In this meticulously researched book, Tobie Meyer-Fong provides an outstanding contribution to the history of the Taiping Rebellion and its aftermath. In chapter 1, “War,” she explains that her primary goal is to redirect scholarship on this crucial event away from the nationalist and revolutionary agendas that have dominated recent historiography, in order “to bring the questions and concerns of those who lived through these events into our understanding of this period” (p. 14). In particular, she seeks to describe the ways in which victims and survivors attempted to understand and cope with the physical and emotional devastation wrought by this massive conflict.
While the religious activities of the Taiping are well studied, Meyer-Fong shows that religiosity also permeated the narratives that Qing loyalists used to interpret the war and explain their responses. Chapter 2, “Words,” illustrates these dynamics with the case of Yu Zhi, a failed examination candidate from...
