“始为黎民成半壁，终成皇帝败江山。 ”
The modern history of China, which started with the Opium War, is a history of blood and tears full of gunpowder smoke and war, and it is also a history of the Chinese nation's heroic and tenacious resistance against a strong enemy.
Ever since the imperialist powers bombarded China's long-closed country with artillery fire, the fate of the Chinese nation has changed, and it has been forced to get involved in fierce market competition, and the iron hooves of the great powers have also stepped into the country.
The huge disparity between China and the rest of the world has made China humiliated and bullied, and the Chinese nation has ushered in the greatest crisis in history.
At a time when the survival of the nation was at stake, countless patriots emerged, each exploring the road to national salvation in different directions, among which the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, a peasant regime represented by Hong Xiuquan, became a large force among them.
In the end, this peasant uprising was shattered under the joint strangulation of Chinese and foreign forces, but later generations have mixed reviews of this peasant movement, and some people have imagined what it would be like if the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom succeeded.
Qian Mu, a well-known historian of modern China, was not optimistic about this, and he once said that if he succeeded in joining the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, then the whole of Chinese history would fail. Why did he have such a view?
A stubborn scholar
Qian Mu is a well-known historian, educator and thinker in modern times, known as one of the four great historians of the Republic of China, who has made outstanding contributions to the cause of historical research on the mainland and has made very fruitful achievements in academic research.
Compared with the other three of the four major historians of the Republic of China, Qian Mu's academic background is not eye-catching, he did not study in college, he was forced to interrupt his studies because of the outbreak of the Wuchang Uprising in middle school, but Qian Mu himself is a full of poetry and books, rich and talented, at the age of 18, he began to teach in primary schools under the recommendation of relatives.
While teaching, Qian Mu did not forget to continue his academic research, and during this time he produced many world-famous achievements and monographs, so his reputation grew, and he was later hired as a professor at Yenching University.
Qian Mu has an upright personality and treats academics rigorously and seriously, even in the face of a highly respected university scholar like Hu Shi at the time, he will never be flattering and humble, nor will he blindly listen to the other party's fame and status, but directly conduct academic exchanges with the other party, and even have forgotten the world many times, making the other party unable to come to the stage in public.
During his tenure at the university, Qian Mu was welcomed by many students, and he was very happy to pass on what he had learned throughout his life to students, and to have in-depth exchanges and discussions with them, so as to learn from these energetic young people.
Qian Mu has a deep affection for China's history, and believes that every citizen should have a certain understanding of their country's history and be in awe, he often instructs students in the classroom to accumulate experience from history, increase knowledge, and pass on the culture and spirit of the nation from generation to generation.
Vigorous movement
The Taiping Rebellion broke out in 1851, after the Opium War, foreign powers began to provoke China with strong ships and artillery, and the Qing government blindly compromised and retreated in the face of powerful foreign enemies, signing many unequal treaties, so that the people were enslaved and oppressed by the invading powers, and struggled to survive in the gap between feudal autocracy and imperialism.
Since the Opium War, Chinese society began to gradually degenerate into a semi-colonial and semi-feudal society, the national crisis became increasingly serious, social contradictions gradually became prominent, and the peasants everywhere frequently revolted in order to resist the rule of darkness, among which the uprising launched by Hong Xiuquan in Guangxi was the largest.
Hong Xiuquan was an ordinary scholar in Guangxi, who had participated in the imperial examination many times without success, and then came into contact with Christianity by chance, and after seeing the darkness of the government and the suffering of the people, he founded the Worship of God Religion, and secretly carried out a campaign against the Qing government in Guangxi, which gradually expanded in scale, and finally led by him to launch a sensational peasant uprising.
Hong Xiuquan, Yang Xiuqing and others led the rebel troops from Jintian, Guangxi, all the way to the high, quickly conquered many provinces in southern China, and finally settled the capital Tianjing, established the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and dealt a great blow to the rule of the Qing government and the invasion of imperialism.
However, in the end, due to the corruption within the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and the limitations of the class, this vigorous peasant uprising was finally defeated by the joint strangulation of the reactionary forces.
Qian Mu commented
Later generations have always given a more positive evaluation of the Taiping Rebellion, affirming the role it played in modern Chinese history, believing that this peasant uprising had dealt a heavy blow to the feudal dynasty and imperialism at that time, and that the series of slogans it proclaimed also had a certain meaning of ideological emancipation.
As a historian, Qian Mu also commented on the Taiping Rebellion, and he did not deny that the movement had its merits, but on the whole, if the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom had succeeded at that time, then the entire history of China would have failed.
The reason for his view was that he saw clearly the nature of the Taiping Rebellion and the regime it established, and that the path of peasant uprising was really not a good way to save the country for China at that time.
The rebel generals, represented by Hong Xiuquan, later co-founded the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom regime and promulgated a series of policies that appeared to be progressive, but in essence, the regime was still a feudal autocracy.
The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom soon had serious internal strife due to the struggle for power and profit, and this internal friction caused this originally prosperous force to be quickly reduced, and thus also made it lose its ability to resist in the joint strangulation of Chinese and foreign reactionary forces.
Hong Xiuquan followed the cloak of Christianity and God, and created a feudal regime that was essentially the same as that of the Qing government, which could not solve the social contradictions of the time, and even did not put forward any revolutionary tasks applicable to the time, so the end of the movement was doomed to failure.
Brief summary:
Due to the special historical background of modern China, outstanding people of all social classes with patriotic fervor at that time had explored the road of salvation and survival from their own standpoint, but almost all of them ended in failure.
Neither the peasants nor the bourgeoisie were able to clearly understand the real national conditions of China at that time, and failed to grasp the real revolutionary tasks and the main contradictions in society at that time, so the methods they proposed to save the country were not feasible.
It was not until after the founding of the Communist Party of China that it closely integrated the basic tenets of Marxism with the actual situation in China, discovered the real revolutionary tasks and the tasks of the times, and found a real road to national salvation.