Reconsiderations the Taiping Rebellion of the Early Modern China:From the Perspective of Millenarianism

Millenarianism refers usually to a radical mass movement which reflects a particular mode of thinking and action with a sense of redemption.Taiping Rebellion is considered as a millenarian movement due to its“Taiping”ideal,coming of the savior,mass appeal and crusade against evil.However,the millenarianism exemplified in the Taiping Rebellion should not be regarded as a pure Western Christian Millenarianism.Instead it should be viewed as a particular kind of theology derived from Hong Xiuquan’s combination of traditional Chinese culture and Christianity.A political-regional comparative study engaging worldwide millenarian movements of the 19th century reveals that Taiping Rebellion actually represents Chinese people’s own particular response towards the coming of modernity which was stimulated and encouraged by the western power’s invasion.

Anti-Confucianism:The Formation Process and the Ideology Essence of the Cultural Policy of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom

The“anti-Confucianism”constituted the main feature of the cultural policy of the Taiping Rebellion.However,the anti-Confucianism movement of the Taiping Rebellion was mainly in form rather than in content,and mainly in action rather than in thought,which manifested itself in a policy of banning and destroying the physical forms of Confucian memorial tablets,Confucian temples,and Confucian classics.The core elements of Confucianism were all inherited and retained by Hong Xiuquan,who was committed to subverting Confucius’position as the cultural authority of Chinese society,so Confucianism,together with Christian thought and folk religious thought,constituted the main source of the ideology of the Taiping Rebellion.It was the influence of Confucianism and folk religious thought on Hong Xiuquan that gave the idea of worshipping God a localized character and made a new type of religion that combined Chinese and Western elements.The“anti-Confucianism”was mostly based on an irrational political movement,and the Taiping Rebellion never criticized the doctrine of Confucius and Mencius from a theoretical point of view.Thus the political submission of civil society to the Taiping Rebellion hardly rose to the level of political identification.Cultural antipathy,to some extent,led to the eventual defeat of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.

Urban Space and Civil War： Hefei, 1853-1854

Previous scholarship has made it abundantly clear that the Taiping War impacted urban hierarchies in the Yangzi delta region, wreaking havoc in economic, commercial, administrative, and cultural centers like Hangzhou, Suzhou, Yangzhou, Changzhou, and Wuxi, thereby hastening the rise of Shanghai. But how did this war affect cities beyond the core Jiangnan region？ In a case study of the prefectural city of Hefei （Luzhou）, this article explores the ways in which war led to the reconfiguration and reimagining of urban space, both through wartime destruction and the patronage of post-war reconstruction.

New Chinese Military History, 1839-1951： What＇s the Story？

Since 1990, New Chinese Military History in the West has remedied scholarly neglect of Chinese warfare and changed the usual stories of modern China. These studies disproved Orientalist assumptions of a unique ＂Chinese way of war＂ or a strategic culture that avoided aggressive confrontation. Scholars also challenge the assumption that Confucian immobility led to a clash of civilizations and decisive defeat in the Opium Wars, First Sino-Japanese War, and Boxer War of 1900. In fact, Qing officials were quick and successful in creating a new military regime. New military histories of the warlords, the Sino-Japanese Wars, and the Chinese Civil War show that developing new types of warfare was central in creating the new nation. All these wars split the country into factions that were supported by outside powers： they were internationalized civil wars. The article also asks how the choice of terms, labels, and categories shapes interpretations and political messages.