Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-lrblm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-27T04:26:09.974Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

4 - The Taiping Land Programme: Creating a Moral Environment

from Egalitarianism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 November 2022

By
Rudolf G. Wagner
Edited by
Marcel van der Linden
Marcel van der Linden
Affiliation:
International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam
Get access

Summary

The Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace sprang from a Chinese Christian evangelical movement with close affinities, but no institutional ties, to evangelical Protestantism in the United States, Great Britain, and the European continent. It originated with a vision of its later leader Hong Xiuquan in 1837, in which he was taken up to heaven and was ordered by an ‘old man’ to drive out of the heavens the demons who had taken possession of them. After he had accomplished this feat, the ‘old man’, who originally had created the world, ordered him to descend back down to earth and do the same, that is, drive out the demons, who had not only established control there, but had done so with the connivance of many members of the Confucian elite.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of Socialism , pp. 101 - 125
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Further Reading

Jen, Yu-wen [Jian Yuwen], The Taiping Revolutionary Movement (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973).Google Scholar
Meyer-Fong, Tobie, What Remains: Coming to Terms with Civil War in Nineteenth-Century China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013).Google Scholar
Michael, Franz H., The Taiping Rebellion: History and Documents (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1971), 3 vols.Google Scholar
Platt, Stephen R., Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom: China, the West, and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012).Google Scholar
Spence, Jonathan, God’s Chinese Son: The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan (New York: W. W. Norton, 1996).Google Scholar
Wagner, Rudolf G., Reenacting the Heavenly Vision: The Role of Religion in the Taiping Rebellion, China Research Monograph 25 (Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, 1982).Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×