S01E22: Taiping Rebellion-On to Nanjing

Chinese Revolutions: A History Podcast

S01E22 The Taiping Rebellion: On to Nanjing

In today's episode, we cover a bit over a year of lightning-speed hard campaigning by Taiping forces, taking them from Southwest China so Eastern China.

Using the rivers of China, the Taiping covered 500 miles (800 km) from Yongan to Wuchang (today Wuhan), then 600 miles (965 km) down the Yangtze to Nanjing.

Development of Qing Opposition

One of the characters we're going to meet today is Jiang Zhongyuan, an official whose hometown is on the path of the Taiping advance. He had organized a local militia to suppress bandits and secret societies. His family and friends kept the militia together even when he himself was promoted to a posting far away.

Jiang led a devastatingly successful ambush on Taiping forces, using forces personally loyal to him and his local allies, not to the central Qing state.

As the Taiping head into more and more "real China," they will face better supported forces, more resourceful enemy commanders with deeper ties to the Confucian civil servant class.

The Taiping Advance

As the Taiping go along, they take some cities and bypass others that give too stiff of resistance. They develop sophisticated combat engineering capabilities: pontoon bridges, sapping against enemy fortifications, undermining, use of boats.

They make skilled use of scouts, infiltrators, and advance agents. As they make local recruits, those same recruits become key agents for the next Taiping advance because they speak the local language and know the terrain.

Through effective messaging that attracts anti-Qing secret society members and appeals to Chinese nationalists, they mobilize a force that helps them seize Nanjing, which will be the Taiping capital for the next ten years.

Three Factors Working Against the Taiping

The Qing were not conclusively defeated. The Taiping were good, but their enemy was only getting started.

The Taiping weren't just the next Chinese dynasty. They were a weird cult, imposing an ideology on their subject populations.

The foreigners who had inserted themselves into the Chinese economy will critically intervene.

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