Tiny Insect

“My hand grasps the killing power in Heaven and earth; To behead the devil ones, spare the just, and ease the people’s sorrow.” – Hong Xiuquan Hong Xiuquan and the leaders of the Taiping must have known there was no going back, even if they wanted to. They had crushed an imperial force at the Battle of Jintian, killing Qing magistrates and officers. Now they prepared to face the consequences...

Painting of a wealthy Qing family. Integrating tens of thousands of new adherents, while planning and launching an insurrection against the Qing, put strain on Taiping society and pushed them to reorganize their society in novel ways. In this episode we’ll look at how the Taiping navigated these challenges in the lead up to their first battles with the Qing government and declaration of the...

In 1850, Guangxi was wracked by all kinds of social maladies and natural disasters – corrupt officials, disease and epidemics, ethnic conflict, drought, and all kinds of organized and less organized crime. In this tempest the Society of God Worshipers grew stronger than ever and transformed into an insurrectionist, revolutionary movement, The Taiping Tianguo, the Kingdom of Heavenly Peace, w...

The Xianfeng Emperor, showing off a set of his yellow imperial robes. The Daoguang Emperor died in 1850. He has been the Qing Emperor for the past dozen episodes and his actions (or lack thereof) helped set the stage for the cataclysmic decade that will be the 1850s. But he didn’t live to see it. Instead, the Qing Empire was left to his teenage son. In this episode, we’ll take a look a...

God doesn’t speak to just anyone. Communicating with the divine is mediated by clerics, sacred texts, by long and complicated rituals. Many traditions, such as Christianity, put a special emphasis on the written word, recordings of revelations from prophets, aeons, or the divine itself. So what happens when God talks to someone who isn’t “supposed” to hear him? What distinguishes new divine revela...

(Painting of the missionary Robert Morrison, who was successful and popular enough to have his portrait painted. The same can not be said for Issachar Roberts). On the surface, Hong Xiuquan’s life in 1845 and 1846 was unremarkable. He was in his early thirties, married with young children. His job as a school teacher had been secured through a mix of qualifications & family connections. And th...

Taiping church service, around 1860. While Feng Yunshan was building up the God Worshipers in Guangxi Province in 1845 and 1846, Hong Xiuquan living was back in his hometown of Guanlubu, Guangdong province working as a school teacher. He also spent his time elaborating on the nature of God, his relationship to humankind, and how the Chinese people had been deceived by demons and spirits. These wri...

This is a statue of a deity in Fujian province, with offerings placed in front of it. Feng Yunshan preached and spread Shangdi’s good word. For nearly 3 years, he worked tirelessly to grow the movement that worshiped God and recognized Hong Xiuquan as Jesus’ younger brother. In this episode we’re going to learn what worshipping Shangdi meant, how it related to other practices in...

Not exactly Thistle mountain, but an example of what the area north/north-west of Guiping, Guangxi looks like. In this episode, we look at the region where the Society of God Worshipers took root and grew, and what life was like there in the second half of the 1840’s. Pirates, bandits, secret societies, and everyday people trying to scratch out a living in a Qing “backwater”. This &#82...

Posthumous portrait of Liang Fa, author of “Good Words for Exhorting the Age” Hong Xiuquan finally lost his faith in ever becoming a Confucian scholar in the aftermath of the Opium War. After reading a set of Christian pamphlets composed by the Chinese writer Liang Fa, he discovered the meaning of his heavenly vision and his life’s new mission: To save his brothers and sisters fr...

The story of the Opium War is usually told as part of a wider narrative of European colonial expansion, and the beginning of a “century of humiliation” from the perspective of the modern Chinese state. Last episode, we covered the main narrative of the war, a kind of “Great Man” history last episode. But it’s easy to forget that the fighting and loss of the Opium War had far-reaching consequences...

The idea of the Opium War carries a great deal of meaning in modern memory. For many flavors of Chinese nationalist, it is the beginning of their century of humiliation at the hands of exploitive foreigners. For the British, it is another milestone on the road to the heights of Empire. But that is how it all looks in retrospect. For those who directed the armies of the war, and those who fought in...

Lin Zexu In 1839, Lin Zexu makes history’s largest drug bust when he secured more than 1,600 tons of opium from European traders in Guangzhou. At first it was a triumph against the plague of imported opium. But unfortunately for Lin & the Qing Empire, that opium was technically owned by Queen Victoria and the British government. In response to the seizure, the Opium War was on.

“Canton Factories” in Guangzhou, c1830 Qing dynasty “foreign policy” operated quite differently than it is commonly understood today, or as it was understood by contemporary states in Europe and West Asia. Going all the way back to the Han, Chinese dynasties tried to fit what we think of as foreign policy into the principles of Confucian hierarchy and submission. When British traders b...

This episode looks at the rise of the East India Trade Company through the triangle trade between British India, Qing China, and the British Isles. Opium fueled the Company’s rise. It took a combination of opium smugglers, Free Trade ideogues, and 19th century Christian missionaries working together to bring their reign in Guangzhou to an end.

In the second episode of the “mini season” on the Opium War, we’ll look at how the highest officials of the Qing Empire debated the problem of opium in the 1820’s and 1830’s. Specifically, what was the best way to prevent trading of Chinese silver for foreign opium? Some advocated harsh crackdowns, while others wondered why not just legalize it?

The name “Opium War” was first given to the war by a British newspaper opposed to the conflict. It was a derogatory label that implied the great British Empire, emancipator of slaves, was being lowered to doing the bidding of a bunch of British drug dealers selling opium mostly grown in British-controlled regions of India by a giant, private corporation. In this episode, we’ll discuss how th...

In this episode, a young Hong Xiuquan fails the provincial exam in Guangzhou for the third time. The experience breaks him, and his family fears for his life. It’s then, as his family fears he might be dying, that a group of small children in golden robes, a host of angels, and a giant rooster come to whisk him away on a journey that will change his life forever.

In this episode, we get to know Hong Xiuquan and the world he grew up in. Hong’s early life was defined by his experience as a Hakka in Southern China, aspiring to join the ranks of the Confucian scholar-officials.

The White Lotus Rebellion at the end of the 18th century foreshadows the later crisis of the mid-19th century.

The Qianlong Emperor This episode we’ll look at the rise of the Qing, China’s last imperial dynasty. We’ll look at some of the major decisions Qing rulers made in the dynasty’s first 150 years. The reigns of Kangxi, Yongzheng, and Qianlong will rule China for a combined 140 years, during which it was the most powerful and populous state on earth. But it’s also in this...

At the beginning of the 17th century the Ming empire was the largest and most powerful on earth. But in a newly global world they soon found themselves tied to the whims of global trade and a silver mountain half way around the world.

This episode we’re going to take a bit of a scenic detour to learn about early policies of Ming expansionism and the tremendous voyages of Zheng He.

Popular conceptions of Chinese history usually follow the lead of Confucian ideology that held that China was the eternal “Middle Kingdom”, always existing in its essential essence at the center of the world. Dynasties may rise and fall, but China remains China, a country that has been around for more than two thousand years. Well, that’s wrong. It’s what they wanted you to...

“From the cry of a tiny insect, one can hear the sound of a vast world.” – Zhang Daye Tiny Insect is a history podcast about the creation of the modern world. It takes a global perspective to tell the story of the world between 1206 and 1914. From the beginning of one era of global catastrophe, to the beginning of another. This episode is an overview of what I want the show to be about.