The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, or Taiping Rebellion, was a religious and political movement that swept over China beginning in 1851, eventually reigning over most of China\u2019s provinces until its fall in 1864 to Chinese imperial and British forces. The Ghost Dance of 1890 was a new religion that rapidly spread among Native American tribes of the American West from 1889-1891. Though separated by a few decades, both movements involved non-white cultures absorbing Christian ideas and reinterpreting them into a millennial style that inspired thousands to join in their practice. Both movements spawned from their respective leaders, Hong Xiuquan and Wovoka or Jack Wilson, experiencing visions wherein they met the Christian God; the men were each inspired by these dreams to share their new theological ideas with their cultural fellows. However, Europeans and Americans understood Taiping theology in much greater depth than Americans ever did with the Ghost Dance. This fundamental difference can be traced to the sharp contrast in media coverage of the two religions.<\/p>\n
The central disparity between the media\u2019s presentation of the Taping Rebellion and the Ghost Dance of 1890 was the agency of its religious practitioners in shaping the popular opinion of their own movement. This ability to contribute to the public discourse allowed Taiping followers to represent their religious beliefs as they understood them, whereas the Ghost Dance was seen only through the eyes of fearful whites viewing it from the outside. Official Taiping documents translated into English and letters from foreign visitors to the Taiping capitol of Nanking frequently appeared in The<\/em> North-China Herald<\/em> throughout the rebellion.1<\/a><\/sup> These visitors were often missionaries invited to Nanking by Hong himself. Though these men frequently came to see the Taiping as blasphemous and heterodox, this was after <\/em>having spoken with followers of the new religion.2<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n In contrast, no reporter ever met with Wovoka during the Ghost Dance\u2019s peak period of popularity both in the media and among Native groups, which lasted only from 1889-1890.3<\/a><\/sup> Instead, the white perspective prevailed in the papers and focused on the practice of the Dance among the Lakota Sioux, which journalists interpreted as a sign of coming war.4<\/a><\/sup> This white perspective removed the possibility of viewing the Dance as a religious movement founded in some Christian concepts for most white American audiences. Even those aware of the true religious nature of the movement saw it as a threat due to the preconceived notion that Native Americans were savages incapable of rationality.5<\/a><\/sup> In summation, the way that newspapers covered each movement controlled the way that white audiences of both Europe and America understood them; since Taiping believers contributed to this coverage in a way not available to Indians practicing the Ghost Dance, the Chinese Taiping were not assumed to be crazed aggressors from the outset.<\/p>\n The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, or Taiping Rebellion, was a religious and political movement that swept over China beginning in 1851, eventually reigning over most of China\u2019s provinces until its fall in 1864 to Chinese imperial and British forces. The Ghost Dance of 1890 was a new religion that rapidly spread among Native American tribes of … Continue reading “God\u2019s New Sons: Media Coverage of the Taiping Rebellion and the Ghost Dance of 1890”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[80,81,79,82],"class_list":["post-587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ghost-dance-of-1890","tag-hong-xiuquan","tag-taiping-rebellion","tag-wovoka"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=587"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":768,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587\/revisions\/768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}