Autumn In The Heavenly Kingdom

Author : Stephen R. Platt
Publisher : Knopf
ISBN 13 : 0307957594
Total Pages : 496 pages
Book Rating : 4.97/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom written by Stephen R. Platt and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2012-02-07 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A gripping account of China’s nineteenth-century Taiping Rebellion, one of the largest civil wars in history. Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom brims with unforgettable characters and vivid re-creations of massive and often gruesome battles—a sweeping yet intimate portrait of the conflict that shaped the fate of modern China. 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. The Taiping rebels drew their power from the poor and the disenfranchised, unleashing the ethnic rage of millions of Chinese against their Manchu rulers. This homegrown movement seemed all but unstoppable until Britain and the United States stepped in and threw their support behind the Manchus: after years of massive carnage, all opposition to Qing rule was effectively snuffed out for generations. Stephen R. Platt recounts these events in spellbinding detail, building his story on two fascinating characters with opposing visions for China’s future: the conservative Confucian scholar Zeng Guofan, an accidental general who emerged as the most influential military strategist in China’s modern history; and Hong Rengan, a brilliant Taiping leader whose grand vision of building a modern, industrial, and pro-Western Chinese state ended in tragic failure. 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 on an entirely different path into the modern world.

Author : Jonathan D. Spence
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 0393285863
Total Pages : 432 pages
Book Rating : 4.64/5 ( download)

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Download or read book God's Chinese Son: The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan written by Jonathan D. Spence and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 1996-12-17 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A magnificent tapestry . . . a story that reaches beyond China into our world and time: a story of faith, hope, passion, and a fatal grandiosity."--Washington Post Book World Whether read for its powerful account of the largest uprising in human history, or for its foreshadowing of the terrible convulsions suffered by twentieth-century China, or for the narrative power of a great historian at his best, God's Chinese Son must be read. At the center of this history of China's Taiping rebellion (1845-64) stands Hong Xiuquan, a failed student of Confucian doctrine who ascends to heaven in a dream and meets his heavenly family: God, Mary, and his older brother, Jesus. He returns to earth charged to eradicate the "demon-devils," the alien Manchu rulers of China. His success carries him and his followers to the heavenly capital at Nanjing, where they rule a large part of south China for more than a decade. Their decline and fall, wrought by internal division and the unrelenting military pressures of the Manchus and the Western powers, carry them to a hell on earth. Twenty million Chinese are left dead.

Author : Thomas H. Reilly
Publisher : University of Washington Press
ISBN 13 : 0295801921
Total Pages : 232 pages
Book Rating : 4.26/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom written by Thomas H. Reilly and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2011-07-01 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Occupying much of imperial China’s Yangzi River heartland and costing more than twenty million lives, the Taiping Rebellion (1851-64) was no ordinary peasant revolt. What most distinguished this dramatic upheaval from earlier rebellions were the spiritual beliefs of the rebels. The core of the Taiping faith focused on the belief that Shangdi, the high God of classical China, had chosen the Taiping leader, Hong Xiuquan, to establish his Heavenly Kingdom on Earth. How were the Taiping rebels, professing this new creed, able to mount their rebellion and recruit multitudes of followers in their sweep through the empire? Thomas Reilly argues that the Taiping faith, although kindled by Protestant sources, developed into a dynamic new Chinese religion whose conception of its sovereign deity challenged the legitimacy of the Chinese empire. The Taiping rebels denounced the divine pretensions of the imperial title and the sacred character of the imperial office as blasphemous usurpations of Shangdi’s title and position. In place of the imperial institution, the rebels called for restoration of the classical system of kingship. Previous rebellions had declared their contemporary dynasties corrupt and therefore in need of revival; the Taiping, by contrast, branded the entire imperial order blasphemous and in need of replacement. In this study, Reilly emphasizes the Christian elements of the Taiping faith, showing how Protestant missionaries built on earlier Catholic efforts to translate Christianity into a Chinese idiom. Prior studies of the rebellion have failed to appreciate how Hong Xiuquan’s interpretation of Christianity connected the Taiping faith to an imperial Chinese cultural and religious context. The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom shows how the Bible--in particular, a Chinese translation of the Old Testament--profoundly influenced Hong and his followers, leading them to understand the first three of the Ten Commandments as an indictment of the imperial order. The rebels thus sought to destroy imperial culture along with its institutions and Confucian underpinnings, all of which they regarded as blasphemous. Strongly iconoclastic, the Taiping followers smashed religious statues and imperially approved icons throughout the lands they conquered. By such actions the Taiping Rebellion transformed--at least for its followers but to some extent for all Chinese--how Chinese people thought about religion, the imperial title and office, and the entire traditional imperial and Confucian order. This book makes a major contribution to the study of the Taiping Rebellion and to our understanding of the ideology of both the rebels and the traditional imperial order they opposed. It will appeal to scholars in the fields of Chinese history, religion, and culture and of Christian theology and church history.

Author : Stephen R. Platt
Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 0307961745
Total Pages : 592 pages
Book Rating : 4.47/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Imperial Twilight written by Stephen R. Platt and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2018-05-15 with total page 592 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As China reclaims its position as a world power, Imperial Twilight looks back to tell the story of the country’s last age of ascendance and how it came to an end in the nineteenth-century Opium War. As one of the most potent turning points in the country’s modern history, the Opium War has since come to stand for everything that today’s China seeks to put behind it. In this dramatic, epic story, award-winning historian Stephen Platt sheds new light on the early attempts by Western traders and missionaries to “open” China even as China’s imperial rulers were struggling to manage their country’s decline and Confucian scholars grappled with how to use foreign trade to China’s advantage. The book paints an enduring portrait of an immensely profitable—and mostly peaceful—meeting of civilizations that was destined to be shattered by one of the most shockingly unjust wars in the annals of imperial history. Brimming with a fascinating cast of British, Chinese, and American characters, this riveting narrative of relations between China and the West has important implications for today’s uncertain and ever-changing political climate.

Author : Stephen R. Platt
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780674026650
Total Pages : 294 pages
Book Rating : 4.59/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Provincial Patriots written by Stephen R. Platt and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2007-10-31 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Taiping Rebellion to the Chinese Communist movement, no province in China gave rise to as many reformers, military officers, and revolutionaries as did Hunan. Platt offers the first comprehensive study of why this province wielded such disproportionate influence.

Author : Li Bo
Publisher : iUniverse
ISBN 13 : 059520032X
Total Pages : 242 pages
Book Rating : 4.20/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Tienkuo the Heavenly Kingdom written by Li Bo and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2001-09-12 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It was the year 1858 and three young “run-aways” Jason Brandt, son of a Hong Kong missionary, his friend Wu Sek-chong and the beautiful and defiant Black Jade set off to find the capital of the rebel Taiping Tienkuo, The Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace. Established in 1851 by a failed civil service candidate who claimed to be the little brother of Christ, the semi-Christian Taiping Kingdom, had made a dramatic and bloody bid to overthrow the Confucian rule of the Ch’ing Dynasty. The three young people’s search for the Heavenly Kingdom and what they eventually found among the Taipings is the central plot of this historical novel of journey and self-discovery in 19th century China.

Author : Louise Levathes
Publisher : Open Road Media
ISBN 13 : 1504007360
Total Pages : 235 pages
Book Rating : 4.68/5 ( download)

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Download or read book When China Ruled the Seas written by Louise Levathes and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2014-12-02 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One hundred years before Columbus and his fellow Europeans began their voyages of discovery, fleets of giant junks commanded by the eunuch admiral Zheng He and filled with the empire’s finest porcelains, lacquerware, and silk ventured to the world’s “four corners.” Seven epic expeditions brought China’s treasure ships across the China Seas and Indian Ocean, from Japan to the spice island of Indonesia and the Malabar Coast of India, on to the rich ports of the Persian Gulf and down the East African coast, to China’s “El Dorado,” and perhaps even to Australia, three hundred years before Captain Cook’s landing. It was a time of exploration and expansion, but it ended in a retrenchment so complete that less than a century later, it was a crime to go to sea in a multimasted ship. In When China Ruled the Seas, Louise Levathes takes a fascinating and unprecedented look at this dynamic period in China’s enigmatic history, focusing on the country’s rise as a naval power that briefly brought half the world under its nominal authority. Drawing on eyewitness accounts, official Ming histories, and African, Arab, and Indian sources, many translated for the first time, Levathes brings readers inside China’s most illustrious scientific and technological era. She sheds new light on the historical and cultural context in which this great civilization thrived, as well as the perception of China by other contemporary cultures. Beautifully illustrated and engagingly written, When China Ruled the Seas is the fullest picture yet of the early Ming dynasty—the last flowering of Chinese culture before the Manchu invasion.

Author : Miguel Nicolelis
Publisher : Macmillan
ISBN 13 : 9781429950794
Total Pages : 368 pages
Book Rating : 4.9X/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Beyond Boundaries written by Miguel Nicolelis and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2011-03-15 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A pioneering neuroscientist shows how the long-sought merger of brains with machines is about to become a paradigm-shifting reality Imagine living in a world where people use their computers, drive their cars, and communicate with one another simply by thinking. In this stunning and inspiring work, Duke University neuroscientist Miguel Nicolelis shares his revolutionary insights into how the brain creates thought and the human sense of self—and how this might be augmented by machines, so that the entire universe will be within our reach. Beyond Boundaries draws on Nicolelis's ground-breaking research with monkeys that he taught to control the movements of a robot located halfway around the globe by using brain signals alone. Nicolelis's work with primates has uncovered a new method for capturing brain function—by recording rich neuronal symphonies rather than the activity of single neurons. His lab is now paving the way for a new treatment for Parkinson's, silk-thin exoskeletons to grant mobility to the paralyzed, and breathtaking leaps in space exploration, global communication, manufacturing, and more. Beyond Boundaries promises to reshape our concept of the technological future, to a world filled with promise and hope.

Author : Tobie Meyer-Fong
Publisher : Stanford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0804785597
Total Pages : 335 pages
Book Rating : 4.94/5 ( download)

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Download or read book What Remains written by Tobie Meyer-Fong and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2013-03-27 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Taiping Rebellion was one of the costliest civil wars in human history. Many millions of people lost their lives. Yet while the Rebellion has been intensely studied by scholars in China and elsewhere, we still know little of how individuals coped with these cataclysmic events. Drawing upon a rich array of primary sources, What Remains explores the issues that preoccupied Chinese and Western survivors. Individuals, families, and communities grappled with fundamental questions of loyalty and loss as they struggled to rebuild shattered cities, bury the dead, and make sense of the horrors that they had witnessed. Driven by compelling accounts of raw emotion and deep injury, What Remains opens a window to a world described by survivors themselves. This book transforms our understanding of China's 19th century and recontextualizes suffering and loss in China during the 20th century.

Author : Shuyun Sun
Publisher : Doubleday Books
ISBN 13 : 0385520247
Total Pages : 298 pages
Book Rating : 4.49/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Long March written by Shuyun Sun and published by Doubleday Books. This book was released on 2006 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recounts the events of China's Long March, describing the odyssey of thousands of Chinese Communists from their bases to the remote north of China and discussing stories behind the March, including ruthless purges, hunger and disease, and mistreatment ofwomen.