The rebellion spanned the Xianfeng and Tongzhi periods of the Qing dynasty, and was eventually suppressed with military force.
[3] The rebellion stemmed from a variety of grievances, including long-standing ethnic tensions with Han Chinese, poor administration, grinding poverty and growing competition for arable land.
[4] The rebellion started in March 1854, when "Yang Yuanbao, a farmer of the Buyi ethnic group from Dushan County, led hundreds of people to revolt".
[1] The aftermath of the rebellion left many areas of Guizhou depopulated, with farmland being overgrown and towns destroyed,[5] causing many Miao, Hmong and other groups to migrate into Vietnam and Laos.
[citation needed] The term "Miao", explains the anthropologist Norma Diamond, does not mean only the antecedents of today's Miao national minority; it is much more general term, which had been used by the Chinese to describe various aboriginal, mountain tribes of Guizhou and other southwestern provinces of China, which shared some cultural traits.