Missed Opportunities: How the Taiping Rebellion and American Civil War Changed American Attitudes Towards the Chinese Empire and China, 1850-1865

Abstract

This thesis is entitled Missed Opportunities: How the Taiping Rebellion and American Civil War Changed American Attitudes Towards the Chinese Empire and China, 1850-1865. It explores how American ideas about the rebellion in China drew on the disparate American understandings of citizenship, religion, revolution, violence, trade and war. By using an entangled history methodology, this thesis demonstrates how communication between the American community in Shanghai and the United States itself shaped the ways both Americans in China and Americans at home understood events in China. The multitudes of information which crossed the Pacific both ways meant Americans did not understand the Taiping Rebellion in isolation, but with reference to the world around them and especially the secession crisis and Civil War in the United States. This dissertation argues that, despite a host of different ideas and stances on the whether the Taiping rebels might be beneficial for both China and those Americans seeking to make money or spread the word of God in the early 1850s, Americans of all political, religious and sectional backgrounds had come to a broad consensus that the Taiping did not represent opportunity for the United States by 1865. This is because of a hardening in attitudes towards revolution and violence, as well as a growing belief that the rebellion in China was standing in the way of American merchants making money in China. Finally, we can learn from examining this subject that the Taiping Rebellion was such actually something that Americans could rally around at a time of disunity, and furthermore, explain that despite the instability within the United States, Americans of all backgrounds looked to China as a land of opportunity and perhaps even imperial ambition.