The Taiping Rebellion

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that the Taiping Rebellion, from 1850 to 1864, which uniquely combined the ideals of pre-Confucian utopianism with Protestant beliefs, began to change the nation's socio-political development with its different stance on areas such as land laws; about 25 million people died in the process. The author points out that after the Taiping Rebellion, the age of the emperors was finished. The paper concludes that, although the Taipings had never heard of Karl Marx or of Communism, they shared many of the same ideals: The Heavenly Kingdom of the Taipings is not so distant from the commune-oriented Marxist utopia, setting the stage for the Communist Revolution to come.

From the Paper:

"While recovering, Hong had several visions where an old man said that people had stopped worshipping him and were instead praising demons. In another dream, this same man chose him as a demon slayer. Having earlier read the information from the Christian missionary, Hong believed that the man in the visions was God the Father. A younger golden-haired man, who also was in the images and presented him with a sword, was Jesus Christ, his Elder Brother. Hong, himself, was the Younger Brother and had been sent by God to earth to destroy the demons and demon worship. Hong began to preach his message to the public, baptize converts and openly destroy Confucian and ancestral shrines."

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