Thoughts on Hong Xiuquan?

Thoughts on Hong Xiuquan?

Was he the final messiah? Was he just a peasant rebel or a religious icon

If he had won America could claim that it`s the manifested destiny to help the christian ching chongs wich are currently being attacked by the japanese

China would have ended up really weird if this guy won. His religion would still be around today.

>Bans opium and sex before marriage
>Lives in a mansion sucking opium pipes all day and fucking whores
He was a bit of a cunt

The Taiping heavenly kingdom was already on the brink of collapse when the Qing put it down. It turns out that actually implementing land reform is fucking hard because the landlords will pay off your subordinates to leave them alone, or fight back. It turns out that people don't like being told they can't have sex and get burned at the stake for speaking out, while the leaders all take a dozen wives and require you to prostrate yourself on the ground as they pass (and burn you at the stake if you don't kowtow low enough, they called it becoming "a celestial lamp"). It also turns out that once you leave your home province nobody is interested in your insane cult, so they don't want to join you.

If the Taiping had marched on Beijing to topple the Qing instead of staying in Nanjing, they probably would have won. But after that there was no way they were holding China together. My guess is that it would quickly collapse into feuding warlords who would then get invaded by the imperialists, causing a full partition of China.

Le contemplating man

>The Taiping heavenly kingdom was already on the brink of collapse when the Qing put it down.

You don't say?!

internal collapse

Hero to the Chinese people fighting against horrible Manchu oppression

Most of those who joined the Taipings did so to fuck Qing Shit/Wh*te boi shit up and not join his David Koresh-ass cult.

Some of the more prominent Chinese nationalist figures fought in his side. Like Liu Yongfu of the Black Flag Army who took his merry band of ex-Taipings in Vietnam to fight Frogs and then in Taiwan to establish a puppet republic to keep it under Chinese rule.

The taiping started out in gaunxi province, the southern most province of China, there’s no way they could have taken Peking/Beijing I think they were doomed the moment the failed to take shanghai

M*nchus deserved worse desu

They were doomed the moment the Brits and French realized they weren't really Christian at all and started actually supporting the Qing

Which is why they never could take shanghai so I’m still right

The Brits and French supported the Qing on the get go.

What Europenises wanted was a weak China with a pliable government that said "yes" to Europe so they can access China's great market. Not a China boiling in chaos or having a chance that the Emperor is replaced by an effective government.

Besides China already had western help before the Brits & French weighed in: they hired a drunk Massachusetts ex-sailor and mercenary with a degree in military sciences to train their first modern army.

>The Brits and French supported the Qing on the get go
They were at war when it started and figured it wouldn't really matter if the Taiping won because business is business, they actually got pissed off about Fred Ward going and fighting the Taiping because they felt it would make them a target

>In 1849 Ward enrolled at the “American Literary, Scientific and Military Academy”, now Norwich University, in Vermont, where the curriculum included military tactics, strategy, drill, and ceremonies. He attended for only a few months, before he left school and never returned.
>This is the commander of China's first modern army.

>The Brits and French supported the Qing on the get go.
>second opium war occurs during Taiping rebellion
Burning down their capital is an interesting way to support them.

I don't think you understand how poor the state of the Qing military was

Ward was a shite tactician, but to be fair he had mastery of Western Drill which is what mattered. In addition oversight by Li Hongzhang also improved the discipline of the EVA, since it was initially composed of an unruly bunch of foreign & local mercenaries as drunk as Ward was.

The Victory over the Taipings are credited on three individuals: Charles Gordon, Li Hongzhang, and Zuo Zongtang.

I always thought it was funny how the Macartney mission's goal was to normalize diplomacy and open up trade to China, but since he failed completely at that most of his report talks about how weak the Chinese military is.

During McCartney's time, the Qing Army was pretty strong- having recently pulled off the 10 Great Campaigns- albeit outdated to European standards.

The Banner Armies declined after Qianlong died.

its mainly the coastal defenses and naval forces that he talks about as being pathetically inadequate