Author: 羽黒山

The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement in the last decades of Qing dynasty of China and Tonghak Movement in the last decades in the kingdom of Joseon of Korea both had significant influence to the nation, which both brought major social transformations and spread of a religion, but also caused devastating results to the occupied regions’ economy and population during a short period of time. Also, it was coincidently similar that the Taiping rebellion in China and Tonghak rebellion in Korea were both known for their religious-led characteristics, one claimed to be Protestant Christianity, and the latter to be Cheondogyo, developed from Tonghak “Eastern Learning”. However, different with many religious-led reformations, warfare or revolutions in early modern Europe, these two movements in East Asia were more likely to be socioeconomic-led peasant uprisings under the ‘guise’ of religious beliefs.

 

For the Taiping Heavenly kingdom’s case, Christopher Hill’s book The English Bible

and the Seventeenth-Century Revolution provided an insight of the major use of the Bible and Christian religious beliefs in the English Revolution – while his study of an European revolution also provided a comparison between the role of the Bible and Christianity in a more ‘traditional’ sense of religious-oriented revolutions and the Taiping Rebellion.[1] Hong Xiuquan’s Taiping Heavenly Kingdom indeed claimed to uphold Christianity as the only official religion, and thus put much effort in the publishing of the Bible and to spread religious texts to churches and to implement weekly worships, all seemed to be formal Christian practices.[2] However, the Taiping’s version of the Bible was altered to conform to the moral values of Taiping theology, and some text were either deleted or rewrote to fit Hong’s own personal understanding of Christianity.[3] In this way, Taiping’s version of ‘Protestant Christianity’ was somehow far from original Protestant teachings, and was more like a combination of Protestantism and local Chinese customs and ideologies – even with some Confucianism beliefs that Hong was taught to before he established the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.[4]

 

While the Taiping’s use of Christianity as the official religion was not aimed to bring Western-patterned Christian practices to China, but to self-establish legitimacy to start a social uprising against the Qing emperor’s reign. By using Christianity in its name (on the surface), Hong agreed with English missionary Medhurst’s claim that the title of Chinese emperors (huangdi) was blasphemous to the God (shangdi) by using the word di since Qin dynasty, and they needed to overthrow the blasphemous imperial system.[5] This way of applying and interpreting Christian theology provided Hong a new form of legitimacy to start his Taiping rebellion. However, the reason for the Taiping rebellion could be in a deeper level rather than Christianity itself. After the defeat of Qing forces in the First Opium War in 1842, the legitimacy of Qing’s imperial government began to be challenged, as the perceived ever-strong empire was suddenly in threats by more powerful Western forces. The devastating economic compensations from the Qing court to British authorities was in no doubt to put extra burdens on normal Chinese people, while the defeat of Qing forces in the Second Opium War at the mean time of Taiping rebellion only made the economic situation worse for the Chinese public, and therefore the breakout of a peasant rebellion was only a matter of time which eventually broke out in 1851, and Christianity was more like an excuse.

 

Tonghak rebellion in Korea was also in similar situations. The Tonghak believers self-established legitimacy by raising a “Righteous Army” and to resist Japanese and Chinese influences in Korea, and also publicly claimed to carrying patriotic duties in the anti-Japanese and anti-Chinese campaign, which was obviously not oriented from the spread of Catholicism into Korean peninsula in the mid-19^th century and the subsequently emerged “Eastern Learning”.[6] From the Twelve Reforms Proclaimed by the Tonghak Overseer’s Office we could also see that the breakout of the Tonghak rebellion was also related to the economic burdens on Korean peasants since the mid-19^th century when foreign powers’ influence increased in Korea, as the Tonghak believers aimed to void “all past debts, private or public”, to redistribute farmland, and to reduce sundry taxes as their resorts to reduce Korean people’s economic burden – this was also obviously emerged from the very real socioeconomic difficulties in late 19^th century Korea, rather than solely the spread of Catholic beliefs, as Catholicism was rather more irrelevant from this rebellion in Korea.[7]

[1] Thomas H. Reilly, The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom: Rebellion and the Blasphemy of Empire (Seattle, 2011), p. 57.

[2] Ibid, p. 74.

[3] Ibid, p. 75.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid, pp. 87 – 88.

[6] Peter H Lee, William Theodore De Bary and Yŏng-ho Ch’oe, Sources of Korean Tradition (New York, 1997 – 2000), p. 267.

[7] Ibid, pp. 265 – 266.

With no doubt that the Neo-Confucianism School has played an important role in shaping the Chinese society during the late imperial centuries in China, which this process could have already been started during the Northern Song dynasty. One central belief of Neo-Confucianism was that “self-cultivation is fundamental for all people”.[1] Though the emphasise of self-cultivation of every individual was a pursuit of higher standards of social morality, this practice seemed to be too ideological to achieve, and it eventually caused somehow opposite political effects in later dynasties.

 

Different from the traditional Confucianism and the dominant political ideology “the Mandate of Heaven” (tianming) in ancient Chinese dynasties, which meant that the Heaven mandated the emperor with unquestionable power to rule the empire, Neo-Confucianism, as promoted by Zhu Xi, Cheng Yi and Hu Anguo etc., challenged the mandate doctrine and claimed that the rulers’ authority shall be based on their moral conscience (tianli).[2] This was in line with Neo-Confucianism’s core belief of “conscious commitments” of individuals – which also included the imperial rulers.[3]

 

Zhu Xi’s “learning for emperors and kings” (diwang zhixue) claimed that the imperial ruler’s mind was the ultimate factor for all affairs, therefore established a new way to legitimise the ruler’s authority and the public’s obedience to him, and the way for the ruler to learn and upheld his moral standard was through studying the Great Learning, an important classical Confucianism text.[4] Thus an ideological rule of the empire was established – that the ruler (emperor) could keep high moral standards and to rule the empire wisely as a “sage-king” and a role model of the entire society by studying classical texts of the ancient sages, and therefore a healthy administrative cycle was formed through high pursuits.[5]

 

Besides the high moral standard expected for the ruler, the officials were also expected to behave in a very high standard of loyalty, unity and selflessness without forming factions, according to Neo-Confucianism.[6] In this utopia-like preset political system under Neo-Confucianism, a highly transparent government from the ruler to the officials at each level was established, and justice and equality was promoted to serve the “heavenly principle” (tianli).[7] However, the problem here was that the Neo-Confucianism governance was far too ideological to be really achieved, and in real practice a ‘flawed’ version of Neo-Confucianism’s governance led to a dramatic increase of the emperor’s own power than anything else.

 

Neo-Confucianism’s construction of a “perfect society” aimed to transform the purpose of governance to serve the public’s interest and to promote unity of the society.[8] However, such strong belief in unity and social harmony was very far beyond the then social reality, especially without sufficient social productive capacity and a stable border without external threats (such as Liao, Jin and Mongolia, the neighbours to the north of Song). With real threats that the Neo-Confucianism governance distorted under ‘righteous’ claims in its name, such as emperor Zhu Yuanzhang’s actions of executing over 40,000 officials whom suspected by him of plotting against him yet without solid evidence, under the name of “the well-being of the population” – which was Zhu Xi’s ideology that the Neo-Confucian ruler should be a sage by studying classical Confucianism texts and to be dedicated to the public’s welfare, while the result came out to be the strengthening of the emperor’s own authority during the Ming dynasty and the purging of dissenters to the imperial authority. Therefore, the Neo-Confucianism’s well-known goal of promoting self-cultivation to uphold the heavenly principle (cun tianli) while supressing human desires (mie renyu) came out to be ‘too good to be true’.[9] In real practices between Song and Qing dynasty, the ‘misused’ Neo-Confucianism seemed to become ‘upholding the heavenly principle for those having the imperial authority while supressing human desires for the general public in the society’.

[1] Peter K. Bol, Neo-Confucianism in History (Cambridge, MA, 2008), p. 116.

[2] Ibid, p. 122, 129.

[3] Ibid, p. 195.

[4] Ibid, pp. 133 – 134.

[5] Ibid, p. 135.

[6] Ibid, p. 138.

[7] Ibid, p. 143.

[8] Ibid, 202.

[9] Fangqin Du and Susan Mann, Women and Confucian Cultures in Premodern China, Korea, and Japan (Berkeley, 2003), p. 225.