I suspected Hong would eventually be...removed...and a more rational leadership of the Taiping movement take over. Given the fact the man has retreated to navel-gazing and let his subordinates kill each other, he's more useful as a martyr than ruler anyway.
All About My Brother: A Taiping Rebellion Timeline
- Thread starter subversivepancakes
- Start date
Hendryk
Banned
Better known in the Western world as the Triad.
Interesting POD. You're definitely on to something.
Keenir
Banned
cool title.
the whole entry's great.
"its good to be the king"
temporal compression is perfectly acceptible,
Actually, you can still say that you only have one POD, for the AH purists out there. Your POD is basically that the rivalry between Hong and his subordinate spirals out 2 years faster than OTL, in 1854. That allows the Butterfly Effect to explain any other difference you have.
On a side note, I hope Confucianism and Taoism survive this Timeline.
On a side note, I hope Confucianism and Taoism survive this Timeline.
Same here, though I am glad to see a rare Taiping TL pop up. And I have to congratulate subverisvepanda for making one of the best first posts ever.On a side note, I hope Confucianism and Taoism survive this Timeline.
On a side note, I hope Confucianism and Taoism survive this Timeline.
Actually, they've got a much better chance in this timeline than in other Taiping-centered TLs (wait, are there any others?). Yang Xiuquan - who with Shi Dakai is effectively running the rebellion - was in OTL much more congenial to Confucianism than Hong Xiuquan, and believed that it could be reconciled with the Taiping brand of Christianity. Hong was rather nutty about it (and everything else). He even banned pictures, etc. of dragons on the grounds that they were a symbol of traditional morality. Yeah . . . he was a crazy person.
Isn't it awesome? Who wouldn't want people to have to refer to them as "the Wing King, Lord of Five Thousand Years?" Fun note: if you transliterate it phonetically, "Wing King" is "E-Wang."
I love it. It is indeed very Chinese to ruthlessly and efficiently implement ideas like Communism, only to pause thirty years later and say, "Oops . . . you know, we probably should have thought this through more carefully."
I love this TL! I was one of the Westerners who hadn't heard about this rebellion until recently, and when I learned about it, my head exploded. I am going to be following this.
I have not gotton to the point in my Chinese education where I can learn that beyond the word Black
Though the other radicals that I recognized have given me alight ego boost!!!
Strangely I have similarly played with a idea like this only set before during the Ming times, with the White Lotus Society setting up a Heavenly Kingdom in China ruled by the Venerable Mother on earth.
I suspect "The Rape of Nanking" book in this TL is going to be a bit shorter than ours.
TTL: Three days of killing POWs vs OTL: 6 weeks of killing, torturing and raping almost half a million people.
Anyway, good update and great POD. I don't know the lesser players of the Taiping Rebellion (haven't found a good history book about it in English!), but seems quite plausible.
.TTL: Three days of killing POWs vs OTL: 6 weeks of killing, torturing and raping almost half a million people.
Anyway, good update and great POD. I don't know the lesser players of the Taiping Rebellion (haven't found a good history book about it in English!), but seems quite plausible.
I don't speak Chinese at all, but I've seen Hendryk's commentI have not gotton to the point in my Chinese education where I can learn that beyond the word Black
Though the other radicals that I recognized have given me alight ego boost!!!
And Black Dragon River/Amur Province is Heilongjiang, in Chinese Manchuria. So, subversivepanda lives in the northernmost part of China, close to the Russian border.I'm sure if you made a survey, most people here would acknowledge the coolness of living in a place called Black Dragon River
BTW, it's great TL, subversivepanda! If only I know more about Chinese history... I hope that casualties wouldn't be even more terrible than in OTL (I've read that 100 million of Chinese died due to the Taiping Rebellion, mostly of hunger, because the Blue River dams were destroyed; if so, then this war remains most destructive in history, even more so than WWII).
Part #2: The Twelve Puppeteers
Excerpted from “Governance in the Heavenly Kingdom,” by Caroline Zuma. University of Toronto Press, 1982.
- How do you solve a problem called Hong Xiuquan? This was the dilemma faced by 石达开 (Shi Dakai) and 杨秀清 (Yang Xiuqing). While it must have been tempting to make a public spectacle of his downfall, or simply to announce that the Heavenly King had suffered a fatal accident, Shi and Yang realized that without Hong’s presence the rebellion was doomed to collapse. After all, it was Hong’s charisma and leadership that had united the rebels into a cohesive force and given them strength and purpose. But the main reason why Hong could not simply be dumped in a ditch was religious in nature. The Heavenly Kingdom itself was based on the idea that Hong was the son of God and the brother of Jesus Christ – and one does not simply depose the divine. Thus, instead of tearing Hong down, Shi and Yang built him up, issuing a series of declarations that both proclaimed his divinity and announced that he was retiring from earthly affairs to commune with his father and older brother, God and Jesus Christ. While these grand proclamations were being issued, including one which stated that Hong and his scions would rule the Heavenly Kingdom for ten thousand years, Shi and Yang were creating the structures of a new government. Thus was the 使徒会 (Shitu hui, or Council of the Apostles) formed. Supposedly established to “faithfully interpret and execute the divine words of the Heavenly King (遵奉地解释，执行天王神圣之懿旨) (1),” in fact the Council of Apostles was the body through which Shi and Yang ruled the Taiping Tianguo. Most of the twelve members of the council were firmly in the pockets of Shi and Yang, although there were some members who were powerful in their own right, most notably the brilliant naval commander 唐正才 (Tang Zhengcai). Shi and Yang’s silent coup was immeasurably aided by the air of ambiguity that surrounded the entire enterprise. Most people had no idea what had actually happened, and even some members of the Council of Apostles were under the illusion that Hong was still in charge. (2) Hong had surrendered responsibility for the day-to-day affairs of the kingdom the year before of his own accord, and thus most people found it quite easy to believe that he would retire from temporal affairs completely. In any event, a great deal of the army was personally loyal to Shi Dakai . . .
Thus it was that Hong Xiuquan lived out the remainder of his days under de facto house arrest in the Palace of the Heavenly King, which he never again left. He was watched at all times by the 天王保护队 (Tianwang baohu dui, or Guardians of the Heavenly King) – more commonly known to Western readers as the Red Guards - which were an elite unit handpicked by and loyal to Yang Xiuqing, who ensured that Hong stayed right where he was. It is said that Hong’s chefs – also handpicked by Yang – put copious amounts of opium in the Heavenly King’s meals. Hong’s days were spent in a drug-addled haze; his nights were spent with one or more of his two hundred concubines. (3)
Excerpted from “Taiping Social Policy: A Study in Contradictions,” by Jehoshaphat Trumbull. University of British Columbia Press, 1922.
- The Taiping Kingdom was, on paper at least, inarguably the most progressive and egalitarian society in the world. A policy of strict equality between the sexes was declared; women were allowed to take the civil service examinations and serve in combat roles in the military. Prostitution and polygamy were banned on pain of death – although many Taiping leaders continued to keep concubines – and foot binding, slavery, opium, and gambling were also proscribed (4). The society that Hong Xiuquan created also leaned towards Marxism (although Hong wouldn’t have known Marx from a hole in the ground). Private property was abolished and society was declared to be classless. Taiping society also had a theocratic bent: the subject of the civil service examinations was changed from the Confucian classics to the Bible, and all citizens were required to undergo baptism and convert to Christianity.
In the early years of the Taiping, this society essentially existed only on paper. Civil administration ranged from shaky to nonexistent, and most of the Taiping social reforms were not implemented in the countryside. It was probably best for all concerned that the Taiping didn’t try too hard to enforce these policies, especially the more esoteric ones. For example, Hong decreed that the sexes should be strictly separated and that even married couples must not live together or . . . do other things that married couples often do. (5) This policy was unceremoniously abandoned after the Silent Coup that followed the Saturday Night Massacre of 1854. Taiping internal policy changed dramatically after the fall of Hong and the rise of Yang Xiuqing and Shi Dakai to prominence. Yang, who had always been a modernizer – it was he who had previously agitated for the change to a solar instead of a lunar calendar – embraced Western ideas, calling on citizens to build a 和谐社会 (hexie shehui, or Harmonious Society) that was rooted in 科学发展 (kexue fazhan, or Scientific Development). Yet he also softened restrictions on the practice of Confucianism and property ownership. (6) Yang had long believed that Confucian morality was compatible with the Taiping brand of Christianity, and thus he allowed Confucianism to resume its role in the lives of the people. This trend culminated in 1877, when the Council of Apostles announced that they had received a “revelation” from Hong Xiuquan stating that just as he was Jesus’ younger brother, so too was Confucius God’s younger brother, who had been sent to Earth to spread morality and right thinking . . . (7)
Excerpted from “History of the Qing Dynasty, 1644-1976: The Reign of the Xianfeng Emperor,” by Maarten Maartens. University of Leiden Press, 2002.
- The 咸丰帝 (Xianfeng Emperor) was the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time. After all, the Dragon Throne was no place for an opium-smoking, alcoholic teenager. Yet when his father the 道光帝 (Daoguang Emperor) died in 1850, Xianfeng (then known as Prince Yizhu) came to power at the tender age of nineteen. The newly-crowned emperor, a fervent traditionalist who believed in the inherent superiority of China over the encroaching Westerners, was almost immediately confronted with a challenge of a different sort – the Taiping Rebellion. Xianfeng could only watch in horror as the Army of Heavenly Peace swept through southern China, culminating with their capture of Nanjing in March of 1853, only two years after the rebellion had begun. He responded to the Taiping threat by sending several prominent officials south with a mandate to crush the rebellion. The most notable of these officials was 曾国藩 (Zeng Guofan).
Zeng rose to prominence when he recaptured the cities of Hankou and Wuchang from the Taiping in 1852, although the Taiping quickly re-re-captured them. He was quickly noticed by the court, which appointed him to the Board of War and gave him carte blanche to take any and all measures necessary to put down the rebellion. In response to the imperial command Zeng raised a new force - 湘军 (Xiang Army) – and managed to stop the Taiping Army’s northern advance in the summer of 1853, after which they took the defensive and focused on consolidating their gains. The following year, as the factional feuding within the Taiping government worsened, Zeng’s Xiang Army attacked, pushing the Army of Heavenly Peace out of 江苏省 (Jiangsu Province). As 1855 began, it seemed that the tide had turned in favor of the Qing. It hadn’t. (8)
NOTES
(1) There’s a good chance that I butchered that translation.
(2) This is going to cause some trouble later on, but at the beginning the fact that no one really knew what was happening was critical to the success of Shi and Yang’s coup, which was made even easier by the fact that Hong was such a nutter that people could easily see him leaving public life completely to hang out with God.
(3) So don’t feel too sorry for Hong. Sure, he’s not allowed to leave his home, but it is a palace. Plus he doesn’t have to do any work, he’s treated like a god, given vast amounts of drugs, and gets the run of the harem to boot. Talk about the hardest job you’ll ever love . . .
(4) The Taiping attitude towards opium is definitely going to cause some problems down the road. Bet on it.
(5) Hong actually did decree that married couples could not live together or have sex. Did I mention that he was a crazy person? In real life this “reform” was dropped in 1855, as Yang Xiuqing’s power grew. In this timeline, Yang can grant the people of the Heavenly Kingdom conjugal visits a year earlier. PARTY!
(6) This is absolutely critical for the medium to long-term survival of the Taiping state. OTL one of the main reasons why they failed was a total inability to co-opt any of the scholar-bureaucrat class, who were understandably a bit turned off by the Confucius hate as well as some of the reforms that would hit them where it hurts – the wallet. With a new regime in charge, most of Hong’s crazier ideas are thrown out, and in particular the Taiping become more congenial to Confucianism. While they’re not exactly going to win the allegiance of the Chinese elite overnight, they will be able to co-opt a solid core of scholar-bureaucrats, which will enable them to actually administer the territory that they own.
(7) Yes, the Taiping Kingdom is shaping up to be a seriously weird place: a proto-Marxist modernizing totalitarian bureaucratic oligarchy, with a theocratic element tossed in for fun. And just to make things really weird, that theocratic element is Christianity with increasing amounts of Confucianism grafted on. Call it Christianity with Chinese Characteristics.
(8) So if you’re keeping score at home, from 1851 to early 1853, the Taiping pretty much kicked the Qing around. Things started to stabilize in mid-to-late 1853, and in 1854 the Qing regained some of their lost territory.
*Again, a big thank-you to everyone who has read and commented on this timeline so far. I’m always open to any suggestions or criticism that people have. In the next entry (which will probably be finished either tomorrow or Friday) things really start to heat up . . . and the foreign devils make their first appearance. Exciting times are ahead . . .
Excerpted from “Governance in the Heavenly Kingdom,” by Caroline Zuma. University of Toronto Press, 1982.
- How do you solve a problem called Hong Xiuquan? This was the dilemma faced by 石达开 (Shi Dakai) and 杨秀清 (Yang Xiuqing). While it must have been tempting to make a public spectacle of his downfall, or simply to announce that the Heavenly King had suffered a fatal accident, Shi and Yang realized that without Hong’s presence the rebellion was doomed to collapse. After all, it was Hong’s charisma and leadership that had united the rebels into a cohesive force and given them strength and purpose. But the main reason why Hong could not simply be dumped in a ditch was religious in nature. The Heavenly Kingdom itself was based on the idea that Hong was the son of God and the brother of Jesus Christ – and one does not simply depose the divine. Thus, instead of tearing Hong down, Shi and Yang built him up, issuing a series of declarations that both proclaimed his divinity and announced that he was retiring from earthly affairs to commune with his father and older brother, God and Jesus Christ. While these grand proclamations were being issued, including one which stated that Hong and his scions would rule the Heavenly Kingdom for ten thousand years, Shi and Yang were creating the structures of a new government. Thus was the 使徒会 (Shitu hui, or Council of the Apostles) formed. Supposedly established to “faithfully interpret and execute the divine words of the Heavenly King (遵奉地解释，执行天王神圣之懿旨) (1),” in fact the Council of Apostles was the body through which Shi and Yang ruled the Taiping Tianguo. Most of the twelve members of the council were firmly in the pockets of Shi and Yang, although there were some members who were powerful in their own right, most notably the brilliant naval commander 唐正才 (Tang Zhengcai). Shi and Yang’s silent coup was immeasurably aided by the air of ambiguity that surrounded the entire enterprise. Most people had no idea what had actually happened, and even some members of the Council of Apostles were under the illusion that Hong was still in charge. (2) Hong had surrendered responsibility for the day-to-day affairs of the kingdom the year before of his own accord, and thus most people found it quite easy to believe that he would retire from temporal affairs completely. In any event, a great deal of the army was personally loyal to Shi Dakai . . .
Thus it was that Hong Xiuquan lived out the remainder of his days under de facto house arrest in the Palace of the Heavenly King, which he never again left. He was watched at all times by the 天王保护队 (Tianwang baohu dui, or Guardians of the Heavenly King) – more commonly known to Western readers as the Red Guards - which were an elite unit handpicked by and loyal to Yang Xiuqing, who ensured that Hong stayed right where he was. It is said that Hong’s chefs – also handpicked by Yang – put copious amounts of opium in the Heavenly King’s meals. Hong’s days were spent in a drug-addled haze; his nights were spent with one or more of his two hundred concubines. (3)
Excerpted from “Taiping Social Policy: A Study in Contradictions,” by Jehoshaphat Trumbull. University of British Columbia Press, 1922.
- The Taiping Kingdom was, on paper at least, inarguably the most progressive and egalitarian society in the world. A policy of strict equality between the sexes was declared; women were allowed to take the civil service examinations and serve in combat roles in the military. Prostitution and polygamy were banned on pain of death – although many Taiping leaders continued to keep concubines – and foot binding, slavery, opium, and gambling were also proscribed (4). The society that Hong Xiuquan created also leaned towards Marxism (although Hong wouldn’t have known Marx from a hole in the ground). Private property was abolished and society was declared to be classless. Taiping society also had a theocratic bent: the subject of the civil service examinations was changed from the Confucian classics to the Bible, and all citizens were required to undergo baptism and convert to Christianity.
In the early years of the Taiping, this society essentially existed only on paper. Civil administration ranged from shaky to nonexistent, and most of the Taiping social reforms were not implemented in the countryside. It was probably best for all concerned that the Taiping didn’t try too hard to enforce these policies, especially the more esoteric ones. For example, Hong decreed that the sexes should be strictly separated and that even married couples must not live together or . . . do other things that married couples often do. (5) This policy was unceremoniously abandoned after the Silent Coup that followed the Saturday Night Massacre of 1854. Taiping internal policy changed dramatically after the fall of Hong and the rise of Yang Xiuqing and Shi Dakai to prominence. Yang, who had always been a modernizer – it was he who had previously agitated for the change to a solar instead of a lunar calendar – embraced Western ideas, calling on citizens to build a 和谐社会 (hexie shehui, or Harmonious Society) that was rooted in 科学发展 (kexue fazhan, or Scientific Development). Yet he also softened restrictions on the practice of Confucianism and property ownership. (6) Yang had long believed that Confucian morality was compatible with the Taiping brand of Christianity, and thus he allowed Confucianism to resume its role in the lives of the people. This trend culminated in 1877, when the Council of Apostles announced that they had received a “revelation” from Hong Xiuquan stating that just as he was Jesus’ younger brother, so too was Confucius God’s younger brother, who had been sent to Earth to spread morality and right thinking . . . (7)
Excerpted from “History of the Qing Dynasty, 1644-1976: The Reign of the Xianfeng Emperor,” by Maarten Maartens. University of Leiden Press, 2002.
- The 咸丰帝 (Xianfeng Emperor) was the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time. After all, the Dragon Throne was no place for an opium-smoking, alcoholic teenager. Yet when his father the 道光帝 (Daoguang Emperor) died in 1850, Xianfeng (then known as Prince Yizhu) came to power at the tender age of nineteen. The newly-crowned emperor, a fervent traditionalist who believed in the inherent superiority of China over the encroaching Westerners, was almost immediately confronted with a challenge of a different sort – the Taiping Rebellion. Xianfeng could only watch in horror as the Army of Heavenly Peace swept through southern China, culminating with their capture of Nanjing in March of 1853, only two years after the rebellion had begun. He responded to the Taiping threat by sending several prominent officials south with a mandate to crush the rebellion. The most notable of these officials was 曾国藩 (Zeng Guofan).
Zeng rose to prominence when he recaptured the cities of Hankou and Wuchang from the Taiping in 1852, although the Taiping quickly re-re-captured them. He was quickly noticed by the court, which appointed him to the Board of War and gave him carte blanche to take any and all measures necessary to put down the rebellion. In response to the imperial command Zeng raised a new force - 湘军 (Xiang Army) – and managed to stop the Taiping Army’s northern advance in the summer of 1853, after which they took the defensive and focused on consolidating their gains. The following year, as the factional feuding within the Taiping government worsened, Zeng’s Xiang Army attacked, pushing the Army of Heavenly Peace out of 江苏省 (Jiangsu Province). As 1855 began, it seemed that the tide had turned in favor of the Qing. It hadn’t. (8)
NOTES
(1) There’s a good chance that I butchered that translation.
(2) This is going to cause some trouble later on, but at the beginning the fact that no one really knew what was happening was critical to the success of Shi and Yang’s coup, which was made even easier by the fact that Hong was such a nutter that people could easily see him leaving public life completely to hang out with God.
(3) So don’t feel too sorry for Hong. Sure, he’s not allowed to leave his home, but it is a palace. Plus he doesn’t have to do any work, he’s treated like a god, given vast amounts of drugs, and gets the run of the harem to boot. Talk about the hardest job you’ll ever love . . .
(4) The Taiping attitude towards opium is definitely going to cause some problems down the road. Bet on it.
(5) Hong actually did decree that married couples could not live together or have sex. Did I mention that he was a crazy person? In real life this “reform” was dropped in 1855, as Yang Xiuqing’s power grew. In this timeline, Yang can grant the people of the Heavenly Kingdom conjugal visits a year earlier. PARTY!
(6) This is absolutely critical for the medium to long-term survival of the Taiping state. OTL one of the main reasons why they failed was a total inability to co-opt any of the scholar-bureaucrat class, who were understandably a bit turned off by the Confucius hate as well as some of the reforms that would hit them where it hurts – the wallet. With a new regime in charge, most of Hong’s crazier ideas are thrown out, and in particular the Taiping become more congenial to Confucianism. While they’re not exactly going to win the allegiance of the Chinese elite overnight, they will be able to co-opt a solid core of scholar-bureaucrats, which will enable them to actually administer the territory that they own.
(7) Yes, the Taiping Kingdom is shaping up to be a seriously weird place: a proto-Marxist modernizing totalitarian bureaucratic oligarchy, with a theocratic element tossed in for fun. And just to make things really weird, that theocratic element is Christianity with increasing amounts of Confucianism grafted on. Call it Christianity with Chinese Characteristics.
(8) So if you’re keeping score at home, from 1851 to early 1853, the Taiping pretty much kicked the Qing around. Things started to stabilize in mid-to-late 1853, and in 1854 the Qing regained some of their lost territory.
*Again, a big thank-you to everyone who has read and commented on this timeline so far. I’m always open to any suggestions or criticism that people have. In the next entry (which will probably be finished either tomorrow or Friday) things really start to heat up . . . and the foreign devils make their first appearance. Exciting times are ahead . . .
Thank you subversivepanda for giving AH.com its first (and long overdue) Taiping TL! I hope that the Heavenly Kingdom survives into at least the mid-20th Century where it could participate in a World War or in the alt-Cold War, I dunno... there are so many interesting possibilties, I can't wait to see where you take this TL of yours! I'll be following it all the way, keep up the great work!
I hope that the Heavenly Kingdom survives into at least the mid-20th Century where it could participate in a World War or in the alt-Cold War, I dunno... there are so many interesting possibilties, I can't wait to see where you take this TL of yours! I'll be following it all the way, keep up the great work! A shout-out from the South!!
Being a Chinese myself, I can tell you that you did a great job on the translations. Keep it coming, panda!!
Haven't learned much about the Taiping Rebellion in my Chinese History classes, but if the Rebellion was more successful, would 李鴻章 (Li Hongzhang), 左宗棠 (Zuo Zongtang), and 曾國藩 (Zeng Guofan) have a less fabulous career? And what about Chinese Gordon? I doubt he'd made it to Khartoum...
And did Japan got invaded or something? Judging by the People's University of Tokyo, the Kami Kaze let Japan down on this one...
Marc A
P.S. Subscribed. Longed for the next updates (and butterflies
)P.P.S. Would certain Americans look to this war with some interest (after all, it would be their turn for a civil war in a few years)?
P.P.P.S. Sorry, couldn't resist using your style, panda
Thank you subversivepanda for giving AH.com its first (and long overdue) Taiping TL!
Thanks! There really are a million places where this timeline could go, and honestly I'm not too sure how things will develop in the long term. I've got a couple of ideas - for example, I'm leaning towards a Marxist Japan, and Russia is going to get owned - but if you have any suggestions I'd love to hear them.
A shout-out from the South!!
Being a Chinese myself, I can tell you that you did a great job on the translations. Keep it coming, panda!!
Haven't learned much about the Taiping Rebellion in my Chinese History classes, but if the Rebellion was more successful, would 李鴻章 (Li Hongzhang), 左宗棠 (Zuo Zongtang), and 曾國藩 (Zeng Guofan) have a less fabulous career? And what about Chinese Gordon? I doubt he'd made it to Khartoum...
And did Japan got invaded or something? Judging by the People's University of Tokyo, the Kami Kaze let Japan down on this one...
Marc A
P.S. Subscribed. Longed for the next updates (and butterflies
P.P.S. Would certain Americans look to this war with some interest (after all, it would be their turn for a civil war in a few years)?
P.P.P.S. Sorry, couldn't resist using your style, panda
I always love to hear from the 南方. You've raised some interesting questions - as for Zeng, Li, and Zuo, they're still going to do OK in this timeline. I don't want to give away too much, but there's going to be a major Qing shakeup in the next post. And you're definitely right about the Americans - they'll be watching with interest, although that interest won't extend as far as helping the Taiping, at least not in the near-term. Looking into the future, though, I can definitely see them being friendlier to the Taiping state than other foreign powers will. Britain will probably get hung up on the opium issue, and France might not be able to look past the bundle of fun that is Taiping Christianity. I'm actually planning to have the Pope issue some kind of statement (encyclical?) condemning Taiping Christianity as a heresy somewhere down the road, but I want to do a bit more research on the mechanics of it.
Too much? I like to give my history book authors funny names, just to keep things entertaining - thus Scheherazade Wang, and her co-author Rajiv Martinez, and of course my personal favorite Marmaduke Tickled-Pinkington.
I was just wondering what your inspiration for that name was. I'm Taiwanese myself, with an Iranian girlfriend. Nice indirect shoutout(?). Very meta.
Hmmm, unless Papal or Catholic missionary interests are threatened, I don't really see the Pope bothering to take any action against the Taiping any more than they did against the Mormons in Protestant America. So the heathens/schismatics of some remote corner outside of good Catholic Christendom has come up with their own brand of wacky heresy. Who needs to call them out for it when everyone knows they're no good?
Hmmm, unless Papal or Catholic missionary interests are threatened, I don't really see the Pope bothering to take any action against the Taiping any more than they did against the Mormons in Protestant America. So the heathens/schismatics of some remote corner outside of good Catholic Christendom has come up with their own brand of wacky heresy. Who needs to call them out for it when everyone knows they're no good?
Hashasheen
Banned
Interesting. I'm no China enthusiast, but this may very well be the first Taipang TL on board.
Excellent. My Afrikaner timeline features a Taiping-ish state that survives until the 1970s. Although TTL's version of Hong is more Reformed/Calvinist-influenced than yours (due to the cultural influence of a gigantic Afrikaner state), there are still plenty of similarities.
Keep up the good work.
One quibble--if Hong's got 200 concubines, how many kids are there? The Taiping could have problems if lots of little Hongs (and Hongettes) try to grab the throne when Dad kicks it or another reigning sibling screws up.
Keep up the good work.
One quibble--if Hong's got 200 concubines, how many kids are there? The Taiping could have problems if lots of little Hongs (and Hongettes) try to grab the throne when Dad kicks it or another reigning sibling screws up.
Part #3: Frying Pans And Fires And Rocks And Hard Places
“善为士者不武，善战者不怒，善胜敌者不与，善用人者为之下。是谓不争之德，是谓用人之力，是谓配天之极.”
Excerpted from “The Nian Rebellion,” by Abdullah Watson. 1997.
- If the only problem faced by the Qing had been the Taiping Rebellion, things still would have been difficult for the dynasty. With the addition of another revolution to the mix, the Xianfeng Emperor could have been forgiven for considering himself cursed. Unlike the Taiping Rebellion, the 捻军起义 (Nian jun qi yi, or Nian Rebellion) was not motivated by ethnic, class or religious considerations. Instead, the revolutionaries were driven simply by anger at a government that had failed them. The 黄河 (Yellow River) had flooded in 1851, causing massive loss of life; in the wake of this disaster no help came from Beijing, which was both broke and busy. When the river flooded again in 1855 and relief was again slow to arrive, many citizens decided that enough was enough. They were led by the charismatic 张乐行 (Zhang Lexing), who organized the revolutionaries into a well-organized guerrilla force that relied on cavalry in attack and the impregnability of their fortified cities in defense. The timing of the rebellion was disastrous for the Qing, who had been making gains against the Taiping in 1854. Now their armies were cut off from their supply lines, and another hostile force had suddenly emerged behind them. The Taiping seized on the opportunity presented to them by the Nian Rebellion, sending troops under the command of the general 赖文光 (Lai Wenguang) to aid Zhang Lexing and his revolutionaries.
Beijing responded, sending an army commanded by the Mongolian general 僧格林沁 (Senggelinqin) to put down the rebellion. Yet the Qing were unlucky once more; Senggelinqin’s army was ambushed by Nian rebels west of 济南 (Jinan) in October of 1855, and the general himself was killed. In a last-ditch attempt to avert total disaster, Zeng Guofan detached a portion of his army under the command of 左宗棠 (Zuo Zongtang), one of his most trusted subordinates, and sent them north to battle the Nian. Showing the skills that would later earn him a place on menus worldwide (1), Zuo’s army achieved some notable successes against the Nian, even capturing Zhang Lexing in 1856. Yet even as Zuo achieved success against the Nian, the decision to send him north left the Qing armies in the field against the Taiping outnumbered and undermanned. The Taiping were not in a position to take full advantage of this; after all, Shi Dakai was not present, having embarked on the famous 南伐 (Nan fa, or Southern Expedition). Yet they still held the advantage and achieved some breakthroughs, most famously in July of 1856 when the Taiping Navy, under the command of 唐正才 (Tang Zhengcai), captured the city of 上海 (Shanghai) in a daring amphibious assault.
Excerpted from “The Panthay Rebellion,” by Ono Kanji. People’s University of Sapporo Press, 1963.
- The 杜文秀起义 (Du Wenxiu qiyi, or Du Wenxiu Rebellion), also known as the Panthay Rebellion, began in 云南省 (Yunnan Province) in 1856. The revolutionaries were predominantly 回 (Hui), a Muslim minority who had been discriminated against for years by the government of the region. In 1856 local uprisings broke out across Yunnan, and rebels under the leadership of 杜文秀 (Du Wenxiu) captured the city of 大理 (Dali) and declared the establishment of a new nation, 平南国 (Pingnan guo, or the Peaceful Southern Nation). Although the rebellion was primarily a Muslim affair, it was aided by many of the minority groups that were scattered throughout Yunnan Province. It was also aided by another emerging power – the Taiping Kingdom. Troops were detached from Shi Dakai’s Southern Expedition under the command of 李世贤 (Li Shixian) to aid Du Wenxiu and his fellow revolutionaries. In contrast, the Qing Dynasty could offer no help to the officials responsible for the defense of Yunnan; there were simply too many other priorities, and Yunnan was too far away. Although the Qing troops in Yunnan were ably led by 岑毓英 (Cen Yuying) they could only be in one place at a time, and had no chance of being able to put down a province-wide rebellion, especially not once the battle-hardened Taiping troops had arrived on the scene. In Yunnan, the Chinese proverb 天高皇帝远 (Tian gao huangdi yuan, or, Heaven is high, and the emperor is far away) proved to be an all too appropriate summary of the situation for the Qing armies charged with the defense of the province. (2)
Excerpted from “The Southern Expedition,” by Zhang Xiaolong. 1912.
- In the spring of 1855, after he had firmly established his position along with Yang Xiuqing as one of the two main power brokers in the Taiping Kingdom, 石达开 (Shi Dakai) – the Wing King, Lord of Five Thousand Years – prepared for his next campaign against the forces of the Qing. Everyone – including his own staff officers – assumed that Shi would strike north, attempting to defeat the forces of Zeng Guofan and threaten Beijing itself. But Shi Dakai had never been one for conforming to the expectations of others, and decided on an alternative course of action. Instead of going north he went south, driving deep into the rich provinces of 浙江 (Zhejiang), 福建 (Fujian), and 广东 (Guangdong). The campaign itself, known to posterity as 南伐 (Nan fa), or the Southern Expedition, was conducted masterfully and took full advantage of both the weakness of Qing forces in the southeast and the near impossibility that the Qing would be able to reinforce those regions. (3)
As Shi’s armies marched south people flocked to the banner of the Wing King, further bolstering his numbers. Shi won decisive engagements at 衢州 (Quzhou) and 三明 (Sanming) in 1855, and even after detaching part of his forces under the command of 李世贤 (Li Shixian) in 1856 to aid Du Wenxiu’s rebels in 1856, his advance continued. In the fall of 1856 Shi Dakai defeated the last organized Qing resistance outside the city of 肇庆 (Zhaoqing) in Guangdong Province and began to liberate the southeastern coastal cities of 杭州 (Hangzhou), 福州 (Fuzhou), 厦门 (Xiamen), and 广州 (Guangzhou). Yet as Shi’s army took these port cities from the Qing, they also inadvertently opened an unpleasant can of worms. For several of these cities were treaty ports – home to and essentially controlled by foreign traders, who began to take a long look at the power that was rising in the South. In many cases, they didn’t like what they saw . . .
Excerpted from “Foreign Tools and Chinese Ideas: Inside the Qing Modernization Movement,” by Natasha Hu. 2004.
- In 1856 the 咸丰帝 (Xianfeng Emperor) had not yet reached the age of twenty-five – yet he was already an old man. Since assuming the throne he had watched impotently as the empire that he had inherited crumbled before his very eyes. As more and more bad news came to Beijing from the front, Xianfeng – a heavy drinker at the best of times – hit the bottle even harder, frequently disappearing from court for days at a time to drink and pursue one of his other vices, the use of opium. Both his physical and mental health began to deteriorate, and the eunuchs and courtiers of the Forbidden City started to whisper amongst themselves about the emperor’s fading grip on reality. The straw that broke the camel’s back came in February of 1856 when a seasonal flu swept through Beijing. As flu outbreaks go, it was no worse than most years; a few thousand residents of the city died, and ordinarily such an event would have gone unnoticed by the imperial court. But disease cares little for rank or title, and as it happened one of the victims of the virus was Imperial Concubine Yi – who was pregnant with what would have been the Emperor’s first child (4). The loss of his favorite concubine and his unborn child – in addition to the loss of a large chunk of his kingdom – was too much for the Xianfeng Emperor to bear. The hysterical monarch fled to his summer palace at 承德 (Chengde), where he wandered the grounds, rending his garments and tearing his hair. After several days he began to refuse nourishment, and on May 4th, the Xianfeng Emperor passed away.
Given that Xianfeng had died without issue, the throne passed to his younger half-brother 奕欣恭亲王 (Yixin, the 1st Prince Gong). After surviving an assassination attempt on his life by the traditionalist faction at court, Yixin assumed the Dragon Throne in June, taking the regnal name 永胜 (Yongsheng, or Eternal Victory) (5). The newly-crowned emperor bore almost no resemblance to his deceased half-brother; he was dynamic and vigorous. Most importantly, he had long been an advocate of modernization and was passionately interested in Western technology and ideas (6). The situation inherited by Yongsheng was dire to say the least, as the Taiping armies swept through the south with seeming impunity. Yet before he could turn his full attention to the rebellion, Yongsheng had to deal with crisis. For the foreign barbarians were knocking on China’s gates again, and everyone remembered what they had done to the Middle Kingdom only fifteen short years before . . .
NOTES
(1) His name was 左宗棠, but you may know him as General Tso. I am told that his chicken is delicious.
(2) Both the Nian and the Panthay Rebellion did indeed occur in real life. IOTL they failed to really coordinate with the Taiping, and thus all three of the rebellions were eventually put down by the Qing Dynasty. In this timeline, the not-crazy Taiping regime is giving a lot of help to their revolutionary counterparts.
(3) The inspiration for the “Southern Expedition” (itself a shout-out to the Northern Expedition, which happened in 1928) comes from Shi Dakai’s Sichuan campaigns of the early 1860s, which ended in failure. Needless to say, he’s doing better this time around.
(4) This so did not happen in real life. You may know the Imperial Concubine Yi by the title she assumed later – 慈禧太后 (Dowager Empress Ci Xi). IOTL she had the baby – who became the 同治帝 (Tongzhi Emperor) – but she pretty much ruled China in her own right for almost fifty years, screwing things up royally along the way. But now she’s dead. As for Xianfeng’s demise, he really was an alcoholic opium addict with a tenuous grip on sanity, and he pretty much did go crazy and drop dead. IOTL this happened in 1860 and the event that prompted it all was China’s defeat in the Second Opium War. I figured that the combination of greater Taiping success and the death of his favorite concubine and unborn child would have the same effect.
(5) Never let it be said that the Qing Dynasty does not believe in the power of positive thinking.
(6) Prince Gong assuming the throne is the best thing that could happen to Qing China. In real life he was pretty much like I described him here – a firm believer in China’s need to modernize.
*So it’s probably becoming apparent where I’m going with all this by now, but here it is anyway. There’s going to be a Taiping China and a Qing China, and they’re both going to be industrializing as fast as they can, both due to the mentalities of their leaders and fear of each other. Basically, I see your one modernizing China and raise you another.
The next update will be posted in a couple of days. Thanks again for all the comments and questions. Keep them coming!
“善为士者不武，善战者不怒，善胜敌者不与，善用人者为之下。是谓不争之德，是谓用人之力，是谓配天之极.”
Excerpted from “The Nian Rebellion,” by Abdullah Watson. 1997.
- If the only problem faced by the Qing had been the Taiping Rebellion, things still would have been difficult for the dynasty. With the addition of another revolution to the mix, the Xianfeng Emperor could have been forgiven for considering himself cursed. Unlike the Taiping Rebellion, the 捻军起义 (Nian jun qi yi, or Nian Rebellion) was not motivated by ethnic, class or religious considerations. Instead, the revolutionaries were driven simply by anger at a government that had failed them. The 黄河 (Yellow River) had flooded in 1851, causing massive loss of life; in the wake of this disaster no help came from Beijing, which was both broke and busy. When the river flooded again in 1855 and relief was again slow to arrive, many citizens decided that enough was enough. They were led by the charismatic 张乐行 (Zhang Lexing), who organized the revolutionaries into a well-organized guerrilla force that relied on cavalry in attack and the impregnability of their fortified cities in defense. The timing of the rebellion was disastrous for the Qing, who had been making gains against the Taiping in 1854. Now their armies were cut off from their supply lines, and another hostile force had suddenly emerged behind them. The Taiping seized on the opportunity presented to them by the Nian Rebellion, sending troops under the command of the general 赖文光 (Lai Wenguang) to aid Zhang Lexing and his revolutionaries.
Beijing responded, sending an army commanded by the Mongolian general 僧格林沁 (Senggelinqin) to put down the rebellion. Yet the Qing were unlucky once more; Senggelinqin’s army was ambushed by Nian rebels west of 济南 (Jinan) in October of 1855, and the general himself was killed. In a last-ditch attempt to avert total disaster, Zeng Guofan detached a portion of his army under the command of 左宗棠 (Zuo Zongtang), one of his most trusted subordinates, and sent them north to battle the Nian. Showing the skills that would later earn him a place on menus worldwide (1), Zuo’s army achieved some notable successes against the Nian, even capturing Zhang Lexing in 1856. Yet even as Zuo achieved success against the Nian, the decision to send him north left the Qing armies in the field against the Taiping outnumbered and undermanned. The Taiping were not in a position to take full advantage of this; after all, Shi Dakai was not present, having embarked on the famous 南伐 (Nan fa, or Southern Expedition). Yet they still held the advantage and achieved some breakthroughs, most famously in July of 1856 when the Taiping Navy, under the command of 唐正才 (Tang Zhengcai), captured the city of 上海 (Shanghai) in a daring amphibious assault.
Excerpted from “The Panthay Rebellion,” by Ono Kanji. People’s University of Sapporo Press, 1963.
- The 杜文秀起义 (Du Wenxiu qiyi, or Du Wenxiu Rebellion), also known as the Panthay Rebellion, began in 云南省 (Yunnan Province) in 1856. The revolutionaries were predominantly 回 (Hui), a Muslim minority who had been discriminated against for years by the government of the region. In 1856 local uprisings broke out across Yunnan, and rebels under the leadership of 杜文秀 (Du Wenxiu) captured the city of 大理 (Dali) and declared the establishment of a new nation, 平南国 (Pingnan guo, or the Peaceful Southern Nation). Although the rebellion was primarily a Muslim affair, it was aided by many of the minority groups that were scattered throughout Yunnan Province. It was also aided by another emerging power – the Taiping Kingdom. Troops were detached from Shi Dakai’s Southern Expedition under the command of 李世贤 (Li Shixian) to aid Du Wenxiu and his fellow revolutionaries. In contrast, the Qing Dynasty could offer no help to the officials responsible for the defense of Yunnan; there were simply too many other priorities, and Yunnan was too far away. Although the Qing troops in Yunnan were ably led by 岑毓英 (Cen Yuying) they could only be in one place at a time, and had no chance of being able to put down a province-wide rebellion, especially not once the battle-hardened Taiping troops had arrived on the scene. In Yunnan, the Chinese proverb 天高皇帝远 (Tian gao huangdi yuan, or, Heaven is high, and the emperor is far away) proved to be an all too appropriate summary of the situation for the Qing armies charged with the defense of the province. (2)
Excerpted from “The Southern Expedition,” by Zhang Xiaolong. 1912.
- In the spring of 1855, after he had firmly established his position along with Yang Xiuqing as one of the two main power brokers in the Taiping Kingdom, 石达开 (Shi Dakai) – the Wing King, Lord of Five Thousand Years – prepared for his next campaign against the forces of the Qing. Everyone – including his own staff officers – assumed that Shi would strike north, attempting to defeat the forces of Zeng Guofan and threaten Beijing itself. But Shi Dakai had never been one for conforming to the expectations of others, and decided on an alternative course of action. Instead of going north he went south, driving deep into the rich provinces of 浙江 (Zhejiang), 福建 (Fujian), and 广东 (Guangdong). The campaign itself, known to posterity as 南伐 (Nan fa), or the Southern Expedition, was conducted masterfully and took full advantage of both the weakness of Qing forces in the southeast and the near impossibility that the Qing would be able to reinforce those regions. (3)
As Shi’s armies marched south people flocked to the banner of the Wing King, further bolstering his numbers. Shi won decisive engagements at 衢州 (Quzhou) and 三明 (Sanming) in 1855, and even after detaching part of his forces under the command of 李世贤 (Li Shixian) in 1856 to aid Du Wenxiu’s rebels in 1856, his advance continued. In the fall of 1856 Shi Dakai defeated the last organized Qing resistance outside the city of 肇庆 (Zhaoqing) in Guangdong Province and began to liberate the southeastern coastal cities of 杭州 (Hangzhou), 福州 (Fuzhou), 厦门 (Xiamen), and 广州 (Guangzhou). Yet as Shi’s army took these port cities from the Qing, they also inadvertently opened an unpleasant can of worms. For several of these cities were treaty ports – home to and essentially controlled by foreign traders, who began to take a long look at the power that was rising in the South. In many cases, they didn’t like what they saw . . .
Excerpted from “Foreign Tools and Chinese Ideas: Inside the Qing Modernization Movement,” by Natasha Hu. 2004.
- In 1856 the 咸丰帝 (Xianfeng Emperor) had not yet reached the age of twenty-five – yet he was already an old man. Since assuming the throne he had watched impotently as the empire that he had inherited crumbled before his very eyes. As more and more bad news came to Beijing from the front, Xianfeng – a heavy drinker at the best of times – hit the bottle even harder, frequently disappearing from court for days at a time to drink and pursue one of his other vices, the use of opium. Both his physical and mental health began to deteriorate, and the eunuchs and courtiers of the Forbidden City started to whisper amongst themselves about the emperor’s fading grip on reality. The straw that broke the camel’s back came in February of 1856 when a seasonal flu swept through Beijing. As flu outbreaks go, it was no worse than most years; a few thousand residents of the city died, and ordinarily such an event would have gone unnoticed by the imperial court. But disease cares little for rank or title, and as it happened one of the victims of the virus was Imperial Concubine Yi – who was pregnant with what would have been the Emperor’s first child (4). The loss of his favorite concubine and his unborn child – in addition to the loss of a large chunk of his kingdom – was too much for the Xianfeng Emperor to bear. The hysterical monarch fled to his summer palace at 承德 (Chengde), where he wandered the grounds, rending his garments and tearing his hair. After several days he began to refuse nourishment, and on May 4th, the Xianfeng Emperor passed away.
Given that Xianfeng had died without issue, the throne passed to his younger half-brother 奕欣恭亲王 (Yixin, the 1st Prince Gong). After surviving an assassination attempt on his life by the traditionalist faction at court, Yixin assumed the Dragon Throne in June, taking the regnal name 永胜 (Yongsheng, or Eternal Victory) (5). The newly-crowned emperor bore almost no resemblance to his deceased half-brother; he was dynamic and vigorous. Most importantly, he had long been an advocate of modernization and was passionately interested in Western technology and ideas (6). The situation inherited by Yongsheng was dire to say the least, as the Taiping armies swept through the south with seeming impunity. Yet before he could turn his full attention to the rebellion, Yongsheng had to deal with crisis. For the foreign barbarians were knocking on China’s gates again, and everyone remembered what they had done to the Middle Kingdom only fifteen short years before . . .
NOTES
(1) His name was 左宗棠, but you may know him as General Tso. I am told that his chicken is delicious.
(2) Both the Nian and the Panthay Rebellion did indeed occur in real life. IOTL they failed to really coordinate with the Taiping, and thus all three of the rebellions were eventually put down by the Qing Dynasty. In this timeline, the not-crazy Taiping regime is giving a lot of help to their revolutionary counterparts.
(3) The inspiration for the “Southern Expedition” (itself a shout-out to the Northern Expedition, which happened in 1928) comes from Shi Dakai’s Sichuan campaigns of the early 1860s, which ended in failure. Needless to say, he’s doing better this time around.
(4) This so did not happen in real life. You may know the Imperial Concubine Yi by the title she assumed later – 慈禧太后 (Dowager Empress Ci Xi). IOTL she had the baby – who became the 同治帝 (Tongzhi Emperor) – but she pretty much ruled China in her own right for almost fifty years, screwing things up royally along the way. But now she’s dead. As for Xianfeng’s demise, he really was an alcoholic opium addict with a tenuous grip on sanity, and he pretty much did go crazy and drop dead. IOTL this happened in 1860 and the event that prompted it all was China’s defeat in the Second Opium War. I figured that the combination of greater Taiping success and the death of his favorite concubine and unborn child would have the same effect.
(5) Never let it be said that the Qing Dynasty does not believe in the power of positive thinking.
(6) Prince Gong assuming the throne is the best thing that could happen to Qing China. In real life he was pretty much like I described him here – a firm believer in China’s need to modernize.
*So it’s probably becoming apparent where I’m going with all this by now, but here it is anyway. There’s going to be a Taiping China and a Qing China, and they’re both going to be industrializing as fast as they can, both due to the mentalities of their leaders and fear of each other. Basically, I see your one modernizing China and raise you another.
The next update will be posted in a couple of days. Thanks again for all the comments and questions. Keep them coming!
Hendryk
Banned
Seconded. I'm glad you've put him on the throne in TTL. I hope he successfully regains control of the situation.
BTW you may have noticed that Frederick Townsend Ward has something of a fan base on this forum. Any chance he might show up in TTL?