BOOK REVIEWS
345
Rebellion. This book in English is the fruit of voluminous earlier work in Chinese, and therefore represents a synthesis of all Mr. Jen's previous researches and writing on this subject. Its quality is such that it attracted the award of the John King Fairbank Prize from the American Historical Association last year (1975).
For Western readers, the first part of the book, which takes the story up to the capture of Nanking in 1853, is probably the most fascinating since it describes the origins and development of the movement. It is, in hindsight, incredible that a Christian pamphlet picked up in Canton and neglected for years in a country home should have been the instrument whereby a great empire was almost toppled and approximately 20 million persons lost their lives, in the course of 15 years of struggle affecting most of the 18 provinces of China Proper at one time or another.
The book brings out the drama of the movement as it traces the fortunes of the principal actors and their leading adversaries. The sufferings of the people are also depicted, experiencing, as they often did, the disruptions caused by the march and counter-march of opposing forces, the ravages of the Imperial Forces upon the recapture of cities and the action of other parties quick to seize advantage from the ensuing disorder and uncertainty.
This work is, in general, a continuous narrative history, packed with new information and insights into the conditions and thinking of the time. It is, as the author has told me, a history of the Taipings as they saw themselves and as it happened. For these reasons, and because so much of a scholar's life and energies have gone into its making (with the editorial assistance of Adrienne Suddard whose name appears on the title page and in the author's preface) this book is a worthy monument to a momentous period in recent Chinese history, and a classic of its kind. That Mr. Jen is an avowed partisan of the Taipings does not lessen its importance.
Hong Kong, 1976.
JAMES HAYES