Confucian China and its Modern Fate by Joseph R. Levenson

Author:Joseph R. Levenson [R. Levenson, Joseph]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis

CHAPTER VIII

Taipings Storm the Confucian Heaven

ASIXTEENTH-CENTURY German, dilating on the absolute authority of the Russian Czar, reported that the Russians conceived of their abject obedience to the will of the prince as obedience to the will of God.1 When Hung Hsiu-ch’uan, T’ien-wang of the T’ai-p’ing T’ien-kuo, was the prince in question, he, too, took obedience to the prince as obedience to the will of God, and he was just as alien to the crucial rationalistic Confucian doctrine of ‘Heaven’ as any foreign divinely-mantled autocrat. When he rejected ties with certain contemporary fellow-rebels against the Ch’ing dynasty, he did so not merely because he, an aspiring monarch in his own right, could hardly share their zeal for a Ming restoration.2 The Taiping ideal of monarchy was simply far removed from the conventional ideas of the traditional sort of rebels.

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