A Lament for the Heavenly Kingdom: The Failure of a Narrow-Minded Revolution

The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom movement should have swept all before it, yet after blazing with an illusory light, it failed. As a result, the decaying Qing dynasty managed to stagger on for several more decades. From the ruins of the Heavenly Kingdom arose the glory of the Xiang Army, along with the ideas of China’s modern bourgeoisie. What lessons can we draw from the smoke-filled battlefields of this peasant war, a war that should not have failed, yet was doomed to do so?