Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom: China, the West, and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War
*Starred Review* Platt presents the perplexing Taiping Rebellion that convulsed China’s Qing dynasty from 1851 to 1864. Overlapping with additional portents that the Qing had forfeited the mandate of heaven, such as territorial cessions to Russia and the Anglo-French capture of Beijing, the turbulent times tested the loyalty of imperial officials like Zeng Guofan. Tracking his apparently amply documented career, Platt richly portrays Zeng’s inner self-doubts about his outer presentation as the general tasked to subdue the Taiping rebels. On their side, Platt has a comparably knowable character named Hong Rengan, a Christian convert whose relative, Taiping leader Hong Xiuquan, proclaimed himself the “Heavenly King” and younger brother of Jesus. However eccentric Taiping theology was, it was the rebels’ control of the Yangtze River and environs that vexed foreign powers trying to extract concessions from the Qing government. From attacking the Qing in 1860, Britain performed a volte-face by fighting the rebels with a mercenary army raised by another bizarre figure, American freebooter Frederick Ward. Incorporating his perceptive characterizations and a comprehensible account of Zeng’s ultimately victorious military campaigns, Platt has skillfully converted his erudition into an eminently general-interest treatment of what may have been the most lethal civil war in world history. --Gilbert Taylor