Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom

Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom
Author :
Publisher : Knopf
Total Pages : 514
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780307271730
ISBN-13 : 0307271730
Rating : 4/5 (30 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom by : Stephen R. Platt

Download or read book Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom written by Stephen R. Platt and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2012 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A gripping account of China's nineteenth-century Taiping Rebellion, one of the largest civil wars in history. Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom brims with unforgettable characters and vivid re-creations of massive and often gruesome battles--a sweeping yet intimate portrait of the conflict that shaped the fate of modern China. The story begins in the early 1850s, the waning years of the Qing dynasty, when word spread of a major revolution brewing in the provinces, led by a failed civil servant who claimed to be the son of God and brother of Jesus. The Taiping rebels drew their power from the poor and the disenfranchised, unleashing the ethnic rage of millions of Chinese against their Manchu rulers. This homegrown movement seemed all but unstoppable until Britain and the United States stepped in and threw their support behind the Manchus: after years of massive carnage, all opposition to Qing rule was effectively snuffed out for generations. Stephen R. Platt recounts these events in spellbinding detail, building his story on two fascinating characters with opposing visions for China's future: the conservative Confucian scholar Zeng Guofan, an accidental general who emerged as the most influential military strategist in China's modern history; and Hong Rengan, a brilliant Taiping leader whose grand vision of building a modern, industrial, and pro-Western Chinese state ended in tragic failure. This is an essential and enthralling history of the rise and fall of the movement that, a century and a half ago, might have launched China on an entirely different path into the modern world.


Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom Related Books

Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom
Language: en
Pages: 514
Authors: Stephen R. Platt
Categories: Americans
Type: BOOK - Published: 2012 - Publisher: Knopf

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A gripping account of China's nineteenth-century Taiping Rebellion, one of the largest civil wars in history. Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom brims with unforget
God's Chinese Son: The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan
Language: en
Pages: 452
Authors: Jonathan D. Spence
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 1996-12-17 - Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"A magnificent tapestry . . . a story that reaches beyond China into our world and time: a story of faith, hope, passion, and a fatal grandiosity."--Washington
The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom
Language: en
Pages: 248
Authors: Thomas H. Reilly
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2011-07-01 - Publisher: University of Washington Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Occupying much of imperial China’s Yangzi River heartland and costing more than twenty million lives, the Taiping Rebellion (1851-64) was no ordinary peasant
Imperial Twilight
Language: en
Pages: 609
Authors: Stephen R. Platt
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2018-05-15 - Publisher: Vintage

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

As China reclaims its position as a world power, Imperial Twilight looks back to tell the story of the country’s last age of ascendance and how it came to an
Provincial Patriots
Language: en
Pages: 294
Authors: Stephen R. Platt
Categories: Biography & Autobiography
Type: BOOK - Published: 2007-10-31 - Publisher: Harvard University Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

From the Taiping Rebellion to the Chinese Communist movement, no province in China gave rise to as many reformers, military officers, and revolutionaries as did