Rebellion is a fascinating aspect of human civilization. For while it is a marvelous tool for the oppressed to use to sweep away the political hierarchies which, in their calcification, have descended into corruption and self-interest, it is, at the same time, innately alienating. It is a gestalt of the most earnest wishes of the most passionate people within the citizenry. For moderates, from those complicit in the ruling regime to those who aimed simply to keep their heads down and survive, such strong emotion, and the actions that flow from them, are a threat to everything they know and hold dear. The result, then, is a messy conflagration of gravitational forces pulling at one another in an attemptt to impose their unique vision upon their opposition. The stresses, understandably, are often enough to rip society apart at its seams. If the Arab Spring's various uprisings are not proof enough of these consequences, then let us turn to 19century China for a most vivid example. Mr. Platt enlightens us.
Considered to be the most lethal civil war in human history, the Taiping Rebellion (1850-1864) consumed 19th century China like a virus, leaving in its wake wide swaths of starvation, disease and despair. Thought to have claimed the lives of approximately 20 million Chinese, it was sparked by attempts by Christian converts to dispel the sins and the stagnation of the Qing dynasty and replace it with a new, westernized nation founded on fundamentalist Christian values. It would not die until it had claimed more than 20 times as many casualties, and lasted almost four times as long, as the more famous American Civil War.
Despite the rebellion's virtuous cause, its successful recruitment of native Chinese to its banner, its numerous military victories and its extension of the hand of friendship to a western Europe with which it shared much in the way of ideology, the insurgents were unable to uproot the Qing dynasty which would survive another five decades until the fall of imperial China in 1911. Not only did the rebel's fundamentalist Christianity clash with a strongly Confucian China, Europe was skeptical of the promises of reform and solidarity falling so eagerly from the lips of the rebels. Their resulting skittishness lead the European powers to largely throw their imperial weight behind the devil they knew. The devil in this case was the Manchurian emperor of China, the centuries-old legacy of the Mongolian conquest of China, a man so un-Chinese, so removed from the day-to-day plight of his people, that cities were built within cities simply to house him, to keep him apart from the unwashed.
Lacking external support, and having effectively divided China into warring camps, the rebels failed to create their new, modern China. Instead, they delivered her into a prolonged conflict that only re-affirmed western ideas of Chinese barbarism while strengthening a failing dynasty of authoritarians set on commanding the fealty of this country of nearly half a billion. In the ashes of Nanjing, freedom would have to wait.
Autumn in The Heavenly Kingdom is an exquisite, narrative history of an important insurrection largely forgotten in the West. Dwarfed in cultural importance by both the Crimean war and the American Civil War, contemporaneous conflicts that helped to reshape western notions of freedom, justice and statehood, the Taiping Rebellion is, nonetheless, a pivotal moment in history. Had the followers of Hong Xiuquan managed to transform China into something resembling a western nation, Mao never rises. He never clashes with the United States. Millions upon millions of people do not die. The Korean War never comes to pass. Harnessing this consequential energy, Mr. Platt submerges us in a world of resplendent cities and gigantic armies, religious zealots and imperial stalwarts, European hypocrisy and earnest idealism, all in a successful effort to bring to life a distant world and the sometimes inscrutable war that convulsed it.
While Mr. Platt renders the conflict's prime movers with style and skill, and while he vividly depicts the numerous battles that characterized this failed rebellion, there are moments in which his chronicle yields under the weight of names and events lacking context for the 21st century reader. So much has happened since, both to China and the world, that the morals and the ideologies that underpinned the actors here seem at times bewildering. The author would have done better to have concentrated his narrative on a few key figures in the conflict instead of spreading out to encompass what must be dozens of characters trapped in a spiderweb of shifting alliances and elusive motives.
Notwithstanding the historical dislocation, this is a wonderful journey into a most violent and pivotal time. As exciting as it is tragic... (4/5 Stars)
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