Population-history reconstructions for Shaanxi and Gansu document a catastrophic regional population collapse across 1862 to 1877, but no historian has separated deaths directly caused by combat and massacre from the era's simultaneous famine, disease and mass flight, and Chu's political and military study of the revolt's course does not attempt a casualty count at all.
What would resolve this A demographic study working from surviving Qing provincial and local gazetteer population records across Shaanxi, Gansu and Ningxia, applying a consistent method capable of separating war and massacre deaths from the period's independently documented famine and plague mortality.
OpenLate Qing history; historical demographyWen-djang Chu, The Moslem Rebellion in Northwest China, 1862 to 1878: A Study of Government Minority Policy