When the British finally intervened in the worst civil war in human history it turned out to be a disastrous mistake. People like Ed Husain should listen to lectures like this if ever in doubt about the value of interfering in other people's affairs such as is occurring in Syria.
Dr. Stephen R. Platt, a 2008-2010 fellow in the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations' Public Intellectuals Program, discusses his latest book, Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom: China, the West, and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War, at the Luce Foundation office in New York. The book is a military history of the nineteenth-century Taiping Rebellion, one of the largest civil wars in history. National Committee Vice-President Jan Berris moderates the event.
