The Taiping Rebellion and the Fall of Nanking

Luke Ball
9 min readJul 21, 2022

The fall of Nanking, the capital of the unrecognised rebel state in China, on 19 July 1864, which finally brought an end to the bloodiest civil war in history.

First, let’s do some scene setting.

We’re in the thick of what China will later call their Century of Humiliation, a period of time where everyone is doing their thang in the middle country. Between 1839 to 1949, Japan and a bunch of Western Powers intervene, invade, bully, subjugate, and carve up China as they please. It’s good ole’ fashioned geopolitical greed.

--

--