Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom

This narrative history of China's nineteenth-century Taiping Rebellion (which cost some twenty million lives) brims with unforgettable characters and vivid re-creations of massive and sometimes gruesome battles--a riveting, both sweeping and intimate portrait of the largest civil war in history.
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This narrative history of China's nineteenth-century Taiping Rebellion (which cost some twenty million lives) brims with unforgettable characters and vivid re-creations of massive and sometimes gruesome battles--a riveting, both sweeping and intimate portrait of the largest civil war in history.
The story begins in the early 1850s, the waning years of the Qing dynasty, when word spread of a major revolution brewing in the provinces, led by a failed civil servant who claimed to be the son of God and brother of Jesus. As the revolt grew, all signs pointed to the success of the Taiping, and the establishment of a modern, industrialized, and pro-Western China. But the United States and Britain threw their support behind the Qing and, after years of massive carnage, all opposition to Qing rule for years to come was effectively snuffed out. Platt recounts these events in spellbinding detail, building his story on two fascinating characters: the scholar-general Zeng Guofan, China's most influential modern military strategist, and Hong Rengan, a brilliant Taiping leader whose valiant attempts to woo the West fell short. This is an essential and enthralling history of the rise and fall of the movement that, a century and a half ago, might have launched China into the modern world.