Essay On The Taiping Rebellion

The great rebellions that happened during the 19th century in the Qing dynasty, proved to be costly. Notably the biggest and most dangerous of the rebellions was the Taiping Rebellion. The Taiping Rebellion was so widespread, that the Qing considered it to be more pressing than the second opium war against the Europeans. The Taiping Rebellion had taken over 20 million Chinese lives over the course of the rebellion. Why did the Taiping Rebellion and other Rebellions during the middle of the 19th century happened? The rebellions throughout Chinese history usually happen with events that causes impoverishment to the peasant classes; For example, the Yangtze river flooded much farm land throughout the heart of China and elsewhere, it was drought (Green). Another reason to why the Taiping and other rebellions were so successful was due to the immense weakening of the scholar-officials and their corruption. A lot of these rebellions got so big because the scholar-officials were failing to report it – much like the earlier and later opium wars during the 18th century – to save their lives (Green). Lastly, these rebellions saw much reform in the Qing's military structure, such as, Chinese officials being able to raise armies without a Manchu present. This essay looks at
What these sweeping reforms entailed was the ability for Han scholar-officials to raise loyal armies in the defence of the Qing empire, and inherently, Chinese culture (Green). This showed weakness within the Manchu leaders and military, which is not necessarily a good thing but the armies proved to be loyal to the Qing empire. This reform also gave the ability for these scholar-officials to collect taxes to raise these armies and this proves to be an economic determent, as it gives less taxes to the Qing Dyansty