The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement is not a cult.
? Abandoned his wife, left his mother to hide in the mountains, and went on a hunger strike for three days. Her mother was very hungry and asked for food. If you meet a thief, you will be forced to surrender and swear. When the thief got angry, he cut off his leg and cooked it. Scold a thief for profit, and the thief will have his elbow cut off by laparotomy? This is just an example. In the notes of the Qing dynasty, there are many incidents about escaping into the mountains behind my mother's back and being arrested and killed later. As for folk writers, there will only be more events that I have never seen or heard of. The thief mentioned here is the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.
There are several cases in the notes of the Qing dynasty that are really outrageous. ? Suitable for a few months of pregnancy, can't travel far? Cursed and then killed? ,? Suitable for pregnancy? Seeing that Gu Zhou was killed, he cried and cursed. Thief angry, died by caesarean section? ,? The thief burned his neck with a whip, then cut his chest and abdomen and died? How crazy is it to hack a pregnant woman to death? In addition, wherever the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom went, Buddhist temples were completely destroyed, and there were many cases of killing monks or gentry to protect Buddha statues.
In the eyes of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, officials of the Qing Dynasty, Manchu people, monks and nuns, gentry businessmen and intellectuals were all regarded as? Demon? , wantonly plunder and slaughter. ? If all the captives have rosy palms and no heavy cocoons on their fingers, they regard their hands as demons. , kill them all. Yang suffered from eye diseases due to indiscriminate killing, and offered a reward of 12000 yuan for his treatment. As a result, no one called because the doctors were killed.
? All evil songs and dramas will be stopped and all performers will be beheaded. ? The criminal law of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom can be described as barbaric and ignorant. Yu Dacheng, one of them? All brothers should be familiar with the doctrine of praise. If they can't get familiar with reporters after three weeks, they will be beheaded. ? It can be seen that those who can't read should also be beheaded.
One year on the Double Ninth Festival, the kings of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom had a whim and simply held a meeting to watch streaking. According to the records of shield nose, On the Double Ninth Festival, thieves held a banquet in Zhongshan, took hundreds of women, stripped them of their clothes and pants, and rushed down the mountain, naked and with nowhere to hide.
A group of thieves were watching on the top of the mountain, thinking they were laughing? The streaking conference was a great success, with colorful flags fluttering and gongs and drums roaring. It is also recorded in the book that in the second year of Xianfeng, the Taiping Army captured Daozhou, the hometown of the great calligrapher He, dug up the body of his mother who died just a year ago and peed in the mouth of the body. Go back and take off your clothes, take a stallion dog and whip it to its home, naked, ugly and embarrassed? , that is, cut off the genitals of male dogs and insert them into the nakedness of female corpses to expose them.
1856 There was a bloody massacre, right? Yang Wei guilty? In fact, more? Hong Yang is guilty? . This kind of influence? Taiping Heavenly Kingdom? Fate kills each other, causing the eyes of Dongyang King? Artifact? , forcing Hong Xiuquan to seal his father and son? Long live? . Hongmi ordered Wei Changhui, the king of the North, to lead the troops back to Beijing from the front overnight, bloodbath East Wang Fu, kill more than 20,000 soldiers in East Wang Fu, and the Qinhuai River was dyed red. Shi Dakai, the wing king, is one of the most farsighted and capable kings, and is considered as the most powerful opponent by Zeng Guofan. He returned to Beijing and accused Wei Changhui of killing too many people. Wei? On the orders or signals of Redmi? They tried to kill the stone again. The stone escaped overnight and killed all the children. Shi Dakai singling out, hong and ordered the killing of wei and his cronies two hundred people. Since then,? Taiping Heavenly Kingdom? From prosperity to decline, to the end.
Debate on Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement
There are obvious differences among historians about the nature of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement. To sum up, there are roughly two kinds:
First of all, this is an old peasant revolution. For example, Liu Danian said in the article "Several Problems in the Study of China's Modern History": During the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, the feudal economy was dominant, and the most common and prominent contradiction in social life was the contradiction between farmers and landlords? And then what? Those who participated in the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement were all people in the old peasant war. ? So? The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was the peak of the old peasant revolution. ?
The second is that it is bourgeois revolutionary. For example, Guo Yisheng put forward in the article "On the Nature of the Taiping Revolution": The Taiping Revolution is undeniably a peasant war, and the peasants are the main force of the revolution, but it broke out after China began to enter a semi-feudal and semi-colonial society and rose in Guangdong and Guangxi areas with relatively developed economy and frequent traffic between China and the West. At this time, new changes have taken place at all levels of society. Farmers are no longer feudal farmers in the Middle Ages, but have the characteristics of bourgeois Democrats. In addition to farmers, there is a new class of citizens. This social force entered the revolutionary struggle and became its core and backbone. ? Like what? Yang, Xiao Chaogui, Qin Richang and others are outstanding representatives of the proletariat? (These authors consider themselves as citizens, editor's note). ? Therefore, we have to make the revolution of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom have many characteristics different from the simple peasant war in the past. For example, the idea of equality put forward in the political platform and the idea of denying authoritarian theocracy and authoritarian regime all have obvious bourgeois nature. ?
The Nature of Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement
The first is that this is an old peasant revolution. For example, Liu Danian said in the article "Several Problems in the Study of China's Modern History": During the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, the feudal economy was dominant, and the most common and prominent contradiction in social life was the contradiction between farmers and landlords? And then what? Those who participated in the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement were all people in the old peasant war. ? So? The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was the peak of the old peasant revolution. ? [ 18- 19]
Second, this is a bourgeois revolution. For example, Guo Yisheng put forward in the article "On the Nature of the Taiping Revolution": The Taiping Revolution is undeniably a peasant war, and the peasants are the main force of the revolution, but it broke out after China began to enter a semi-feudal and semi-colonial society and rose in Guangdong and Guangxi areas with relatively developed economy and frequent traffic between China and the West. At this time, new changes have taken place at all levels of society. Farmers are no longer feudal farmers in the Middle Ages, but have the characteristics of bourgeois Democrats. In addition to farmers, there is a new class of citizens. This social force entered the revolutionary struggle and became its core and backbone. ? Like what? Yang, Xiao Chaogui, Qin Richang and others are outstanding representatives of the proletariat? . ? Therefore, we have to make the revolution of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom have many characteristics different from the simple peasant war in the past. For example, the idea of equality put forward in the political platform and the idea of denying authoritarian theocracy and authoritarian regime all have obvious bourgeois nature. ?
The reasons for the first view can be summarized as follows:
The rise of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement was mainly caused by political corruption, heavy taxes, land annexation and intensification of class contradictions in the Qing Dynasty, which was basically the same as the reasons for many old peasant wars in history.
Like many old peasant wars in history, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement used backward religious methods to mobilize and organize the masses.
The guiding ideology of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement is mainly the egalitarianism of the peasant class for thousands of years, without the guidance of advanced scientific revolutionary theory. The leading class is the peasant class, so the revolution is not led by the advanced class.
The struggle of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was mainly aimed at feudal rulers. Its revolutionary program "celestial system" requires the abolition of feudal land ownership and the establishment of an absolutely egalitarian small-scale peasant economic society, which is only a continuation of farmers' anti-feudal thoughts for thousands of years and does not go beyond the scope of the old peasant war.
⑤ The organizational form of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom followed the feudal autocratic monarchy, enfeoffment of kings, strict hierarchical order, and the struggle for power and profit within the leading group, which fully reflected the backwardness of the peasant class and was nothing new. In the late Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, although Hong Rengan put forward a relatively complete plan to develop capitalism, it was limited to his personal understanding and did not become a leading group. "Senior Minister's New Chapter" did not link the development of capitalism with the elimination of feudal exploitation system, did not link it with the actual struggle of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom at that time, and did not mention the land issue that farmers were most concerned about.
The outcome of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement, like the old peasant war in history, eventually failed due to the limitations of the peasant class. /kloc-the Asian revolutionary storm in the middle of the 0/9th century was an old peasant war, and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement, as an important part of it, was of course an old peasant war. Therefore, although the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement has some new features, it is basically not beyond the scope of the old-style peasant war, and it is still a simple old-style peasant war.
The reasons for the second view can be summarized as follows:
① The reasons for the rise of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement are not only the intensification of class contradictions, but also the disasters brought to the people of China by the invasion of foreign capitalism after the Opium War. At the same time, religious thoughts from the west also had a great influence on the rise of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement, which was different from the old peasant war in history.
② While opposing feudalism, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom undertook the task of opposing foreign aggression, and the Taiping Army launched a large-scale armed struggle with foreign invaders. Later, it was jointly strangled by Chinese and foreign reactionary forces. This is a new situation that is not found in the simple old peasant war in history.
(3) The leader of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom advocated trading with other countries, and later put forward the first plan to develop capitalism in China-a new chapter for senior ministers, which had obvious capitalist factors.
(4) After the Opium War, the China Revolution entered the period of anti-imperialist and anti-feudal bourgeois old-democratic revolution, and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement took place after the Opium War, belonging to the category of bourgeois old-democratic revolution.