produced a great
response from the peasants. The programme of the T'ai P'ing, in some
points influenced by Christian ideas but more so by traditional Chinese
thought, was in many points revolutionary: (a) all property was communal
property; (b) land was classified into categories according to its
fertility and equally distributed among men and women. Every producer
kept of the produce as much as he and his family needed and delivered
the rest into the communal granary; (c) administration and tax systems
were revised; (d) women were given equal rights: they fought together
with men in the army and had access to official position. They had to
marry, but monogamy was requested; (e) the use of opium, tobacco and
alcohol was prohibited, prostitution was illegal; (f) foreigners were
regarded as equals, capitulations as the Manchus had accepted were not
recognized. A large part of the officials, and particularly of the
soldiers sent against the revolutionaries, were Manchus, and
consequently the movement very soon became a nationalist movement, much
as the popular movement at the end of the Mongol epoch had done. Hung
made rapid progress; in 1852 he captured Hankow, and in 1853 Nanking,
the important centre in the east. With clear political insight he made
Nanking his capital. In this he returned to the old traditions of the
beginning of the Ming epoch, no doubt expecting in this way to attract
support from the eastern Chinese gentry, who had no liking for a capital
far away in the north. He made a parade of adhesion to the ancient
Chinese tradition: his followers cut off their pigtails and allowed
their hair to grow as in the past.

He did not succeed, however, in carrying his reforms from the stage of
sporadic action to a systematic reorganization of the country, and he
also failed to enlist the elements needed for this as for all other
administrative work, so that the good start soon degenerated into a
terrorist regime.

Hung's followers pressed on from Nanking, and in 1853-1855 they advanced
nearly to Tientsin; but they failed to capture Peking itself.

The new T'ai P'ing state faced the Europeans with big problems. Should
they work with it or against it? The T'ai P'ing always insisted that
they were Christians; the missionaries hoped now to have the opportunity
of converting all China to Christianity. The T'ai P'ing treated the
missionaries well but did not let them operate. After long hesitation
and much vacillation,