ial form of worship. Subject to that, he might privately belong
to any other religion. To a Mohammedan, this was impossible and
intolerable. The Mohammedans were only ready to practise their own
religion, and absolutely refused to take part in any other. The Chinese
also tried to apply to Turkestan in other matters the same legislation
that applied to all China, but this proved irreconcilable with the
demands made by Islam on its followers. All this produced continual
unrest.

Turkestan had had a feudal system of government with a number of feudal
lords (_beg_), who tried to maintain their influence and who had the
support of the Mohammedan population. The Chinese had come to Turkestan
as soldiers and officials, to administer the country. They regarded
themselves as the lords of the land and occupied themselves with the
extraction of taxes. Most of the officials were also associated with the
Chinese merchants who travelled throughout Turkestan and as far as
Siberia. The conflicts implicit in this situation produced great
Mohammedan risings in the nineteenth century. The first came in
1825-1827; in 1845 a second rising flamed up, and thirty years later
these revolts led to the temporary loss of the whole of Turkestan.

In 1848, native unrest began in the province of Hunan, as a result of
the constantly growing pressure of the Chinese settlers on the native
population; in the same year there was unrest farther south, in the
province of Kwangsi, this time in connection with the influence of the
Europeans. The leader was a quite simple man of Hakka blood, Hung
Hsiu-ch'uean (born 1814), who gathered impoverished Hakka peasants round
him as every peasant leader had done in the past. Very often the nucleus
of these peasant movements had been a secret society with a particular
religious tinge; this time the peasant revolutionaries came forward as
at the same time the preachers of a new religion of their own. Hung had
heard of Christianity from missionaries (1837), and he mixed up
Christian ideas with those of ancient China and proclaimed to his
followers a doctrine that promised the Kingdom of God on earth. He
called himself "Christ's younger brother", and his kingdom was to be
called _T'ai P'ing_ ("Supreme Peace"). He made his first comrades,
charcoal makers, local doctors, peddlers and farmers, into kings, and
made himself emperor. At bottom the movement, like all similar ones
before it, was not religious but social; and it