33. “Jesus’ Younger Brother” and the 19th Century’s Bloodiest Conflict
The 1860s were a bloody time. As the Civil War raged in the US, an even more destructive civil war was being fought on the other side of the world, in China: the Taiping Rebellion – a mixture of peasant uprising and millenarian Christian cult upheaval. It was led by Hong Xiuquan, who had failed the entrance exams into the Chinese civil service, had a breakdown, and upon recovery, declared himself Jesus Christ’s younger brother.
He amassed a following, and established the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom – an oppositional state that waged a brutal war from 1851 to 1864 against China’s ruling Manchu Dynasty. By the time the Taiping were defeated, about 30 million people had been killed, making the rebellion the bloodiest war in history, until its toll was exceeded by that of World War II.