S06: Civil Wars

External

• Opium War: Burden of indemnity payments
• Economic displacement after opening of new treaty ports
• Opium addiction and rural poverty
• First Industrial Revolution

Domestic

• Population growth: “High-equilibrium trap”?
• Official corruption: Case of Heshen
• State involution and declining fiscal capacity

• 1855-1858: Second Opium War against England and France
• 1858: Outer Manchuria ceded to Russia
• 1860: Treaty of Beijing

• 1850-1864: Taiping Civil War, led by Hong Xiuquan
• 1851-1868: Nian Rebellion in Anhui, Shandong, and Henan, led by remnants of the White Lotus Society
• 1855-1872: Panthay Rebellion in Yunnan, led by Du Wenxiu
• 1867-1876: Dungan Revolt in Xinjiang, led by Jakub Beg

• 1855: Yellow River changed course; Grand Canal flooded.
• 1873-1876: three year drought
• 1876-1879: Great North China Famine in five provinces, claiming at least 9.5 million lives.

• What was the source of unrest and rebellion in 19th century China?
• Unequal treaties: What were they? How did Qing become a modern sovereign state?
• Why didn’t the Qing collapse, despite its many crises?

• The opening of ports in Xiamen, Fuzhou, Ningbo, and Shanghai to Western trade led to job losses for millions of Southerners; many turned to banditry.
• Tensions arose between the Hakka ethnicity and the Han Chinese.
• A religious sect called the God Worshipping Society emerged among the Hakka, exacerbating the existing conflicts.

• Born in Hakka highlands in Fujian near Canton
• Failed exam candidate
• Encounter with American baptist missionary Issachar Jacox Roberts during exam trips

Robert Morrison (1782-1834)
Translator to the East India Company and of the Chinese Bible

Issachar Jacox Roberts (1802-1871)
Baptist missionary in China and supporter of the Taiping Rebellion.

• Hong traveled to the Hakka in Guangxi and built a military force of 20,000 by 1850.
• Gathered followers and built an army, controlled over a third of China by late 1850s.

• How do the Taipings justify their mission to establish an order in the world?
• What is their vision of the family in relation to the state?
• How do you think the Chinese elite, educated in Confucian values, would react to their “Christian” vision of the state and family?
• How would foreign missionaries react to the Taiping?

• A “new way of life, a ‘Human Fellowship’ in which men and women would be equal, and wealth would be shared”
• Building utopia: Introduced common property, land reform, equal position of women, abstinence from opium, tobacco, and alcohol, calendar and literary reform, and new political-military organization
• Taiping ideology as blend of Confucian, ancient, and Western ideas

• Although signed in 1858, China didn’t ratify the Tianjin Treaty until British and French forces attacked and entered Beijing in 1960, burning the Summer Palace but sparing the Forbidden City.
• U.S. diplomat John Ward negotiated treaty ratifications in 1859, allowing other powers to benefit from the Treaty of Tianjin.

• Signed with Russia
• Cession of lands east and north of the Amur (Outer Manchuria)
• Russia as North Pacific Power: Naval stations in new Province of Vladivostok, Ussuriysk and other settlements
• Chinese access to the Sea of Japan sealed off

• The Hui are one of China’s 10 Muslim ethnic groups, part of the 56 official nationalities recognized.
• In the 2020 census, there were 18 million Muslim adults in China (1.6% of the adult population), with the Hui (8.3 million) and Uyghurs (7.7 million) as the largest groups.
• The Hui are Chinese Muslims, distinct from Turkic or Mongolian groups, mainly found in western China.

• Their ancestors were merchants, soldiers, craftsmen, and scholars from Islamic Persia and Central Asia who settled in China from the 7th to 13th centuries.
• The Hui intermarried with Han Chinese, Uighurs, and Mongolians, adopting Chinese languages while often retaining some Arabic.

• The Panthay Rebellion took place from 1856 to 1873 in Yunnan Province, China.
• Yunnan was diverse, with an economy based on trade and mining involving Hui Muslims, indigenous Yi, and Han Chinese.
• Rapid population growth and Han migration led to tensions, culminating in the 1856 Kunming Massacre against the Hui, which left thousands dead.
• The rebellion was multi-ethnic and peaked between 1867 and 1869.

• The Dungan Revolt occurred from 1862 to 1877 in China, primarily involving Hui Muslims (Dungan) against the Qing government.
• The revolt began in Shaanxi Province and spread to Gansu and Ningxia, with the Hui seeking autonomy and rights.
• As Muslim rebellion spread from Shaanxi and Gansu to East Turkistan (now Xinjiang), rebel Muslims formed an independent power at Kuldja (Yining), a significant caravan trade center.

• In 1865, Yakub Beg invaded Kashgaria and established power, showing intentions to move towards the Ili region to support the British in India.
• This threatened the Sino-Russian Treaty of Kuldja (1851), and kindled great power rivalry between the British and Russian Empires in the region.

• What should the Qing do to quell its internal turmoils?
• How should the Qing handle its relationship with Western imperial powers?
• With the decline of the Qing power and prestige, Qing’s peripheral areas began to free themselves from the Qing influence. What should it do?

• After victory over the Taiping, Ward and Gordon received official ranks in the Qing bureaucracy, along with official robes and military investitures.
• Ward further solidified his alliance with the Chinese merchant community by marrying the daughter of banker Yang Fang, his benefactor.
• Ward and Gordon’s hybrid identity as Western-born Chinese subjects allowed them to seize opportunities in early 1862.

Western Mercenaries: Friends or Enemies?

• Foreign adventurers participated in the Taiping War on both Qing and Taiping sides, often against their governments’ prohibitions.
• Foreign officers could exploit their positions for their own interests and their training training might undermine Chinese troops’ discipline and loyalty.

Foreign Christians: Good Christians?

• Western missionaries were supported by the Qing under pressure from conquering western forces.
• Confusion among Chinese gentry: Why were they battling indigenous Chinese adherents to Christianity on the one hand and supporting foreign Christian missionaries on the other?

• Rebellion took 15 years and defeated only in 1864, when the Hunan army retook Nanjing.
• At least 100,000 Taiping rebels slaughtered; city burned.
• Estimated 20 million lives lost in total, twice that of World War I, and the deadliest civil war in history.

• In 1863, the Nian faced a setback when their stronghold in Zhihe (Guoyang, Anhui today) was captured and leader Zhang Lexing was killed.
• As the Qing dealt with the Taiping, they shifted focus to the Nian, using a blockade strategy to defeat the rebels.

• The movement lacked unifying leadership among Hui leaders.
• Key figures included Ma Rulong, who initially resisted Qing authority but later joined their military, and Du Wenxiu, who founded the Pingnan state and sought alliances with Han and Yi groups.
• Du Wenxiu surrendered to avoid more bloodshed, was executed, and the rebellion ended with Qing control over Dali.

• Zuo Zongtang, also known as General Tso, led a military campaign in Xinjiang from 1876 to 1878 to suppress the Dungan Revolt and re-establish Qing control.
• Sino-Russian Treaty of St. Petersburg (1881): recognized China’s sovereignty over Mongolia; in return, Russia was granted the right to build a railway across northern China to Vladivostok. The Treaty also established a boundary in Central Asia.
• The campaign and negotiations cost China nearly 58 million taels in expedition and indemnity.
• In 1884, the region was officially established as the new province of Xinjiang, integrating it into China for the first time.

• The Taiping Rebellion lasted from 1850 to 1864.
• With over twenty million deaths, it was the deadliest civil war in history (twice the casualties of World War I).
• The destruction caused by the rebellion had long-lasting effects, with some areas of central China not fully recovering by the 1950s.

CCP: Proto-Communist Revolution?

• Taiping was nationalist and democratic, its egalitarianism as precursor to socialism
• At the same time, that same egalitarian condemned as backward and cultish
• Peasant uprisings failed because they were “idealistic” and were not led by the Communist Party

When stripped of its religious mantle, [Taping] was actually a revolutionary organization, advocating an anti-religious philosophy of struggle…. The message is clear: state power is secured only by the sword, happiness is realized only through hard work, and only by capturing all demons, and by suppressing traitors and blood-suckers, can peace be brought to the world.

• Devolution and regionalization of state power
• Rise of regional elites to national leadership
• Militarization of local societies
• Erosion of control over the borderlands
• Anti-Manchun nationalism

• The Taiping Rebellion (1850-1864) displaced many peasants, who sought refuge in Shanghai after losing their homes.
• Land regulations allowed Chinese refugees to rent and buy property in the International Settlements, creating new opportunities for them.
• The settlements became increasingly populated by Chinese nationals, despite being governed primarily by foreign powers.

Pre-Taiping:

• Successful governance stemmed from a strong civilian bureaucracy rather than military power.
• Culture would prevail over force: the best men should serve in government rather than as soldiers.

After-Taiping:

• Arms and ammunition became the largest Western exports to China.
• To address rebellions, semi-permanent militias were formed at provincial and regional levels, but no national army until mid-20th century.
• Since the 1910s, China consistently had one of the largest numbers of men under arms of any nation.

• End of “law of avoidance”
• Regional armies, personally loyal to their commanders than to the empire
• New fiscal power: commercial transit tax
• Rise of local gentry and elite-led militia across the empire