ConflictEast Asia
The Taiping Rebellion
The bloodiest war of the nineteenth century, and few in the West have heard of it
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The Taiping movement demanded common property, equality between the sexes and bans on foot-binding and opium — a programme radical for its time. That this war is so little known outside China says something about how world history has traditionally been told. The Qing survived, but were permanently weakened.
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A man who believed he was Jesus's younger brother led a revolt that controlled much of southern China for fourteen years. Between twenty and thirty million people died — far more than in any other nineteenth-century war.
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Part of Terra Saga — the story of Earth on a timeline. terrasaga.org