emily’s Reviews > Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom: China, the West, and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War > Status Update

‘—against—the two-hundred-year-old Qing dynasty of the Manchus—The Qing Empire was deeply integrated into the world’s economy through trade—thousands of foreigners living in—Shanghai. Many—were conscientious—well-meaning. Some were not. But as is so often the case, even the monsters among them believed, at some level, that they acted only in the interests of humanity. Hong Kong, late spring, 1852—among the Hakkas—’