Table Of ContentFAR EASTERN AND RUSSIAN INSTITUTE
PUBLICATIONS ON ASIA
Number 15
This book is a product of the Modem Chinese History Project carried
on by the Far Eastern and Russian Institute of the University of
Washington. Members of the group represent various disciplines in the
social sciences and humanities. The work of the project is of a cooper
ative nature with each member assisting the others through critical
discussion and the contribution of ideas and material. The responsibility
for each study rests with the author.
The Taiping Ideology
ITS SOURCES, INTERPRETATIONS, AND INFLUENCES
By
VINCENT Y. C. SHIH
UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON PRESS
Seattle and London
Copyright 0 1967 by the University of Washington Press
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 66-19571
All rights reserved
PRINTED IN JAPAN
BY GENERAI. PRINTING CO., LTD., YOKOHAMA
Preface
In substance this study was completed in 1954. Since then Jen (Chien)
Yu-wen has brought out his monumental works on Taiping institutions
and history. I regret that I have not been able to give them the treat
ment they deserve, although on the basis of some of his papers published
earlier which are now included in these works I have revised my views
about his interpretation of the T’ai-p’ing t’ien-kuo. In mainland China
we find also a few papers on the nature of the Taiping Rebellion. But
the whole chorus of voices is still harping on the orthodox Communist
view, drowning out any occasional feeble but discordant note. I have
not found it necessary to change any of my views about the Communist
interpretation.
In the process of writing this monograph, I have received generous
help from my colleagues of the Modem Chinese History Colloquium at
the University of Washington in the form of friendly criticisms, and I
wish especially to thank George Taylor, Director of the Far Eastern and
Russian Institute, Franz Michael, Chairman of the Modem Chinese
History Colloquium, Chung-li Chang, Kung-chuan Hsiao, and Hellmut
Wilhelm. If I have not on all occasions followed their advice, I have
always considered their suggestions seriously. It is indeed a refreshing
experience to be exposed to views and disciplines other than one's own.
For this broadening of my scope I feel deeply grateful. It is safe to
assume that this work would not be what it is if I had to work in isola
tion without the benefit of constant discussions with a group of scholars
who had nothing but the scholarly interests at heart. Not any less do I
owe gratitude to Miss Gladys Greenwood and her assistants for their
untiring effort to bring the book into its present form. While grateful for
the help my colleagues have given me, I alone am responsible for the
final result.
VINCENT Y. C. SHIH
University of Washington
August 12, 1963
Contents
Preface............................................................................................. v
Introduction................................................ ix
Part One: Exposition of the Taiping Ideology.................... 1
Chapter I : Religion......................................................................... 3
Chapter II: Moral Views................................................................. 31
Chapter III : Social Ideals and Social Structure........................ 45
Chapter IV: The Economic A spect............................................. 81
Chapter V : Political and Military Aspects.................................... 85
Chapter VI: The Development of the Taiping Ideology . . . 105
Part Two: Sources and Interpretations of the
Taiping Ideology..........................................................141
Chapter VII : Christianity............................................................ 147
Chapter VIII: The Classics and Confucianism.............................165
Chapter IX: Buddhism, Taoism, and Mohism.................................273
Chapter X: Other Sources of the Taiping Ideology.....................285
Chapter XI: Some Rebel Ideologies Prior to the Taipings . . . 329
Part Three: Interpretations of the T’ai-p’ing t’ien-kuo . . . 391
Chapter XII : Nineteenth-Century Interpretations.........................395
Chapter XIII : Twentieth-Century Interpretations.........................427
Chapter XIV: A Transcendent Interpretation.................................469
Reign Periods of the Ch'ing Dynasty.................................................499
Abbreviations.........................................................................................501
Bibliography...........................................................................................503
Index......................................................................................................527
Introduction
An analytical study of an ideology is believed to be a key to the
understanding of the society in which it takes form. This belief is based
on the assumptions that ideas are functions of the persons who express
them1* * * * * * * and that “the shape that ideas take is relative to the culture and
era in which they develop and are used."* On the other hand we are also
aware that “there are internal standards of validity in ideas themselves."*
It is precisely this study of the intrinsic validity of ideas themselves (or
categories of the understanding, according to philosophers) that distin
guishes philosophy from ideology, the latter being a system or systems of
ideas always conceived in conjunction with social, economic, political,
and other objective conditions. However inadequate this view of the
sociology of knowledge may be in reference to ideas which have intrinsic
1 Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge
(New York, 1936), p. 50.
1 Max Lemer, Ideas Are Weapons (New York, 1939), p. 8. See also Max Scheler’s
Die Probleme der Geschichtsphilosophie (Leipzig, 1923), p. 48, where he takes the position
that all knowledge is determined by the social conditions out of which it arises; and
Emile Durkheim’s The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, translated by Joseph Ward
Swain (New York, 1926), in which Durkheim holds that “they [referring to categories
of understanding without which no thinking is possible] are born in religion and of
religion; they are a product of religious thought9’ (p. 9). Hence Durkheim’s general
conclusion: these categories are social in character.
• Max Lemer, loc. cit. Philosophers since the time of Aristotle have been trying to
map out intellectual life in terms of fundamental categories of the understanding.
Even Max Scheler also seeks to escape the sociologistic implication of his position that
the social factors which condition knowledge also determine the validity of that knowl
edge by the metaphysical device of constructing two separate realms of existence:
value essences and concrete existential facts. See his “Erkenntnis und Arbeit” in his
Die Wissensformen und die Gesellschaft (Leipzig, 1926), p. 347.
X INTRODUCTION
validity, ideas which are components of an ideology do reflect the reality
in which they emerge and so should be treated in conjunction with
objective conditions. But it does not follow that ideas are the effects, and
conditions the cause. The first cause or causes of history are forever
beyond our understanding. All we can do in studying historical devel
opments and movements is to take a convenient point in history and
start to analyze the course of events from then on. We shall then find
that there are times when ideas, while reflecting the conditions of the
time, also influence the course of events and the action of men; and
men’s action is after all the chief factor in determining the nature of
their society. Whatever our view of ideas in relation to concrete condi
tions, ideas do furnish us with valuable primary data with which to
study our society—both the existing society and the society the ideology
is meant to create.
On the basis of this understanding of ideas, the approach and purpose
of our study of the ideology of the T’ai-p’ing t’ien-kuo can be simply
stated. We seek to know what kind of movement the T’ai-p’ing t’ien-kuo
was and what kind of society it sought to replace, and for what reason.
To do this obviously requires a careful analysis of the social, political,
and economic conditions at the time it took its rise as well as an analysis
of its ideology—its sources, its functions, its development, its interpreta
tions. In the process of finding the unique characteristics that distinguish
the Taiping ideology from previous rebel ideologies, I have found a
more or less uniform pattern in all rebellions: the recurring conditions
prior to the emergence of rebellions, the nature and components of
rebel ideologies, and the reasons for success or failure. These similarities
show that rebel ideologies tend to have a tradition of their own, a
tradition which on closer scrutiny turns out to be part and parcel of the
main current of the orthodox ideology.
As ideas reflect the reality in which they emerge, so the Taiping
ideology reflected China in the middle of the nineteenth century and
the periods immediately preceding. China was then rudely shaken out
of her complacent belief that she was the center of the world, culturally
or otherwise. The empire, beset with troubles of all kinds, was well on
its way to decline. The process of decline had started some time earlier.
Just as in the past the seeds of decline had been sown during periods of
prosperity and strength (during the reign of Emperor Wu, 140-87
b. c., in the Han and during the T’ien-pao reign, a. d. 742-56, in the
T’ang), so in the Ch’ing it was during the unprecedented period of peace
