Your fields ground to mud by war machines, your home long plundered by roving bandits, your friends and family long dead of plague, you have no choice but to join the same armies that destroyed your village for a scrap of food. It seems like the world is ending, but you aren’t bothered. You know that any catastrophic event is part of a broader cycle, and the destruction you see now will eventually result in a society with greater farm acreages and less hierarchical power structures. Granted, this new society will eventually develop until it collapses under its own weight, just like your own is now. But that is the price to pay for civilization. All individual humans can hope to do is enjoy the ride. You are able to adopt this surprisingly blasé worldview because you have read Secular Cycles, by Peter Turchin and Sergey Nefedov (or at least the SSC review).
You might find this a little unrelatable. Sorry. After reading Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom, 300 pages of people reacting in unrelatable ways to civilizational collapses, I may have lost my touch.
Secular Cycles is a book about the tides of civilization. It posits a theory for when, how, and why civilizations rise and fall, and implies that the greatest calamities in human civilization were driven less by individual madness than by Malthusian pressures and macroeconomics. Secular Cycles was light on China, which is strange considering that it is such a great data point for the model. We don’t even have to look at arcane geologic records to see how they fared over time – they provide us with named dynasties that neatly (but not perfectly) denote the full phases of a cycle. Even though it is a work of history, Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom by Stephen Platt reads as the literary companion to the academic Secular Cycles. While it doesn’t reference Secular Cycles, it takes the principles codified by Turchin, like Malthusian growth and elite overproduction, and creates a narrative out of one specific civilizational downfall. But here is the twist: it is the story of a society that already understands the cycle model in a way that 21st Westerners don’t. After dozens of secular cycles, the Chinese state and people had Turchin in their bones, and it leads to a story that is wholly alien, the kind you usually associate with loopy science fiction.
The downfall in question is the Taiping Civil war, which tore apart the Imperial Chinese heartland from 1850 to 1864. While the war did not actually lead to dynastic change, its status as a collapse is undeniable. The Taiping Civil War was the deadliest civil war in history, around forty times more so than its concurrent American counterpart, and the population of China did not recover from the war until around 1910. It is a good starting point in the study of collapses, being recent enough to leave behind a trove of historical data but obscure enough (to Westerners) that it can be seen with fresh eyes.
Our story, like any good secular cycle, begins with the previous collapse. In this case, it was the “Ming-Qing Transition” of 1618-1683 which, despite the bland name, was one of the greatest periods of death in history (right behind the Taiping Civil War on most lists). To thwart a peasant rebellion, Ming forces opened the Great Wall to the Manchu in the North. The peasant rebellion was crushed, but the Manchu invaders entered the capital and founded their own dynasty. Throughout the Qing dynasty, the Manchu were around one percent of the Chinese population, often hidden away in city garrisons. A peasant would see the mark of the Manchu everywhere – notably the shaved heads and braids, a Manchu style that had been foisted on the population – but they would be lucky to see a single Manchu in their lifetime.
Elite Production in Qing China
Elite overproduction is a key concept in Secular Cycles. In short, if you have elites, like generals and nobles, that you can’t get a job for, expect them to rebel and bring the peasant class with them. So, how does a society that has internalized Turchin’s model respond? With a rigorous exam-based meritocracy that keeps a lid on the expansion of the elite class.
The Qing Dynasty was ruled by the Manchu, but they didn’t run the empire. They outsourced the administration of the state, like the dynasties before them, to a meritocratic system of Confucian scholars. The English word “bureaucrat” is an imperfect translation of their role, as it gives the wrong connotation of their status. A provincial governor had a salary roughly 100 times greater than the income of a wealthy peasant farmer, even before you add in the potential for bribes and kickbacks that come with administrative power. One gifted son passing the rigorous rounds of exams on Confucian thought to reach the exalted highest level of administrative status could provide wealth and power to their family for generations to come.[1]
In the early 19th century, one family of poor farmers in southern China believed that they had one such special son. Hong Xiuquan had already memorized the multitude of books required for the civil service examinations by age 11. But the initial provincial level exams were difficult, without any proper analogies in the contemporary western world. They had a pass rate of less than one percent. If you failed, you had to wait around seven years to take it again. Hong Xiuquan took and failed the exam three times. After his third failure, he was confronted by visions in which a divine force commanded him to cleanse China of demonic perversions. After his fourth and final exam failure, Hong Xiuquan happened upon translated Christian texts that had made their way into the Chinese interior. It suddenly all made sense. The divine force from his visions was the Christian god, and the demons were China’s Manchu rulers and the Confucian idols that had kept the Chinese submissive. He baptized his cousin as his first convert and began preaching the countryside.
Let’s take a break! How would you do on the imperial examination? Here are some sample questions from historical exams. Keep in mind, for a good score, you have to
1. Show a deep understanding of all the texts referenced, both explicitly and implicitly. For best results you should perfectly memorize the entire canon of Confucian literature.
2. Give an answer consistent with the Confucian school of thought dominant in the palace at the time. Don’t ask you parents for help! The school of thought may have changed since they went through the mill.
3. Make sure to write using perfect prose and handwriting. Also, maintain your mental sharpness, since you have to do this for 60 hours straight.
Stop whatever you are doing right now and pick up your calligraphy brush. These questions are excerpts from the 1904 metropolitan exam, held every three years in the capital. (Translation by Bofeng Hu)[2]
1. From the history section:
Jia Yi talked about “three example and five bait”. Ban Gu thought it was a joke. Yet Duke Mu of Qin used it to make peace with Xi Rong, Zhong Hangyue used it to warn Xiong Nu. Discuss why this might not be a bad idea.
2. From the politics section:
Schools are made for three reasons: educate the people, train talented people and revitalize the industries .... Which of these three is the most important?
3. From the classics section. Explain this line:
“He stands erect in the middle, without inclining to either side. How firm is he in his energy!”
Brushes down! Most likely you failed horribly. Not your fault, as even brilliant scholars like Hong Xiuquan were unable to pass with decades of training. The Chinese state understood the risks of elite overproduction. The examination system was their cure. Meritocracy gave the state the ability to tune the number of elites with just one metric, the imperial exam pass rate. And while there were a lot of useless Manchu nobles sitting around, Manchu started out as such a small part of the population that it wasn’t an issue. Unfortunately for the Qing, the exam system just kicked the can down the road, leading to eventual overproduction of an aspirational yet unsuccessful class who would do strange things like convert to Christianity and preach against the state. But you have to give the Qing credit for their system. After the stresses of a full secular cycle, even during the darkest moments of the war, the elite ruling class remained stunningly loyal to the central state.
While 21st century Westerners question whether the model of Secular Cycles could ever apply to them, 19th century Chinese knew that it did. The whole concept of the mandate of heaven existed to explain the past dynastic cycles, and implied that the cycles would continue. Even the safest Chinese cities were still guarded by great walls, protecting against inevitable peasant revolts. By the early 1800’s, cracks were starting to show in the Qing Dynasty. The imperial court continually achieved greater heights of decadence. The first Emperors were warrior horsemen, so they had a lot of distance to cover before they were at the Antionette level. Still, two centuries is a very long time, and by the 1830’s the Emperor almost never left his palace complex (filled with Pekinese dogs and acres of idyllic cottages). Peasant rebellions were becoming more frequent and more difficult to put down. Many citizens were looking for the exits – that is, looking for the first movement that had a chance of tearing down the old order and creating a new dynasty.
Malthus’ Revenge
Because of the imperial state’s firm control on the number of elites, the only real internal threats came from the peasants. The 17th century Manchu invasion had decreased the population by a cool 12%, giving everyone (mostly in the North, but still some in the South) more farmland. But the Malthusian curse caught up with the Chinese after decades of stability and growth. By the mid 19th century the Chinese population had grown to unprecedented heights, for a handful of reasons. In addition to ushering in a 200 year period of relative stability that pushed populations to their Malthusian limit, the Manchu had managed to convert what were previously nomad-held pasturelands into agrarian settlements. Technological advances like the introduction of yams also helped increase crop yields in poor areas. But a large portion of growth came from increased global interconnectedness – cotton was a popular cash crop because you could earn a living income on less land than you would need with rice or grain. Because of this, many farmers were living on less than the minimum acreage to feed themselves and their families. This was a precarious living situation where a farming family could go from well-off to struggling to landless in the course of a few bad harvests. In this environment, previously minor setbacks like floods or bad yields became major disasters – disasters that the people recognized as signs of the Dynasty losing Heaven’s Mandate.[1]
To start a rebellion, you need at least one rebel. Hong Xiuquan’s rebellious Christian message was perfect. Within three years he had two thousand members, within six he had ten thousand. When the imperial government cracked down on the movement, Hong Xiuquan’s followers began to raise armies and conquer towns and cities. Now known as the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, his forces left their lands, surging northward. Nine years after Hong Xiuquan baptized his cousin, his army of half a million conquered Nanjing, a historical capital of China and the largest city in the Yangtze river valley. All Manchu inside were killed. The forces of the Heavenly Kingdom were so good at recruiting from the lands that they passed through that it made Western observers rethink their beliefs about the heathen nature of the Chinese. But most peasants were not even in the kind of position that they could make a decision. After the armies of the Heavenly Kingdom entered their villages, many only had the option to cut their braids and join the rebels. Their fields had been trampled and their markets destroyed. To stay would mean starvation.
War of Ideological Attrition
Where Hong Xiuquan had failed in the civil service examinations, others had succeeded. Exams were structured in a hierarchy, so that after you passed province level exams, you could test in more prestigious exams for better jobs. The very best – typically having passed around 4 tiers of exams - joined an exclusive cadre of a hundred scholars in Beijing that acted as the emperor’s moral, spiritual, and political advisors. The second most important figure in the Taiping Civil War – other than Hong Xiuquan – was Zheng Guofan, a civil servant who had risen to the top of the scholarly hierarchy. He served in the academy of philosopher kings, administering the exams, advising the emperor, and dictating the nation’s domestic policy.
Zheng Guofan found himself on home leave in southern China just as the area was collapsing into chaos. Out of sheer desperation, Beijing ordered him to stay in the area to organize militias to combat lawlessness caused by the approaching Taiping. The desperation of his masters was for good reason. The Taiping were only one of several rebellions stretching their forces thin, and after centuries of peace and stability, Imperial forces were in woeful condition. In theory, the empire could call on millions of soldiers. However, the members of these massive armies were only in it for the meager salary it offered. Forces would often refuse to leave their home provinces. Many ran or defected as soon as battle began. By the time that Zheng Guofan started fighting, the empire was in freefall. British and French led expeditions had sailed upriver to the capital region, extracting humiliating trade concessions. Facing resistance, the Westerners obliterated Manchu defenses and forced the Emperor to flee North. This was the exact kind of humiliating defeat that signaled the loss of Heaven’s mandate, and even the powerful Confucian scholars in the capital were musing in private about the downfall of the dynasty.
From Turchin, ideology is at its fever pitch during downfalls. At the start of the curve, everyone is mostly concerned with getting along and building a better society. But as time goes on, people get locked into zero sum thinking. The Taiping Civil war can be thought of as a conflict of ideologies, and the reason that lasted so long and was so destructive was that the two ideologies in conflict were incredibly durable and powerful. The Heavenly Kingdom was ostensibly a Christian movement, but that wasn’t necessarily what got it millions of followers. Its most prominent attraction was its anti-Manchu philosophy. Zheng Guofan had his doubts about the Manchu, but wanted to make sure their downfall wouldn’t also be the end of Confucianism. While the Taiping were raising armies in the name of the Christian God, Zeng Guofan was massing forces to defend traditional Chinese values. As the other imperial armies crumbled around him, Zeng Guofan was left as the last Qing general standing.
So, a battle of ethnicity and ideology. Manchu (unpopular) and Confucian (popular) versus Han (popular) and Christian (unpopular). As Turchin notes, when ideology becomes paramount, the value of human life decreases. The Taiping Civil War was the lowest point in history for the value of human life. At the beginning I listed some facts about the death toll from the war. While I trust that you are intelligent enough to understand those facts, you probably don’t have the ability to understand what they mean, in that no human can really comprehend death by the millions. Despite its pop-history veneer, this book tries its best to make you understand. It is not for everyone. This book will make you feel guilty reading it. It is grimmer and darker than any grimdark novel – not because George R.R. Martin wasn’t trying, but because of what a politician might call a “failure of imagination”. Martin just didn’t know that it could get that bad.
As each year passed, Hong Xiuquan grew more delusional, rewriting Christian theology to replace the holy spirit with himself in the Trinity. Zheng Gaofan grew more tortured by guilt, privately writing prayers lamenting the fact that the fate of the empire had been left up to a bookish scholar. More land turned into mud, as the world’s richest farmland became entirely devoid of life. Innumerable sieges combined war, plague, and starvation to kill those that managed to escape the countryside.
Eventually, the whole thing burnt itself out. At the beginning of the war, rebel preachers were able to conjure up entire armies with a few biblical passages. After 15 years, there just wasn’t anybody left to join. To give you a picture of the depopulation, the whole war culminated on one final siege of the rebel capital. It was impossible to starve the rebels out, though. There were so few left in the city that agriculture inside the city walls could produce enough for everyone. Eventually imperial forces dug under the massive walls and crushed the rebels. Zheng Goufan was left with an opportunity. As the most powerful military leader in the empire, he could drive North to the capital and take the Empire for himself. He chose not to. The time for that would have been a few years earlier in the cycle, but it was too late. He was racked with guilt. The emperor, a young child with few political backers outside of the Manchu nobility, remained on the throne.
Lost in Translation
Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom was published in 2012, and being a post-Iraq book, has to include portions about western meddling in the affairs of the Chinese state. It serves as a cautionary tale about cultural misunderstanding – specifically about how Westerners and Chinese misunderstood each other’s mental models of history. On paper, you would expect the West to side with the Christian rebels. But any sort of negotiations between the two quickly broke down. I have tried to represent the negotiations in this dialogue below. (Disclaimer: any sort of contact between the two groups simultaneously occurred through the fog of war and massive linguistic and cultural barriers. No one ever had a conversation as clear and candid as this.)
British: We are nervous about the effect that your war will have on the cotton trade. The American Civil war has choked supply, and overthrowing the government risks destroying the plantations and trade stability that we need. But because we like you, we will set a deal. Don’t come within 100 miles of our coastal trading posts, and we will leave you alone.
Taiping: You don’t understand. We are on the downswing of Turchin’s secular cycle. We want trade, but prioritizing stability at a point like this is the wrong strategic move. This is the one chance any of us have to take down the established order, and chaos, even chaos in the cotton markets, is a natural and acceptable consequence of that. If we want to take down the Empire, we have to attack coastal trading ports like Shanghai.
British: Well, if you do that, we’re going to shoot at you.
Taiping: <No response>
And so, the Taiping attacked Shanghai and got shot at. Platt argues that Western (mostly British) intervention decisively tilted the tide of the war in favor of the Qing, even though it was mostly via indirect means like arms sales and training. Whether the cycle model of history was vindicated is up for debate. The Qing Dynasty limped on for 50 years, but didn’t have the tools to unify the country or project power. From the start of the Taiping Civil War, it would be more than 100 years until the world knew a strong, unified China. In 1909, Japanese Prime Minister Ito Hirobumi told journalists that British intervention in the war, which at that point had been forgotten by the West, was the greatest mistake the British ever made in China.
Ultimately that ominous statement is what stuck with me from the book. To the British, the war was a forgotten blip in the march of progress. To the Japanese, it was the seminal event around which everything rotated. Study history, but also study historical models. Just in case you find yourself in a civilization-scale depopulation event and find yourself having to rebuild society, I hope you remember Secular Cycles.
[1] The information in these paragraphs mostly comes from Peasant Life and Social Change in Northern China by Huang, which serves as a useful quantitative context for Autumn.
[2] I tried to find some sort of official academic source for the exam questions, but the absolute best I could find were translated by someone named Bofeng Hu on Quora who clearly has a fair amount of knowledge on classical Chinese. Silly, I know. Whoever you are, thank you. I would suggest looking at them for yourself, because they include a fair amount of context that I stripped out.