Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"[T]hey sought the conversion of the Chinese people to the Taiping's syncretic version of Christianity, the overthrow of the ruling Manchus, and a wholesale transformation and reformation of the state. . . . To that end, they established the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom as an oppositional state based in Tianjing (present-day Nanjing) and gained control of a significant part of southern China . . ." [Wikipedia] "It ranks as one of the bloodiest wars in human history, the bloodiest civil war, and the largest conflict of the 19th century. . . . These convulsions were in important respects the direct product of the western impact on China. . . . The spark was provided in the shape of an obsessed, perhaps psychopathic prophet and messianic leader, Hung Hsiu Chuan (1813-64) . . . Around 1847-8 he founded a 'Society of those who venerate God', in Kwangsi province, and was rapidly joined by peasants and miners, by men from the large Chinese population and by supporters of the older secret societies. . . . It abolished private property (land being distributed only for use, not ownership), established the equality of the sexes, prohibited tobacco, opium and alcohol . . ." [Hobsbawm: Capital, p. 127-9]