
#340 - Taiping 17: Out of Kings
The Heavenly Kingdom, having recently killed kings three and four of its founding five – and misplaced the fifth – attempts to solve its acu...
Radio and PodcastLive Radio & Podcasts
An audio journey through the 5000 year history of one of the world's oldest continuous civilizations.
Listen to The History of China, a Society & Culture podcast by Chris Stewart. Stream 393 episodes in English, follow new audio stories, and play episodes online on Radio and Podcast.
Browse this show under Society & Culture podcasts.
20 episodes are loaded now from a catalog of 393. More episodes can be opened from this page.
Explore Society & Culture podcasts, United States podcasts and English podcasts.

The Heavenly Kingdom, having recently killed kings three and four of its founding five – and misplaced the fifth – attempts to solve its acu...

The Taiping's greatest summer curdles into its bloodiest autumn. Two months after the East King demands to be crowned Hong Xiuquan's equal,...

The Taiping Army is riding high. Having finally broken two massive, three-year-long sieges over the course of a single summer, ultimate vict...

Three months after the biggest win of his life, Zeng Guofan tries to drown himself.Again.His fleet gets ambushed, split in half, & set ablaz...

Zeng Guofan goes to war to defend a fixed universe – and nearly drowns proving how unfixed his own place in it actually is. Across a single...

While the Northern Expedition dies in the freezing mud of Shandong, the Taiping's second strike — the Western Expedition — turns its sights...

The Taiping Army commits to one of its most audacious acts yet – an assault on the Qing throne itself, a thousand miles north in Beijing. To...

Finally pooled and stilled at Nanjing, in the afterglow of victory, the Taiping reflect on what they’ve become, and what they’ve yet to acco...

The Heavenly Host arrives at last before the walls of the South Capital. What follows is not a battle so much as a verdict – rendered in pow...

The Heavenly Host marches north out of Hunan. Ahead of them lies the spine of China itself – the mighty Yangtze; maker and breaker of dynast...

The Heavenly Host has arrived at the great provincial capital of Hunan - Changsha. The mighty bastion that will prove to be the first city o...

The army that marches north out of Quanzhou in June 1852 is not the same one that left Jintian 18 months prior. It has left its prime archit...

The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom has been proclaimed — but proclamations don't feed armies. As such, its Divine Host will enjoy all of 11 days b...

The God-Worshippers of Thistle Mountain managed to survive their first test — but now the world itself seems dead-set on finishing the job....

The God-Worshippers of Thistle Mountain, under the dual leadership of Hong Xiuquan and Feng Yunshan, had gone from being a quirky, backwater...

Amidst the ashes of the Opium War, a new flame is beginning to kindle – not in the halls of power, but in the distant, forgotten hills and m...

Even in the fallout of the Opium War, dreams endure—but what happens to a dream deferred? In Canton, one young man’s starry-eyed visions of...

TheKangxi Emperor’s Obsessive Pursuit ofGaldan Khanto the Endsof the EarthPresented: 02/28/2026audio-only cut (this is from my mic pick-up,...

The war is over. The treaty is signed, sealed, & delivered. Yet though the smoke has cleared, the haze of uncertainty over what - exactly -...

The new envoy from London arrives at Qing's doorstep in August 1842 with a simple mandate: stop allowing Britain to be "humbugged" & finish...