Taiping Heavenly Kingdom

The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was the theocratic rebel state that shook the Qing dynasty from 1851 to 1864. Hong Xiuquan, a Hakka man from Guangzhou who believed himself the younger brother of Jesus, raised the Jintian Uprising with Feng Yunshan in Guangxi in 1850, taking the title of Heavenly King on 11 January 1851, his own birthday. His armies swept down the Yangtze, took Nanjing as the capital Tianjing in 1853, and ruled nearly thirty million people across southern China, preaching the Supreme Emperor faith, smashing idols and announcing land reform and the equality of men and women. The Qing besieged the Taiping lands for years; the 1856 Tianjing bloodletting against Yang Xiuqing tore the leadership apart, the 1860 taking of Hangzhou and Suzhou failed to crack Shanghai, and Qing forces with French and British guns finally crushed them. When Tianjing fell in 1864 after fourteen years of war, the rebellion ended in Qing victory.