RAS Shanghai Book Club – 16/1/17 – Stephen Platt’s Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom

Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom

Author: Stephen R. Platt, 2012

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

Stephen R. Platt is an historian of late imperial China, specializing in 19th century and China’s foreign relations. Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom won the 2012 Cundill Prize, the largest international literary prize for a work on history. Platt is professor of history at University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA, where he teaches courses on modern Chinese history and the writing of history.

Set in a global context Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom is an account of China’s 19th century Taiping Rebellion/Civil War (1850-1864), one of the longest and bloodiest civil wars in human history. The movement’s supreme leader Hong Xiuquan (b.1814 – d.1864), self-proclaimed son of God and younger brother of Jesus, strove to transform China by fulfilling a quasi-Christian millenarian vision. The Taiping rebels drew their power from the poor and the disenfranchised, unleashing the ethnic rage of millions of Chinese against their Manchu rulers. The war was fought mostly in the south but, over 14 years of war, the Taiping Army marched through every province of China proper except Gansu. At its apogee the Taipings held sway over a territory roughly the size of Italy.

Platt tells the epic story from a fresh perspective. A major element he brings to the fore is the equivocal involvement of Britain and the international context of this Chinese power struggle. Officially London was neutral towards both the Qing and the rebels, even though some missionaries who met the Taiping saw them as a force that might modernize China and open up relations with the West. Hong Rengan, a far-sighted cousin of the Taiping leader, encouraged this prospect and plays a major role in Platt’s narrative.

The movement seemed all but unstoppable until Britain and the United States, along with armies raised by rural Han gentry, stepped in and threw their support behind the Manchus. After years of massive carnage, all opposition to Qing rule was effectively snuffed out for generations.

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