The Taiping Rebellion, also known as the Taiping Civil War, Revolution, or Movement, was a civil war in late imperial China between the Qing dynasty and the rebel Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. The conflict lasted 14 years, from its outbreak in 1850 until the fall of Taiping-controlled Nanjing — which had been renamed to Tianjing ("heavenly capital") — in 1864. The last rebel forces were defeated in August 1871. Estimates of the conflict's death toll range between 20 to 30 million people, representing 5–10% of China's population at that time, while higher estimates range from 73 to 100 million, roughly up to one quarter of the Chinese population at that time, making it perhaps the deadliest civil war in all of human history. While the Qing ultimately defeated the rebellion, the victory came at a great cost to the state's economic and political viability.
The uprising was led by Hong Xiuquan, an ethnic Hakka who, after a series of visions, proclaimed himself to be the younger brother of Jesus Christ. Hong sought the religious conversion of the Han people to his syncretic version of Christianity, as well as the political overthrow of the Qing dynasty, and a general transformation of the mechanisms of state. Rather than supplanting China's ruling class, the Taiping rebels sought to entirely upend the country's social order. The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom in Nanjing seized control of significant portions of southern China. At its peak, the Heavenly Kingdom ruled over a population of nearly 30 million.
For more than a decade, Taiping armies occupied and fought across much of the mid- and lower Yangtze valley, ultimately devolving into civil war. It was the largest war in China since the Ming–Qing transition, involving most of Central and Southern China. It ranks as one of the bloodiest wars in human history, the bloodiest civil war, and the largest conflict of the 19th century, comparable to World War I in terms of deaths. Thirty million people fled the conquered regions to foreign settlements or other parts of China. The war was characterized by extreme brutality on both sides. Taiping soldiers carried out widespread massacres of Manchus, the ethnic minority of the ruling Imperial House of Aisin-Gioro. Meanwhile, the Qing government also engaged in massacres, most notably against the civilian population of Nanjing.
Weakened severely by internal conflicts following the failure of the campaign against Beijing (1853–1855) and an attempted coup in September and October 1856, the Taiping rebels were defeated by decentralised provincial armies such as the Xiang Army organised and commanded by Zeng Guofan. After moving down the Yangtze River and recapturing the strategic city of Anqing, Zeng's forces besieged Nanjing during May 1862. After two more years, on June 1, 1864, Hong Xiuquan died during the siege, caused from the consumption of weeds in the palace grounds as well as suspicions of poison. Nanjing fell barely a month later.
The 14-year civil war, along with the internal and external conflicts of the Opium Wars and the Boxer Rebellion, weakened the Qing dynasty's grasp on central China. The Taiping rebellion prompted the government's initially successful "Self-Strengthening Movement", but continued social and religious unrest exacerbated ethnic disputes and accelerated the rise of provincial powers. The Warlord Era, the loss of central control after the establishment of the Republic of China, would begin in earnest in 1912.
The terms which writers use for the conflict and its participants often represent their different opinions. During the 19th century, the Qing did not describe the conflict as either a civil war or a movement, because doing so would have lent credibility to the Taiping. Instead, they referred to the tumultuous civil war as a period of chaos (亂; luàn), rebellion (逆; nì) or military ascendancy (軍興; jūnxìng). They often referred to it as the Hong-Yang Rebellion (洪楊之亂; Hóngyáng zhī luàn), referring to the two most prominent leaders. It was also dismissively referred to as the Red Sheep Rebellion (紅羊之亂; Hóngyáng zhī luàn) because the two names sound similar in Chinese.
In modern China, the war is often referred to as the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement (太平天國運動; Tàipíng tiānguó yùndòng), due to the fact that the Taiping espoused a doctrine which was both nationalist and communist, and the Taiping represented a popular ideology which was based on either Han nationalism or protocommunist values. The scholar Jian Youwen is among those who refer to the rebellion as the "Taiping Revolutionary Movement" on the grounds that it worked towards a complete change in the political and social system, rather than working towards the replacement of one dynasty with another.
Many Western historians refer to the conflict in general as the "Taiping Rebellion". In 2013, scholars such as Tobie Meyer-Fong and Stephen Platt argued that the term "Taiping Rebellion" is biased, because it insinuates that the Qing government was a legitimate government which was fighting against the illegitimate Taiping rebels. Instead, they argue that the conflict should be called a "civil war". Other historians such as Jürgen Osterhammel term the conflict the "Taiping Revolution" because of the rebels' radical transformational objectives and the social revolution that they initiated.
Little is known about how the Taiping referred to the war, but the Taiping often referred to the Qing in general and the Manchus in particular as some variant of demons or monsters (妖; yāo), representing Hong's proclamation that they were fighting a holy war to rid the world of demons and establish paradise on earth. The Qing referred to the Taiping as "Yue Bandits" (粵匪; Yuèfěi or 粵賊; Yuèzéi) in official sources, a reference to their origins in the southeastern province of Guangdong.
More colloquially, the Chinese called the Taiping some variant of Long-Hairs (長毛鬼、長髪鬼、髪逆、髪賊), because they did not shave their foreheads and braid their hair into a queue as Qing subjects were obligated to do, allowing their hair to grow long.
During the 19th century, the Qing dynasty experienced a series of famines, natural disasters, economic problems and defeats at the hands of foreign powers. Farmers were heavily overtaxed, rents rose dramatically, and peasants started to desert their lands in droves. The Qing military had recently suffered a disastrous defeat in the First Opium War, while the Chinese economy was severely impacted by a trade imbalance caused by the large-scale and illicit importation of opium. Banditry became common, and numerous secret societies and self-defense units formed, all of which led to an increase in small-scale warfare.
Meanwhile, the population of China had nearly doubled between 1766 and 1833, while the amount of cultivated land remained the same. The government, commanded by ethnic Manchus, had become increasingly corrupt, and was weak in southern regions where local clans dominated. Anti-Manchu sentiment was strongest in southern China among the Hakka community, a Han Chinese subgroup. Meanwhile, Christian missionaries were active.
In 1837, Hong Huoxiu, a Hakka from a poor village in Guangdong, failed the imperial examination for the third time, frustrating his ambition to become a scholar-official in the civil service and leading him to a nervous breakdown. While recovering, Hong dreamed of visiting Heaven, where he discovered that he possessed a celestial family distinct from his earthly family. His heavenly father lamented that men were worshiping demons rather than himself and informed Hong that his given name violated taboos and had to be changed, suggesting "Hong Xiuquan", the moniker ultimately adopted by Hong. In later embellishments, Hong declared that he saw Confucius being punished by his celestial father for leading the people astray.
In 1843, Hong failed the imperial examinations for the fourth and final time. It was only then, prompted by a visit by his cousin, that Hong took time to carefully examine Christian pamphlets he had received from a Protestant Christian missionary several years earlier. After reading these pamphlets, Hong came to believe that they had given him the key to interpreting his visions: his celestial father was God the Father, the elder brother that he had seen was Jesus Christ, and he had been directed to rid the world of demons, including the corrupt Qing government and Confucian teachings.