Reading Chinese history can be difficult for a Westerner due to the names, locations, time frames, etc. Dr. Platt has done an excellent job of bringing to the reader an important segment of China’s more recent history (1850s) when somewhere between 20-50,000,000 (that is million) people lost their lives in a civil war. Consider that our Civil War cost about 750,000 lives and you will get an idea of the scope of the war and the misery it caused in China.

The Taiping leadership took many Christian dogmas as their rules and felt that the Western powers would help them in their struggle to overthrow the hated Ming dynasty. The Western powers (mostly Great Britain) did not understand the politics of China however as well as they thought so they decided to back the Ming dynasty with whom they knew they were able to get valuable trading concessions and who were weak and corrupt.

The book is an excellent read and will give the reader a bit of an insight into the history that continues to shape China today. A definite well done to the author.