Quote:
Originally Posted by Turn Prophet
The Taiping Rebellion was a massive Christian (or pseudo-Christian depending on your academic persuasion) apocalyptic movement that was one of the largest flowerings of popular Christianity in China. The resulting uprisings, war, and famine resulted in the deaths of about 20 million people. Other attempts at large-scale missionary work during the Qing Period, even when Christianity was relatively unrestricted (prior to the Kangxi Emperor's decrees following the Franciscan-Jesuit controversy), were met with relatively lukewarm reaction. Several Chinese diaspora communities, however, have relatively large Christian populations. Malaysia has a fairly strong contingent of evangelical and Methodist Christians, though they are still a minority to Muslims of Chinese descent in that country.
The leader of the Taiping Rebellion was a recent Christian convert. But his followers weren't exactly long time converts. It was mostly a peasant Hakka movement as your link explains here:
Ethnic structure of the army
See also: Ethnic minorities in China and List of ethnic groups in China
Ethnically, the Taiping Heavenly Army was formed at the outset largely from these groups: the Hakka (客家; literally means "guest households"), a Han Chinese subgroup, the Cantonese, another Han Chinese subgroup that were the local residents of Guangdong province and the Zhuang (a non-Han ethnic group), which were minority groups as compared to the Han Chinese subgroups that form dominant regional majorities across south China. It is no coincidence that Hong Xiuquan and the other Taiping royals were Hakka.
As a Han sub-group, the Hakka were frequently marginalized economically and politically, having migrated to the regions they inhabit only after other Han groups were already established there. For example, when the Hakka settled in Guangdong and parts of Guangxi, speakers of Yue Chinese (Cantonese) were already the dominant regional Han group there and had been for some time, just as speakers of various dialects of Min are locally dominant in Fujian province. The Hakka settled throughout southern China and beyond, but as latecomers they generally had to establish their communities on rugged, less fertile land scattered on the fringe of the local majority group’s settlements. As their name ("guest households") suggests, the Hakka were generally treated as migrant newcomers, often subject to hostility and derision from local majority Han populations. Consequently, the Hakka, to a greater extent than other Han Chinese, have been historically associated with popular unrest and rebellion.
The other significant ethnic group in the Taiping army were the Zhuang, an indigenous people of Tai origin and China's largest non-Han ethnic minority group. Over the centuries Zhuang communities had been adopting Han Chinese culture. This was possible because Han culture in the region accommodates a great deal of linguistic diversity, so the Zhuang could be absorbed as if the Zhuang language were just another Han Chinese dialect (which it is not). As Zhuang communities were integrating with the Han at different rates, a certain amount of friction between Han and Zhuang was inevitable, with Zhuang unrest on occasion leading to armed uprisings.[18] The second tier of the Taiping army was an ethnic mix that included many Zhuang. Prominent at this level was Shi Dakai, who was half-Hakka, half-Zhuang and spoke both languages fluently, making him quite a rare asset to the Taiping leadership.[citation needed]
In the later stages of the Taiping Rebellion, the number of Han Chinese in the army from Han groups other than the Hakka increased substantially. However, the Hakka and the Zhuang (who constituted as much as 25% of the Taiping Army), as well as other non-Han ethnic minority groups (many of them of Tai origin related to the Zhuang), continued to feature prominently in the rebellion throughout its duration, with virtually no leaders emerging from any Han Chinese group other than the Hakka.
