History on Fire

“Everywhere in southern Anhui they are eating people.” Zeng Guofan

“Infants but recently born were torn from their mother’s breasts, and disemboweled before their faces. Young strong men were disemboweled, mutilated, and the parts cut off thrust into their own mouths…” A British testimony on the Qing treatment of POWs

If I were to ask you which is the deadliest conflict in history, you’d probably answer WW II. But if I were to ask you, which is the second deadliest conflict ever—at least according to most historians—I’d bet the number of raised hands would shrink quickly. And I’d also bet that a good percentage of those taking their chances with an answer would probably be wrong. So, welcome to the wildest, weirdest, biggest conflict in history that few people have heard about (that is…unless you are quite knowledgeable about Chinese history). Millions of troops took part in this war. Something in the neighborhood of 600 cities changed hands over decade and half of fighting. Conservative estimates place the dead around 20-30 millions (some estimates go as high as 100 millions.) For frame of references, this is deadlier than the Iraq War, the War in Afghanistan, the Vietnam War, the Korean War, the Spanish American War, the American Civil War and the American Revolution put together. We can also throw in the 7 Years War, all three Punic wars and all of the Crusades for good measure. In light of this, it may begin to make sense why several historians believe this is the bloodiest civil war of all time. 

It all began with a Chinese man who, in the mid-1800s, dreamed of becoming a scholar and receive a government job. Seems like an innocent start, right? Well, our wannabe intellectual, a certain Hong Xiuquan, experienced a major crisis when he realized that no matter how much he studied, he would not succeed at passing the imperial exams, that were the prerequisite to getting the career he dreamed of. The fact that he failed was more than a personal tragedy for Hong. Rather, this failure would trigger a sequence of events leading to the death of millions. This was easily the most costly F in the history of education. Broken to the core, he had a mental breakdown, and began to experience visions. These visions revealed to him that he was God’s son, and Jesus’ younger brother, and he was tasked by his heavenly relatives to clean China off any demonic influences in order to create the Kingdom of Heavenly Peace. His efforts to create this Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace heralded a bloody civil war with a body count that would make most video gamers blush.

In this episode, we run into Christian missionaries floating on a river of death, Hong’s descent into further layers of madness, the Second Opium War, Zeng Guofan’s comical pessimism, the wavering French-British policy, the Empress Dowager Cixi being a gangster, the battle for Shanghai, the Ever Victorious Army, a cholera outbreak, the asexual crusader Charles Gordon, the death of a Christian kingdom in China, and much more.

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“Is not this insurgent movement truly wonderful? These rebels keep Sabbath as we do, they pray to God daily, they read the Scriptures, they break the idols, and they long for the time when, instead of those heathen temples, they shall have Christian chapels, and worship together with us… is it not a remarkable era in China?”

A Christian missionary wife about the Taiping Rebellion

“Jesus our Elder Brother showed us the treacherous heart of this demon follower.” Sign hanging around the neck of a man executed by the Taiping

“Those who believe not in the true doctrine of God and Jesus, though they be old acquaintances, are still no friends of mine, but they are demons.” Hong Xiuquan

If I were to ask you which is the deadliest conflict in history, you’d probably answer WW II. But if I were to ask you which is the second deadliest conflict ever—at least according to most historians—I’d bet the number of raised hands would shrink quickly. And I’d also bet that a good percentage of those taking their chances with an answer would probably be wrong. So, welcome to the wildest, weirdest, biggest conflict in history that few people have heard about (that is…unless you are quite knowledgeable about Chinese history). Millions of troops took part in this war. Something in the neighborhood of 600 cities changed hands over decade and half of fighting. Conservative estimates place the dead around 20-30 millions (some estimates go as high as 100 millions.) For frame of references, this is deadlier than the Iraq War, the War in Afghanistan, the Vietnam War, the Korean War, the Spanish American War, the American Civil War and the American Revolution put together. We can also throw in the 7 Years War, all three Punic wars and all of the Crusades for good measure. In light of this, it may begin to make sense why several historians believe this is the bloodiest civil war of all time. 

It all began with a Chinese man who, in the mid-1800s, dreamed of becoming a scholar and receive a government job. Seems like an innocent start, right? Well, our wannabe intellectual, a certain Hong Xiuquan, experienced a major crisis when he realized that no matter how much he studied, he would not succeed at passing the imperial exams, that were the prerequisite to getting the career he dreamed of. The fact that he failed was more than a personal tragedy for Hong. Rather, this failure would trigger a sequence of events leading to the death of millions. This was easily the most costly F in the history of education. Broken to the core, he had a mental breakdown, and began to experience visions. These visions revealed to him that he was God’s son, and Jesus’ younger brother, and he was tasked by his heavenly relatives to clean China off any demonic influences in order to create the Kingdom of Heavenly Peace. His efforts to create this Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace heralded a bloody civil war with a body count that would make most video gamers blush.

In this episode, we follow Hong Xiuquan as he graduates from religious intolerance to armed insurrection against the government. We also run into angels torturing Confucius, ‘God’ & ‘Jesus’ & ‘Jesus’ younger brother’ leading an army to topple the Qing Dynasty, a massive army of sexually frustrated people, the capture of Nanjing, Quentin Tarantino’s Biblical tales, the Taiping turning into The Sopranos, ‘Jesus’ younger brother’ placing a hit on ‘God’s Voice’, and much more.

If you feel generous and enjoy History on Fire, please consider joining my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/historyonfire to access plenty of bonus content.

All the links to History on Fire social media can be found at https://linktr.ee/danielebolelli 

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“The entire story of the Taiping Rebellion might be told, from one perspective, as the rage of a failed exam candidate writ large.” Stephen Platt

 “They may not intend to harm others on purpose, but the fact remains that they are so obsessed with material gain that they have no concern whatever for the harm they can cause to others.” Lin Zexu about British opium traders

“Heaven is furious with anger, and all the gods are moaning with pain!... A murderer of one person is subject to the death sentence; just imagine how many people opium has killed! This is the rationale behind the new law which says that any foreigner who brings opium to China will be sentenced to death by hanging or beheading.” Lin Zexu

“… soothing, quieting and delightful beyond measure.” Queen Victoria about opium

If I were to ask you which is the deadliest conflict in history, you’d probably answer WW II. But if I were to ask you which is the second deadliest conflict ever—at least according to most historians—I’d bet the number of raised hands would shrink quickly. And I’d also bet that a good percentage of those taking their chances with an answer would probably be wrong. So, welcome to the wildest, weirdest, biggest conflict in history that few people have heard about (that is…unless you are quite knowledgeable about Chinese history). Millions of troops took part in this war. Something in the neighborhood of 600 cities changed hands over decade and half of fighting. Conservative estimates place the dead around 20-30 millions (some estimates go as high as 100 millions.) For frame of references, this is deadlier than the Iraq War, the War in Afghanistan, the Vietnam War, the Korean War, the Spanish American War, the American Civil War and the American Revolution put together. We can also throw in the 7 Years War, all three Punic wars and all of the Crusades for good measure. In light of this, it may begin to make sense why several historians believe this is the bloodiest civil war of all time. 

It all began with a Chinese man who, in the mid-1800s, dreamed of becoming a scholar and receive a government job. Seems like an innocent start, right? Well, our wannabe intellectual, a certain Hong Xiuquan, experienced a major crisis when he realized that no matter how much he studied, he would not succeed at passing the imperial exams, that were the prerequisite to getting the career he dreamed of. The fact that he failed was more than a personal tragedy for Hong. Rather, this failure would trigger a sequence of events leading to the death of millions. This was easily the most costly F in the history of education. Broken to the core, he had a mental breakdown, and began to experience visions. These visions revealed to him that he was God’s son, and Jesus’ younger brother, and he was tasked by his heavenly relatives to clean China off any demonic influences in order to create the Kingdom of Heavenly Peace. His efforts to create this Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace heralded a bloody civil war with a body count that would make most video gamers blush.

In this episode, we tackle ethnic conflicts in China, Christian missionaries in Canton, uber-difficult Imperial exams, the Pablo Escobar of the 1800s having the British navy on her side, foot binding, Great Britain solving a trade deficit by flooding China with drugs, the First Opium War, and much more.

If you feel generous and enjoy History on Fire, please consider joining my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/historyonfire to access plenty of bonus content.

All the links to History on Fire social media can be found at https://linktr.ee/danielebolelli 

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“If you know the way broadly you will see it in everything.” Miyamoto Musashi

Ever since I started History on Fire, one topic has been the most consistently requested by listeners. Over the years, I received hundreds of messages asking me to cover the life of Miyamoto Musashi. That time has come. Here we go.

Musashi has been the subject of one of the greatest bestsellers ever written, a novel by Eiji Yoshikawa that sold over 120 million copies. And yet, the story of his life is mixed with so many myths and legends that it’s rather difficult to separate fact from fiction. He lived across the late 1500s and early 1600s, during the waning phases of the Warring States period. By that point, after over 100 years of on and off civil war, Japan was a country suffering with PTSD. Soldiers and civilians alike had all been exposed to insane amounts of bloodshed and brutality during the Sengoku Jidai. Musashi was born in the midst of that, so it’s little surprised that his is a tale filled with intensity and violence.

In this second and final chapter of this series, I’ll explore some of the key events in the latter parts of Musashi’s life: from the siege of Osaka to the Shimabara Rebellion, from his adopting sons to his grief over the death of his daughter, from his exploration of Zen Buddhism to his writing of the Book of Five Rings, and much more!

If you feel generous and enjoy History on Fire, please consider joining my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/historyonfire to access plenty of bonus content.

All the links to History on Fire social media can be found at https://linktr.ee/danielebolelli 

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“All warfare is based on deception.” Sun Tzu

Ever since I started History on Fire, one topic has been the most consistently requested by listeners. Over the years, I received hundreds of messages asking me to cover the life of Miyamoto Musashi. That time has come. Here we go.

Musashi has been the subject of one of the greatest bestsellers ever written, a novel by Eiji Yoshikawa that sold over 120 million copies. And yet, the story of his life is mixed with so many myths and legends that it’s rather difficult to separate fact from fiction. He lived across the late 1500s and early 1600s, during the waning phases of the Warring States period. By that point, after over 100 years of on and off civil war, Japan was a country suffering with PTSD. Soldiers and civilians alike had all been exposed to insane amounts of bloodshed and brutality during the Sengoku Jidai. Musashi was born in the midst of that, so it’s little surprised that his is a tale filled with intensity and violence.

In this first of two episodes, I’ll dive in to make sense of the contradictory evidence available: from his childhood marred by a terrible relationship with his father to his possible participation in the uber-famous battle of Sekigahara, from his first duel to the death at the age of 13 to his conflicts with the Yoshioka family and with Sasaki Kojiro, and much more!

If you feel generous and enjoy History on Fire, please consider joining my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/historyonfire to access plenty of bonus content.

All the links to History on Fire social media can be found at https://linktr.ee/danielebolelli 

Including the HOF YouTube Channel:

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“But the years of peace and plenty was not to last. Slowly the days turned sour and the watchful nights closed in. Thrór's love of gold grown too fierce and sickness had begun to grow within him. It was a sickness of the mind. And where sickness thrives, bad things will follow...” JRR Tolkien

“The more White investigated the flow of oil money from Osage headrights, the more he found layer upon layer of corruption. Although some white guardians and administrators tried to act in the best interests of the tribe, countless others used the system to swindle the very people they were ostensibly protecting. Many guardians would purchase, for their wards, goods from their own stores or inventories at inflated prices.” David Grann

You may have heard of Killers of the Flower Moon, a new movie by Martin Scorsese, starring Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio. Or, maybe you have heard of the best-selling book by David Grann, on which the movie is based. In this episode, I do a deep dive into the murders at the root of the story. Back in the late 1800s, the Osage tribe was kicked out of their homes and pushed onto a plot of poor land where few people wanted to live. But the Universe has a sense of humor. Fast-forward a few years, and in a surprising twist of events it is discovered their land is not so poor after all, since it sits on some of the largest oil deposits in United States. Overnight, the Osage go from the deepest poverty to extreme wealth. A happy, feel-good story then, right? Not so fast. By the early 1920s, many Osage die in the prime of their lives—some are mysterious deaths. Others are clearly murders by poison, shooting and explosives. In this tale, I’ll tell you about oil, greed, murder mysteries, the birth of the FBI, and much more!

If you feel generous and enjoy History on Fire, please consider joining my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/historyonfire to access plenty of bonus content.

All the links to History on Fire social media can be found at https://linktr.ee/danielebolelli 

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“The universities do not teach all things, so a doctor must seek out old wives, gypsies, sorcerers, wandering tribes, old robbers, and such outlaws and take lessons from them. A doctor must be a traveler… Knowledge is experience.” Paracelsus

 “They indulged in disgraceful immodesty, for many women, during this shameless dance and mock-bridal singing, bared their bosoms, while others of their own accord offered their virtue.” C. Browerus describing the 1374 Dancing Plague

Weird seems like the most appropriate word to describe today’s subject, and yet ‘weird’ feels like an understatement. On July 14, 1518, in Strasbourg, a lady named Troffea began dancing in the streets.

Ok… that doesn’t sound too weird.

Just bare with me…

Troffea didn’t reply to questions or requests from her frustrated husband that she stopped. She had somehow slipped in a whole different state of consciousness and

kept dancing until she passed out from exhaustion. As soon as she woke up, she started dancing again. This process of compulsive dancing and passing out went on for days until Troffea’s feet were covered in blood. But the real problem began when others fell under the same spell and joined in the dance… And that’s not the worst part. Before long, many of them began dropping off dead from heart attacks caused by the excessive effort. No matter how self-destructive the dance could be, the people afflicted simply couldn’t stop. Strasbourg had been hit with the weirdest plague in history… a dancing plague.

As we explore the mystery of the dancing plague, we end up discussing the black plague, anti-Semitism, the corruption of the church, martyrs and saints, creepy fairy tales, the origin of Tarantella music, the limits of medicine in the 1500s, Paracelsus, mass hallucinations, collective hysteria, the placebo effect, and much more.

If you feel generous and enjoy History on Fire, please consider joining my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/historyonfire to access plenty of bonus content.

All the links to History on Fire social media can be found at https://linktr.ee/danielebolelli 

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“Never in history had the United States Army been called on to rescue such a large number of POWs from so deep in enemy territory.” William Breuer

 “We were in the best shape of our lives, and with this mission we understood why he had driven us so hard.” Alvie Robbins speaking about Henry Mucci’s physical training

“As far as we were concerned, they were gods.” Bob Body about the Rangers who rescued him and his fellow POWs.

“Nothing in this entire campaign has given me so much personal satisfaction.” General MacArthur

 “I’ll be grateful for the rest of my life that I had a chance to do something in this war that was not destructive. Nothing for me can ever compare with the satisfaction I got from helping to free our prisoners.” Robert Prince

This is the tale of one of the most daring missions in the history of WWII. After being defeated by the Japanese in 1942, by 1945 American forces were back in the Philippines ready to retake the islands. But their very success may have spelled doom for some survivors of the Bataan Death March, who had spent nearly three years as prisoners of the Japanese. Plenty of evidence, in fact, suggested that Japanese guards were ready to kill them all rather than letting them be freed. The only way to stop this imminent massacre was for a newly formed unit of Rangers, along with Filipino guerrilla fighters, to travel 30 miles behind enemy lines, face off with numerically superior forces, and rescue the POWs. By every logical metric, this had suicide mission written all over it. And yet, the Rangers and guerrilla, all volunteered. Rarely are war stories feel-good stories. But this may be the exception to the rule.   

If you feel generous and enjoy History on Fire, please consider joining my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/historyonfire to access plenty of bonus content.

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“Brother, this is the greatest sorrow and the greatest trial that could happen to me in the whole course of my life. But don’t despair; before you lose sight of him who did the mischief, you shall see yourself revenged by my hand.” Benvenuto Cellini

“Folk too gathered round us, for it had become clear that our words meant swords and daggers.” Benvenuto Cellini

Italian artists from the Renaissance often lived lives that would make Biggie or Tupac blush. Born at a time and place when colorful individuals abounded, Benvenuto Cellini was the wildest of them all. He is remembered as one of the greatest artists of the era, and at the same time as a man of explosive passions, equally inclined to murder and disturbing sexual escapades. In this second episode: Cellini and his path to vengeance, summoning demons inside the Colosseum, the 48 Laws of Power at the court of the French King, escaping from prison, surviving poisonings, Perseus and Medusa, and much, much more. If you are looking for entertainment set in the Renaissance, you really can’t ask for anything better.

If you feel generous and enjoy History on Fire, please consider joining my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/historyonfire to access plenty of bonus content.

Bison is some of the healthiest meat you could possibly eat. Get yours at https://dakotapurebison.com/ History on Fire listeners get a discount by using the code HOF10 at checkout.

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“If one of you comes out of the shop, let the other run for a priest, because there’ll be no need for a doctor.” Benvenuto Cellini

“The whole world was now in warfare.” Benvenuto Cellini

“And then falling on my knees, I begged him to absolve me of that homicide, and of the others I had committed while serving the Church in the castle. At this the Pope raised his hand, carefully made a great sign of the cross above my head, and said that he gave me his blessing and that he forgave me all the murders I had ever committed and all the murders I ever would commit in the service of the Apostolic Church.” Benvenuto Cellini

Italian artists from the Renaissance often lived lives that would make artists-gangsters a la Biggie or Tupac blush. Born at a time and place when colorful individuals abounded, Benvenuto Cellini was the wildest of them all. He is remembered as one of the greatest artists of the era, and at the same time as a man of explosive passions, equally inclined to murder and disturbing sexual escapades. In this first episode, we’ll witness Cellini surviving the plague and pirates, multiple street fights with blades drawn and the 1527 Sack of Rome. Along the way, we’ll see how Italian honor culture may help explain the Will Smith-Chris Rock clash at the Oscars. The characters that show up in our tale from kings and prostitutes, mercenaries and artists, necromancers and cardinals, servants and guards. If you are looking for entertainment set in the Renaissance, you really can’t ask for anything better.

If you feel generous and enjoy History on Fire, please consider joining my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/historyonfire to access plenty of bonus content.

Bison is some of the healthiest meat you could possibly eat. Get yours at https://dakotapurebison.com/ History on Fire listeners get a discount by using the code HOF10 at checkout.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices