This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Health & Fitness

In the 1840's, the Brick City Threw A Brick that Landed in China - And Helped to Stoke a Rebellion

Newark's Christian activists were obsessed with China in the 1840's, and their efforts would lay the foundations for one of the most violent rebellions in Chinese history...

Sometimes the best of intentions wind up doing the exact opposite. I tell this to my Arts High students from time to time, especially when we study the roles of the various idealistic movements throughout American and global history. One of the most interesting examples of this that I’ve brought up in class involves the efforts of many of the most religious, “upstanding” people of Newark in the 1840’s. Their extensive and expensive efforts to spread their version of Protestant Christianity brought new institutions of learning and healing to distant China. But, inadvertently, their undertakings would also bring upon the greatest rebellion and humanitarian disaster in Chinese and all of human history. It is the greatest event that most Americans have never heard of: The Taiping Rebellion.

 

Let’s start at the beginning of this convoluted and fascinating story. China before the 1840’s was one of the world’s most ancient and developed civilizations. While Europeans were living in the darkness of the Middle Ages, the Chinese were manufacturing paper, ammunition and using advanced machines. In the century before Columbus landed in The Americas, Chinese ships sailed the waters of the Pacific and Indian Oceans, looking for new lands and new partners for trade. Then, due to internal political developments mixed with a healthy dose of ethnocentrism, China shifted into swift decline. This decline continued into the 1840’s, as the once-great empire was soundly defeated by the British in the Opium Wars. One of the main effects of the war – and this is where Newark, New Jersey enters into our story – is that Christian missionaries would now be allowed into China to “spread the good word of the Gospel.”

Find out what's happening in Newarkwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

 

The Christian ideal was a central part of Newark’s entire existence since its founding by Puritans in the 1600’s. After American independence, the city became home to every conceivable and competing Christian sect, from Presbyterians to Anglicans to Catholics to Unitarians. In the early 1800’s these religious sects dominated social and political life in the Brick City. Their beautiful stone churches still line the city’s great boulevards to this day.

Find out what's happening in Newarkwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

 

With China now open to Christian missionaries, Newark’s Protestants openly planned, funded and sent representatives to China’s coastal cities to spread the faith. One of the most dramatic stories from this time comes from a November 16, 1843 speech at one of the city’s churches. The speech, given by Reverend Dr. Boone, electrified the entire religious community of the city.

 

Boone had come to Newark to galvanize support for his missionary program. He told one congregation that while the recent British war in China had been unfortunate, it had opened “the heathen” to the Christian message. Boone claimed that the time was ripe for Newark’s churches to fund and send missionaries to the ancient kingdom, to bring “redemption” to the whole land.

 

Boone informed his listeners that missionaries had already arrived there, establishing new churches, making public speeches, and handing out Bibles and religious tracts. These tracts, he claimed, were eagerly welcomed and read by the masses. What he told them on one level was correct: the religious publications had made a deep impact on the Chinese, particularly in the Southeastern portion of the country. What he failed to mention was that most missionaries were sloppy. In China at this time, many a Christian preacher entered a town, gave out tracts, preached a bit, baptized many, declared a Victory for the Lord, and then moved on. Christianity had indeed come to China, but one rather twisted but brilliant man would interpret and spread a version of it that would lead to a civil war like no other. In some respects, the war would be so destructive that parts of China would not recover from it until the late 20th century.

 

In the late 1830’s and 1840’s, inspired by those very same Christian publications he had received, a Chinese man named Hong Xiuqan convinced himself and eventually millions of others that Christianity was needed in China – or at least, his version of it. Hong claimed in a series of visions that he had journeyed to Heaven and was informed by both God and Jesus that he was “God’s Chinese Son.” Hong asserted that he was not only Jesus’ brother, he was THE Divine Instrument on Earth that would rule China with Holy Authority. Using a combination of Christianity and widespread hatred for China’s rulers, Hong’s movement took off. He called it the “Taiping” (Chinese for “Heavenly”) Kingdom.

 

Between 1850 and 1864, Hong raised a colossal army that occupied, at its height, 1/5 of China. His troops at one point threatened the entire Chinese regime and threatened to topple it entirely. Between the two sides, the Chinese Empire on one and the Taipings on the other, there was no mercy. They slaughtered each other without pity, burning villages and entire cities, even killing each other’s prisoners of war. Like modern day fanatical holy warriors, millions of Taiping soldiers preferred suicide to capture.

 

Meanwhile, missionaries from America, and especially Newark, kept arriving in China. Records from the time show us that, except for a few Westerners, for the first years of the rebellion few knew of Hong’s distortions of Christianity and monotheism as a whole. During one of the fiercest periods of conflict, one local newspaper reported of a large gathering and send-off in Newark of several missionaries. Thousands had gathered at a church off Broad Street to praise Mr. and Mrs. Myers and one Mrs. Knight, as they left for the troubled Asian country. At another meeting one inspired member of a Newark audience offered up an immediate donation of $100 – a huge sum in those days for anyone, rich or poor. Meanwhile, speaker after speaker at meeting after meeting offered an endless stream of good news. Christians were establishing new schools…caring for orphans…spreading God’s word. They spoke of a transformed China headed towards Heaven, instead of the real state of the land, transformed into a hell.

 

Meanwhile, Hong had made serious mistakes and his most fatal one was the belief that those in the West would come to his defense in the name of a common Christianity. But by the early 1860’s word had gotten out of Hong’s megalomania and this all but shut the door for British, French or American support.

 

When the Taiping Rebellion finally faltered and failed in 1864, over 10 million were certainly dead. Some scholars today claim that between the war and the famines it caused, over 50 million were lost.

 

Whether anyone in Newark was aware of Hong’s ideas or not, their concern for the souls of the Chinese mattered little by 1861. By that time their attention had firmly shifted from the Pacific Rim to the impending conflict in America. The American Civil War had begun, and Newark’s churches and citizens would be at the forefront of modern hospital construction and the funding and provision of medical care for tens of thousands of wounded Union soldiers.

 

I always tell my students that Newark’s History is America’s history, but Newark and its residents have impacted the world, both near and distant, with their industry, energy and ideas. The Taiping Rebellion certainly wasn’t the fault of anyone in Newark, per se, but well-intentioned citizens of the Brick City undoubtedly played a part in laying the groundwork for it.

 

 

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?