The last great English-language history of the 19th-century Taiping Rebellion — one of the bloodiest uprisings the world has ever seen — was published in 1996. China, at the time, was slowly emerging from its defensive crouch following the Tiananmen Square crackdown. So, perhaps fittingly, the writer, the storied Chinese historian Jonathan Spence, chose to emphasize the profound weirdness of the rebellion's leader, the eccentricity of his ideology and the faraway nature of the events. The Taiping Rebellion was significant, Spence seemed to argue in "God's Chinese Son," more for the fact that it was a good story than for the effect it had on the world. China, then and now, he seemed to say, was unchangeable. Possessing many great yarns, mind you, but fundamentally unchangeable.
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