God's Chinese Son: Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan

by JonathanSpence (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  1996

  $3.42

  The rise and fall of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom in mid 19th-century China was one of the most violent events in human history. Led by Hong Xiuquan, a religious visionary and failed civil servant, the Taipang Rebellion cost at least 2 million lives. Hong had a dream in which he ascended into heaven and met his elder brother Jesus Christ. He returned to earth charged, he believed, to destroy the demon devils who did not share his beliefs. His preaching soon attracted followers, arms and money. After a succession of battles, massacres and sieges, Hong's army seized power over a vast territory. From his capital, Nanjing, Hong ruled his kingdom for 11 years, playing his rivals off against each other. Eventually his army lost its morale and Nanjing was surrounded and besieged. Hong died after eating poisonous herbs, followed by the fall of Nanjing and the rounding up and execution of the surviving Taiping leaders.

• New

  Paperback
  1997

  $23.83

  Whether read for its powerful account of the largest uprising in human history, or for its foreshadowing of the terrible convulsions suffered by twentieth-century China, or for the narrative power of a great historian at his best, God's Chinese Son must be read. At the center of this history of China's Taiping rebellion (1845-64) stands Hong Xiuquan, a failed student of Confucian doctrine who ascends to heaven in a dream and meets his heavenly family: God, Mary, and his older brother, Jesus. He returns to earth charged to eradicate the demon-devils, the alien Manchu rulers of China. His success carries him and his followers to the heavenly capital at Nanjing, where they rule a large part of south China for more than a decade. Their decline and fall, wrought by internal division and the unrelenting military pressures of the Manchus and the Western powers, carry them to a hell on earth. Twenty million Chinese are left dead.