins
China, under the Qing Dynasty in the mid-19th century, suffered a series of natural disasters, economic problems and defeats at the hands of the Western powers; in particular, the humiliating defeat in the First Opium War. The Qing government, led by ethnic Manchus, was seen by much of the Han Chinese population as an ineffective and corrupt foreign regime. Anti-Manchu sentiment was strongest in the south among the laboring classes and it was these disaffected elements who flocked to join the charismatic Hong, a member of the Hakka community, itself a disaffected segment of Chinese society.
At the age of thirty-seven, Hong Xiuquan, had failed in numerous attempts to pass the imperial examinations (5% pass rate), and was thus denied access to the ranks of the ruling scholar-elite. Hong then experienced a lengthy illness, from which he recovered with a changed personality. After reading a pamphlet he had received from a Protestant Christian missionary, Hong concluded that his illness was in fact a visionary trance which revealed that he was the younger brother of Jesus, and had been sent to rid China of "devils"; i.e., corrupt Manchu rulers and followers of Confucius. After this vision, he felt it was his duty to spread his interpretation of Christianity and overthrow Manchu rule. American Baptist missionary Issachar Jacox Roberts became a teacher and an adviser to Hong. The sect's power grew in the late 1840s, initially as a campaign to suppress bandits, then as a guerrilla rebellion, and finally as a widespread, bloody civil war.
Early years
The revolt began in Guangxi province. The Taiping belief in sharing property in common and their propaganda against the Manchu rulers gained followers among peasants, workers, miners, and other outcasts. The Taiping Rebellion aroused the general discontent of the Chinese people with the Manchus, who were deemed corrupt and ineffective against bandits and foreigners. The revolt soon spread throughout southeastern China as peasant bands joined the evangelical movement. By 1853 the group, which had grown to an army of more than a million, controlled five provinces on the lower reaches of the Yangzi.
Middle years
Hong Xiuquan withdrew from active control of policies and administration, ruling exclusively by written proclamations that often had religious content. Hong disagreed with his lieutenant Yang Xiuqing in certain matters of policy and became increasingly suspicious of Yang's ambitions, his extensive network of spies, and Yang’s declarations when "speaking as God." Yang, his family, and all those loyal to him were put to death in 1856.
Taiping delegates tried to widen their popular support with the Chinese middle classes and forge alliances with European powers, but failed on both counts. The Europeans, preferring an effete, pliant government to a strong, revolutionary one, decided to stay neutral. Inside China, the rebellion faced resistance from the traditionalist middle class because of the rebels' hostility to Chinese customs and Confucian values. The land-owning upper class, unsettled by the Taipings' land reform policies and peasant sympathies, sided with government forces and their Western allies.
In 1859 Hong Rengan, a cousin of Hong Xiuquan, developed an ambitious plan to expand the Kingdom's boundaries. In 1860 the Taiping rebels succeeded in taking Hangzhou and Suzhou to the east, but they eventually became overextended and their failure to take Shanghai marked the beginning of the decline of the Kingdom.
Fall of the Kingdom
The attempt to take Shanghai in August 1860 was repulsed by a force of Qing imperial troops and European officers under the command of the American Frederick Townsend Ward, who conceived of training and outfitting local Chinese with Western weapons. This remarkably effective unit was termed the "Ever Victorious Army," and was led by Charles "Chinese" Gordon after Ward’s death in 1862. Imperial forces were reorganized under the command of the ethnic Chinese Zeng Guofan and Li Hongzhang, and the imperial reconquest began in earnest. By early 1864 imperial control in most areas was re-established.
Aftermath
Although the fall of Nanjing in 1864 marked the demise of the Taiping regime, the struggle was not yet over. There were still several hundred thousand Taiping rebel troops continuing to fight, with more than a quarter-million Taiping rebels in the border regions of Jiangxi and Fujian alone. It wasn't until August 1871 that the last Taiping rebel army was completely wiped out by the governmental forces in the border region of Hunan, Guizhou and Guangxi.
Death toll
With no reliable census at the time, estimates are necessarily based on projections, but the most widely cited sources put the total number of deaths during the 15 years of the rebellion at about 20–30 million civilians and soldiers. Most of the deaths were attributed to plague and famine. At the Third Battle of Nanking in 1864, more than 100,000 were killed in three days.
Total War
Extent of Taiping control in 1854 (in red)
The Taiping Rebellion was the first instance of total war in modern China. Almost every citizen of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was given military training and conscripted into the army to fight against Qing imperial forces.
During this conflict both sides tried to deprive the other of resources to continue the war and it became standard practice to destroy agricultural areas, butcher the population of cities and in general exact a brutal price from captured enemy lands in order to drastically weaken the opposition's war effort. This war was total in the sense that civilians on both sides participated to a significant extent in the war effort and in the sense that armies on both sides waged war on the civilian population as well as military forces.
This resulted in massive civilian death toll with some 600 cities destroyed. Since the rebellion began in the province of Guangxi, Imperial forces allowed no rebels speaking its dialect to surrender. Reportedly in the province of Guangdong, it is written that 1,000,000 were executed.