19th century
A01=Jonathan D. Spence
Author_Jonathan D. Spence
biography
Category=NHF
china
christianity
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
guangxi
history
manchu
peasant revolt
qing dynasty
revolution
taiping civil war
taiping rebellion
total war
uprising
Product details
- ISBN 9780393315561
- Weight: 641g
- Dimensions: 157 x 236mm
- Publication Date: 17 Dec 1996
- Publisher: WW Norton & Co
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Whether read for its powerful account of the largest uprising in human history, or for its foreshadowing of the terrible convulsions suffered by twentieth-century China, or for the narrative power of a great historian at his best, God's Chinese Son must be read. At the center of this history of China's Taiping rebellion (1845-64) stands Hong Xiuquan, a failed student of Confucian doctrine who ascends to heaven in a dream and meets his heavenly family: God, Mary, and his older brother, Jesus. He returns to earth charged to eradicate the "demon-devils," the alien Manchu rulers of China. His success carries him and his followers to the heavenly capital at Nanjing, where they rule a large part of south China for more than a decade. Their decline and fall, wrought by internal division and the unrelenting military pressures of the Manchus and the Western powers, carry them to a hell on earth. Twenty million Chinese are left dead.
Jonathan D. Spence (1936—2021) was Sterling Professor of History at Yale University, where he taught for more than forty years. He was awarded MacArthur and Guggenheim Fellowships, and the Los Angeles Times Book Award. The Search for Modern China won the Lionel Gelber Award and the Kiriyama Book Prize.
