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115-852: 1853—1856: when the armies of the Taiping Rebellion occupied Nanjing, after 10 days Xiang Rong in command of a 10,000 strong Green Standard Army tracked them to Taiping and stationed outside the Nanjing wall. The headquarters of the Jiangnan DaYing were located in Ming Xiaoling Mausoleum . Imperial Commissioner : First Class Senior General Xiang Rong ( 向榮 ) Military commander: Second Class Senior General Her Chyun Lieutenant General : Zhang GuoLiang Shi Dakai , Yang Xiuqing , Qin Rigang ( 秦日綱 ), Li Xiucheng The 80,000 soldiers in

230-405: A 22% risk of falling into civil war in a given five-year period, while a country with no primary commodity exports has a 1% risk. When disaggregated, only petroleum and non-petroleum groupings showed different results: a country with relatively low levels of dependence on petroleum exports is at slightly less risk, while a high level of dependence on oil as an export results in slightly more risk of

345-598: A Hakka from a poor village in Guangdong , failed the imperial examination for the third time, frustrating his ambition to become a scholar-official in the civil service and leading him to a nervous breakdown. While recovering, Hong dreamed of visiting Heaven, where he discovered that he possessed a celestial family distinct from his earthly family. His heavenly father lamented that men were worshiping demons rather than himself and informed Hong that his given name violated taboos and had to be changed, suggesting " Hong Xiuquan ",

460-552: A Protestant Christian missionary several years earlier. After reading these pamphlets, Hong came to believe that they had given him the key to interpreting his visions: his celestial father was God the Father (whom he identified with Shangdi from Chinese tradition), the elder brother that he had also seen was Jesus Christ , and he had been directed to rid the world of demons, including the corrupt Qing government and Confucian teachings. In 1847 Hong went to Guangzhou , where he studied

575-732: A Qing-Vietnamese coalition headed by Feng Zicai . Wu Kun's troops broke up and became marauding armies such as the Yellow Flag Army led by Huang Chongying ( 黃崇英 ) and the Black Flag Army led by Liu Yongfu . The latter would become a prominent warlord in Upper Tonkin and would later help the Nguyễn dynasty to engage against the French during the Sino-French War in the 1880s. He later became

690-697: A State. (b) That the insurgent civil authority exercises de facto authority over the population within a determinate portion of the national territory. (c) That the armed forces act under the direction of an organized authority and are prepared to observe the ordinary laws of war. (d) That the insurgent civil authority agrees to be bound by the provisions of the Convention. According to a 2017 review study of civil war research, there are three prominent explanations for civil war: greed-based explanations which center on individuals' desire to maximize their profits, grievance-based explanations which center on conflict as

805-568: A cannon to scatter them irretrievably. Four months before the fall of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, Hong Xiuquan abdicated in favor of his eldest son Hong Tianguifu , who was 15 years old. The younger Hong was inexperienced and powerless, so the kingdom was quickly destroyed when Nanjing fell in July 1864 to the imperial armies after protracted street-by-street fighting. Tianguifu and few others escaped but were soon caught and executed. Most of

920-506: A civil war rises approximately proportionately with the size of a country's population. There is a correlation between poverty and civil war, but the causality (which causes the other) is unclear. Some studies have found that in regions with lower income per capita, the likelihood of civil war is greater. Economists Simeon Djankov and Marta Reynal-Querol argue that the correlation is spurious, and that lower income and heightened conflict are instead products of other phenomena. In contrast,

1035-419: A civil war than national dependence on another primary commodity. The authors of the study interpreted this as being the result of the ease by which primary commodities may be extorted or captured compared to other forms of wealth; for example, it is easy to capture and control the output of a gold mine or oil field compared to a sector of garment manufacturing or hospitality services. A second source of finance

1150-472: A common authority at the outset of the hostilities." The intensity at which a civil disturbance becomes a civil war is contested by academics. Some political scientists define a civil war as having more than 1,000 casualties, while others further specify that at least 100 must come from each side. The Correlates of War , a dataset widely used by scholars of conflict, classifies civil wars as having over 1000 war-related casualties per year of conflict. This rate

1265-550: A decade, Taiping armies occupied and fought across much of the mid- and lower Yangtze valley, ultimately devolving into civil war. It was the largest war in China since the Ming–Qing transition , involving most of Central and Southern China. It ranks as one of the bloodiest wars in human history, the bloodiest civil war, and the largest conflict of the 19th century, comparable to World War I in terms of deaths. Thirty million people fled

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1380-599: A deterioration of relations between the Taiping rebels and the triads. On March 19, 1853, the Taipings captured the city of Nanjing and Hong renamed it "Tianjing", or the 'heavenly capital' of his kingdom. Since the Taipings considered the Manchus to be demons, they first killed all the Manchu men, then forced the Manchu women outside the city and burned them to death. Shortly thereafter,

1495-461: A general transformation of the mechanisms of state. Moreover, rather than supplanting China's ruling class, the Taiping rebels sought to entirely upend the country's social order. The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom located at Nanjing managed to seize control of significant portions of southern China. At its peak, the Heavenly Kingdom ruled over a population of nearly 30 million people. For more than

1610-555: A reference to their origins in the southeastern province of Guangdong. More colloquially, the Chinese called the Taiping some variant of Long-Hairs ( 長毛鬼、長髪鬼、髪逆、髪賊 ), because they did not shave their foreheads and braid their hair into a queue as Qing subjects were obligated to do , allowing their hair to grow long. During the 19th century, the Qing dynasty experienced a series of famines , natural disasters, economic problems and defeats at

1725-626: A response to socioeconomic or political injustice, and opportunity-based explanations which center on factors that make it easier to engage in violent mobilization. According to the study, the most influential explanation for civil war onset is the opportunity-based explanation by James Fearon and David Laitin in their 2003 American Political Science Review article. Scholars investigating the cause of civil war are attracted by two opposing theories, greed versus grievance . Roughly stated: are conflicts caused by differences of ethnicity, religion or other social affiliation , or do conflicts begin because it

1840-510: A restoration of the ancient Chinese faith in Shangdi. The Taiping faith, says one historian, "developed into a dynamic new Chinese religion ... Taiping Christianity". The movement at first grew by suppressing groups of bandits and pirates in southern China in the late 1840s, then suppression by Qing authorities led it to evolve into guerrilla warfare and subsequently a widespread civil war . Eventually, two other God Worshipers claimed to possess

1955-459: A scholar of civil wars at Stanford University , defines a civil war as "a violent conflict within a country fought by organized groups that aim to take power at the center or in a region, or to change government policies". Ann Hironaka further specifies that one side of a civil war is the state . Stathis Kalyvas defines civil war as "armed combat taking place within the boundaries of a recognized sovereign entity between parties that are subject to

2070-445: A standardized avenue to influence government and increase the commitment credibility of established peace treaties. It is the strength of a nation's institutionalization and good governance—not the presence of democracy nor the poverty level—that is the number one indicator of the chance of a repeat civil war, according to Walter. High levels of population dispersion and, to a lesser extent, the presence of mountainous terrain, increased

2185-460: A stronger emphasis should be put on personal data and human perspective of the people in conflict. Beyond Keen, several other authors have introduced works that either disprove greed vs. grievance theory with empirical data, or dismiss its ultimate conclusion. Authors such as Cristina Bodea and Ibrahim Elbadawi, who co-wrote the entry, "Riots, coups and civil war: Revisiting the greed and grievance debate", argue that empirical data can disprove many of

2300-522: A study by Alex Braithwaite and colleagues showed systematic evidence of "a causal arrow running from poverty to conflict". While there is a supposed negative correlation between absolute welfare levels and the probability of civil war outbreak, relative deprivation may actually be a more pertinent possible cause. Historically, higher inequality levels led to higher civil war probability. Since colonial rule or population size are known to increase civil war risk, also, one may conclude that "the discontent of

2415-636: Is a small fraction of the millions killed in the Second Sudanese Civil War and Cambodian Civil War , for example, but excludes several highly publicized conflicts, such as The Troubles of Northern Ireland and the struggle of the African National Congress in Apartheid -era South Africa . Based on the 1,000-casualties-per-year criterion, there were 213 civil wars from 1816 to 1997, 104 of which occurred from 1944 to 1997. If one uses

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2530-426: Is among those who refer to the rebellion as the "Taiping Revolutionary Movement" on the grounds that it worked towards a complete change in the political and social system, rather than working towards the replacement of one dynasty with another. Many Western historians refer to the conflict in general as the "Taiping Rebellion". Recently, however, scholars such as Tobie Meyer-Fong and Stephen Platt have argued that

2645-701: Is in the economic best interests of individuals and groups to start them? Scholarly analysis supports the conclusion that economic and structural factors are more important than those of identity in predicting occurrences of civil war. A comprehensive study of civil war was carried out by a team from the World Bank in the early 21st century. The study framework, which came to be called the Collier–Hoeffler Model, examined 78 five-year increments when civil war occurred from 1960 to 1999, as well as 1,167 five-year increments of "no civil war" for comparison, and subjected

2760-525: Is known about how the Taiping referred to the war, but the Taiping often referred to the Qing in general and the Manchus in particular as some variant of demons or monsters ( 妖 ; yāo ), representing Hong's proclamation that they were fighting a holy war to rid the world of demons and establish paradise on earth. The Qing referred to the Taiping as "Yue Bandits" ( 粵匪 ; Yuèfěi or 粵賊 ; Yuèzéi ) in official sources,

2875-400: Is national diasporas , which can fund rebellions and insurgencies from abroad. The study found that statistically switching the size of a country's diaspora from the smallest found in the study to the largest resulted in a sixfold increase in the chance of a civil war. Higher male secondary school enrollment, per capita income and economic growth rate all had significant effects on reducing

2990-404: Is not. The study therefore concluded that the economic model of opportunity cost better explained the findings. Most proxies for "grievance"—the theory that civil wars begin because of issues of identity, rather than economics—were statistically insignificant, including economic equality, political rights, ethnic polarization and religious fractionalization. Only ethnic dominance, the case where

3105-666: Is provided in the text of the Conventions. Nevertheless, the International Committee of the Red Cross has sought to provide some clarification through its commentaries on the Geneva Conventions , noting that the Conventions are "so general, so vague, that many of the delegations feared that it might be taken to cover any act committed by force of arms". Accordingly, the commentaries provide for different 'conditions' on which

3220-409: Is sustained, organized and large-scale. Civil wars may result in large numbers of casualties and the consumption of significant resources. Civil wars since the end of World War II have lasted on average just over four years, a dramatic rise from the one-and-a-half-year average of the 1900–1944 period. While the rate of emergence of new civil wars has been relatively steady since the mid-19th century,

3335-697: The Green Standard Army against the Jintian uprising . On January 11, 1851, Hong declared himself the Heavenly King of the Heavenly Kingdom of Peace (or Taiping Heavenly Kingdom), from which comes the term "Taipings" commonly used for them in English-language studies. The Taipings began marching north in September 1851 to escape Qing forces closing in on them. The Taiping army pressed north into Hunan following

3450-548: The Manchu -led Qing dynasty and the Hakka -led Taiping Heavenly Kingdom . The conflict lasted 14 years, from its outbreak in 1850 until the fall of Taiping-controlled Nanjing —which they had renamed Tianjing "heavenly capital"—in 1864. However, the last rebel forces were not defeated until August 1871. Estimates of the conflict's death toll range between 20 and 30 million people, representing 5–10% of China's population at that time. While

3565-665: The Salvadoran Civil War , Wood finds that traditional explanations of greed and grievance are not sufficient to explain the emergence of that insurgent movement. Instead, she argues that "emotional engagements" and "moral commitments" are the main reasons why thousand of civilians, most of them from poor and rural backgrounds, joined or supported the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front , despite individually facing both high risks and virtually no foreseeable gains. Wood also attributes participation in

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3680-720: The Small Swords Society uprising in Shanghai regrouped with the Taiping army. Du Wenxiu , who led the Panthay Rebellion in Yunnan , was in contact with the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. He was not waging his rebellion against Han Chinese, instead, he was anti-Qing and he wanted to destroy the Qing government. Du's forces led many non-Muslim forces, including Han Chinese, Li , Bai , and Hani peoples. They were assisted by non-Muslim Shan and Kachin people and other hill tribes in

3795-578: The Taiping Rebellion to gain momentum. Her Chyun could use the Brigadier General 's works but he belittled the Taiping Rebellion , He Guiqing 's cowardice and Zeng Guofan 's selfishness, which were the three reasons for their loss. Taiping Rebellion The Taiping Rebellion , also known as the Taiping Civil War or the Taiping Revolution , was a civil war in China between

3910-785: The Tongzhi Emperor , Zeng Guofan's Xiang Army captured Anqing with help from a naval blockade imposed by the Royal Navy on the city. Near the end of 1861 the Taipings launched a final Eastern Expedition. Ningbo was easily captured on 9 December, and Hangzhou was besieged and finally captured on 31 December. Taiping troops surrounded Shanghai in January 1862, but were unable to capture it. The Ever-Victorious Army repulsed another attack on Shanghai in 1862 and helped to defend other treaty ports such as Ningbo , reclaimed on 10 May. They also aided imperial troops in reconquering Taiping strongholds along

4025-771: The Xiang River , besieging Changsha , occupying Yuezhou , and then capturing Wuchang in December 1852 after reaching the Yangtze River. At this point the Taiping leadership decided to move east along the Yangtze River. Anqing was captured in February 1853. Taiping leaders may have reached out to Triad organizations, which had many cells in South China and among government troops. Taiping titles echoed Triad usage, whether consciously or not, which made it more attractive for Triads to join

4140-608: The civil war in July 1864. The Jiangnan DaYing had trouble making payroll for its forces, and these forces were insufficient to fight against the British and French forces in northern China during the Second Opium War . The leaders intrigued against each other: Xiang Rong ( 向榮 ) and Her Chyun in the first Jiangnan DaYing Her Chyun group, and the He Guiqing and Zeng Guofan groups disputed inner officials' system, which allowed

4255-543: The ethno-linguistic fractionalization index (ELF) used by Fearon, Laitin and other political scientists is flawed. ELF, Cederman states, measures diversity on a country's population-wide level and makes no attempt to determine the number of ethnic groups in relation to what role they play in the power of the state and its military. Cederman believes it makes little sense to test hypotheses relating national ethnic diversity to civil war outbreak without any explicit reference to how many different ethnic groups actually hold power in

4370-451: The population of China had nearly doubled between 1766 and 1833, while the amount of cultivated land remained the same. The government, commanded by ethnic Manchus , had become increasingly corrupt, and was weak in southern regions where local clans dominated. Anti-Manchu sentiment was strongest in southern China among the Hakka community, a Han Chinese subgroup. Meanwhile, Christian missionaries were active. In 1837, Hong Huoxiu ,

4485-661: The regular Army faced 460,000+ in the Taiping Rebellion militia force . On June 1, 1856, an army tried to stop the Taiping forces but the Governor of Jiangsu Jeer Hungar ( 吉爾杭阿 ), Mayor of Nanjing, lost and his army of 7,800 were all killed. There was a heated battle from June 16 to June 20, but the Qing army of 80,000 was defeated and the surviving 36,000 followers of Xiang Rong retreated north. On August 9, Xiang Rong committed suicide in Danyang , but this strategy stopped

4600-518: The 1815 Congress of Vienna as the United Kingdom , Habsburg Austria , Prussia , France , and Russia ) would frequently coordinate interventions in other nations' civil wars, nearly always on the side of the incumbent government. Given the military strength of the Great Powers, these interventions nearly always proved decisive and quickly ended the civil wars. There were several exceptions from

4715-640: The 1856 Tianjing Incident , wherein Yang and his followers were slaughtered by Wei Changhui, Qin Rigang , and their troops on Hong Xiuquan's orders. Shi Dakai's objection to the bloodshed led to his family and retinue being killed by Wei and Qin with Wei ultimately planning to imprison Hong. Wei's plans were ultimately thwarted and he and Qin were executed by Hong. Shi Dakai was given control of five Taiping armies, which were consolidated into one. But fearing for his life, he departed from Tianjing and headed west towards Sichuan. With Hong withdrawn from view and Yang out of

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4830-427: The 19th century and in the early 20th century tended to be short; civil wars between 1900 and 1944 lasted on average one and a half years. The state itself formed the obvious center of authority in the majority of cases, and the civil wars were thus fought for control of the state. This meant that whoever had control of the capital and the military could normally crush resistance. A rebellion which failed to quickly seize

4945-612: The Bible with Issachar Jacox Roberts , an American Baptist missionary. Roberts refused to baptize him and later stated that Hong's followers were "bent on making their burlesque religious pretensions serve their political purpose". Soon after Hong began preaching across Guangxi in 1844, his follower Feng Yunshan founded the God Worshipping Society , a movement which followed Hong's fusion of Christianity, Taoism , Confucianism and indigenous millenarianism , which Hong presented as

5060-688: The Dungan rebellion began in 1862, not as a planned uprising but as a coalescence of local brawls and riots triggered by trivial causes, among these causes were false rumors that the Hui Muslims were aiding the Taiping rebels. The Hui Ma Xiaoshi claimed that the Shaanxi Muslim rebellion was connected to the Taiping. Jonathan Spence claims that a key reason for the Taiping's defeat was its inability to coordinate its rebellion with other rebellions. The rebels announced social reforms, including strict separation of

5175-477: The London School of Economics is one of the major critics of greed vs. grievance theory, defined primarily by Paul Collier, and argues the point that a conflict, although he cannot define it, cannot be pinpointed to simply one motive. He believes that conflicts are much more complex and thus should not be analyzed through simplified methods. He disagrees with the quantitative research methods of Collier and believes

5290-489: The Qing did not describe the conflict as either a civil war or a movement because doing so would have lent credibility to the Taiping. Instead, they referred to the tumultuous civil war as a period of chaos ( 亂 ; luàn ), rebellion ( 逆 ; nì ) or military ascendancy ( 軍興 ; jūnxìng ). They often referred to it as the Hong-Yang Rebellion ( 洪楊之亂 ; Hóngyáng zhī luàn ), referring to the two most prominent leaders. It

5405-452: The Qing ultimately defeated the rebellion, the victory came at a great cost to the state's economic and political viability. The uprising was led by Hong Xiuquan , an ethnic Hakka who had proclaimed himself to be the brother of Jesus Christ . Hong sought the religious conversion of the Han people to his syncretic version of Christianity , as well as the political overthrow of the Qing dynasty, and

5520-467: The Roman Republic in the 1st century BC. Most modern civil wars involve intervention by outside powers. According to Patrick M. Regan in his book Civil Wars and Foreign Powers (2000) about two thirds of the 138 intrastate conflicts between the end of World War II and 2000 saw international intervention. A civil war is often a high-intensity conflict, often involving regular armed forces , that

5635-503: The Taiping Rebellion militia force had at least 560,000 soldiers. Taiping Rebellion forces occupied Jiangsu in 1860. The next year, they occupied Zhejiang . The Jiangnan DaYing was destroyed. The Second Opium War took place and the Xianfeng Emperor died in 1861. The Xiang Army and Huai Army combined to become the Green Standard Army in 1862 and for the third time they surrounded and attacked Nanjing , successfully ending

5750-400: The Taiping army's female soldiers. Civil war A civil war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country ). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies. The term is a calque of Latin bellum civile which was used to refer to the various civil wars of

5865-513: The Taiping ideology and the policy of strict separation of the sexes, even for married couples, sided with government forces. In Hunan , the local irregular Xiang Army under the personal leadership of Zeng Guofan , became the main force fighting the Taiping on behalf of the Qing. Zeng's Xiang Army proved effective in gradually turning back the Taiping advance in the western theater of the war and ultimately retaking much of Hubei and Jiangxi provinces. In December 1856 Qing forces retook Wuchang for

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5980-705: The Taiping launched concurrent Northern and Western expeditions, in an effort to relieve pressure on Nanjing and achieve significant territorial gains. The former expedition was a complete failure but the latter achieved limited success. In 1853, Hong Xiuquan withdrew from active control of policies and administration to rule exclusively by written proclamations. He lived in luxury and had many women in his inner chamber, and often issued religious strictures. He clashed with Yang Xiuqing, who challenged his often impractical policies, and became suspicious of Yang's ambitions, his extensive network of spies and his claims of authority when "speaking as God". This tension culminated in

6095-415: The Taiping princes were executed. A small remainder of loyal Taiping forces had continued to fight in northern Zhejiang, rallying around Tianguifu. But after Tianguifu's capture on 25 October 1864, Taiping resistance was gradually pushed into the highlands of Jiangxi, Zhejiang, Fujian and finally Guangdong , where one of the last Taiping loyalists, Wang Haiyang, was defeated on January 29, 1866. Although

6210-698: The Taiping rebellion lost ground, particularly after the fall of Nanjing in 1864, former Taiping soldiers and commanders like Lai Wenguang were incorporated into Nian ranks. After the failure of the Red Turban Rebellion (1854–1856) to capture Guangzhou , their soldiers retreated north into Jiangxi and joined forces with Shi Dakai. After the defeat of the Li Yonghe and Lan Chaoding rebellion in Sichuan, remnants combined with Taiping forces in Shaanxi. Remnant forces of

6325-459: The Yangtze River. In 1863, Shi Dakai surrendered to the Qing near the Sichuan capital Chengdu and was executed by slow-slicing . Some of his followers escaped or were released and continued the fight against the Qing. Qing forces were reorganized under the command of Zeng Guofan , Zuo Zongtang and Li Hongzhang , and the Qing reconquest began in earnest. Zeng Guofan had initially failed so badly that he attempted suicide, but he then adopted

6440-732: The ability to speak as members of the "Celestial Family", the Father in the case of Yang Xiuqing and Jesus Christ in the case of Xiao Chaogui . The Taiping Rebellion began in the southern province of Guangxi when local officials launched a campaign of religious persecution against the God Worshipping Society. In early January 1851, following a small-scale battle in late December 1850, a 10,000-strong rebel army organized by Feng Yunshan and Wei Changhui routed Qing forces stationed in Jintian (present-day Guiping , Guangxi). Taiping forces successfully repulsed an attempted imperial reprisal by

6555-566: The application of the Geneva Convention would depend; the commentary, however, points out that these should not be interpreted as rigid conditions. The conditions listed by the ICRC in its commentary are as follows: (1) That the Party in revolt against the de jure Government possesses an organized military force, an authority responsible for its acts, acting within a determinate territory and having

6670-541: The border region of Hunan, Guizhou and Guangxi. Taiping wars also spilled over into Vietnam with devastating effects. In 1860, Wu Lingyun ( 吳凌雲 ), an ethnic Zhuang Taiping leader, proclaimed himself King of Dingling ( 廷陵國 ) in the Sino-Vietnamese border regions. Dingling was destroyed during a Qing campaign in 1868. His son Wu Yazhong, also called Wu Kun ( 吳鯤 ), fled to Vietnam but was killed in 1869 in Thái Nguyên by

6785-486: The capital and control of the military for itself normally found itself doomed to rapid destruction. For example, the fighting associated with the 1871 Paris Commune occurred almost entirely in Paris , and ended quickly once the military sided with the government at Versailles and conquered Paris. The power of non-state actors resulted in a lower value placed on sovereignty in the 18th and 19th centuries, which further reduced

6900-456: The chance of civil war. Specifically, a male secondary school enrollment 10% above the average reduced the chance of a conflict by about 3%, while a growth rate 1% higher than the study average resulted in a decline in the chance of a civil war of about 1%. The study interpreted these three factors as proxies for earnings forgone by rebellion, and therefore that lower forgone earnings encourage rebellion. Phrased another way: young males (who make up

7015-445: The chance of conflict. Both of these factors favor rebels, as a population dispersed outward toward the borders is harder to control than one concentrated in a central region, while mountains offer terrain where rebels can seek sanctuary. Rough terrain was highlighted as one of the more important factors in a 2006 systematic review. The various factors contributing to the risk of civil war rise increase with population size. The risk of

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7130-549: The city. The city's food supplies ran low. Hong contracted food poisoning from eating wild vegetables; the intent may have been suicide. He died in June 1864 after a 20-day illness. A few days later, the Qing took the city in the Third Battle of Nanjing . On 1 August, Zeng Guofan ordered Hong's body exhumed for verification, and desecrated as spiritual punishment. After exhumation, it was dismembered, cremated, and its ashes were fired from

7245-468: The civil war to the value that insurgents assigned to changing social relations in El Salvador , an experience she defines as the "pleasure of agency". Ann Hironaka , author of Neverending Wars , divides the modern history of civil wars into the pre-19th century, 19th century to early 20th century, and late 20th century. In 19th-century Europe, the length of civil wars fell significantly, largely due to

7360-433: The colonized, caused by the creation of borders across tribal lines and bad treatment by the colonizers" is one important cause of civil conflicts. The more time that has elapsed since the last civil war, the less likely it is that a conflict will recur. The study had two possible explanations for this: one opportunity-based and the other grievance-based. The elapsed time may represent the depreciation of whatever capital

7475-514: The conduct of internal conflicts". James Fearon and David Laitin find that ethnic and religious diversity does not make civil war more likely. They instead find that factors that make it easier for rebels to recruit foot soldiers and sustain insurgencies, such as "poverty—which marks financially & bureaucratically weak states and also favors rebel recruitment—political instability, rough terrain, and large populations" make civil wars more likely. Such research finds that civil wars happen because

7590-452: The conquered regions to foreign settlements or other parts of China. The war was characterized by extreme brutality on both sides. Taiping soldiers carried out widespread massacres of Manchus, the ethnic minority of the ruling Imperial House of Aisin-Gioro . Meanwhile, the Qing government also engaged in massacres, most notably against the civilian population of Nanjing. Weakened severely by internal conflicts following an attempted coup and

7705-510: The country exacerbating ethnic disputes and accelerating the rise of provincial power . Historians debate whether these developments played a role in the start of the Warlord Era , the loss of central control after the establishment of the Republic of China in 1912. The terms which writers use for the conflict and its participants often represent their different opinions. During the 19th century,

7820-684: The country average”, going against the opportunity-based explanation for civil war outbreak. Michael Bleaney, Professor of International Economics at the University of Nottingham , published a 2009 paper titled Incidence, Onset and Duration of Civil Wars: A Review of the Evidence , which tested numerous variables for their relationship to civil war outbreak with different datasets, including that utilized by Fearon and Laitin. Bleaney concluded that neither ethnoreligious diversity, as measured by fractionalization, nor another variable, ethnic polarization, defined as

7935-495: The country avoided ethnic dominance. The study interpreted this as stating that minority groups are more likely to rebel if they feel that they are being dominated, but that rebellions are more likely to occur the more homogeneous the population and thus more cohesive the rebels. These two factors may thus be seen as mitigating each other in many cases. David Keen, a professor at the Development Studies Institute at

8050-432: The data set to regression analysis to see the effect of various factors. The factors that were shown to have a statistically significant effect on the chance that a civil war would occur in any given five-year period were: A high proportion of primary commodities in national exports significantly increases the risk of a conflict. A country at "peak danger", with commodities comprising 32% of gross domestic product , has

8165-421: The death toll may have reached 100 million. The Nian Rebellion (1853–1868), and several Chinese Muslim rebellions in the southwest (the Panthay Rebellion , 1855–1873) and the northwest ( Dungan revolt , 1862–1877) continued to pose considerable problems for the Qing dynasty. Occasionally, the Nian rebels collaborated with Taiping forces, for instance, they collaborated during the Northern Expedition . As

8280-514: The destruction of idols was initially welcomed by foreign missionaries, missionaries eventually came to fear the zealotry of the Taiping that they had a hand in creating. Separation of the sexes was strictly enforced in the first few years, although it tapered off in later years. Part of the extremeness came from a mistranslation of the Ten Commandments , which led to the seventh commandment also forbidding "licentiousness" as well as adultery. It

8395-422: The extent to which individuals in a population are distributed across different ethnic groups, were "a sufficient measure of diversity as it affects the probability of conflict." In a state torn by civil war, the contesting powers often do not have the ability to commit or the trust to believe in the other side's commitment to put an end to war. When considering a peace agreement, the involved parties are aware of

8510-472: The failure of the siege of Beijing , the Taiping rebels were defeated by decentralised provincial armies such as the Xiang Army organised and commanded by Zeng Guofan . After moving down the Yangtze River and recapturing the strategic city of Anqing , Zeng's forces besieged Nanjing during May 1862. After two more years, on June 1, 1864, Hong Xiuquan died during the siege, caused from the consumption of weeds in

8625-431: The fall of Nanjing in 1864 marked the destruction of the Taiping regime, the fight was not yet over. There were still several hundred thousand Taiping troops continuing the fight, with more than a quarter-million fighting in the border regions of Jiangxi and Fujian alone. It was not until August 1871 that the last Taiping army led by Shi Dakai 's commander, Li Fuzhong ( 李福忠 ), was completely wiped out by government forces in

8740-551: The final time. The Xiang Army captured Jiujiang in May 1858 and then the rest of Jiangxi by September. In 1859, Hong Rengan , Hong Xiuquan's cousin, joined the Taiping forces in Nanjing and was given considerable power by Hong. Hong Rengan developed an ambitious plan to expand the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's boundaries. In May 1860, the Taiping defeated the imperial forces that had been besieging Nanjing since 1853, eliminating them from

8855-973: The forces' march north. 1858–1860 Imperial Commissioner : First Class Senior General Her Chyun Viceroy of Liangjiang : He Guiqing ( 何桂清 ) (escaped to Shanghai and was executed by Qing ) Military commander: Second Class Senior General Zhang GuoLiang ( KIA early May 1860) Governor of Zhejiang province 1st Luo Zundian ( 羅遵殿 ) (died early March 1860, forced suicide) Governor of Zhejiang province 2nd Wang Youling ( 王有齡 ) (died early October 1861, forced suicide) Governor of Jiangsu province Xu Youren ( 徐有壬 ) ( KIA December 21, 1860) Lieutenant General : Zhang YuLiang ( 張玉良 ) ( KIA October 1861) Lieutenant General : Zhou Tengso ( 周天受 ) (KIA middle of May 1860) Lieutenant General : Wang Jung ( 王浚 ) (KIA late April 1860) Li Xiucheng , Lai Wenguang , Tong Zonghai ( 童容海 ), Chen Yucheng , Yang Fuqing ( 楊輔清 ), Li Shixian , Liu Qeuling ( 劉瑲琳 ) The regular Army had only 180,000 soldiers while

8970-408: The general rule of quick civil wars during this period. The American Civil War (1861–1865) was unusual for at least two reasons: it was fought around regional identities as well as political ideologies, and it ended through a war of attrition , rather than with a decisive battle over control of the capital, as was the norm. The Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) proved exceptional because both sides in

9085-561: The geographical distribution of ethnic groups within countries, as this can affect their access to regional resources and commodities, which in turn can lead to conflict. A third theme explored by Cederman is that ethnolinguistic fractionalization does not quantify the extent to which there is pre-existing economic inequality between ethnic groups within countries. In a 2011 article, Cederman and fellow researchers describe finding that “in highly unequal societies, both rich and poor groups fight more often than those groups whose wealth lies closer to

9200-407: The groups eventually disbanded. With no reliable census at the time, estimates of the death toll of the Taiping Rebellion are speculative. The most widely cited sources estimate the total number of deaths during the almost 14 years of the rebellion to be approximately 20 to 30 million civilians and soldiers. Most of the deaths were attributed to plague and famine. Some analysts have claimed that

9315-569: The hands of foreign powers. Farmers were heavily overtaxed, rents rose dramatically, and peasants started to desert their lands in droves. The Qing military had recently suffered a disastrous defeat in the First Opium War , while the Chinese economy was severely impacted by a trade imbalance caused by the large-scale and illicit importation of opium. Banditry became common, and numerous secret societies and self-defense units formed, all of which led to an increase in small-scale warfare. Meanwhile,

9430-701: The high incentives to withdraw once one of them has taken an action that weakens their military, political or economical power. Commitment problems may deter a lasting peace agreement as the powers in question are aware that neither of them is able to commit to their end of the bargain in the future. States are often unable to escape conflict traps (recurring civil war conflicts) due to the lack of strong political and legal institutions that motivate bargaining, settle disputes, and enforce peace settlements. Political scientist Barbara F. Walter suggests that most contemporary civil wars are actually repeats of earlier civil wars that often arise when leaders are not accountable to

9545-519: The incentive to secede. The two major global ideologies, monarchism and democracy , led to several civil wars. However, a bi-polar world, divided between the two ideologies, did not develop, largely due to the dominance of monarchists through most of the period. The monarchists would thus normally intervene in other countries to stop democratic movements taking control and forming democratic governments, which were seen by monarchists as being both dangerous and unpredictable. The Great Powers (defined in

9660-722: The increasing length of those wars has resulted in increasing numbers of wars ongoing at any one time. For example, there were no more than five civil wars underway simultaneously in the first half of the 20th century while there were over 20 concurrent civil wars close to the end of the Cold War . Since 1945, civil wars have resulted in the deaths of over 25 million people, as well as the forced displacement of millions more. Civil wars have further resulted in economic collapse; Somalia , Burma (Myanmar), Uganda and Angola are examples of nations that were considered to have had promising futures before being engulfed in civil wars. James Fearon ,

9775-580: The insurgents recognition as belligerents for the purposes only of the present Convention; or (d) That the dispute has been admitted to the agenda of the Security Council or the General Assembly of the United Nations as being a threat to international peace, a breach of the peace, or an act of aggression. (4) (a) That the insurgents have an organization purporting to have the characteristics of

9890-447: The largest ethnic group comprises a majority of the population, increased the risk of civil war. A country characterized by ethnic dominance has nearly twice the chance of a civil war. However, the combined effects of ethnic and religious fractionalization, i.e. the greater chance that any two randomly chosen people will be from separate ethnic or religious groups, the less chance of a civil war, were also significant and positive, as long as

10005-410: The less-stringent 1,000 casualties total criterion, there were over 90 civil wars between 1945 and 2007, with 20 ongoing civil wars as of 2007. The Geneva Conventions do not specifically define the term "civil war"; nevertheless, they do outline the responsibilities of parties in "armed conflict not of an international character". This includes civil wars; however, no specific definition of civil war

10120-434: The major European powers divested themselves of their colonies at an increasing rate: the number of ex-colonial states jumped from about 30 to almost 120 after the war. The rate of state formation leveled off in the 1980s, at which point few colonies remained. More states also meant more states in which to have long civil wars. Hironaka statistically measures the impact of the increased number of ex-colonial states as increasing

10235-439: The means of respecting and ensuring respect for the Convention. (2) That the legal Government is obliged to have recourse to the regular military forces against insurgents organized as military and in possession of a part of the national territory. (3) (a) That the de jure Government has recognized the insurgents as belligerents; (b) That it has claimed for itself the rights of a belligerent; or (c) That it has accorded

10350-401: The moniker ultimately adopted by Hong. In later embellishments, Hong would declare that he also saw Confucius being punished by his celestial father for leading the people astray. In 1843, Hong failed the imperial examinations for the fourth and final time. It was only then, prompted by a visit by his cousin, that Hong took time to carefully examine Christian pamphlets he had received from

10465-409: The movement. In 1852, Qing government troops captured Hong Daquan , a rebel who had assumed the title Tian De Wang (King of Heavenly Virtue). Hong Daquan's confession claimed that Hong Xiuquan had made him co-sovereign of the Heavenly Kingdom and given him that title, but was more likely an echo of an earlier but unconnected White Lotus Rebellion . However, the capture of Nanjing in that year led to

10580-523: The nature of the conflicts as battles for the power center of the state, the strength of centralized governments, and the normally quick and decisive intervention by other states to support the government. Following World War II the duration of civil wars grew past the norm of the pre-19th century, largely due to weakness of the many postcolonial states and the intervention by major powers on both sides of conflict. The most obvious commonality to civil wars are that they occur in fragile states . Civil wars in

10695-686: The number of civil wars. For example, the pirates of the Barbary Coast were recognized as de facto states because of their military power. The Barbary pirates thus had no need to rebel against the Ottoman Empire – their nominal state government – to gain recognition of their sovereignty. Conversely, states such as Virginia and Massachusetts in the United States of America did not have sovereign status, but had significant political and economic independence coupled with weak federal control, reducing

10810-497: The palace grounds as well as suspicions of poison. Nanjing fell barely a month later. The 14-year civil war as a whole coincided with internal and external conflicts of the Opium Wars and the future Boxer Rebellion to further weaken the Qing dynasty’s grasp on central China. The Taiping rebellion gave incentive for an initially successful period of reform and self-strengthening although shadowed by social and religious unrest within

10925-452: The picture, the remaining Taiping leaders tried to widen their popular support and forge alliances with European powers, but failed on both counts. The Europeans decided to stay officially neutral, though European military advisors served with the Qing army. Inside China, the rebellion faced resistance from the traditionalist rural classes because of hostility to Chinese culture and Confucian values . The landowning upper class, unsettled by

11040-402: The proponents of greed theory and make the idea "irrelevant". They examine a myriad of factors and conclude that too many factors come into play with conflict, which cannot be confined to simply greed or grievance. Anthony Vinci makes a strong argument that "fungible concept of power and the primary motivation of survival provide superior explanations of armed group motivation and, more broadly,

11155-402: The public, when there is poor public participation in politics, and when there is a lack of transparency of information between the executives and the public. Walter argues that when these issues are properly reversed, they act as political and legal restraints on executive power forcing the established government to better serve the people. Additionally, these political and legal restraints create

11270-455: The rate of new civil wars had not increased appreciably; the drastic rise in the number of ongoing wars after World War II was a result of the tripling of the average duration of civil wars to over four years. This increase was a result of the increased number of states, the fragility of states formed after 1945, the decline in interstate war, and the Cold War rivalry. Following World War II,

11385-485: The rebellion was fought over and thus increase the opportunity cost of restarting the conflict. Alternatively, elapsed time may represent the gradual process of healing of old hatreds. The study found that the presence of a diaspora substantially reduced the positive effect of time, as the funding from diasporas offsets the depreciation of rebellion-specific capital. Evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa has argued that an important cause of intergroup conflict may be

11500-525: The region and opening the way for a successful invasion of southern Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, the wealthiest region of the Qing Empire. The Taiping rebels were successful in taking Hangzhou on March 19, 1860, Changzhou on May 26, and Suzhou on June 2 to the east. While Taiping forces were preoccupied in Jiangsu, Zeng's forces moved down the Yangtze River. An attempt to take Shanghai begun in June 1861

11615-726: The relative availability of women of reproductive age. He found that polygyny greatly increased the frequency of civil wars but not interstate wars. Gleditsch et al. did not find a relationship between ethnic groups with polygyny and increased frequency of civil wars but nations having legal polygamy may have more civil wars. They argued that misogyny is a better explanation than polygyny. They found that increased women's rights were associated with fewer civil wars and that legal polygamy had no effect after women's rights were controlled for. Political scholar Elisabeth Wood from Yale University offers yet another rationale for why civilians rebel and/or support civil war. Through her studies of

11730-468: The revolt. The other Muslim rebellion, the Dungan revolt , was the reverse: it was not aiming to overthrow the Qing dynasty because its leader Ma Hualong had accepted an imperial title. Instead, it erupted as a result of intersectional fighting between Muslim factions and Han Chinese. During the Dungan revolt, various groups fought against each other without any coherent goal. According to modern researchers,

11845-502: The second and last leader of the short-lived Republic of Formosa . Other "Flag Gangs" armed with the latest weapons, disintegrated into bandit groups that plundered remnants of the Lan Xang kingdom. They were then engaged in the Haw wars (misnamed due to conflation with Chinese Muslims ) against the incompetent forces of King Rama V ( r.  1868–1910–  ) until 1890, when the last of

11960-589: The sexes, abolition of foot binding , land socialisation, and "suppression" of private trade. They also outlawed the importation of opium into all Taiping territories. In regard to religion, the Kingdom replaced Confucianism , Buddhism and Chinese folk religion with the Taiping Christianity, God Worshipping , which held that Hong Xiuquan was the younger brother of Jesus and the second son of Shangdi . Buddhist libraries were burned. Because Hong saw Confucianism

12075-608: The state is weak; both authoritarian and democratic states can be stable if they have the financial and military capacity to put down rebellions. Some scholars, such as Lars-Erik Cederman of the Center for Security Studies (CSS) at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology , have criticized the data used by Fearon and Laitin to determine ethnic and religious diversity. In his 2007 paper Beyond Fractionalization: Mapping Ethnicity onto Nationalist Insurgencies , Cederman argues that

12190-455: The state. This suggests that ethnic, linguistic and religious cleavages can matter, depending on the extent to which the various groups have ability and influence to mobilize on either side of a forming conflict. Themes explored in Cederman's later work criticizing the use of ethnic fractionalization measures as input variables to predict civil war outbreak relate to these indices not accounting for

12305-453: The struggle received support from intervening great powers: Germany , Italy , and Portugal supported opposition leader Francisco Franco , while France and the Soviet Union supported the government (see proxy war ). In the 1990s, about twenty civil wars were occurring concurrently during an average year, a rate about ten times the historical average since the 19th century. However,

12420-510: The teachings of the 16th-century Ming general Qi Jiguang . He bypassed the professional regular armies and recruited from local villages, paying and drilling them well. Zeng, Zuo and Li led personally loyal soldiers. By early 1864, Qing control in most areas had been reestablished. In May 1862, the Xiang Army besieged Nanjing; attempts to break the siege by the numerically superior Taiping Army failed. Hong Xiuquan declared that God would defend

12535-447: The term "Taiping Rebellion" is biased because it insinuates that the Qing government was a legitimate government which was fighting against the illegitimate Taiping rebels. Instead, they argue that the conflict should be called a "civil war". Other historians such as Jürgen Osterhammel term the conflict "Taiping Revolution" because of the rebels' radical transformational objectives and the social revolution that they initiated. Little

12650-437: The vast majority of combatants in civil wars) are less likely to join a rebellion if they are getting an education or have a comfortable salary, and can reasonably assume that they will prosper in the future. Low per capita income has also been proposed as a cause for grievance, prompting armed rebellion. However, for this to be true, one would expect economic inequality to also be a significant factor in rebellions, which it

12765-588: Was a shadow of its noble origin, being now a tool of the Qing to tyrannize Han people, libraries of the Confucian monasteries were destroyed—in the Yangtze delta, almost entirely —and the temples were often defaced or turned into temples of his new religion or hospitals and libraries. Traditionalist works like those of Confucius were burned and their sellers executed. The Taiping were especially opposed to idolatry , destroying idols wherever found with great prejudice. Though

12880-604: Was also dismissively referred to as the Red Sheep Rebellion ( 紅羊之亂 ; Hóngyáng zhī luàn ) because the two names sound similar in Chinese. In modern China, the war is often referred to as the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement, due to the fact that the Taiping espoused a doctrine which was both nationalist and communist, and the Taiping represented a popular ideology which was based on either Han nationalism or protocommunist values. The scholar Jian Youwen

12995-498: Was marked by a high level of discipline and fanaticism. They typically wore a uniform of red jackets with blue trousers, and grew their hair long so in China they were nicknamed "long hair". In the beginning of the rebellion, the large numbers of women serving in the Taiping army also distinguished it from other 19th-century armies. However, after 1853 there ceased being many women in the Taiping army. Hong Xuanjiao , Su Sanniang and Qiu Ersao are examples of women who became leaders of

13110-429: Was repulsed after 15 months by an army of Qing troops supported by European officers under the command of Frederick Townsend Ward . This army would become known as the " Ever Victorious Army ", a seasoned and well-trained Qing military force commanded by Charles George Gordon , and would be instrumental in the defeat of the Taiping rebels. In 1861, around the time of the death of the Xianfeng Emperor and ascension of

13225-405: Was so severe that parents and children of the opposite sex could not interact, and even married couples were discouraged from having sex. The rebels used brilliant unorthodox strategies that nearly toppled the dynasty but inspired it to adopt what one historian calls "the most significant military experimentation since the seventeenth century." The Taiping army was the rebellion's key strength. It

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