Civilizations in crisis: The Ottoman Empire, the Islamic Heartlands and the Qing China Hong Xiuquan was a well educated in a society where very few went to school.~ Though he failed to pass the test necessary to get him the lowest degree, which carries with it a modest stipend from the states and the right to wear the robes of the scholar-gentry.
After taking up the serious study of the bible he began to believe himself the younger son of Jesus and that god had given him a sword to rid the world of corrupt officials and other agent of the devil. He was charismatic speaker and so won many converts, which became known as the Tapings (meaning the “Great Peace”). The Tapings revolutionary agenda was aimed at the scholar gentry , in rebel control areas, ancestral tablets were smashed, land was seized from the local gentry and the imperial examinations system was abolished, they proclaimed the women were equal to men, adopted Christian solar calendar and sought to restore moral order by banning slavery, foot binding , concubinage, arranged marriages, opium smoking, judicial torture and more.
Both Hong’s personal crisis and the revolutionary movement launched the disintrigation of Chinese civilizations. The ottomans were also well on the decline even earlier, after they had ruled the Middle east and south Asia. In both cases the sheer size, complexity and persisting military power of each of these empires, combined with the outgoing rivalry with the European countries, prevented them from being formally colonized.
~these two groups were determined to bring down the existing social order in order to replace it with a religiously inspired utopian society.
~Western-educated dissidents sought to build strong nation-states patterned after those of western Europe.

The Ottoman crisis was brought on by a succession of weak rulers within a political and social order that was centered on the sultan at the top. Inactive or inept sultans opened the way for power struggles between rival ministers, religious experts, and the commanders of the Janissary corps. Increased Western dependency weakened the Ottoman empire more. Eventually making it possible for them to take over Ottoman land.