|
The Taiping Rebellion or Taiping Civil War (simplified Chinese: 太平天国运动; traditional Chinese: 太平天國運動; pinyin: ''Taìpíng Tīanguó Yùndòng'') was a massive rebellion or civil war in China that lasted from 1850 to 1864, which was fought between the established Manchu-led Qing dynasty and the Christian millenarian movement of the Heavenly Kingdom of Peace. The Taiping Rebellion began in the southwestern province of Guangxi when local officials launched a campaign of persecution against a Christian sect known as the God Worshipping Society led by Hong Xiuquan, who believed himself to be the younger brother of Jesus Christ. The war was mostly fought in the provinces of Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui, Jiangxi, and Hubei, but over 14 years of war, the Taiping Army had marched through every regularized province of China proper except Gansu. The war was the largest in China since the Qing conquest in 1644, and ranks as one of the bloodiest wars in human history, the bloodiest civil war, and the largest conflict of the nineteenth century with estimates of war dead ranging from 20 to 70 million dead, as well as millions more displaced. Hostilities began on January 1, 1851 when the Qing Green Standard Army launched an attack against the God Worshipping Society at the town of Jintian, Guangxi. Hong declared himself the Heavenly King of the Heavenly Kingdom of Peace (or Taiping Heavenly Kingdom), from which the term Taipings has often been applied to them in the English language. The Taipings began marching north in September 1851 to escape Qing forces closing in on them. On March 19, 1853, the Taipings captured the city of Nanjing and Hong declared it the Heavenly Capital of his kingdom. For a decade, the Taiping occupied and fought across much of the mid and lower Yangzi valley, some of the wealthiest and most productive lands in the Qing empire. The Taiping nearly managed to capture the Qing capital of Beijing with a northern expedition launched in May 1853, and were quite successful in capturing large parts of Anhui, Jiangxi, and Hubei provinces with a western expedition launched in June 1853. Qing imperial troops proved to be largely ineffective in halting Taiping advances, focusing on a perpetually stalemated siege of Nanjing. In Hunan Province, a local irregular army, called the Xiang Army or Hunan Army, under the personal leadership of Zeng Guofan, became the main armed force fighting for the Qing against the Taiping. Zeng’s Xiang Army proved effective in gradually turning back the Taiping advance in the western theater of the war. In 1856, the Taiping were weakened after infighting after an attempted coup led by the East King, Yang Xiuqing. During this time, the Xiang Army managed to gradually retake much of Hubei and Jiangxi province. In May 1860, the Taiping defeated the imperial forces that had been besieging Nanjing since 1853, eliminating imperial forces from the region and opening the way for a successful invasion of southern Jiangsu and Zhejiang province, the wealthiest region of the Qing Empire. While Taiping forces were preoccupied in Jiangsu, Zeng’s forces moved down the Yangzi River capturing Anqing on September 5, 1861. In May 1862, the Xiang Army began directly sieging Nanjing and managed to hold firm despite numerous attempts by the Taiping Army to dislodge them with superior numbers. Hong died on June 1, 1864, and Nanjing fell shortly after on July 19. After the fall of Nanjing, Zeng Guofan and many of his protégées, such as Li Hongzhang and Zuo Zongtang, were celebrated as saviors of the Qing empire and were some of the most powerful men in late-nineteenth century China. A small remainder of loyal Taiping forces continued to fight in northern Zhejiang, rallying behind Hong’s teenage son Tianguifu, but after Tianguifu’s capture on October 25, 1864, Taiping resistance was gradually pushed into the highlands of Jiangxi, Zhejiang, Fujian, and finally Guangdong, where the last Taiping loyalist, Wang Haiyang, was defeated in January 29, 1866. ==Nomenclature== In modern Chinese, the Taiping Civil War is often referred to as the Movement of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, reflecting both a Nationalist and Communist point of view that the Taiping represented a popular ideological movement of either Han nationalism or proto-communist values. In the nineteenth century, the Qing did not directly name the conflict as a civil war or movement, since that would lend the Taiping credibility, but instead referred to the tumultuous civil war as a period of chaos (乱), rebellion (逆), or military ascendency (军兴). The Qing referred to the Taiping as Yue Bandits (粤匪 or 粤贼) in official sources, a reference to their origins in the southeastern province of Guangdong. At other times, it was referred to as the Hong-Yang Rebellion (洪杨之乱), pointing out the two most prominent leaders of the Taiping, Hong Xiuquan and Yang Xiuqing, and was also referred to them more dismissively as the Red Sheep Rebellion (红羊之乱), because Hong-Yang sounds like Red Sheep in Chinese. More colloquially, Chinese in the nineteenth century called the Taiping with some variant of Long-Hairs (长毛鬼、长髪鬼、髪逆、髪贼), because the Taiping did not shave their foreheads and braid their hair into a queue as Qing subjects were obligated to do, allowing their hair to grow long. Little is known about how the Taiping referred to the war they found, but the Taiping often referred to the Qing in general and Manchus in particular as some variant of demons or monsters (妖), reflecting Hong’s proclamation that they were fighting a holy war to rid the world of demons and establish paradise on earth. In English, the Heavenly Kingdom of Peace has often been shortened to simply the Taipings, from the word “Peace” in the Heavenly Kingdom of Peace, but this was never a term the Taipings or their enemies used to refer to them. In the Nineteenth Century, Western observers, depending on their ideological position, either referred to the Taiping as the “revolutionaries,” “insurgents,” or “rebels.” The conflict in general has been called by many Western historians as the Taiping Rebellion. Recently, scholars of the period, such as Tobie Meyer-Fong and Stephen Platt, have argued that the term Taiping Rebellion is biased in its view of the war, because it insinuates that the Qing were the legitimate government fighting against illegitimate Taiping rebels, denying historical contingency, experience, and values of historical neutrality. They argue, instead, that the conflict should be called a civil war. This argument has quickly gained traction among numerous Western historians of China, leading many to now refer to the conflict as the Taiping Civil War, but the term Taiping Rebellion is still also widely used.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Taiping Rebellion」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|