The British scholar Ke Wennan commented in "Li Xiucheng and Him": He believes that the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom is a revolutionary movement launched by millions of poor peasants in order to survive and pursue equality and fairness, in the spirit of sacrifice, but due to objective limitations, its political system has not been able to well reflect this ideal. ”
The capital was Set in Tianjing, and the administrative region was reformed
In the late Qing Dynasty, the world situation underwent turbulent changes. The Qing government's closed-door policy made China lag behind the Western countries in an all-round way, and in the past hundred years, Chinese was bullied and oppressed by foreign powers.
It was at this time that the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement, led by Hong Xiuquan, swept the country and occupied almost half of the Qing government in just fourteen years.
On March 19, 1853, the Taiping Army conquered Nanjing, and the capital was Nanjing, changing Nanjing to Tianjing, and began to confront the Qing Dynasty.
Although the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was in full swing, in the final analysis, it still had its own limitations. The main body of this vigorous movement is still the peasants, and if there is no rational system, its degeneration and decay are inevitable outcomes.
And it is also true that when Hong Xiuquan rose up in his early years, he proposed "equal family" and "equal distribution", but later it was all the big king and the little king to enjoy the blessings. Even these big kings and little kings have formulated many ridiculous policies, including the renaming of the provinces.
Rename the provinces just to avoid secrecy
At that time, the person in charge of the reform of the administrative division of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was Hong Renjie, the King of Gan. Having lived in Hong Kong for many years, he had some understanding of the Western capitalist system, so he wrote China's first program of modern capitalist nature, the "New Chapter of Senior Administration". But because of its lack of social, economic, ideological and class conditions, it has not been realized.
Similarly, Hong Renyu was equally unrealistic when he presided over the administrative division reform of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.
At that time, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom practiced a strict hierarchical system of upper and lower levels, so a system of avoidance was implemented in the areas under the jurisdiction of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. Therefore, in order to avoid the king of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, many provinces in China were renamed by the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.
At that time, there were six kings in the Yong'an system, namely The Heavenly King Hong Xiuquan Wanzai, the Eastern King Yang Xiuqing 9,000 years old, the Western King Xiao Chaogui 8,000 years old, the Southern King Feng Yunshan 7,000 years old, the Northern King Wei Changhui 6,000 years old, and the Wing King Shi Dakai 5,000 years old.
These people were called kings, and according to the system of feudal society, the name of the place should be avoided. Therefore, at that time, the avoidance was mainly in terms of personal names, and if there was a word in the name that was the same as that of the Heavenly King Hong Xiu, it was necessary to change the word or write a stroke when writing. This phenomenon was very common at that time, and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was even more excessive, and the names of the provinces had to be avoided.
The ignorance of the rulers is doomed to failure
For example, the two provinces of Shandong and Shanxi were changed to Shandong and Shanxi in order to avoid the word "mountain" of Feng Yunshan, the king of the south; Yunnan Province was changed to Yunnan in order to avoid the "cloud" of Feng Yunshan; Guizhou was changed to Guizhou in order to avoid the "guizi" of the western king Xiao Chaogui, and if you did not know it, you thought that this was the territory of Guangxi.
As we all know, the place of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's uprising was in Guangxi, and most of these kings were also Guangxi people, so they changed the name of Guangxi to Guifu Province, which also meant to pray for the blessing of heaven.
And Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Xinjiang these places, also do not know and changed to Zhejiang ginger, Jiangxi, new ginger. In addition, there are other places that have changed more, causing a lot of inconvenience to people at that time.
In addition to these so-called avoidances, the top brass of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom also changed the names of the provinces according to their personal preferences.
During the Qing Dynasty, the administrative division was divided into four levels: "province, prefecture, province, and county", while the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was changed to "province, county, and county".
What is even more excessive is that Tianjin at that time was directly subordinate to the province and was under the direct jurisdiction of the central government. However, the Heavenly King Hong Xiuquan believed that the people here had been brainwashed by the Qing government and were all sinners, so after he captured Tianjin, he changed the area to a province of sin.
In fact, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom only occupied half of China at most, and it was mainly in the south, so the situation was whimsical to change the name of the whole country, which showed that it was indeed carried away by victory.
It is precisely because of the bad tastes of these rulers of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom that their internal contradictions are getting bigger and bigger. In the end, the Taiping Army was strangled by the Qing government and the foreigners, and the vigorous Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement was declared a failure.
In fact, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement is also considered to have a positive significance in the development of China's modern history. In the late Qing Dynasty, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom brought with it the advanced revolutionary basis of western ideas. However, the uprising led by Hong Xiuquan inevitably carried the limitations of the peasant uprising, did not have a long-term vision, and did not govern the country's inherent system, so that it ultimately failed.