| Chapter : | Introduction |
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more general observations on the nature of millenarian movements will be made. Although this is a comparative study of two East Asian millenarian movements, I will also discuss briefly Somali Islamic activities against Western powers because these activities also had a millenarian character occasioned by similar circumstances as those that prompted the East Asian millenarian movements to act as they did. In their responses to alien expansion, the Chinese and the Korean in northeastern Asia, and the Somali in northeastern Africa, in their religiously inspired millenarianism, fused religion and politics in their quest for salvation from earthly crisis and suffering. Since my main plan is not a comparison with the Somali case, however, I have not presented it in detail. For Somali sources, I refer mainly to Professor Lee V. Cassanelli's acclaimed The Shaping of Somali Society. His book provides much useful information including precious oral recollections and primary sources of Somali society.
The purpose of the first chapter is to set forth the concepts of millenarianism and to trace the development and the evolution of millenarianism. The second chapter will introduce ancient Korean millenarian, yin, yang, stars, ki (chi) energy, or the I-jing, which influenced the Tonghak and the Taiping millenarian movements. The third chapter will describe the respective social, economic, political, and international situations of the Chinese and Korean societies from which the Taiping and the Tonghak uprisings emerged and developed as movements. The fourth chapter will examine the motivation and causations of the leaders of the Taiping and the Tonghak, asking why it was that they did not remain in a traditional framework, but took a route toward a millenarian pathway. The fifth chapter aims to introduce the Taiping's and Tonghak's philosophy of history, their sociopolitical and religious implication, and to find the appearance and nature of millenarian movements within the Chinese and Korean cultures, along with their doctrines and ideas of salvation and history. The movements also will be examined in order to find the difference in the change that indigenous ideologies undergo, in relation to orthodox religious traditions such as Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism. The sixth chapter will survey the character of leadership to make