Book contents
- The Cambridge World History of Genocide
- The Cambridge World History of Genocide
- The Cambridge World History of Genocide
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Maps
- Tables
- Contributors to Volume ii
- Introduction to Volume ii
- Part I Settler Colonialism
- Part II Empire-Building and State Domination
- Part III Nineteenth-Century Frontier Genocides
- Part IV Premonitions
- 22 Genocide and the Forcible Removal of Aboriginal Children in Australia, 1800–1920
- 23 The Killing Fields of Jiangnan
- 24 The Crime of the Congo
- 25 The Ottoman Massacres of Armenians, 1894–1896 and 1909
- 26 ‘Rivers of Blood and Rivers of Money’
- 27 Representations of the Poison Gas War on the Eastern Front, 1915–1917
- Index
23 - The Killing Fields of Jiangnan
Genocide and China’s Taiping Rebellion, 1851–1864
from Part IV - Premonitions
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 June 2023
- The Cambridge World History of Genocide
- The Cambridge World History of Genocide
- The Cambridge World History of Genocide
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Maps
- Tables
- Contributors to Volume ii
- Introduction to Volume ii
- Part I Settler Colonialism
- Part II Empire-Building and State Domination
- Part III Nineteenth-Century Frontier Genocides
- Part IV Premonitions
- 22 Genocide and the Forcible Removal of Aboriginal Children in Australia, 1800–1920
- 23 The Killing Fields of Jiangnan
- 24 The Crime of the Congo
- 25 The Ottoman Massacres of Armenians, 1894–1896 and 1909
- 26 ‘Rivers of Blood and Rivers of Money’
- 27 Representations of the Poison Gas War on the Eastern Front, 1915–1917
- Index
Summary
Although China’s Taiping Rebellion (1851-64) is perhaps history’s bloodiest civil war it has remained largely beyond the purview of genocide scholars, and its historiography has generally portrayed it as a “progressive” or “revolutionary” movement. This essay argues, however, that in its alien ideology derived from Protestantism and pre-Confucian millenarianism guided by the visions of Hong Xiuquan (1813-1864); radical attempts at social leveling; dismantling of Confucian culture and society; and elimination of select ethnic and religious groups, this attempt to create a theocratic “heavenly kingdom of great peace” (taiping tianguo) bears the hallmarks of current definitions of genocide and departs in crucial ways from even the most massive and sanguinary conflicts marking the Chinese past.
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- Information
- The Cambridge World History of Genocide , pp. 562 - 584Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023