Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom
Book description
In the early 1850s, during the twilight of the Qing dynasty, word spread of a major revolution brewing in the provinces. The leader of this movement - who called themselves the Taiping - was Hong Xiuquan, a failed civil servant who claimed to be the son of God and the…
Why read it?
1 author picked Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
If the Opium War represents the greatest threat to China’s global stature, the Taiping Rebellion certainly posed the greatest domestic challenge to the ruling dynasty. On the surface, the bare facts of the rebellion defy belief. Its leader, Hong Xiuquan, after failing the imperial civil service examination, came to believe that he was the younger brother of Jesus Christ and embarks on establishing a kingdom that upends thousands of years of beliefs by instituting a wide array of socially progressive ideas. Using both Chinese and Western sources, Chinese historian Stephen Platt breathes new life into both the extraordinary rise of…
From David's list on 19th-century China’s rebellions, uprisings, and wars.
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