The Taiping Ideology

Why the Taiping movement occurred at the moment it did will probably forever remain an enigma, but on the basis of our study we may make a few conjectures. The government was inept and corrupt. The whole empire was overrun with confusion and chaos. The people were suffering form poverty. The government had just suffered humiliating defeat, with all its military weakness completely exposed. there were natural calamities throughout the land. but these conditions alone would not necessarily have led to rebellion... Such a rebellion required imagination and strong leadership. Hung, in addition to his magnetic personality, offered both, and Yang strengthened the leadership. But these leaders would still have found it difficult to persuade people long indoctrinated in the official ideology to join them had there not been the happy coincidence of the coming of Christianity, the catalytic influence of a new ideology... Without this new ideology, it would have been nearly impossible to break the hold that orthodoxy had on the mind of the people... Social, political, and economic conditions persisted while ideas changed; hence the upheaval.