REFLECTIONS ON THE TAIPING REBELLION
Rebellions and revolutions in China are not new and rare historic
occurrences. There have been at least twenty-four dynasties and as many
attendant rebellions or revolutions. But with the exception of the
Feudatory period, revolutions in China (since the consolidation of the
three Kingdoms into one Empire under the Emperor Chin) meant only a
change of hands in the government, without a change either of its form,
or principles. Hence the history of China for at least two thousand
years, like her civilization, bears the national impress of a monotonous
dead level--jejune in character, wanting in versatility of genius, and
almost devoid of historic inspiration.
The Taiping Rebellion differs from its predecessors in that in its
embryo stage it had taken onto itself the religious element, which
became the vital force that carried it from the defiles and wilds of
Kwangsi province in the southwest to the city of Nanking in the
northeast, and made it for a period of fifteen years a constantly
impending danger to the Manchu Dynasty, whose corruption, weakness and
maladministration were the main causes that evoked the existence of this
great rebellion.
The religious element that gave it life and character was a foreign
product, introduced into China by the early Protestant missionaries, of
whom Dr. Robert Morrison was the first English pioneer sent out by the
London Mission, followed a decade later by the Rev. Icabod J. Roberts,
an American missionary. These two missionaries may properly claim the
credit, if there is any, of having contributed (each in his particular
sphere) in imparting to Hung Siu Chune a knowledge of Christianity. Dr.
Morrison, on his part, had translated the Bible into Chinese, and the
Emperor Khang Hsi’s dictionary into English; both these achievements
gave the missionary work in China a basis to go upon in prosecuting the
work of revising and of bringing the Bible to the Chinese standard of
literary taste, so as to commend it to the literary classes, and in
making further improvements in perfecting the Chinese-English
dictionary, which was subsequently done by such men as Dr. Medhurst,
Bishop Boone, Dr. Legge, E. C. Bridgeman, and S. Wells Williams.
Besides these works of translation, which undoubtedly called for further
revision and improvement, Dr. Morrison also gave China a native
convert--Leang Ahfah--who became afterwards a noted preacher and the
author of some religious tracts.
Hung Siu Chune, in his quest after religious knowledge and truths, got
hold of a copy of Dr. Morrison’s Bible and the tracts of Leang Ahfah. He
read and studied them, but he stood in need of a teacher to explain to
him many points in the Bible, which appeared to him mysterious and
obscure. He finally made the acquaintance of the Rev. Mr. Icabod J.
Roberts, an American missionary from Missouri, who happened to make his
headquarters in Canton. Hung Siu Chune called upon him often, till their
acquaintance ripened into a close and lasting friendship, which was kept
up till Hung Siu Chune succeeded in taking Nanking, when Mr. Roberts was
invited to reside there in the double capacity of a religious teacher
and a state adviser. This was undoubtedly done in recognition of Mr.
Roberts’ services as Hung’s teacher and friend while in Canton. No one
knew what had become of Mr. Roberts when Nanking fell and reverted to
the imperialists in 1864.
It was about this time, when he was sedulously seeking Mr. Roberts’
religious instructions at Canton, that Hung failed to pass his first
competitive examination as a candidate to compete for official
appointment, and he decided to devote himself exclusively to the work of
preaching the Gospel to his own people, the Hakkas of Kwang Tung and
Kwangsi. But as a colporter and native preacher, Hung had not reached
the climax of his religious experience before taking up his stand as the
leader of his people in open rebellion against the Manchu Dynasty.
We must go back to the time when, as a candidate for the literary
competitive examinations, he was disappointed. This threw him into a
fever, and when he was tossing about in delirium, he was supposed to
have been translated to Heaven, where he was commanded by the Almighty
to fill and execute the divine mission of his life, which was to destroy
idolatry, to rectify all wrong, to teach the people a knowledge of the
true God, and to preach redemption through Christ. In view of such a
mission, and being called to the presence of God, he at once assumed
himself to be the son of God, co-equal with Christ, whom he called his
elder brother.
It was in such a state of mental hallucination that Hung Siu Chune
appeared before his little congregation of Hakkas--migrating
strangers--in the defiles and wilds of Kwangsi. Their novel and strange
conduct as worshippers of Shangti--the Supreme Ruler--their daily
religious exercises, their prayers, and their chanting of the doxology
as taught and enjoined by him, had attracted a widespread attention
throughout all the surrounding region of Kwangsi. Every day fresh
accessions of new comers flocked to their fold and swelled their ranks,
till their numerical force grew so that the local mandarins were baffled
and at their wits’ end to know what to do with these believers of
Christianity. Such, in brief, was the origin, growth and character of
the Christian element working among the simple and rustic mountaineers
of Kwangsi and Kwang Tung.
It is true that their knowledge of Christianity, as sifted through the
medium of the early missionaries from the West, and the native converts
and colporters, was at best crude and elementary, but still they were
truths of great power, potential enough to turn simple men and
religiously-inclined women into heroes and heroines who faced dangers
and death with the utmost indifference, as was seen subsequently, when
the government had decided to take the bull by the horns and resorted to
persecution as the final means to break up this religious, fanatical
community. In their conflicts with the imperial forces, they had neither
guns nor ammunition, but fought with broomsticks, flails and pitchforks.
With these rustic and farming implements they drove the imperialist
hordes before them as chaff and stubble before a hurricane. Such was
their pent-up religious enthusiasm and burning ardor.
Now this religious persecution was the side issue that had changed the
resistance of Hung Siu Chune and his followers, in their religious
capacity, into the character of a political rebellion. It is difficult
to say whether or not, if persecution had not been resorted to, Hung Siu
Chune and his followers would have remained peaceably in the heart of
China and developed a religious community. We are inclined to think,
however, that even if there had been no persecution, a rebellion would
have taken place, from the very nature of the political situation.
Neither Christianity nor religious persecution was the immediate and
logical cause of the rebellion of 1850. They might be taken as
incidents or occasions that brought it about, but they were not the real
causes of its existence. These may be found deeply seated in the vitals
of the political constitution of the government. Foremost among them was
the corruption of the administrative government. The whole official
organization, from head to foot, was honeycombed and tainted by a system
of bribery, which passed under the polite and generic term of
“presents,” similar in character to what is now known as “graft.” Next
comes the exploitation of the people by the officials, who found an
inexhaustible field to build up their fortunes. Finally comes the
inevitable and logical corollary to official bribery and exploitation,
namely, that the whole administrative government was founded on a
gigantic system of fraud and falsehood.
This rebellion rose in the arena of China with an enigmatic character
like that of the Sphinx, somewhat puzzling at the start. The Christian
world throughout the whole West, on learning of its Christian
tendencies, such as the worship of the true and living God; Christ the
Savior of the world; the Holy Spirit, the purifier of the soul; the
destruction of temples and idols that was found wherever their
victorious arms carried them; the uncompromising prohibition of the
opium habit; the observance of a Sabbath; the offering of prayers before
and after meals; the invocation of divine aid before a battle--all these
cardinal points of a Christian faith created a world-wide impression
that China, through the instrumentality of the Taipings, was to be
evangelized; that the Manchu Dynasty was to be swept out of existence,
and a “Celestial Empire of Universal Peace,” as it was named by Hung Siu
Chune, was going to be established, and thus China, by this wonderful
intervention of a wise Providence, would be brought within the pale of
Christian nations. But Christendom was a little too credulous and
impulsive in the belief. It did not stop to have the Christianity of the
Taipings pass through the crucible of a searching analysis.
Their first victory over their persecutors undoubtedly gave Hung Siu
Chune and his associates the first intimation of a possible overturning
of the Manchu Dynasty and the establishment of a new one, which he named
in his religious ecstasy “The Celestial Empire of Universal Peace.” To
the accomplishment of this great object, they bent the full force of
their iconoclastic enthusiasm and religious zeal.
En route from Kwang Si, their starting point, to Nanking, victory had
perched on their standard all the way. They had despatched a division of
their army to Peking, and, on its way to the northern capitol, it had
met with a repulse and defeat at Tientsin from whence they had turned
back to Nanking. In their victorious march through Hunan, Hupeh, Kiang
Si and part of An Hwui, their depleted forces were replenished and
reinforced by fresh and new accessions gathered from the people of those
provinces. They were the riffraff and scum of their populations. This
rabble element added no new strength to their fighting force, but proved
to be an encumbrance and caused decided weakness. They knew no
discipline, and had no restraining religious power to keep them from
pillage, plunder and indiscriminate destruction. It was through such new
accessions that the Taiping cause lost its prestige, and was defeated
before Tientsin and forced to retreat to Nanking. After their defeat in
the North, they began to decline in their religious character and their
bravery. Their degeneracy was accelerated by the capture of Yang Chow,
Suchau, and Hangchau, cities noted in Chinese history for their great
wealth as well as for their beautiful women. The capture of these
centers of a materialistic civilization poured into their laps untold
wealth and luxury which tended to hasten their downfall.
The Taiping Rebellion, after fifteen years of incessant and desultory
fighting, collapsed and passed into oblivion, without leaving any traces
of its career worthy of historical commemoration beyond the fact that it
was the outburst of a religious fanaticism which held the Christian
world in doubt and bewilderment, by reason of its Christian origin. It
left no trace of its Christian element behind either in Nanking, where
it sojourned for nearly ten years, or in Kwang Si, where it had its
birth. In China, neither new political ideas nor political theories or
principles were discovered which would have constituted the basal facts
of a new form of government. So that neither in the religious nor yet in
the political world was mankind in China or out of China benefited by
that movement. The only good that resulted from the Taiping Rebellion
was that God made use of it as a dynamic power to break up the stagnancy
of a great nation and wake up its consciousness for a new national life,
as subsequent events in 1894, 1895, 1898, 1900, 1901, and 1904-5 fully
demonstrated.