S01E20 Taiping Rebellion: Open Conflict Begins

Chinese Revolutions: A History Podcast

S01E20 Taiping Rebellion: Open Conflict Begins

In this episode, we speed up the story a bit, moving from the end of 1849 to the middle of 1851 and the Taiping capture of their first real city.

The Taiping started in a 60 by 80 square mile (100 by 130 km) base area in rugged rural Guangxi, but then they moved out of that area as the Qing began to concentrate military forces to crush them there.

Traveling for the Movement

Hong Xiuquan traveled all over the Taiping base area to collect money to sustain the movement, standardize indoctrination, and coordinate operations.

Members were captured and imprisoned, and one reason for the collection of money was to buy their freedom. Hong increasingly moved away from just bearing suffering for the cause to his "destroy the demons" mission. Eventually this coalesced into the vision of establishing a new Chinese dynasty.

Toward the Capture of Yongan

Even as the "God Worshiping Society" was still underground, their leadership was developing sophisticated signal and unit command methods for the eventual military campaign that occurred.

They stockpiled weapons, gathered recruits, and advanced indoctrination of the hodgepodge of recruits they gained.

There were some defections by former members of secret societies, and Qing forces were more and more tightly encircling part of their base area in Thistle Mountain.

In a breakout campaign, the Taiping left Thistle Mountain and in a spectacular assault seized the city of Yongan with all its connections to the regional trade and communication network, its printing facilities, supplies, and ability to house all the Taiping followers.

Whatever was to come next, they had their first real built up base.

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