The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was an oppositional state in southern and central China that existed from 1851 to 1864, with Nanjing serving as its capital. The kingdom was proclaimed by the Christian "God Worshippers' Society" cult leader Hong Xiuquan, who claimed that he was Jesus' younger brother. He rallied a million soldiers behind the ideas of overthrowing the "foreign" Manchu Qing dynasty, taking the land into common ownership, banning opium, tobacco, and alcohol, and leading a recovery of China's failing economy. The Taiping rebels seized Nanjing after killing thousands of civilians and over 30,000 imperial soldiers, and the Taiping areas were besieged by Qing forces throughout most of the rebellion. The Qing, eventually aided by France and the United Kingdom, succeeded in suppressing the rebellion in 1864, when the Qing conquered Nanjing; Hong and 100,000 other rebels committed suicide rather than surrender.
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