January 11, 1851

Jintian Uprising

The conventional Jintian Uprising proclamation

The standard start date of the Taiping Rebellion was also celebrated as Hong Xiuquan's lunar-calendar birthday — and historians still argue over whether it is the right day at all.

Jintian village, 11 January 1851

On the conventionally accepted date of 11 January 1851, more than 10,000 members of the God Worshipping Society assembled at Jintian Village in Guiping County, Guangxi, and raised the standard of revolt against Qing rule.

The assembly called itself the Taiping Army and declared an intention to overthrow the Qing government. Some accounts have Hong Xiuquan assuming the titles "King of Peace" and "Heavenly King" that day; a detailed chronology of the uprising treats 11 January as the proclamation of the uprising and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and places Hong's explicit Heavenly King declaration later, at East Village.

The more than 10,000 assembled adherents formed a religious community, not simply a 10,000-man army.

A marker inside a longer mobilisation

January 11 functioned as a formal and commemorative marker. Hong had issued military rules by early November 1850, and fighting with Qing forces had already occurred before the proclamation.

Those early regulations segregated men and women, banned pillaging and desertion, and demanded obedience to drum and bugle signals. Feng Yunshan helped build the society in Guangxi and devised early rules and organisational practices.

The proclamation did not create the mature territorial state later headquartered at Nanjing; substantive regime-building followed the capture of Yong'an in September 1851.

Which day, if any

Even the lunar reading is contested. One chronology puts 11 January at the tenth day of the twelfth lunar month in the thirtieth Daoguang year; another makes it the eleventh day of the first lunar month of 1851, and some secondary references give 1 January instead.

Luo Ergang argued for 11 January 1851; other historians proposed 5 April or 4 November 1850, and Wang Qingcheng treated the uprising as a months-long process rather than a single-day event.

Accounts also differ over when Hong's kingship and the Taiping state became formally constituted, some distinguishing the Jintian proclamation from the later regime establishment at Yong'an.

Sources

Researched 23 Aug 2026 4 sources 2 audit passes, 2 issues open Date disputed

How this was checked

Researched from the web into a fact sheet, rewritten from that sheet, then audited against it by a different model. How the pipeline works →

Date disputed. Sources disagree about when this happened.

What the sources leave uncertain

January 11 is the standard memorial date, corresponding to the tenth day of the twelfth lunar month in the thirtieth Daoguang year—not the “eleventh day of the first lunar month,” as some summaries claim.
The date is genuinely disputed. Luo Ergang argued for January 11, 1851; other historians proposed April 5 or November 4, 1850, while Wang Qingcheng treated the uprising as a months-long process rather than a single-day event.
Accounts also differ over when Hong’s kingship and the Taiping state became formally constituted; some distinguish the Jintian proclamation from the later “regime establishment at Yong’an.”