A man who believed he was Jesus's younger brother led a 14-year civil war that killed up to 30 million people — the deadliest conflict of the 19th century, barely known in the West.
Hong Xiuquan was a Chinese scholar who had failed the imperial civil service examination four times when, after his third failure in 1837, he suffered a nervous breakdown and had vivid visions. He later read Christian missionary pamphlets and became convinced the visions meant he was the younger brother of Jesus Christ, sent to purge China of demons — beginning with the Qing dynasty.
In 1851, Hong declared himself the Heavenly King of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. His movement grew with extraordinary speed. By 1853 his forces had captured Nanjing, which he renamed Tianjing and made his capital, controlling a population of nearly 30 million people across southern China.
At its peak, the Taiping army numbered approximately 500,000 soldiers. They acquired modern weapons smuggled by American and English suppliers; rebel factories in Nanjing were eventually producing artillery superior to the Qing government's. The rebellion reached the outskirts of Shanghai and very nearly destabilized the entire empire.
The Heavenly Kingdom imposed radical social policies: strict separation of the sexes (even married couples were discouraged from having sex), abolition of foot binding, socialization of land, and banning of opium, Confucianism, and Buddhism. Taiping forces destroyed temples and Confucian libraries across the territories they controlled.
The rebellion lasted 14 years, from 1850 to 1864. Estimates of the death toll range from 20 to 30 million people — some scholars place it as high as 100 million when accounting for famine and disease. As a proportion of China's population, it was one of the most lethal conflicts in human history.
Hong Xiuquan died in June 1864 — reportedly from eating wild vegetables, possibly deliberately — just before his capital fell. His 15-year-old son was captured and executed shortly after. The last scattered Taiping forces weren't wiped out until 1871, seven years after the main rebellion collapsed.
Despite being arguably the deadliest civil war ever fought, the Taiping Rebellion is almost completely unknown in the Western world. It directly weakened the Qing dynasty and set in motion the fragmentation that would eventually lead to the 1912 revolution and the end of imperial China.