The name by which one refers to, among other terms, the 'Taiping Rebellion', 'Taiping Civil War', 'Taiping Heavenly Kingdom' or even the 'Taiping Revolutionary Movement' can reveal quite a lot about the angle being taken on the subject. All of these are in some way charged language, and rather than just a potted history of the war it might be worth going into the various names that the conflict has been given.
The Taiping Rebellion
Referring to the conflict as a 'rebellion' tends to, as Tobie Meyer-Fong notes, imbue the imperial government with the status of being the legitimate power and the Taiping as challengers to order.^1 Imperial documents at times simply referred to the Taiping as 粵匪 (yue4 fei3) – 'Yue Rebels', denying any national characteristics to the movement by identifying them by their language. Similarly, Theodore Hamberg's The visions of Hung-Siu-tshuen, and origin of the Kwang-si insurrection (1854) had such connotations of regional rather than national character. Before deriding this assessment as unfair, there was a grain of truth to this – no Taiping wang are known to have been non-Hakka (suggestions that Chen Yucheng was Cantonese are speculative at best), whilst Luo Dagang, one of the earliest Taiping supporters, claimed to have been passed over for promotion for being from Guangdong rather than Guangxi province.^2 The term 'Taiping Rebellion' was perhaps most strongly used in the West rather than China proper – take, for example, this line from William McGonagall's General Gordon, the Hero of Khartoum (1885): 'And the Chinese rebels soon gave way'.^3 Both Franz Michael and Philip A. Kuhn would also use 'Taiping Rebellion' in the 1960s and 70s, the former with his The Taiping Rebellion: History and Documents (3 vols., published 1966-71) and the latter in Rebellion and its Enemies in Late Imperial China (1970). However, Chinese scholarship (and indeed popular consciousness) had generally preferred the Taiping's name for their own state – 太平天囯 (tai4 ping2 tian1 guo3) – the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.
The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom
Shih's book from 1972 (see notes) has '太平天囯' proudly emblazoned on the back, although the earliest work by a Western author (or indeed in English generally) which I could find using the term in its title is an article in Social Research from 1987, called Historians and Consciousness: The Modern Politics of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom by Robert P. Weller. Looking at later scholarship Jonathan D. Spence's God's Chinese Son (1997) is also subtitled The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan, whilst Thomas H. Reilly used The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom for his book.^4 Using the Taiping's own term carries with it connotations of the Taiping as an 'alternative state on Chinese soil', to quote Stephen R. Platt,^5 and these writings tend towards studying the Taiping in and of themselves. Where Michael and Kuhn focus on the Taiping in terms of their political and military challenge to Qing power, Shih, Spence and Reilly emphasise religion and ideology. The extension of 'alternative statehood', however, is the term popularised in more recent usage, the Taiping Civil War.
The Taiping Civil War
Platt and Meyer-Fong have different rationales for calling the 'Taiping Rebellion' a civil war. In Platt's case, it originates from not only the multi-faceted diplomatic game waged between the Taiping, the Qing and the Western governments, but also the new order that the Taiping, particularly Hong Rengan, planned to establish. In Meyer-Fong's, the devastation wreaked upon the Chinese by their own countrymen forms the basis for the use of 'civil war'. In both cases, the term serves as a rejection of the idea of a 'legitimate' or an 'illegitimate' side whilst also avoiding the restrictive nature of 'Heavenly Kingdom', which implicitly limits coverage to the Taiping and can lead to a lack of appreciation of the war's wider context at the Chinese level, let alone the world stage. In a way, the term 'Taiping Civil War' is perhaps the most useful, as it allows for a view of both the interior and exterior facets of the movement. The three terms so far all consider the problems of naming the war from the perspective of the conflict in and of itself, but there is one more to take into account.
The Taiping Revolutionary Movement
Only one book in English has used this term, as far as I am aware, which is the eponymous book from 1973 by Jian Youwen. Jian was part of the first generation of academic Taiping historiography, being not only one of the first historians to hunt down Chinese sources, but also one of the first serious Chinese historians on the Taiping, when most prior work was produced by Western scholars based chiefly on Western sources.^6 More than this, Jian is in some ways the poster child of Republican-era Taiping historiography, which emphasised the continuity between the Taiping Rebellion and the 1911 Revolution, seeing the Taiping as the first attempt at not only overthrowing the Qing but also modernising the country. Sun Yat-Sen had grown up on stories of the old Taiping heroes, and was referred to as 'Hong Xiuquan the Second' by friends who did indeed see him as the continuation of the Taiping legacy.^5 ^7 Mao, too, would emphasise the revolutionary nature of the Taiping and its relevance to the CCP, and his early scholarly work at university was focussed on social studies of China at the time of the Taiping.^8 Of course, Western historiography has been less keen to make links between the Taiping, the 1911 Revolutionaries and the early Communists, but it is important to see the Taiping beyond the time they actually occupied and also see what they left behind.
Notes, Sources and References
I decided to make this post separate because I felt the two halves of the question were different enough to warrant it. The origin of the Taiping Rebellion arguably stretches back beyond the First Opium War, beyond the establishment of the Qing Dynasty, and beyond even the establishment of Imperial China itself by Qin Shi Huang. How so? The simple answer is traditional political theory from the end of the 2nd Millenium BC.
When the Zhou kings ousted the Shang (traditionally dated to 1046 BC), the justification for this was that the time of the Shang had passed – the Mandate of Heaven had been lost. As refined by later scholars (and reiterated by the pro-Taiping British consul Thomas Taylor Meadows), the idea of the Mandate of Heaven is that when a new dynasty comes to power, it brings peace and prosperity and gives the people what it needs. As time goes on, the dynasty becomes more and more corrupt and extracts increasing amounts from the people for increasingly little in return. As a result, natural disasters (particularly river flooding, the prevention of which is contingent upon effective mobilisation of labour), armed banditry and foreign invasions proliferate, until the dynasty is replaced from either without or within and the cycle begins anew.^1 For both Meadows and the Taiping, the Qing's time in the sun was over, and a new dynasty was poised to take its place. At least, this was the justification eventually found.
Looking past the abstract ideas and towards the Qing Dynasty in general, the Taiping were far from the first people to believe themselves destined to overthrow the Manchus. The White Lotus Society, a Buddhist sect which had put the Ming into power in the 14th Century, rose up again in Sichuan in 1794, overwhelming the local militias and requiring the involvement of the Green Standard Army and the Banner Armies in a war lasting ten years. The severe and indiscriminate reprisals carried out by these government troops led to their being called the 'Red Lotus Society' by the people they were supposed to protect, and weakened confidence in the Qing. In addition to its ideological effects, the White Lotus Rebellion of 1794-1804 led to the reforming of local militias, with the beginnings of a transition from from the centralised 保甲 (bao3 jia2) – 'Protection' – system to 團練 (tuan2 lian4) – 'Group Training', which was based on local initiative. This increasing decentralisation of first-line defence would prove at first a curse and then a blessing to the Qing, as local militia became harder to mobilise on government initiative but also easier to lead and maintain if placed under provincial command.^2
The religion peculiar to the Taiping had already been forming before British gunboats fired on Chinese junks. The Taiping religious leader, Hong Xiuquan, had come across Christianity via a cursory reading of Leung Fat's Good Words for Admonishing the Age (1832) in 1836 after failing the civil service exams. The next year, he became delirious during a severe fever after another failure, during which he claimed to receive a vision in which his impure earthly organs were replaced by new divine ones, and was finally greeted by a Heavenly Father, Heavenly Elder Brother and Heavenly Wife. Given a 'demon-slaying sword' and a magical seal for his defence, Hong was admonished to expel the demons from the lower heavens, which was achieved after forty days, and was sent back to earth. At this point, Hong merely went on with his teaching career, although friends reported that he had gained in both height and erudition. It was after re-reading Leung Fat's tract in 1843 that Hong linked this with his visions and began to believe himself to be the son of God. Hong began an iconoclastic campaign against Confucianism from this point, and began converting friends and family, the key converts being his cousins Li Jingfang, Feng Yunshan and Hong Rengan. Li was the first to notice the link between Leung Fat's pamphlet and Hong's vision, but subsequently disappears from the record. Hong Rengan was then only 20 and forced to remain at home by his parents. That left Feng, who travelled with Hong from their home in Guangdong to neighbouring Guangxi in 1843, and both began preaching and destroying idols there. Whilst Hong returned home soon after, Feng remained and established the God-Worshipping Society in 1844.^3
In spite of what has been said earlier, the First Opium War should not be dismissed as merely a drop in the ocean. Aside from accelerating the process of militia reorganisation,^2 the creation of a British colony in Hong Kong under the terms of the 1842 Treaty of Tianjin enabled the expansion of Protestant missionary activity in China. Hong would go on to take advantage of this opportunity by studying under the Southern Baptist preacher Issachar Roberts, but was rather suddenly shunned after a month and returned home. Another significant effect of the war was that disbanded mercenaries began forming bandit groups, destabilising the region.^4 EDIT: These bandits (many of whom were coastal pirates forced to retreat onto the rivers) became extremely useful for the God-Worshippers, as those who converted, like Su Sanniang and Luo Dagang, brought with them not only hundreds or even thousands of armed men, but also a great deal of expertise in sailing, whilst those who did not were useful common enemies to rally the locals around.^5
It was this atmosphere of instability which allowed the God-Worshippers to grow. During a confused period in 1848, Feng Yunshan was banished from Guangxi, just as Hong was travelling to the God-Worshipping core at Thistle Mountain. Whilst the two were gone, two new men entered the equation – Xiao Chaogui and Yang Xiuqing. Local folk religion had long involved channelling, and Xiao and Yang ended up being among the few such channellers among the God-Worshippers whom Hong verified as authentic vessels. Xiao was the vessel for the Elder Brother (Jesus), Yang that of the Heavenly Father (God). All throughout this period, the Taiping were gathering support. Fighting against bandits as a better-organised alternative to the militia forces, the Taiping gained support both from the minority Hakkas, who were particularly targeted by the majority-Punti bandits, and from the population more generally. Some bandit forces even willingly defected, with one of the main God-Worshipper/Taiping supporters throughout the early part of the war being the Triad-affiliated river pirate, Luo Dagang, whilst another Triad leader, a woman named Su Sanniang, also joined them. A government crackdown in 1850 led to a decision to begin concentrating the God-Worshippers for protection, and so by July 1850 there were perhaps 30,000 God-Worshippers gathered in the town of Jintian. On Chinese New Year's Day 1851 (1 February) it was decided that the God-Worshippers would form the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, beginning the Taiping Rebellion.
Notes, Sources and References