This is a rambling episode pushed out to get the ball rolling, getting this podcast going again.

The next big thing on the agenda is the Boxer Rebellion. We'll do some episodes in the run up to the Boxer Rebellion, and then we'll spend some good time on the next major revolutionary inflection point before the Qing Dynasty is taken out with the garbage.

The Boxer Rebellion is going to illustrate the problems of the people and the political classes of China, both with sclerotic domestic conditions and intrusive, oppressive foreign intervention, imposition, and influence on China.

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In this episode, we finish up our coverage of the Taiping Rebellion, as such. In following episodes, we'll do a little more with how the roots in the succeeding era come on from interactions between the Qing Dynasty government and foreign powers.

We follow the final chapter of Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom: China, the West, and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War by Stephen R. Platt.

While the Taiping inspired later generations of revolutionaries, they ultimately failed to carry through a successful revolution. This episode looks at why, and what future revolutionary movements will have to do to succeed.

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In this episode, we deal with the Siege of Nanjing. As the extremely brutal culmination of years of already brutal fighting, the Qing loyalist forces of Zeng Guofan finally storm the Taiping capital and put a permanent end to the top leadership of the rebellion.

Again, drawing on Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom by Stephen R. Platt.

The central questions pivotal to future revolutions we'll deal with:

1. What is the Chinese nation, who are the Chinese people?
2. What does a modern Chinese state, competitive in the modern world, look like?

Next episode we'll deal with the epilogue from Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom.

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In this episode, I take a rambling skim through several chapters of Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom. There is a lot of content I want to get to, other than the blow by blow of the Taiping Rebellion.

I'm fast forwarding to the end of this one so we can get through it and get on to other revolutions.

We'll still be doing things with this book, because it has a lot of material related to the period after the Taiping Rebellion, but the emphasis will be on what comes after, rather than the Taiping Rebellion.

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Some points of review on where we left the Taiping Rebellion story.

We're getting back into the Taiping Rebellion. We'll be following the story of Zeng Guofan most closely. For Zeng Guofan, dogged determination and luck keep him in the game.

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We're back from break! While I've been away, I've still been doing reading on China and thinking about the podcast, thinking about how to keep moving it forward.

I'll probably move to a more modular approach: 2-3 episodes on a topic, a person, an event. Episodes to tie the narrative together. Also a lot on international context, the world in which Chinese revolutionaries are seeking to reconstitute the Chinese state.

Lately I've been reading Street Without Joy by Bernard Fall, covering the French go at having a Vietnam War in the early 1950s. It really shows how the Vietnamese Communists were savvy, competent fighters of modern war and modern politics, but having to account for their very different resources than available to the French. When we get to the Chinese revolutionaries, we'll see how they're fully modern and competent, but they have to be very resourceful to get where they're going.

I've been listening to the podcast The Age of Napoleon by E. M. Rummage. This has inspired my thinking about how to put a podcast together and how to go about focusing on a much longer span of history.

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Here we go, grinding back into gear with this year's episodes. This episode's title addresses one of the main actual insights in the episode, not quite what it's about.

Hong Rengan is working on planning the modern government structure of the future of the Taiping government apparatus. He follows the pattern of the contemporary Chinese state to show order and continuity, to give confidence to the people they'd have to be governing.

Hong Rengan, clearly smart and competent, runs into the trouble of the old guard Taiping leadership. They had been there from the beginning, but his only connection was his family relationship with the "Heavenly King," Hong Xiuquan.

As the Taiping Rebellion stretches on, the actual Taiping ideology is decreasingly the thing they'll turn to, to appeal to the people of China. All of China has seen what foreign powers have been able to do to China, and messaging about who should be the legitimate dynasty had to address that.

A central bit of the messaging was race-based, ethnic conflict-based. The Qing were foreign invaders, not native Han. That was something all native Han could understand and get onboard with.

The Qing Dynasty, by its continued existence, threatens the success of the Taiping Rebellion. Zeng Guofan, dogged, duty-driven enemy of the Taiping, still has his small force working its way toward defeating the Taiping.

We'll be coming back to him shortly

I'm going to figure out how to get to the end of the Taiping Rebellion. I've answered a lot of the questions I had for myself about what this rebellion shows for the central thesis of the podcast, so I'm going to try to jump toward the end in not too many more episodes.

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In this episode, we look at more of the visitors to Hong Rengan, effective foreign minister for the Taiping.

First is Griffith John, a Welsh missionary. He came on a factfinding mission to see what Nanjing was like under the Taiping. He thought the Taiping were very wrong, religiously speaking, but he thought he saw an opportunity for missionary work, were they to win the war.

Yung Wing, an American-educated young Chinese man, came to look at the part of China held by the Taiping and ultimately used the opportunity to get access to tea growing areas rather than to join up with the rebels.

We further discuss how national characteristics ultimately poke through the revolution as nations adjust to new reality after everything changes. The more things change, the more they stay the same, as it were.

Hat tip to the Revolutions podcast by Mike Duncan for some of the insights in this episode concerning the Russian Revolution.

We're still following Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom: China, the West, and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War by Stephen R. Platt

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