Hong Xiuquan
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Search complete. 28 mentions across 8 episodes found for "Hong Xiuquan".
Sep 7, 2026
Daisy ChristodoulouGUEST
Great to be here, Russ.
Russ RobertsHOST
Now, our topic for today is the intersection between meritocracy, education, governance, but we're gonna go back in time and look at some crazy historical moments in civil service history, and we're gonna start with a failed Chinese civil servant exam taker, Hong Xiuquan.
Russ RobertsHOST
Uh, what-- uh, why is he interesting?
Daisy ChristodoulouGUEST
So Hong Xiuquan is really interesting because he's probably the instigator of the worst civil war, maybe the worst war in history.
Daisy ChristodoulouGUEST
It's not very well known in the West, and in fact, one of the leading American historians of this, of this war, this civil war, has said that he didn't even read about it till he was an undergraduate.
Daisy ChristodoulouGUEST
So it's remarkably kind of not, not very well known in, in the West, given how, how significant it is and how, how major a factor it is in Chinese history.
Daisy ChristodoulouGUEST
And Hong Xiuquan, he's basically a failed civil service candidate.
Daisy ChristodoulouGUEST
So, and this, this all takes place in, in the mid-nineteenth century in China, and at that time, China has these very rigorous exams to become a civil servant.
Chris StewartHOST
The wave that crashes with great force soon spends itself and leaves peace.
Chris StewartHOST
Hong Xiuquan, the Heavenly King, to his cousin, 1859.
Chris StewartHOST
Six thousand men walked for a month through a war that had no idea they were in it.
Chris StewartHOST
That was Hong Rengan's plan reduced to its simplest moving part.
Chris StewartHOST
Ganwang, the Shield King.
Chris StewartHOST
Keeper of order in the court, second in the kingdom only to Hong Xiuquan himself.
Chris StewartHOST
The whole new treatise of aiding administration, the study crowded with English curiosities, that whole doctrinal argument over whether God needed to descend to earth physically in person, all that belongs to last time.
Chris StewartHOST
None of it needs repeating here except for the shape of how it ended.
Jonathan ChengGUEST
I don't know that I need to go too much into the details here.
Jonathan ChengGUEST
But there you also have, uh, a man, Hong Xiuquan, um, who was, uh, also inspired, influenced by, uh, Christian teachings.
Jonathan ChengGUEST
Certainly not in the most orthodox of ways.
Jonathan ChengGUEST
But you have him, um, failing his civil service exams on more than one occasion, coming across a tract, um, that was distributed by American missionaries in southwestern China where he was, and interpreting it, remixing it in all sorts of fanciful ways that eventually lead to his creation of a, uh, Taiping, um, heavenly kingdom established in Nanjing that basically governs, let's call it half of China, without getting too precise about things, and leading to perhaps the most disastrous civil war in human history when you count the death toll.
10 MINS LATER
Jonathan ChengGUEST
I think history is the thing that really just, just, just grabs me.
Jonathan ChengGUEST
It's the thing that I really wanted to do, I want to do.
Jonathan ChengGUEST
And so if there is, maybe, I don't know if it is Hong Xiuquan, um, he's been pretty well documented already.
Jonathan ChengGUEST
Jonathan Spence, of course, has written a great book, among many others.
speaker_0NARRATOR
The second came more than one thousand years later, between 1853 and 1864, when the Taiping rebels captured the city.
speaker_0NARRATOR
They were led by the fanatical leader Hong Xiuquan, who after failing scholarly examinations that would have guaranteed him a place in the nation's elite, convinced himself and others that he was the younger brother of Jesus Christ.
speaker_0NARRATOR
The attempt he then spearheaded to overthrow the Qing dynasty eventually killed some twenty million Chinese over thirteen years.
speaker_0NARRATOR
The rebels used Nanking as their capital for more than a decade until they were driven out, at which time they reduced the city to smoldering ruins and even smashed the Porcelain Pagoda, a multicolored tower of glazed tiles considered the most beautiful structure of its kind in China.
Jonathan ChengGUEST
I don't know that I need to go too much into the details here.
Jonathan ChengGUEST
But there you also have a, a man, Hong Xiuquan, um, who was, uh, also inspired, influenced by, uh, Christian teachings.
Jonathan ChengGUEST
Certainly not in the most orthodox of ways.
Jonathan ChengGUEST
But you have him, um, failing his civil service exams on more than one occasion, coming across a tract, um, that was distributed by American missionaries in southwestern China, where he was, and interpreting it, remixing it in all sorts of fanciful ways that eventually lead to his creation of a, uh, Taiping, um, heavenly kingdom established in Nanjing that basically governs, let's call it half of China, without getting too precise about things, and leading to perhaps the most disastrous civil war in human history when you count the death toll.
10 MINS LATER
Jonathan ChengGUEST
I think history is the thing that really just, just, just grabs me.
Jonathan ChengGUEST
It's the thing that I really wanted to do, I want to do.
Jonathan ChengGUEST
And so if there is, maybe, I don't know if it is Hong Xiuquan, um, he's been pretty well documented already.
Jonathan ChengGUEST
Jonathan Spence, of course, has written a great book, among many others.
Chris StewartHOST
Join us in doing service to the father and the elder brother and extinguishing the stinking reptiles.
Chris StewartHOST
Hong Xiuquan, the Heavenly King, in a letter to Lord Elgin, December 1858.
Chris StewartHOST
Those elected by the majority are considered worthy and capable, and decisions reached by the majority are considered just.
Chris StewartHOST
Hongren Gan, A New Treatise on Aids to Administration, 1859 On the 20th of November, 1858, a cannonball struck the deck of the Furious and put a hole clean through Lord Elgin's cabin.
Chris StewartHOST
Dispatched upriver after the cannonade, it had failed to overtake a flotilla under full steam, and the emissaries carrying it could not follow him into Qing-held water, so it awaited his return.
Chris StewartHOST
a roll of yellow silk about three fathoms long, in an envelope addressed to, quote, our elder brother Lai, end quote, which was as close as the Heavenly Kingdom's clerks could get to Elgin.
Chris StewartHOST
Quote, the father and the elder brother led me to rule the Heavenly Kingdom, to sweep away and exterminate the devilish spirits, bestowing on me great honor, Hong Xiuquan had written.
Chris StewartHOST
Elgin's verdict at the time was that it was a strange document.