Donghak Peasant Revolution
The Donghak Peasant Revolution of 1894 was a mass rising of Korean peasants against the triple burden of state taxes, yangban landlord rents, and corrupt local magistrates, channelled through the Donghak ('Eastern Learning') movement — a syncretic religious-nationalist ideology with broad peasant appeal that also opposed growing foreign, especially Japanese, penetration. The rebels overran much of the southwestern provinces and defeated government forces before the dynasty, treating the movement as sedition rather than a signal of systemic failure, requested Chinese military assistance. That request triggered Japanese intervention under the terms of an earlier convention, and the two powers' rival deployments on Korean soil ignited the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-95). As a mass popular movement aiming to overturn the existing order of exploitation and foreign domination, the Donghak rising is structurally a revolution, and it proved the decisive hinge in the loss of Korean sovereignty.
- Year: 1894 CE
- Category: Military
