Will I love Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom?

Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom is an excellent primer into the Taiping Civil War, a massive and sprawling series of events that is criminally understudied in the west. The Taiping Civil war was the deadliest war of the 19th century, and to date the deadliest civil conflict in human history. Platt reminds the reader of China's importance to global events in the 19th century. Specifically, Platt makes clear that both the US Civil war and the Taiping Civil War greatly affected the calculations and decision making of the British Empire.

If the Opium War represents the greatest threat to China’s global stature, the Taiping Rebellion certainly posed the greatest domestic challenge to the ruling dynasty. On the surface, the bare facts of the rebellion defy belief. Its leader, Hong Xiuquan, after failing the imperial civil service examination, came to believe that he was the younger brother of Jesus Christ and embarks on establishing a kingdom that upends thousands of years of beliefs by instituting a wide array of socially progressive ideas. Using both Chinese and Western sources, Chinese historian Stephen Platt breathes new life into both the extraordinary rise of… show more.