Taiping Rebellion | |||||||
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Image of the Battle of Anqing (1861) |
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Belligerents | |||||||
Later stages: |
Taiping Heavenly Kingdom | ||||||
Commanders and leaders | |||||||
Strength | |||||||
1,100,000+ | 500,000 | ||||||
Casualties and losses | |||||||
145,000 killed | 243,000 killed | ||||||
Total dead: 20–30 million dead (best estimate). |
Qing victory
Later stages:
France
United Kingdom
The Taiping Rebellion or the Taiping Civil War (simplified Chinese: 太平天国运动; traditional Chinese: 太平天國運動; pinyin: Tàipíng Tiānguó Yùndòng, literally "Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement") was a massive rebellion or civil war in China that lasted from 1850 to 1864 and was fought between the established Manchu-led Qing dynasty and the millenarian movement of the Heavenly Kingdom of Peace.
The Taiping Rebellion began in the southern province of Guangxi when local officials launched a campaign of religious persecution against a millenarian sect known as the God Worshipping Society led by Hong Xiuquan, who believed himself to be the younger brother of Jesus Christ. The goals of the Taipings were religious, nationalist, and political in nature; they sought the conversion of the Chinese people to the Taiping's version of Christianity, the overthrow of the ruling Manchus, and a wholesale transformation and reformation of the state. Rather than simply supplanting the ruling class, the Taipings sought to upend the moral and social order of China. The war was mostly fought in the provinces of Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui, Jiangxi and Hubei, but over 14 years of war the Taiping Army had marched through every province of China proper except Gansu. The war was the largest in China since the Qing conquest in 1644, and it also ranks as one of the bloodiest wars in human history, the bloodiest civil war and the largest conflict of the 19th century, with estimates of the war dead ranging from 20–70 million to as high as 100 million, with millions more displaced.