Works like Philip Kuhn's "Rebellion and Its Enemies in Late Imperial China" (1970) place the story in the context of China's long history of struggles between dynasties and those seeking to topple them, while Jen Yu-wen's "The Taiping Revolutionary Movement" (1973) goes further, insisting that Hong's movement had more in common with the revolutions that followed it than rebellions of earlier times.

WSJ: Book Review: Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom