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Have you guys heard of the American Civil War? I'm sure most of dakka's users, regardless what country they're from, have heard about this conflict where over half a million people died.

But roughly during the same time period, on the other side of the world, raged a conflict that cost 20 million people's lives, i.e. a death toll comparable to WWI, yet western school history books remain oddly silent about it.

Just projecting my train of thought. Conflicts that have such a high death toll should be general knowledge.

Yup, learned it in uni as part of my East Asian history course. Gotta love how many people have claimed to Jesus' brother throughout history, even by the Chinese!

I think the general lack of exposition on this event may have to do with the fact that this occurred within the twilight years of the Qing dynasty where Western Imperial powers had significantly undermined Chinese authority, particularly the British with the Opium Wars. Heck, this rebellion was one of the main reasons why the Qing didn't have the resources to spare in fighting the West, so given the negative connotation to imperialism nowadays the Brits don't want to bring it up very much and modern China doesn't exactly look at the Qing dynasty in a very good light either so it's not exactly surprising that an event like this, despite the casualties gets overlooked (doesn't help WWII still dominates that scene when it comes to deaths.)

In general, I think everyone is less aware of histories other than their own. The further we get from our own history, the less aware of it we become. For those of us in the West, Chinese history is very distant. At least in terms of general text books, for us the Rebellion really doesn't have a place. Even in the colonial/imperial eras, this was a very distant conflict. We barely mention the Boxer Rebellion, or the Opium Wars in general texts here in the States and at least from our perspective, these wars are much closer to us.

Death Toll isn't really a race but if it was, Taiping would be up there. The period between the fall of the Han and the rise of Jin saw over 36 million people die*. Chinese conflicts have some very high death tolls, if only because China as a geographically distinct region is so big and so old.

*Like the Taiping rebellion though, most of these deaths resulted from famine rather than the conflict itself. Rice patties are labor intensive to maintain and it gets worse when you consider that even today, most of China's landmass is not good for agriculture. Naturally, wars tended to concentrate along a north-south corridor that included most of this land.

War in the far east has always been on a different scale. Medieval Chinese armies were hundred of thousands of men, when at the same time in Europe they were hundreds.

A war in China that doesn't result in megadeaths is more like a riot. The Long March killed vast numbers of people.

Ancient sources, both European and Chinese, regularly exaggerate the size of armies, the extent of casualties, etc. The Taiping Rebellion by contrast was undoubtedly a massive conflict. Even so, there's not much one can learn by throwing around a figure like 20 million deaths out of context. As to why it is not much mentioned in Western history ... well, what part of Chinese history is much mentioned? Furthermore, the legacy of the Taiping Rebellion remains poorly understood, not least of all thanks to political distortions undertaken by the CCP.

I'm aware of it. Not many people know Gordon of Khartoum used to be called 'Chinese Gordon' during his day because of his role.

Never heard of it, but that's probably because Koei didn't make a video game about it. My knowledge of Chinese history pretty much starts and ends at the Three Kingdoms period (because I love the strategy games and the book was epic). Of course, now that I know of it's existence, I might go look into it a bit more. I love history, but it isn't the sort of thing I go looking for unless someone gives me a specific starting point to work with. Now that I have one, I expect I'll be reading up on this for the next couple hours or so...

What is Taiping? Is that in China? Never heard about it.
Education about Chinese history pretty much starts with the Chinese civil war and Mao Tse Tung. Earlier Chinese history does not go beyond: 'China used to be an empire back in the day, it was pretty large, it was bullied by Westerners and at some point Russia pretty much ruled half of it.
'
I don't know about the rest of the world, but history education in the Netherlands is almost exclusively focussed on Western Europe. I suspect that is the same in other parts of Western Europe.
I mean, how many here have heard of the Smuta, the Time of Troubles that killed about half of Russia's entire population? And that was in Europe. If education about Europe is already that bad, it is logical that education about Asia is almost non-existent.


Also, this talk of Chinese wars having huge casualties makes me think of a bad joke: "During the Sino-Soviet border conflicts of 1969, the Chinese army had developed 3 main strategies: 'The Great Advance', the 'Small Withdrawal' and the secret infiltration across the border in small groups of 2-3 million."

Yeah, I learned about it in history. We didn't go into a ton of detail about it.

One of the reasons we don't focus a ton on Asian history prior to the 1900s is because we focus on stuff that was relevant on a global scale. The American Civil War was a very important conflict from a global perspective. It was the first modern war in many ways, it was a small preview of WW1. There was rapid technological advancement outstripping conventional century old military tactics which would eventually lead to the bloodbath of WW1. The advent of steel warships, and the first battle between them. The first use of submarines in warfare.

On the other hand, the Taipang Rebellion didn't have much more than minor influence outside of China itself.

I have a brief overview of it because I was trying to learn about the actual General Tsao who finally ended the rebellion and oddly enough had a spicy chicken dish named after him.

I know some of the basics.

The Brother of Jesus thing is a bit unforgettable considering the context.

this was taught in my schools... and im old

China spent a very long time as a giant stagnant nation wracked by occasional immense civil wars; the largest field battles in history up until WWI were all in China. Westerners don't usually teach those to students simply because "Dynasty X was in charge, there was a giant war that dwarfed anything in the West at the time, then Dynasty Y was in charge" doesn't make a particularly exciting narrative.

Yes, learned of it when reading...



...although it's not the main focus of the book

I researched it as a part of a paper on the decline of China as a sovereign state and the role of nationalism in the rise of the Chinese Communists (they weren't true nationalists, but they were able to take advantage of the sentiment).

In the same general time frame, the world powers cared so little about the Chinese and their people's lives that they did things like invade China so they could import drugs or fight wars with each other over Chinese territory without bothering to involve the Chinese.

20 million dead Chinese was no more than another one of those confounded oriental messes to them.

 Manchu wrote:
Ancient sources, both European and Chinese, regularly exaggerate the size of armies, the extent of casualties, etc.

There's a bit more to be considered in China, as going back to the Spring and Autumn period, Chinese dynasties maintained meticulous census data. The number of the fall of the Han dynasty for example was calculated in the Book of Han using the last Han census and the first Jin census. This is not to say the numbers are 100% accurate, but they're not like European events which tended to be recorded ad hoc by a scholar afterwards (sometimes centuries) who seemed to just use whatever number went with the stories he heard. EDIT: Correction. It is not in the Book of Han, but the Book of Later Han, as well as being reported in The Records of the Three Kingdoms.

On the other hand, the Taipang Rebellion didn't have much more than minor influence outside of China itself.

It had a huge influence on Imperialism. The thing is that it was China fighting China, so we Europeans cared a bit less.

China has had a major role in Global scale events far longer than Europeans. The Mongols got their start in China. The Battle of Talas was a hugely important event for the history of the Middle East. China created paper, firearms, and held the most economically important position on the planet for nearly 1500 years. China's history is massively globally relevant. It's just that the events of their history had extremely indirect influence on our own, so we pay less attention to it.

I don't think it is taught in High School (for the most part) but many World History classes in college touch on it and if one takes any courses in Chinese history it absolutely comes up.

tl;dr Not in High School but in College

I've heard of it, although I wasn't taught about it.

My Chinese history lessons covered 1949 onwards, no one cared about China before that other than "there was a big civil war, and Britain used to beat China up and take it's opium, oh and it has been an Empire".

Much like the Boxer Rebellion, us lot in the West tend to ignore it.

 Sir Arun wrote:
Have you guys heard of the American Civil War? I'm sure most of dakka's users, regardless what country they're from, have heard about this conflict where over half a million people died.

But roughly during the same time period, on the other side of the world, raged a conflict that cost 20 million people's lives, i.e. a death toll comparable to WWI, yet western school history books remain oddly silent about it.

Just projecting my train of thought. Conflicts that have such a high death toll should be general knowledge.

China has had so many conflicts that saw millions die, they kind of get lost in the shuffle of things.

It is very hard to understand and appreciate any part of history when it isn’t part of a clear narrative of how things ended up as they are today. The Civil War is quite easy to place in the context of the current US, from there you get territorial expansion but the government is continuous until today. So if you read about the Civil War at the end you have a pretty decent idea about how it fits in with the modern world.

However after the Taiping Rebellion the government of China had three changes of government, foreign occupation, and a whole bunch of civil war. When I did Chinese history in high school I believe it started with a quick summary of events at the turn of the century for context before moving on to describe 20th century Chinese history, ending with a way too brief bit on Deng Xiaoping.

At least Chinese history gets covered. Who knows anything about Indian history other than Ghandi?

Is that when China got rid of their Monarchy?

 Rainbow Dash wrote:
Is that when China got rid of their Monarchy?

I don't believe so, but it was the beginning of the end.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Rainbow Dash wrote:
Is that when China got rid of their Monarchy?

I don't believe so, but it was the beginning of the end.

Yeah I am reading a book on that

 Rainbow Dash wrote:
Is that when China got rid of their Monarchy?

That took another 50 years. The Taiping Rebellion played a major role in destabilizing the Empire, but it took a lot more before they finally ceded control.

I knew about it. I read a lot. Not in school, just in my random wanderings about of the collected knowledge of the human race.

 welshhoppo wrote:
I've heard of it, although I wasn't taught about it.

My Chinese history lessons covered 1949 onwards, no one cared about China before that other than "there was a big civil war, and Britain used to beat China up and take it's opium, oh and it has been an Empire".

Much like the Boxer Rebellion, us lot in the West tend to ignore it.

I thought the British beat them up and made them take opium?

 Da krimson barun wrote:

 welshhoppo wrote:
I've heard of it, although I wasn't taught about it.

My Chinese history lessons covered 1949 onwards, no one cared about China before that other than "there was a big civil war, and Britain used to beat China up and take it's opium, oh and it has been an Empire".

Much like the Boxer Rebellion, us lot in the West tend to ignore it.

I thought the British beat them up and made them take opium?

Thats the one. They refused to take our Indian opium so we declared war on them and made sure they would take it.

I know of it, through my own reading. I've never had much interest in Chinese history to be honest. We covered the boxer rebellion and opium wars in history much more than we covered this.

The 20 million deaths sounds impressive, but remember that the vast majority of those deaths would be from disease (1865 wasn't a great time for hundreds of men to go camping in the woods together) and starvation among the civilian population. Without proper logistics soldiers looted what they needed and come winter a lot of peasant farmers died.

Yup, most deaths due to war prior to WW1 were from disease or starvation and not actual combat.

If you're a farmer just scraping by year after year, and then an army comes by and takes all your food for the year and all your animals that you carefully tended you're going to starve quickly.

And without basic sanitation concepts even a small scratch can be a death sentence. Getting killed on the battle field was a mercy compared to a slow agonizing death from infection due to a minor injury. And if you lost a limb it was just as bad, sure you are alive but now you can't work and will be reduced to begging.