What if the Taiping Rebellion was successful?

In many ways, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was the bastard child of North Korea, early Mormonism, and ISIS. Not only did you have an aggressive cult of personality that worshipped Hong Xiuquan as the literal younger brother of Jesus, but also massive large-scale land reappropriation, "reeducation/religious conversion camps", mass killings of villages that rejected Hong Xiuquan's divinity and/or Christianity, the destruction of centuries old landmarks, and the burning of any "non-Christian" literature, which in the context of 19th century China, was more or less everything the revolutionaries could get their hands on. The list goes on and on.
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I don't mean to derail the thread, but I don't know much about China... but why was the Taiping Rebellion so successful IOTL? Was it solely due to the incompetence of the Qing regime?
 
I don't mean to derail the thread, but I don't know much about China... but why was the Taiping Rebellion so successful IOTL? Was it solely due to the incompetence of the Qing regime?
The Qing regime was highly corrupt.It was also an apartheid regime that restricted the freedom of it's people.It's defeats against the Western armies weakened it's authority drastically.Most of it's armies were poorly led,organised and trained.The army was also outdated in both doctrine and equipment by the west.
 

PhilippeO

Banned
People are getting way sensationalist over this. Sure, by our standards, the Taiping were weird, but not really moreso than past Chinese millenarian movements, like the White Lotus/Red Turbans; however crazy and bloody the origins of the Ming, their dynasty turned out alright for a while. People are also overstating how much Chinese culture they'd destroy; even setting aside the general syncretism involved in the Taiping project, Hong Rengan joins up at Tianjing and reintroduces Confucius onto the Taiping examinations anyway. ....

Seconding this.

People in armed rebellion which overthrown social order, have enemy on all sides, and living day-to-day in chaos do a lot of crazy things. And beliefs that they living in end of world certainly didn't help things.

Taiping is not unique on this. Mazdakism, Munster Rebellion, Mormons during Nauvoo days, many Sufi groups in Iran, Ikhwan in Saudi Arabia, Reign of Terror during French Revolution, and numerous Chinese Milleniarian Peasant Rebellion (including Mao communist rebellion) have produced LOTS of crazy government policies and sometime produced brutal massacre and persecution.

But, if they succeed in establishing themselves and maturing to second generation leadership, they usually lost many of early days strangenesss and interested in stabilisation of society.

Taiping policy during its Hong Xiuquan cannot be guide for future policy of successful 'Taiping' dynasty.

Napoleon, child of Revolution ended up marrying daughter of Holy Roman Emperor and Bernadotte ended up establishing monarchy. Look at modern Mormon and current China regime, they very different from what they are originally, they both now become conservative capitalist society which value leadership of the old and seek stable society.
 
People are getting way sensationalist over this. Sure, by our standards, the Taiping were weird, but not really moreso than past Chinese millenarian movements, like the White Lotus/Red Turbans; however crazy and bloody the origins of the Ming, their dynasty turned out alright for a while. People are also overstating how much Chinese culture they'd destroy; even setting aside the general syncretism involved in the Taiping project, Hong Rengan joins up at Tianjing and reintroduces Confucius onto the Taiping examinations anyway. Plus, Hong Rengan was a great advocate of modernization and normalized relations with the Western Powers; his vision of China's future had banks, steamships, factories, insurance companies, and railroads at its heart, and there were Europeans who understood the dynastic cycle the Chinese had imposed on their history, and observed that in Taiping domains that were not the seat of war, the ground was in fact well cultivated.
Zhu Yuanzhang ditched the White Lotus/Manichaean stuff as soon as he controlled a domain of his own.Hong Xiuquan on the other hand had no indication of doing this.The upper echelons of the Taiping rebels wasn't that different from that of the Khmer Rouge minus they haven't started a massive purges yet.Hong Xiuquan was clearly insane.One of the kings will probably have to take him out later,but there's probably gonna be a large civil war between the different kings.
 
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Taiping were also successful in that their rebellion was but the most bloody of several regional uprisings that happened around the same time. Everyone wanted a piece of the Qing and everyone thought the Manchu were devils.
 
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