Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom: China, The West and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War - Tapa dura

Knowledgeable, zestily written and utterly surprising. -- Thomas Quinn * Big Issue * A refreshing and gripping account that illuminates how civil conflicts can suck in outsiders and why the West has had great difficulties in trying to maintain a facade of neutrality and protect its commercial interests at the same time... Powerful, dramatic and unforgettable. -- Minxin Pei * San Francisco Chronicle * A marvellous account of a largely forgotten but major event. Combines great scholarship with a driving narrative and sharp characterisation. -- Jonathan Fenby, author of The Penguin History of Modern China

In the early 1850s, during the waning years of the Qing dynasty, word spread of a major revolution brewing in the provinces. The leader of the this movement - who called themselves the Taiping - was Hong Xiuquan, a failed civil servant who claimed to be the son of God and the brother of Jesus Christ. As the revolt grew and battles raged across the empire, all signs pointed to a Taiping victory and to the inauguration of a modern, industrialized and pro-Western china. Soon, however, Britain and the United States threw their support behind the Qing, soon quashing the Taiping and rendering ineffective the years of bloodshed the revolution had endured. In Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom, Stephen Platt recounts the events of the rebellion and its suppression in spellbinding detail. It is an essential and enthralling history of the rise and fall of a movement that, a century and a half ago, might have launched China into the modern world.