The Revolt of Oppressed People - Essay Example

Historically speaking, oppressed people eventually revolt, whether because of poverty, governmental oppression, a need for social or religious reform, or any number of other oppressive factors. Often, a combination of factors becomes a growing problem leading to widespread dissatisfaction boiling under the surface. A precipitous incident or incidents can then catapult the people into revolt. Usually, it is not the upper classes, ensconced in their authoritative societal position, who revolt. Most often, it is the masses, the commoners. This is what has made the common people so influential in changing the course of world history: an oppressive environment must exist: a generation must become ready for change, and a precipitous event must trigger a chain of events leading to a change in government, culture, and/or society in general. God's Chinese Son, by Jonathan Spence, illustrates this principle well. In the case of the Taiping Rebellion, which only lasted almost fourteen years, the impact that this particular movement had was that ultimately in 1864 when Nanjing and the Taiping "Dynasty" fell to the Qing, (its founder, Hong Xiuquan, dying for unknown reasons shortly before the city was taken), it left a legacy of millions of deaths. Though the Qing took back the rule, its weakening was irrevocable and its control was never the same. Scholars in the People's Republic of China have devoted attention to it largely because they think of the Taipings as proto-Communists. Long-term reverberations of the heretical pseudo-Christian movement still include a continued wariness of full religious liberty as a potential for governmental or political overthrow or at least strong unwanted influence. Who is to blame in the vast, great country, filled with masses of people, powerful bureaucrats in untouchable offices in the great cities--but a younger son of a poor farming family from the mountains north of Canton, an ethnic minority group in the region called the Hakka. His family and his village had invested much of what they had in him for the honor of him achieving a bureaucratic career. He failed the Chinese Civil Service exams, which were the only sure road to high office and success, four times. Only partially educated himself, he went back to his village, humiliated at repeated failure in a culture that values honor and even seeks death rather than shame. Only partially educated himself, he took up teaching. What is the backdrop to this drama China in the first half of the nineteenth century faced unusually complex problems. The ruling Qing (Manchu) dynasty was weak and internally divided. Trade contacts with the West were increasing, but the Qing government was unsure how to deal with them. The first Opium War, concluded in 1842, showed that military resistance would not succeed. Should Western trade be restricted to the coastal cities Or should it be allowed access to all Chinese markets And then there was the problem of Christianity. By the 1840s, many missionaries were numerous and active, publishing tracts and Chinese versions of the Bible and distributing them freely. Pan into Hong Xiuquan's village, and it is 1837. We find an impoverished minority group in a country full of impoverished minority groups led by a distracted government that did not hear the people's voice well. Deep personal disappointment and community-wide humiliation on a level that cannot be completely understood by a Western culture that values individualism. A sickness, and a dream of God telling him to fight. In the dream, something happens that is not happening in reality: he wins. Victorious in the "test" in his dream (as he was not in reality), he is told in the dream to continue on to higher and greater battles: fighting the non-responsive bureaucratic system that has shamed him and rejected him. Not knowing what to think of his dream, he eventually comes in contact (in 1843) with a missionary tract that gives the gospel of Christianity in part without any historical or traditional context, as short pieces of literature generally cannot do. However, in this situation, the results were deadly. Uneducated in the historical context of Christianity, he became convicted that he was the younger brother of Jesus, "God's Chinese Son." Profoundly affected, to the point of eventually feeling he had the authority to re-write the bible and eradicate all indications of human weakness (sin) from the record of biblical figures, (Spence offers a picture of Hong between 1860-62 holed up in his palace in Nanjing, devoting many hours a day to biblical study and annotation) he leaves his village, and travels to a more remote area, only to go to an even more impoverished Hakka village full of people in even more desperate straits than his own community. His message of redemption spread like fire through dry brush, and the parched generation of people who heard his message burned a trail all the way to Nanjing in 1953, the largest city in Central China, and declared it the new capital. By that time, they had a military force of several hundreds of thousands, and had consistently proved superior to government forces in battle. Spence shows that language reform (new vocabulary additions and the purification of old ones), social reform (redefining of the proper relations between the sexes, redistribution of property, changes in dress), and religious reform (rejection of old orthodoxy and replacement with new religion)-occurred among the Taipings. But in a unique way, all were given an explicitly Christian justification by the Taipings. In this instance, religion served as the justification, the final impetus to change everything else that was wrong in their world. It was their means to an end, not even important enough in itself to actually be historically accurate or ethically sound: though Hong Xiuquan prohibited all men and women, even married couples, from living together, he himself had several wives. In conclusion, Hong Xiuquan's message was directed at and seems to have appealed largely to poor and underprivileged-the ordinary people. Agricultural laborers and village schoolteachers were his converts. The kinds of challenges that historians face when viewing history through the perspective of a largely disempowered people is understanding the cultural values they hold that, religious foundational beliefs. Understanding what living conditions they endured helps a historian see the perspective of the people and understand the impetus for the change. Read More