PRE-OBLIGATORY ADMINISTRATIVE STUFF: Please go here to discuss the timeline, comment on it, or demand a refund. I've cleaned things up a bit from the original version and there are minor retcons, but it's pretty much the same.
OBLIGATORY ADMINISTRATIVE STUFF: I’ve never written a timeline before, so please be gentle when telling me how much I suck. This timeline will describe an alternate Taiping Rebellion, that being the civil war which tore China apart in the mid-19th century. I’ve never been much for the “1899: Important Thing Happened” style of alternate history, so I’m going to take a kind of history book approach to what happened, with occasional first-person bits. Additionally, there won’t be one big point when everything changes; rather, there will be a series of small unfortunate events (unfortunate if you’re a fan of the Qing Dynasty, that is). The real exciting stuff will start around 1850, but this post will mostly be about setting the stage for what’s to come. And . . . that’s it for the obligatory administrative stuff! So we begin.
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Introduction: The Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost, and the Other Guy
Excerpted from “Hong Xiuquan: The Man, the King, the God,” by Honda Keisuke. People’s University of Tokyo Press, 1979.
- 洪秀全 (Hong Xiuquan) was a man who could safely be discounted. For there were millions of others exactly like him. Born in the village of 福源水(Fuyuanshui) in Guangdong on January 1st, 1814 as 洪仁坤 (Hong Renkun), his parents, 洪兢扬 (Hong Jingyang) and 王氏 (Wang Shi) were members of the semi-proletariat middle-peasant class. Hong Xiuquan thus came of age under the thumb of the imperialist exploiting classes, who for centuries had held the laboring peasant masses in a state of feudal quasi-serfdom.
Hong was by all accounts a dutiful student, although his formal education was cut short at the age of fifteen, when his parents could no longer afford tuition fees. He continued studying on his own, and in 1836 traveled to the provincial capital of 广州 (Guangzhou) to take the civil service examinations. He returned home empty-handed, as did more than 95% of all those who attempted to earn degrees. Hong’s humble class origins worked against him; although examples of poor men who earned a degree and went on to fame and fortune were heavily publicized, in reality most of the degrees went to privileged scions of the reactionary elite classes. Hong sat the exams three more times, failing on each occasion. It was after his third failure that he had his first dreams, or “revelations” as they would later be called. Although previous scholarship has placed Hong Xiuquan in the role of proto-Marxist revolutionary, I will use a post-Modernist-neo-structuralist-anti-colonialist-deconstructo-formulistic Fourth Wave Marxism-Fukuzawaism (1) approach to argue that in fact, Hong was . . .
Excerpted from “The Birth of the Red Heresy,” by Paolo Bellucci. University of Florence Press, 1950. (2)
- In 1837, after failing the civil service examinations for the third time, Hong Xiuquan slipped into a fit of delirium, probably brought on by a combination of stress and shame. In the words of the famous Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, it was “the panic attack that changed the world.” The series of dreams that Hong had in this state have been written about and dramatized a thousand times. This volume will content itself with the facts. Hong later claimed that in his dreams he saw an old man complaining that men were worshipping demons instead of him, followed by Confucius being tortured for his sins and then repenting. In his most vivid hallucination, Hong dreamt of being brought to heaven on the wings of angels and meeting a golden-bearded man who ordered him to rid the world of evil, after which he took out Hong’s organs and replaced them with new ones. Most critically, the bearded man addressed Hong as “Younger Brother.”
Hong saw no greater meaning in these dreams for six years, until in 1843 he failed the examinations for the fourth time. It was then that his cousin Li Jingfang gave him the book 劝世良言 (Quan shi liang yan, or Good Words to Exhort the World), a Christian tract by the writer Liang Afa. Thus was the Red Heresy born; Hong immediately connected the tenets of Christianity to his dreams from six years earlier. He saw himself as the adopted younger brother of Jesus Christ, who had been sent by God to rid China of Confucianism and found a new heavenly kingdom. Hong’s first converts were his cousins Feng Yunshan and Hong Rengan, who had also repeatedly failed the civil service examinations. After being forced out of their village by Confucians, the three men traveled to 广西 (Guangxi Province), where they began to preach and by 1850 had assembled a group of at least 10,000 converts, known as the 拜上帝会 (Bai Shangdi hui, or God-Worshippers Society).
Excerpted from “Bad Houseguests: The History of the Kejia People,” by Allison Seymour. New York: Goldman, Sachs and Company, 2002.
- Although much has been written about the religious dimensions of the Taiping Rebellion, relatively little mention has been given to its origins as an ethnically-based movement. In fact, Hong Xiuquan, his cousins, and the core of the Taiping army and administration were members of the 客家 (Kejia) minority. The 客家 (Kejia, or Hakka, literally meaning “guest people”) have a long and complicated history . . .
The earliest supporters of the Taiping Rebellion came not only from the Kejia, but from another prominent ethnic minority in Southern China – the 壮 (Zhuang) people. In effect the Taiping Rebellion began as an uprising by disaffected minority peasants, spurred into action by their charismatic leader.
NOTES
(1) This would be 福澤諭吉 (Fukuzawa Yukichi), who in the real world was an incredibly influential Japanese philosopher, educator, and political theorist. I have plans for him.
(2) Hong’s heterodox interpretation of Christianity has been dubbed “The Red Heresy” due to a mistake made by his former teacher, American missionary Issachar Jacox Roberts. As Hong’s fame grew, so too did Roberts’, and in 1858 he published a book detailing his experiences entitled My Name is Red. This title was chosen based on Roberts’ mistaken belief – his Chinese wasn’t that great – that the “Hong” in Hong Xiuquan was written with the character 红, which means red. In fact it’s written with the character 洪, which means vast or grand. Roberts was unaware of this fact, and even if he had been, My Name is Vast just doesn’t sound as good. Like all misunderstandings it spread rapidly, unchecked by the truth, and even today Hong Christianity is commonly referred to as the “Red Heresy,” and the Great Kingdom of Heavenly Peace is often simply known as “Red China.”
*Careful readers will notice that everything so far pretty much happened in real life – there’s not too much alternate in this history yet. Sorry. I did it this way because the Taiping Rebellion isn’t as well known in the West as it might be, and thus I thought it was important to establish the context in which it occurred. Next update coming tomorrow.
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Part #1: Nobody Expects the Taiping Revolution!
Excerpted from “The Beginning of the Beginning: The Taiping Rebellion, 1851-53,” by Marmaduke Tickled-Pinkington. Cambridge University Press, 1983.
- The 太平天国 (Taiping tianguo, or Great Kingdom of Heavenly Peace) was proclaimed by Hong Xiuquan in January of 1851 from his power base in eastern Guangxi Province. Hong’s army, which now numbered more than 20,000 men and women, had been allowed to flourish unmolested by local Qing bureaucrats, who were spending much of their time and energy attempting to put down another rebellion, that of the 天地会 (Tiandihui, or Heaven and Earth Society) (1). By the time they noticed the clouds gathering overhead, the storm had already begun. On January 1st, 1851, Qing troops sallied forth in an attempt to crush the rebels at Jintian Village, only to be defeated in an ambush. Thus began the opening phase of the Taiping Rebellion, often known as the 金田超义 (Jintian chaoyi, or Jintian Uprising). The two armies fought a series of engagements over the next six months, in which neither side was able to strike a decisive blow in the dense jungles of Guangxi. The Qing armies failed to destroy the rebels; likewise, the Taiping were unable to break out of Guangxi and strike north. However, the Jintian Uprising must on balance be regarded as a victory for the Taiping rebels, who merely by surviving attracted substantial popular support and gained needed materiel for the campaigns to come.
In 1852 the Taiping succeeded where they had failed the previous year and broke out of Guangxi, successfully conquering the city of 长沙 (Changsha, capital of Hunan Province) after a prolonged siege. The Army of Heavenly Peace – an oxymoron if there ever was one – continued their onslaught, taking the cities of 汉口 (Hankou) and 武昌 (Wuchang) in late 1852 and marching through the central 长江 (Chang River) valley on the way to their ultimate goal – 南京 (Nanjing), the Southern Capital (2).
Excerpted from “The Rape of Nanking,” by Rose Zhang. University of California Los Angeles Press, 1992. (3)
- One of the more overlooked atrocities in modern history happened in March of 1853, when Hong Xiuquan’s “Army of Heavenly Peace” entered and sacked the ancient city of Nanking. This enormous and disciplined band of fanatics swept aside all resistance, destroying the Qing defenders utterly and murdering at least 50,000 prisoners of war who had surrendered after the battle. The victorious legions of God’s second son then tore through the city itself, burning and killing indiscriminately as they went. One survivor later wrote: “Buckets of blood were spilled indiscriminately . . . I saw one group of them cutting [a man’s] organs out and feeding them to him . . . after three days of terror the skies roared and the rains begin to fall, as if even the gods themselves were saying ‘Enough.’ Only then was the blood and offal cleansed from the streets of Nanjing.” After the massacre was concluded, Hong Xiuquan declared Nanjing as the capital of the Great Kingdom of Heavenly Peace, renaming the city 天京 (Tianjing, or Heavenly Capital) and converting the residence of the local Qing administrator into his 天王府 (Tianwang fu, or Palace of the Heavenly King). Dark days had come to the Middle Kingdom, and even darker ones lay ahead . . .
Excerpted from “What If?: Conterfactuals That Could Have Changed the World,” edited by Scheherazade Wang and Rajiv Martinez. University of Antananarivo Press, 1966.
- In 1853 the Taiping were ascendant, having taken the city of Nanjing and extended their control over much of southern China. Their strength was mirrored by the weakness of the Qing, a dynasty in decline that was poised on the brink of disaster. What if the Taiping had taken advantage of the momentum they possessed and launched a campaign aimed at 北京 (Beijing) itself? It is highly possible – even probable – that the 清朝 (Qing Dynasty) would have crumbled before them. (4)
Hong Xiuquan chose a different approach, preferring to consolidate his gains and re-order the army and administrative structures of his fledgling kingdom. One of the greatest strengths of the rebellion lay in the Army of Heavenly Peace, which was organized, disciplined, and utterly fanatical. Known as the 长毛 (Changmao, or Long Hair) by their Qing adversaries, the army was drawn almost totally from the lower classes and even included female soldiers in combat roles, although units were strictly segregated by sex.
Naturally, the Taiping government was headed by Hong Xiuquan himself, who ruled as the Heavenly King from his palace in the newly-renamed city of 天京 (Tianjing). In a move that was little-noticed at the time, Hong chose to retire from the daily affairs of government in favor of spending more time receiving visions from God – a decision he would later live to regret. While Hong was still unquestionably the paramount leader of the kingdom, increasing amounts of power devolved upon five provincial rulers, who were themselves named as “kings” by Hong. Of these men, the first among equals was 杨秀清 (Yang Xiuqing), the 东王 (Eastern King) and de facto prime minister. Yang, a former firewood salesman, employed a vast network of spies and was known for his eagerness to amass as many titles as he could; his nemesis was 韦昌辉 (Wei Changhui), the 北王 (Northern King). The Southern and Western Kings, Feng Yunshan and Xiao Chaogui, both died in separate engagements in 1852; most of their power was taken by Yang Xiuqing, although some fell to 秦日刚 (Qin Rigang), the 燕王 (Yan wang, or Swallow King). Finally, there was 石达开 (Shi Dakai), the rebellion’s most capable general, who was given the title 翼王五千岁 (Yi wang wuqiansui, or the Wing King, Lord of Five Thousand Years). Old rivalries quickly came to the fore, and soon these men were spending as much time fighting with each other as they were with the armies of the Qing . . . (5)
Excerpted from “The Saturday Night Massacre: Inside the Taiping Coup,” by Archibald Cox. Washington: Watergate Press, 1974.
- The internecine rivalries that had plagued the Heavenly Kingdom since its inception came to a head on the night of September 1, 1854 in the famous 周六半夜大屠杀 - Zhouliu banye datusha, or Saturday Night Massacre - as it has come to be called by Western scholars; Taiping historians prefer the more anodyne 天京事件 (Tianjing Incident). Regardless of the term used to describe the events of that night, they were anything but incidental. Since the fall of Nanjing, Eastern King Yang Xiuqing had steadily amassed power to the point where had earned the enmity not only of his longtime rival, Northern King Wei Changhui, but also of Hong Xiuquan himself. Yang and Hong had fundamental disagreements regarding the scale of the reforms to be implemented in the Heavenly Kingdom; unlike Hong, Yang thought that Confucianism was compatible with the Taiping brand of heterodox Christianity. After one incident in which Yang suggested to Hong that the two of them should be regarded as equals, the Heavenly King decided that enough was enough, and ordered Wei Changhui, Qin Rigang and Shi Dakai to kill Yang Xiuqing and all of his followers. Ironically, the Saturday Night Massacre actually began on the previous day – Friday, August 31 – when Wei and Qin’s troops entered Tianjing (Shi Dakai had yet to arrive) and descended on Yang’s residence – only to discover that their arrival had been anticipated. Yang’s labyrinthine network of spies had alerted him to the coming storm, and thus the armies of Wei and Qin were greeted with organized resistance from Yang’s followers. A night of battle ensued under the red lanterns in the streets of Tianjing. Wei and Qin’s forces eventually gained the upper hand and forced the Yang loyalists into a fighting retreat to the outskirts of the city, but were unable to consummate the victory. As dawn broke they moved through the now-ruined western quarter of Tianjing, summarily executing all those sympathetic to Yang who were still left – and some others who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Shi Dakai, the Wing King, Lord of Five Thousand Years, arrived at noon the following day with his army. Though his orders stated in no uncertain terms that he was to do away with Yang Xiuqing, upon his arrival Shi attempted mediation between the two sides, hoping that a settlement could be reached. His attempts were for nought, and after receiving several increasingly irate messages from the Heavenly King telling him to get on with it, Shi prepared to complete the defeat of Yang Xiuqing. As Shi was organizing the disposition of his forces, a bedraggled servant from his household stumbled into camp and delivered the news that Shi’s entire family had been killed – executed by Wei and Qin’s forces the night before. Though revisionist historians have suggested that the servant – whose name is lost to posterity – was in fact one of Yang’s many spies, there is no evidence to support this contention, and in any case his report was indisputably correct. That evening, when Shi Dakai did make his attack, it was not against the Yang loyalists, but was rather a surprise descent on the unprepared armies of Wei and Qin. What ensued was not a battle, but a rout. Qin Rigang was killed in the engagement, while Wei Changhui was captured and executed the following day; he was strapped to the mouth of a cannon which was then fired. Chronicler 邢立臣 (Xing Lichen) later wrote, “A haze of blood filled the sky, and for three days thereafter the crows feasted on the man who had once been the King of the North.” Shi Dakai and Yang Xiuqing met in a dilapidated teahouse in the southern quarter of Tianjing at the stroke of midnight, after their shared adversaries had been crushed. No record of what was said at that meeting survives, but their actions thereafter speak for themselves. For Hong Xiuquan never again left the Palace of the Heavenly King . . . (6)
NOTES
(1) The 天地会 was a secret society dedicated to overthrowing the Qing Dynasty and restoring the Ming Dynasty.
(2) So named because it was the capital of China for a few hundred years, until the 永乐 (Yongle) Emperor moved it to Beijing because . . . well, because he felt like it, and he was the emperor.
(3) This timeline’s version of the Rape of Nanjing happens a little earlier. The “author” of this “excerpt” is more than a little biased – there were only light massacres in reality, and the city was definitely not sacked or anything.
(4) This would be another great starting point for a Taiping Rebellion timeline, as there was a significant chance that had the Taiping gone for the jugular, the Qing would have collapsed. Needless to say, I’m going in a different direction.
(5) They were a fractious bunch, those Taiping.
(6) So obviously, this is the point of divergence. Originally I had planned a series of small events instead of one big thing, but I kept on landing here. Quite a bit of what I described actually happened in the real world: Hong and Yang had a falling out, and Hong ordered the others to get rid of him. Our first divergence is that in the real world, Yang was taken unawares. I have him finding out about the plot in advance due to his network of spies (which he was indeed famed for). Likewise, Shi Dakai did in fact show up late to the party, and his entire family was actually killed by Wei Changhui’s troops, and he did really turn and destroy Wei and Qin’s armies. The big difference is that in the real world, Yang was already dead, so Shi wasn’t technically disobeying Hong. In my timeline Yang is still alive, so when Shi learns of the deaths of his family and goes apeshit, he’s also aiding Yang Xiuqing and in effect pitting himself against Hong Xiuquan. Thus, he and Yang cooperate and stage a quasi-coup (it’s a bit complicated, as will be explained in the next entry) out of self-preservation as much as anything else – it was either Hong or them. Other divergences in this POD: the real Tianjing Incident took place in 1856; mine occurs in 1854. Furthermore, in real life the incident unfolded over a period of weeks. I compressed the timeline of the events, more for simplicity’s sake than anything else, as I couldn’t keep track of when everything was supposed to be happening. Hey, it’s alternate history, right?
I know that’s a rather long-winded explanation, but especially since the POD is so dramatic I feel compelled to provide some justification for it. I think I’m on reasonably solid ground here, given that a lot of what I described actually did take place, but comments, suggestions and criticism are all welcome. The next update is coming on Thursday. And thanks to everyone who's commented so far.
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Part #2: The Twelve Puppeteers
Excerpted from “Governance in the Heavenly Kingdom,” by Caroline Zuma. University of Toronto Press, 1982.
- How do you solve a problem called Hong Xiuquan? This was the dilemma faced by 石达开 (Shi Dakai) and 杨秀清 (Yang Xiuqing). While it must have been tempting to make a public spectacle of his downfall, or simply to announce that the Heavenly King had suffered a fatal accident, Shi and Yang realized that without Hong’s presence the rebellion was doomed to collapse. After all, it was Hong’s charisma and leadership that had united the rebels into a cohesive force and given them strength and purpose. But the main reason why Hong could not simply be dumped in a ditch was religious in nature. The Heavenly Kingdom itself was based on the idea that Hong was the son of God and the brother of Jesus Christ – and one does not simply depose the divine. Thus, instead of tearing Hong down, Shi and Yang built him up, issuing a series of declarations that both proclaimed his divinity and announced that he was retiring from earthly affairs to commune with his father and older brother, God and Jesus Christ. While these grand proclamations were being issued, including one which stated that Hong and his scions would rule the Heavenly Kingdom for ten thousand years, Shi and Yang were creating the structures of a new government. Thus was the 使徒会 (Shitu hui, or Council of the Apostles) formed. Supposedly established to “faithfully interpret and execute the divine words of the Heavenly King (遵奉地解释,执行天王神圣之懿旨) (1),” in fact the Council of Apostles was the body through which Shi and Yang ruled the Taiping Tianguo. Most of the twelve members of the council were firmly in the pockets of Shi and Yang, although there were some members who were powerful in their own right, most notably the brilliant naval commander 唐正才 (Tang Zhengcai). Shi and Yang’s silent coup was immeasurably aided by the air of ambiguity that surrounded the entire enterprise. Most people had no idea what had actually happened, and even some members of the Council of Apostles were under the illusion that Hong was still in charge. (2) Hong had surrendered responsibility for the day-to-day affairs of the kingdom the year before of his own accord, and thus most people found it quite easy to believe that he would retire from temporal affairs completely. In any event, a great deal of the army was personally loyal to Shi Dakai . . .
Thus it was that Hong Xiuquan lived out the remainder of his days under de facto house arrest in the Palace of the Heavenly King, which he never again left. He was watched at all times by the 天王保护队 (Tianwang baohu dui, or Guardians of the Heavenly King) – more commonly known to Western readers as the Red Guards - which were an elite unit handpicked by and loyal to Yang Xiuqing, who ensured that Hong stayed right where he was. It is said that Hong’s chefs – also handpicked by Yang – put copious amounts of opium in the Heavenly King’s meals. Hong’s days were spent in a drug-addled haze; his nights were spent with one or more of his two hundred concubines. (3)
Excerpted from “Taiping Social Policy: A Study in Contradictions,” by Jehoshaphat Trumbull. University of British Columbia Press, 1922.
- The Taiping Kingdom was, on paper at least, inarguably the most progressive and egalitarian society in the world. A policy of strict equality between the sexes was declared; women were allowed to take the civil service examinations and serve in combat roles in the military. Prostitution and polygamy were banned on pain of death – although many Taiping leaders continued to keep concubines – and foot binding, slavery, opium, and gambling were also proscribed (4). The society that Hong Xiuquan created also leaned towards Marxism (although Hong wouldn’t have known Marx from a hole in the ground). Private property was abolished and society was declared to be classless. Taiping society also had a theocratic bent: the subject of the civil service examinations was changed from the Confucian classics to the Bible, and all citizens were required to undergo baptism and convert to Christianity.
In the early years of the Taiping, this society essentially existed only on paper. Civil administration ranged from shaky to nonexistent, and most of the Taiping social reforms were not implemented in the countryside. It was probably best for all concerned that the Taiping didn’t try too hard to enforce these policies, especially the more esoteric ones. For example, Hong decreed that the sexes should be strictly separated and that even married couples must not live together or . . . do other things that married couples often do (5). This policy was unceremoniously abandoned after the Silent Coup that followed the Saturday Night Massacre of 1854. Taiping internal policy changed dramatically after the fall of Hong and the rise of Yang Xiuqing and Shi Dakai to prominence. Yang, who had always been a modernizer – it was he who had previously agitated for the change to a solar instead of a lunar calendar – embraced Western ideas, calling on citizens to build a 和谐社会 (hexie shehui, or Harmonious Society) that was rooted in 科学发展 (kexue fazhan, or Scientific Development). Yet he also softened restrictions on the practice of Confucianism and property ownership. (6) Yang had long believed that Confucian morality was compatible with the Taiping brand of Christianity, and thus he allowed Confucianism to resume its role in the lives of the people. This trend culminated in 1877, when the Council of Apostles announced that they had received a “revelation” from Hong Xiuquan stating that just as he was Jesus’ younger brother, so too was Confucius God’s younger brother, who had been sent to Earth to spread morality and right thinking . . . (7).
Excerpted from “History of the Qing Dynasty, 1644-1976: The Reign of the Xianfeng Emperor,” by Maarten Maartens. University of Leiden Press, 2002.
- The 咸丰帝 (Xianfeng Emperor) was the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time. After all, the Dragon Throne was no place for an opium-smoking, alcoholic teenager. Yet when his father the 道光帝 (Daoguang Emperor) died in 1850, Xianfeng (then known as Prince Yizhu) came to power at the tender age of nineteen. The newly-crowned emperor, a fervent traditionalist who believed in the inherent superiority of China over the encroaching Westerners, was almost immediately confronted with a challenge of a different sort – the Taiping Rebellion. Xianfeng could only watch in horror as the Army of Heavenly Peace swept through southern China, culminating with their capture of Nanjing in March of 1853, only two years after the rebellion had begun. He responded to the Taiping threat by sending several prominent officials south with a mandate to crush the rebellion. The most notable of these officials was 曾国藩 (Zeng Guofan).
Zeng rose to prominence when he recaptured the cities of Hankou and Wuchang from the Taiping in 1852, although the Taiping quickly re-re-captured them. He was quickly noticed by the court, which appointed him to the Board of War and gave him carte blanche to take any and all measures necessary to put down the rebellion. In response to the imperial command Zeng raised a new force - 湘军 (Xiang Army) – and managed to stop the Taiping Army’s northern advance in the summer of 1853, after which they took the defensive and focused on consolidating their gains. The following year, as the factional feuding within the Taiping government worsened, Zeng’s Xiang Army attacked, pushing the Army of Heavenly Peace out of 江苏省 (Jiangsu Province). As 1855 began, it seemed that the tide had turned in favor of the Qing. It hadn’t. (8)
NOTES
(1) There’s a good chance that I butchered that translation.
(2) This is going to cause some trouble later on, but at the beginning the fact that no one really knew what was happening was critical to the success of Shi and Yang’s coup, which was made even easier by the fact that Hong was such a nutter that people could easily see him leaving public life completely to hang out with God.
(3) So don’t feel too sorry for Hong. Sure, he’s not allowed to leave his home, but it is a palace. Plus he doesn’t have to do any work, he’s treated like a god, given vast amounts of drugs, and gets the run of the harem to boot. Talk about the hardest job you’ll ever love . . .
(4) The Taiping attitude towards opium is definitely going to cause some problems down the road. Bet on it.
(5) Hong actually did decree that married couples could not live together or have sex. Did I mention that he was a crazy person? In real life this “reform” was dropped in 1855, as Yang Xiuqing’s power grew. In this timeline, Yang can grant the people of the Heavenly Kingdom conjugal visits a year earlier. PARTY!
(6) This is absolutely critical for the medium to long-term survival of the Taiping state. OTL one of the main reasons why they failed was a total inability to co-opt any of the scholar-bureaucrat class, who were understandably a bit turned off by the Confucius hate as well as some of the reforms that would hit them where it hurts – the wallet. With a new regime in charge, most of Hong’s crazier ideas are thrown out, and in particular the Taiping become more congenial to Confucianism. While they’re not exactly going to win the allegiance of the Chinese elite overnight, they will be able to co-opt a solid core of scholar-bureaucrats, which will enable them to actually administer the territory that they own.
(7) Yes, the Taiping Kingdom is shaping up to be a seriously weird place: a proto-Marxist modernizing totalitarian bureaucratic oligarchy, with a theocratic element tossed in for fun. And just to make things really weird, that theocratic element is Christianity with increasing amounts of Confucianism grafted on. Call it Christianity with Chinese Characteristics.
(8) So if you’re keeping score at home, from 1851 to early 1853, the Taiping pretty much kicked the Qing around. Things started to stabilize in mid-to-late 1853, and in 1854 the Qing regained some of their lost territory.
*Again, a big thank-you to everyone who has read and commented on this timeline so far. I’m always open to any suggestions or criticism that people have. In the next entry (which will probably be finished either tomorrow or Friday) things really start to heat up . . . and the foreign devils make their first appearance. Exciting times are ahead . . .
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Part #3: Frying Pans And Fires And Rocks And Hard Places
“善为士者不武,善战者不怒,善胜敌者不与,善用人者为之下。是谓不争之德,是谓用人之力,是谓配天之极. ”
Excerpted from “The Nian Rebellion,” by Abdullah Watson. 1997.
- If the only problem faced by the Qing had been the Taiping Rebellion, things still would have been difficult for the dynasty. With the addition of another revolution to the mix, the Xianfeng Emperor could have been forgiven for considering himself cursed. Unlike the Taiping Rebellion, the 捻军起义 (Nian jun qi yi, or Nian Rebellion) was not motivated by ethnic, class or religious considerations. Instead, the revolutionaries were driven simply by anger at a government that had failed them. The 黄河 (Yellow River) had flooded in 1851, causing massive loss of life; in the wake of this disaster no help came from Beijing, which was both broke and busy. When the river flooded again in 1855 and relief was again slow to arrive, many citizens decided that enough was enough. They were led by the charismatic 张乐行 (Zhang Lexing), who organized the revolutionaries into a well-organized guerrilla force that relied on cavalry in attack and the impregnability of their fortified cities in defense. The timing of the rebellion was disastrous for the Qing, who had been making gains against the Taiping in 1854. Now the Qing armies were cut off from their supply lines, and another hostile force had suddenly emerged behind them. The Taiping seized on the opportunity presented to them by the Nian Rebellion, sending troops under the command of the general 赖文光 (Lai Wenguang) to aid Zhang Lexing and his revolutionaries.
Beijing responded, sending an army commanded by the Mongolian general 僧格林沁 (Senggelinqin) to put down the rebellion. Yet the Qing were unlucky once more; Senggelinqin’s army was ambushed by Nian rebels west of 济南 (Jinan) in October of 1855, and the general himself was killed. In a last-ditch attempt to avert total disaster, Zeng Guofan detached a portion of his army under the command of 左宗棠 (Zuo Zongtang), one of his most trusted subordinates, and sent them north to battle the Nian. Showing the skills that would later earn him a place on menus worldwide (1), Zuo’s army achieved some notable successes against the Nian, even capturing Zhang Lexing in 1856. Yet even as Zuo waged his campaign against the Nian, the decision to send him north left the Qing armies in the field against the Taiping outnumbered and undermanned. The Taiping were not in a position to take full advantage of this; after all, Shi Dakai was not present, having embarked on the famous 南伐 (Nan fa, or Southern Expedition). Yet they still held the advantage and achieved some breakthroughs, most famously in July of 1856 when the Taiping Navy, under the command of 唐正才 (Tang Zhengcai), captured the city of 上海 (Shanghai) in a daring amphibious assault.
Excerpted from “The Panthay Rebellion,” by Ono Kanji. People’s University of Sapporo Press, 1963.
- The 杜文秀起义 (Du Wenxiu qiyi, or Du Wenxiu Rebellion), also known as the Panthay Rebellion, began in 云南省 (Yunnan Province) in 1856. The revolutionaries were predominantly 回 (Hui), a Muslim minority who had been discriminated against for years by the government of the region. In 1856 local uprisings broke out across Yunnan, and rebels under the leadership of 杜文秀 (Du Wenxiu) captured the city of 大理 (Dali) and declared the establishment of a new nation, 平南国 (Pingnan guo, or the Peaceful Southern Nation). Although the rebellion was primarily a Muslim affair, it was aided by many of the minority groups that were scattered throughout Yunnan Province. It was also aided by another emerging power – the Taiping Kingdom. Troops were detached from Shi Dakai’s Southern Expedition under the command of 李世贤 (Li Shixian) to aid Du Wenxiu and his fellow revolutionaries. In contrast, the Qing Dynasty could offer no help to the officials responsible for the defense of Yunnan; there were simply too many other priorities, and Yunnan was too far away. Although the Qing troops in Yunnan were ably led by 岑毓英 (Cen Yuying) they could only be in one place at a time, and had no chance of being able to put down a province-wide rebellion, especially not once the battle-hardened Taiping Army had arrived on the scene. In Yunnan, the Chinese proverb 天高皇帝远 (Tian gao huangdi yuan, or, Heaven is high, and the emperor is far away) proved to be an all too appropriate summary of the situation for the Qing armies charged with the defense of the province. (2)
Excerpted from “The Southern Expedition,” by Zhang Xiaolong. 1912.
- In the spring of 1855, after he had firmly established his position along with Yang Xiuqing as one of the two main power brokers in the Taiping Kingdom, 石达开 (Shi Dakai) – the Wing King, Lord of Five Thousand Years – prepared for his next campaign against the forces of the Qing. Everyone – including his own staff officers – assumed that Shi would strike north, attempting to defeat the forces of Zeng Guofan and threaten Beijing itself. But Shi Dakai had never been one for conforming to the expectations of others, and decided on an alternative course of action. Instead of going north he went south, driving deep into the rich provinces of 浙江 (Zhejiang), 福建 (Fujian), and 广东 (Guangdong). The campaign itself, known to posterity as 南伐 (Nan fa), or the Southern Expedition, was conducted masterfully and took full advantage of both the weakness of Qing forces in the southeast and the near impossibility that the Qing would be able to reinforce those regions. (3)
As Shi’s armies marched south people flocked to the banner of the Wing King, further bolstering his numbers. Shi won decisive engagements at 衢州 (Quzhou) and 三明 (Sanming) in 1855, and even after detaching part of his forces under the command of 李世贤 (Li Shixian) in 1856 to aid Du Wenxiu’s rebels in 1856, his advance continued. In the fall of 1856 Shi Dakai defeated the last organized Qing resistance outside the city of 肇庆 (Zhaoqing) in Guangdong Province and began to liberate the southeastern coastal cities of 杭州 (Hangzhou), 福州 (Fuzhou), 厦门 (Xiamen), and 广州 (Guangzhou). Yet as Shi’s army took these port cities from the Qing, they also inadvertently opened an unpleasant can of worms. For several of these cities were treaty ports – home to and essentially controlled by foreign traders, who began to take a long look at the power that was rising in the South. In many cases, they didn’t like what they saw . . .
Excerpted from “Foreign Tools and Chinese Ideas: Inside the Qing Modernization Movement,” by Natasha Hu. 2004.
- In 1856 the 咸丰帝 (Xianfeng Emperor) had not yet reached the age of twenty-five – yet he was already an old man. Since assuming the throne he had watched impotently as the empire that he had inherited crumbled before his very eyes. As more and more bad news came to Beijing from the front, Xianfeng – a heavy drinker at the best of times – hit the bottle even harder, frequently disappearing from court for days at a time to drink and pursue one of his other vices, the use of opium. Both his physical and mental health began to deteriorate, and the eunuchs and courtiers of the Forbidden City started to whisper amongst themselves about the emperor’s fading grip on reality. The straw that broke the camel’s back came in February of 1856 when a seasonal flu swept through Beijing. As flu outbreaks go, it was no worse than most years; a few thousand residents of the city died, and ordinarily such an event would have gone unnoticed by the imperial court. But disease cares little for rank or title, and as it happened one of the victims of the virus was Imperial Concubine Yi, who was pregnant with what would have been the Emperor’s first child (4). The loss of his favorite concubine and his unborn child – in addition to the loss of a large chunk of his kingdom – was too much for the Xianfeng Emperor to bear. The hysterical monarch fled to his summer palace at 承德 (Chengde), where he wandered the grounds, rending his garments and tearing his hair. After several days he began to refuse nourishment, and on May 4th, the Xianfeng Emperor passed away.
Given that Xianfeng had died without issue, the throne passed to his younger half-brother 奕欣恭亲王 (Yixin, the 1st Prince Gong). After surviving an assassination attempt on his life by the traditionalist faction at court, Yixin assumed the Dragon Throne in June, taking the regnal name 永胜 (Yongsheng, or Eternal Victory) (5). The newly-crowned emperor bore almost no resemblance to his deceased half-brother; he was dynamic and vigorous. Most importantly, he had long been an advocate of modernization and was passionately interested in Western technology and ideas (6). The situation inherited by Yongsheng was dire to say the least, as the Taiping armies swept through the south with seeming impunity. Yet before he could turn his full attention to the rebellion, Yongsheng had to deal with crisis. For the foreign barbarians were knocking on China’s gates again, and everyone remembered what they had done to the Middle Kingdom only fifteen short years before . . .
NOTES
(1) His name was 左宗棠, but you may know him as General Tso. I am told that his chicken is delicious.
(2) Both the Nian and the Panthay Rebellion did indeed occur in real life. IOTL they failed to really coordinate with the Taiping, and thus all three of the rebellions were eventually put down by the Qing Dynasty. In this timeline, the not-crazy Taiping regime is giving a lot of help to their revolutionary counterparts.
(3) The inspiration for the “Southern Expedition” (itself a shout-out to the Northern Expedition, which happened in 1928) comes from Shi Dakai’s Sichuan campaigns of the early 1860s, which ended in failure. Needless to say, he’s doing better this time around.
(4) This so did not happen in real life. You may know the Imperial Concubine Yi by the title she assumed later – 慈禧太后 (Dowager Empress Ci Xi). IOTL she had the baby – who became the 同治帝 (Tongzhi Emperor) – but she pretty much ruled China in her own right for almost fifty years, screwing things up royally along the way. But now she’s dead. As for Xianfeng’s demise, he really was an alcoholic opium addict with a tenuous grip on sanity, and he pretty much did go crazy and drop dead. IOTL this happened in 1860 and the event that prompted it all was China’s defeat in the Second Opium War. I figured that the combination of greater Taiping success and the death of his favorite concubine and unborn child would have the same effect.
(5) Never let it be said that the Qing Dynasty does not believe in the power of positive thinking.
(6) Prince Gong assuming the throne is the best thing that could happen to Qing China. In real life he was pretty much like I described him here – a firm believer in China’s need to modernize.
*So it’s probably becoming apparent where I’m going with all this by now, but here it is anyway. There’s going to be a Taiping China and a Qing China, and they’re both going to be industrializing as fast as they can, both due to the mentalities of their leaders and fear of each other. Basically, I see your one modernizing China and raise you another.
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Part #4: How to Make Friends and Influence Foreign Devils
“弱之胜强,柔之胜刚,天下莫不知,莫能行。是以圣人云,爱国之垢,是谓社棱主,爱国不祥,是为天下王。正 言若反.”
Excerpted from “Barbarians at the Great Wall: 19th Century Western Imperialism in China,” by X. Egbert Fappington-Twatley. University of Leeds Press, 1989.
- China had been rudely disabused of its arrogance and complacency in 1839, when the British Empire swept aside the armies of the Middle Kingdom and forced the Qing Dynasty to sign the humiliating and unequal 南京条约 (Treaty of Nanjing) in 1842. The French and Americans stuck their feet in the door as well, and the Qing granted them trade privileges and extraterritoriality as well in the Treaty of the Bogue (1843) and the Wangxia Treaty (1844). The treaties were damaging to China in many ways; they undercut the nation’s traditional sense of superiority, allowed the opium trade to continue, and gave foreigners a privileged status above Chinese in several “treaty ports.” Yet the worst part about the unequal treaties was that in each one of them, a clause was inserted allowing for renegotiation after a dozen years had passed. Thus it was that in the mid-1850s the foreigners came back for more concessions – and with China in the midst of revolution, they couldn’t have arrived at a worse time.
The British and the French attempted to begin renegotiation of the treaties in 1855, hoping to gain further concessions, but made little headway with the representatives of the Xianfeng Emperor, a hardcore traditionalist. Had their patience run out and war been declared on the Qing, it certainly would have been the end of the dynasty. But the Xianfeng Emperor died in the spring of 1856 and was replaced by his half-brother, a firm supporter of modernization. The newly-crowned 永胜帝 (Yongsheng Emperor) was such an advocate of Westernization that his nickname at court was 鬼子六 (Guizi liu, or Devil Number Six), a reference to his fondness for the foreign devils and his position as the 六王爷 (Liu wangye, or Sixth Prince) (1). Needless to say, this nickname fell out of fashion once he had been crowned emperor. Yongsheng restarted the treaty renegotiation talks in the summer of 1856, quickly earning himself the admiration of the European negotiators. James Bruce, 8th Earl of Elgin, the lead negotiator for the British Empire, wrote of Yongsheng, “The current emperor of the Celestial Kingdom sits with us for hours and dickers over the smallest clauses, a shocking departure from the remoteness of his predecessors . . . though his amity is beyond reproach and his clear interest in the broader world unquestioned, I wonder sometimes if his true calling is that of a particularly hard-fisted merchant, for on several occasions upon the conclusion of our sessions I have felt compelled to check my purse after leaving, just so as to ensure that it is still there . . .”
The negotiations were not without difficulties. While none of the parties were especially eager to mention it, they all knew that not only did the Qing Dynasty no longer control any of the five cities that had been designated as treaty ports, but even the city in which the treaty itself had been signed was now the capital of a new nation. Yet Yongsheng, knowing that the Qing could not survive another foreign war, persevered and managed to reach an accord with the British and French. The 天津条约 (Treaty of Tianjin) was signed in June of 1857. Naturally, the British and French got pretty much what they wanted – the right to establish embassies in Beijing, the right to travel freely in the internal regions of China, the right of foreign vessels to navigate freely on China’s rivers, and the opening of eight new treaty ports in territory still under Qing control. Furthermore, the opium trade was officially legalized. (2) An additional treaty with the United States was signed a few months later, more or less with the same clauses as the British and French versions. The Yongsheng Emperor had also requested British and French aid in the struggle against the Taiping Kingdom. While neither country was prepared to commit to a full-scale war in China to support the Qing, they did sell weapons and technology and allowed some of their soldiers to “resign” and join the Qing military (3). With the treaties concluded, the Yongsheng Emperor thought that he could turn his full attention back to fighting the Taiping. But there was one foreign power that he had overlooked . . .
Excerpted from “The Second Opium War,” by Svetlana Chandrasekhar. University of Bombay Press, 1955.
- As the Army of Heavenly Peace advanced through southern China – taking control of the treaty ports of 广州 (Guangzhou), 厦门 (Xiamen), 上海 (Shanghai), 宁波 (Ningbo), and 福州 (Fuzhou) in the process – the foreign powers realized that they had no choice but to deal with the fledgling Taiping Kingdom. Britain, France and the United States hoped to force the Taiping to recognize the Treaty of Nanjing and to open more ports to trade The Taiping, on the other hand, were almost naively endearing in their hopes. They assumed that as “fellow Christians”, the Western powers would be eager to form alliances with them and aid in the overthrow of the Qing. The negotiations began in the fall of 1856, and the speed with which each side managed to offend the other was perhaps unprecedented in the annals of diplomacy. The trouble began when the Westerners, still believing that Hong Xiuquan ruled the Taiping, demanded an audience with the Heavenly King himself. Of course, Hong had been under virtual house arrest for the past two years, and the kingdom was ruled by the 使徒会 (Council of Apostles), which was firmly in the pocket of Yang Xiuqing and Shi Dakai. Yang, who did not want to advertise the fact that he had overthrown Hong, tried to delay and prevaricate, but the foreigners continued – loudly and angrily – to demand a meeting with Hong. In desperation, Yang dressed one of his household servants up as the emperor and summoned the foreigners to meet with “Hong Xiuquan” at the Palace of the Heavenly King. The servant, known to posterity only as 小王 (Little Wang), had been ordered on pain of death to commit to no agreements with the foreign dignitaries. As the following transcription of the meeting (taken by secretary to the American delegation Caleb Henry) indicates, Little Wang took his orders all too seriously:
MR. PARKES (British representative): It is our strong desire that Your Majesty’s government recognize the provisions of the Treaty of Nanjing.
EMPEROR HONG (through an interpreter): Perhaps we will do this. But perhaps we will not.
M. DESJARDINS (French representative): I beg Your Majesty’s pardon?
EMPEROR HONG: We will no doubt comply with the provisions of the treaty.
MR. PARKES: That is wonderful news, and my government will be very pleased to hear it.
EMPEROR HONG: Yes, we will naturally comply. Of course we might not comply, in which case we certainly will not have complied.
MR. WILCOX (US representative): Could Your Majesty perhaps be a little . . . clearer?
EMPEROR HONG: Maybe.
M. DESJARDINS (to Mssrs. Wilcox and Seymour): What the devil is he playing at?
MR. PARKES: Maybe it’s an issue of translation.
MR. WILCOX: He looks quite pale, doesn’t he? [to the Emperor] Your Majesty, are you quite well?
EMPEROR HONG: It is difficult to say.
Aside from that comedy of errors, there were other issues that plagued the negotiators. Great Britain demanded legalization of the opium trade, which to the Taiping was completely unacceptable. Religion was another sticking point. The French were insistent on the right of missionaries to evangelize, which offended the Taiping, who insisted that they were already a Christian nation. As Yang Xiuqing famously put it, “应该送你们的传教士到罗马去” (You might as well send them to Rome instead!) (4). Both sides were disgusted with each other, and the casus belli came in December of 1857, when French missionary Auguste Chapdelaine was beheaded by local authorities in Guangxi province for “denying the divinity of the Heavenly King” (否天王之神性), thus leading many satirists to dub the conflict “The War of Chapdelaine’s Head.”
Whether one refers to it as the War of Chapdelaine’s Head or as the Second Opium War, the outcome of the conflict was never in doubt. The Army of Heavenly Peace may have been fanatical, battle-hardened, and disciplined, but it was no match for the Royal Navy. An Anglo-French expeditionary force under the command of Admiral Sir James Hope attacked and occupied 广州 (Guangzhou), while another force led by the French general Jean-Baptiste Louis Gros took Shanghai. In the piece de resistance of the whole affair, a Royal Navy squadron sailed into the mouth of the 长江 (Chang River) basin and bombarded the Taiping capital, 天京 (Tianjing, or the City Formerly Known as Nanjing). After this last flourish the Council of Apostles concluded that they had no choice but to sue for peace, and the 天京条约 (Treaty of Tianjing) was signed on January 14, 1859. The terms of the agreement were harsh – the Taiping were forced to recognize the earlier Treaty of Nanjing, legalize the opium trade, open nine more cities as treaty ports, cede the district of 九龙 (Jiulong) to Britain, and pay an indemnity of eight million taels (5). It is interesting to ponder what would have happened had the Qing been able to apply their full attention to the Taiping during the Second Opium War. But as fate would have it, they were embroiled in a foreign crisis of their own . . .
Excerpted from “The Amur War,” by Marcos Ndebele. 2000.
- For more than a hundred years, the Empire of all the Russias had desired a warm-water port on the Pacific Ocean. Their ambitions were blocked by Qing China and by the Treaty of Nerchinsk, signed by the two nations in 1689, which assigned the land east of the Stanovoy Mountains to China. But as the power of the Middle Kingdom waned, Russia saw an opportunity to seize the moment and capitalize on the weakness of the Qing. Thus it was that after the signing of the Treaty of Tianjin, Russia began to press for territorial concessions in the Amur River valley. Nikolay Muravyov, Governor-General of Irkutsk and Yeniseyisk, pressed an aggressive policy with regard to Russia’s eastern claims, believing that the Qing would back down and agree to negotiate. He would have been right – all evidence suggests that the Yongsheng Emperor was loathe to make war over what he regarded as a frozen wasteland – but Muravyov had underestimated the power of the traditionalist faction in Beijing. This group, which fervently believed in the superiority of China over the foreign barbarians, had been appalled when Yongsheng signed the Treaty of Tianjin and began to make noises suggesting that should he grant yet more concessions to another foreign state it would be clear proof of his unfitness to rule. The only thing that Yongsheng wanted less than a war with Russia was a coup attempt at home, and so when Russian settlers continued to move into the Amur River basin in defiance of the Treaty of Nerchinsk, Yongsheng shocked everyone by declaring war in April of 1858. There were those who noticed that Yongsheng had appointed virtually all of the traditionalist faction to positions of responsibility in the army that he sent north. They were careful not to mention these observations too loudly.
Had the Taiping Rebellion not been a factor, the traditionalists – headed by the Manchu noble 肃顺 (Sushun) and Yongsheng’s younger half-brother 醇贤亲王 (the 1st Prince Chun) – might have had a point. Russian forces in the Far East were small, scattered and poorly trained. But after seven years of war with the Taiping, the Nian, and Du Wenxiu, the Qing military cupboard was more than a little bare. Sushun marched north with an army of mostly local militia, poorly-equipped and poorly-trained with no combat experience. Murayovksy sensibly avoided a general engagement – his forces were vastly outnumbered – instead making use of his Cossacks and fighting a mobile campaign. Sushun’s army blundered back and forth on the frozen plains of Outer Manchuria until Russian reinforcements finally arrived and inflicted a decisive defeat on the Qing forces outside Khabarovsk. After this reverse Yongsheng had no recourse but to sue for peace and the 瑷珲条约 (Treaty of Aihun) was signed in May of 1859. The terms imposed on the Qing by the victorious Russians were harsh; not only did Russia gain territory on the left bank of the Amur River, but they also gained the Ussuri krai, which gave them access to the Pacific Ocean (6). Additionally, the Qing were forced to pay an indemnity of five million taels to Russia (7). In the final analysis, not only did the 黑龙江战 (Amur War) cost the Qing troops and money, it also diverted their attention from the south, where the Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace refused to go quietly into that good night . . .
NOTES
(1) People actually did call him this IOTL, which in my opinion is yet another sign that he’s the perfect guy to be running Qing China right now.
(2) ITTL, Yongsheng does win one concession – there will be no missionaries in Qing China, as he convinces the foreign negotiators that Christianity is so closely associated with the Taiping that a missionary in a Qing village would last about as long as a snowball in hell. Plus, I just saved the 圆明园 (Yuanming yuan). You can thank me later.
(3) I promise that there will be a Frederick Townsend Ward sighting in the next post. Maybe Charles Gordon as well, although I’m not making any promises.
(4) Not an exact translation (which would be something like “You should just send your missionaries to Rome!”), but the interpreter responsible for translating the phrase had an ironic turn of mind.
(5) This is more or less what happened to the Qing after their ill-advised involvement in the Second Opium War IOTL.
(6) Again, these borders correspond to what happened IOTL, although there were two treaties and no wars instead of the sequence of events described above.
(7) Receiving this indemnity (which didn’t happen in real life, as there was no Amur War) will leave the Russians feeling a bit more flush than they did IOTL, and as a result they will not be trying to sell off Alaska.
*So the Taiping and the Qing both get involved in expensive and distracting foreign wars, and as a result kind of forget that they’re supposed to be fighting each other. This will all be detailed in the next post, which will be – drum roll – the end of part one of the timeline. There might be a map involved, although I suck at making them so don’t get your hopes up or anything. Thanks for reading, and please do let me know what you think of things so far.
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Part #5: A Peace of the Pie
“以道佐人主者,不以兵强天下. 其事好还. 师之所处,荆棘生焉. 大军之后,必有凶年.”
Excerpted from “The Taiping Rebellion, 1857-60: The Final Years,” by Marmaduke Tickled-Pinkington. Cambridge University Press, 1988.
- After the debacle that was 1855 and 1856, the Qing Dynasty managed to achieve some notable successes in 1857, the last year of full-scale combat in the Taiping Rebellion. In the north, 左宗棠 (Zuo Zongtang) continued his campaign against the Nian rebels. His capture in 1856 of 张乐行 (Zhang Lexing), the charismatic leader of the rebels, proved to be the point at which momentum shifted from the revolutionaries to the Qing, and in 1857 Zuo’s forces managed to pin the Nian cavalry – which had previously been so effective – behind the walls of rebel-controlled cities in the provinces of Henan and Shandong. Thus, Qing forces were able to take the offensive for the first time, and concentrated on clearing the countryside of the Nian and besieging these fortified citadels, which proved difficult to breach due to the defensive walls that had been constructed around them over a period of decades (1). The artillery that the Qing had been able to purchase from Britain and France after the signing of the 天津条约 (Treaty of Tianjin) was a powerful equalizer to these walls, though, and by the end of 1857 the Nian Rebellion was well on its way to defeat.
The Qing also found success in the southwest, where the forces of both the Taiping and Du Wenxiu’s 平南国 (Pingnan guo, or Peaceful Southern Country) had been threatening to break into the heartland of 四川 (Sichuan) Province. In response to this threat, the Qing sent an army under the command of one of 曾国藩 (Zeng Guofan)’s subordinates, who had distinguished himself in the fighting of the previous years. His name was 李鸿章 (Li Hongzhang). Li’s Army of the Southwest was able to force the Taiping and Pingnan Guo troops back during the summer of 1857, culminating in the Battle of Leshan, which resulted in the defeat of the combined armies of the Taiping Kingdom and Pingnan Guo and their subsequent withdrawal from 四川省. Li Hongzhang continued to secure the Qing’s southwest flank throughout the fall and winter of 1857, putting down a rebellion in 重庆 (Chongqing) that threatened Qing control of eastern Sichuan late in that year. Nevertheless, the Taiping Kingdom also made gains in 1857 as well. Most notably, in September the brilliant naval strategist 唐正才 (Tang Zhengcai) masterminded the Taiping assault on the lightly defended island of 台湾 (Taiwan), which was fully controlled by the Taiping Kingdom at the end of the year (2). It was Tang’s last major victory; he was decapitated by a British cannonball the following year in the War of Chapdelaine’s Head (also known as the Second Opium War).
All of these campaigns were perceived as mere sideshows by the powers in both Beijing and Nanjing, whose attention was riveted on the Anhui-Hubei front, where the armies of Zeng Guofan and Shi Dakai continued to batter each other into increasingly smaller pieces. Neither side was able to gain much of an advantage in the clashes – Shi and Zeng were too familiar with each other at this point, and their armies were evenly matched – so the battles continued inconclusively, with no end in sight for the weary soldiers and citizens on both sides of the fight. Foreigners also began to see action in the war, as well. After the signing of the Treaty of Tianjin, Great Britain and France allowed their soldiers to “resign” and sign on with the Qing, in the hopes of bolstering their new ally without having to do any of the dirty work themselves. One of the most prominent of these volunteers was Charles George Gordon, a captain in the British Army who took service with the Qing and helped to re-organize their armies into a more cohesive force. Gordon’s career ended abruptly when he was killed in a skirmish outside the town of Lu’an in Anhui Province in the spring of 1858, but others followed in his footsteps. The Taiping had their share of 外国专家 (waiguo zhuanjia, or foreign experts) as well, chief among them being the American adventurer Frederick Townsend Ward, who is primarily remembered today for commanding the Black Flag Army during both the 1st and the 2nd Tonkin Incident . . . (3)
Excerpted from “The Phony War,” by Helen Ware. University of Auckland Press, 1951.
- In 1858, the Taiping Kingdom and the Qing Dynasty both became embroiled in foreign disputes – the War of Chapdelaine’s Head for the Taiping and the Amur War for the Qing. Had one of these powers been able to avoid foreign war, they might have gained the upper hand in the seven year war that had ravaged China. But neither of the warring states was able to resist war with the foreigners, and both suffered costly and time-consuming defeats. Thus it was that for the better part of 1858 and 1859, the Taiping Rebellion entered a strange state of stasis, with both the Qing and the Taiping as opposed to each other as ever, but neither able to muster the strength to sally forth in force and deliver a decisive blow to the opponent. Along the nearly 2,000 mile front that extened from 连云港 (Lianyungang) in the east to 成都 (Chengdu) in the west there were numerous skirmishes, but almost no general engagements between the spring of 1858 and the fall of 1859. Citizens on both sides began to call the conflict 假战 (Jia zhan, or the Phony War). Both Beijing and Tianjing issued endless proclamations declaring that victory was imminent, but to the war-weary populace on both sides of the fight it seemed as if the rebellion was destined to go on forever . . .
Excerpted from “The Tacit Peace,” by Harold Jordan. 1919.
- In retrospect, it seems insane that the Qing and Taiping would have considered any course of action other than ending the war between them in 1860. Both sides were exhausted – there had been ten solid years of war, with no end in sight. Both sides were also broke, due to the expense of equipping their armies and paying indemnities stemming from their ill-fated foreign wars. Moreover, the people on both sides had simply had enough of war, whether they lived in Qing or Taiping China. Rebellions broke out in the Qing-controlled region of Turkestan in the spring of 1860, necessitating the formation of yet another pacifying army, while in the Taiping Kingdom the merchants of Guangdong grew restless at the constant disruption of the trade that was their livelihood. Yet political considerations on both sides meant that a peace could not simply be negotiated and agreed upon in public. While the traditionalist faction in the Qing court had been weakened in the wake of the Amur War they were still powerful, and in their eyes it would be absolutely unthinkable for any emperor to sign away more than a third of Great Qing. Meanwhile in the Taiping Kingdom, the Council of Apostles had issued a decade’s worth of proclamations stating that only total victory would be acceptable; furthermore, a crisis of leadership was brewing, as the relationship between Yang Xiuqing and Shi Dakai had steadily deteriorated over the past few years (4). Neither side could talk peace, but both knew that a cessation of hostilities was of paramount importance.
In the spring of 1860 石达开 (Shi Dakai), the Wing King, Lord of Five Thousand Years and one of the two most powerful men in the Taiping Kingdom, took matters into his own hands and secretly sent emissaries to the man he had spent the better part of five years fighting, Zeng Guofan. Zeng reacted cautiously to Shi’s initial overtures – sending his own coded messages to the 永胜帝 (Yongsheng Emperor) seeking guidance – but upon receiving an enthusiastic reply from Yongsheng urging him to find any way possible to end the conflict, Zeng sent secret emissaries of his own to Shi urging a meeting between the two men. These negotiations were pursued so circumspectly that historians are still unaware of the date when an agreement was signed, or even if there was a written agreement at all. But by the summer of 1860 it became clear to observers on both sides that hostilities had ceased between Qing China and Taiping China. Thus began the Tacit Peace, or as it is known in Chinese, 默认平 (Moren ping). After ten years of war, the Taiping Rebellion had come to an end, and now there was not one China, but two . . . (5)
NOTES
(1) OTL the Nian rebels were famous for making use of the defensive walls that ringed the cities of Shandong and Henan, and the rebellion was not completely crushed until 1873.
(2) If ITTL the Taiping hadn’t seized Taiwan, I imagine some enterprising foreign power would have showed up, taken advantage of the Qing weakness, and made a nice little colony for themselves.
(3) A Frederick Townsend Ward sighting (yes, I know he fought for the Qing OTL; ITTL it’s different because . . . well, because I say so)! Hooray! By the way – all that stuff about the Black Flag Army and the Tonkin Incidents? Major foreshadowing . . .
(4) OTL Yang grew more and more jealous of Shi as the latter’s reputation grew. ITTL they join forces for the Silent Coup early enough that there’s no friction, but by now it has definitely developed and will be an issue in the future.
(5) I was going to make a map but didn’t, because I remembered that I suck at cartography. I have it on good authority that a thousand words is worth a picture, so here’s the situation: at the Tacit Peace, the Taiping control OTL provinces of Guizhou, Guangxi, Hainan, Hunan, Guangdong, Jiangxi, Fujian, Zhejiang, Anhui, and Jiangsu, plus Taiwan. Yunnan is a client state of the Taiping (平南国, or the Peaceful Southern Country). The Qing control the rest of China, plus all of Mongolia, plus Korea is a tributary state of the Qing. Their suzerainty is rather theoretical in Xinjiang and Tibet, though. In real life I’m aware that things wouldn’t break down so neatly on current provincial borders, but this will make it way easier for me to calculate population and the like later on, so that’s the way it’s going to be. And if anyone wants to take it upon themselves to make a map . . . Hong Xiuquan bless you.
*And that’s the end of the first section of this timeline. Originally it was going to be the end of the whole thing, but I’ve since realized that there are a number of interesting directions that I can go with this, and will thus keep on writing for a while. The next series of posts will be about the development of both Qing and Taiping China – government, economy, society, and so forth. I’d be eager to hear people’s ideas and input about where I should go with the timeline – all of my ideas are quite unformed from here on out. And thanks for following this! I hope you’ve had as much fun reading this timeline so far as I’ve had writing it. More to come soon.
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Part #6: We Don’t Need No Modernization (Actually, We Really Do)
“江海所以能为百谷王者,以期善下之。故能为百谷王。是以欲上民,必以言下之,欲先民,必以身后之。是以圣 人,处上而民不重,处前而民不害。是以天下乐推不厌。以其不争故,天下莫能与之争.”
Excerpted from “Qing China: A New History,” by Esmeralda Ludendorff-Castro. 2006.
- With the outbreak of peace in 1860, the 永胜帝 (Yongsheng Emperor) was free to concentrate on his true passion – modernizing the structures of Qing government and opening China more fully to the West. After extensive consultation with his advisers, Yongsheng unveiled his modernization programme in a proclamation issued on January 1st, 1861. Even the date of the proclamation was a sign; Yongsheng had chosen the Western New Year’s Day rather than Chinese New Year to announce his reforms. Yongsheng called for a national “self-strengthening movement” (自强运动, or zi qiang yundong), which would merge traditional Chinese thought with Western science and technology to create a stronger, more powerful nation. Yongsheng was not merely content to talk about modernization; he demanded prompt action, and the first phase of his reforms – commonly known as 百日维新 (Bai ri weixin, or the Hundred Days Reform) – sent the remaining traditionalists at court into fits of apoplexy. With a few strokes of his red brush, Yongsheng gutted the civil service examination system that had dominated Chinese intellectual life for a thousand years, replacing it with a test that focused heavily on modern math and science (questions on the Confucian classics were relegated to a nineteen-page supplement at the end of the exam). Yongsheng also reformed the civil service itself, eliminating sinecures and elevating previously low-ranking advocates of modernization to positions of responsibility in the Qing bureaucracy. Furthermore, Yongsheng also issued decrees ordering the complete reorganization of the military and the educational system along Western lines (1). Granted, some of the decrees promulgated during the Hundred Days Reform read more like a wish list than anything else. After ten years of war, the Qing Dynasty simply did not possess the funds necessary to immediately pursue a radical military overhaul while also instituting a national system of education, for example. In an effort to speed up the pace of modernization Yongsheng also pushed for reform of the Chinese economy to encourage capitalism and private enterprise, which will be more fully discussed in later chapters of this volume . . . (2)
Throughout his campaign to reform and modernize China, Yongsheng was guided by a variety of advisers from the imperial bureaucracy. But unquestionably the most influential men during this process are known to us today simply as the 四人帮 (Si ren bang, or the Gang of Four) (3). They were 曾国藩 (Zeng Guofan), 左宗棠 (Zuo Zongtang), 李鸿章 (Li Hongzhang), and 张之洞 (Zhang Zhidong). More than anyone else save for Yongsheng himself, these four men guided China through its sometimes-tumultuous period of modernization – a period that later historians would come to refer to as 改革开放 (gaige kaifang), or “Reform and Opening.” The Yongsheng Emperor used these men almost as his personal auxiliaries, moving them from post to post wherever it seemed as though his decrees regarding reform and opening were being improperly implemented. While this has led some modern “pop historians” to label these men “the Superfriends of modernization,” we should be careful not to analogize them to some sort of mythical traditionalism-fighting superheroes. They were all flawed, and the “Gang of Four” often disagreed with themselves over the proper way to reform China, with Zhang Zhidong in particular urging caution . . .
Yongsheng’s efforts to modernize China did not end after the blizzard of proclamations and decrees that was the Hundred Days Reform. In 1861 he announced the formation of the 总理衙门 (Zongli Yamen, or Office of Foreign Affairs). 1861 also saw the formation of the Imperial Maritime Customs Service, which was originally staffed largely by men from the Qing’s new allies, Great Britain and France. The Customs Service collected tariffs and provided Yongsheng with a steady stream of revenues to continue his modernization projects. Although this proved to be invaluable, the struggle to establish a more effective system for transferring revenues from provincial to national levels of government would continue throughout the 1860’s. Many local officials – who had grown accustomed to treating the areas to which they were assigned almost as personal fiefs during the Taiping Rebellion – were skeptical of Yongsheng’s projects and loathe to hand over taxation monies to the central government. The spectre of the Taiping proved to be of great value to Yongsheng in bringing these recalcitrant local officials to heel, as he grew accustomed to frequently dispatching emissaries to one or another provincial or county-level governor warning them that if they failed to fully exercise their responsibilities to the state, then they could hardly expect the state to protect them in the next war against the Taiping, which at the time seemed inevitable (4). For a traditionalist local official, the only thing worse than being forced to modernize the nation was the thought of being overrun by the Taiping, with all that that entailed – Christianity! Gender equality! Rule by the mob! Thus, provincial units of government were gradually reintegrated into the existing state structures, and revenues began to flow into Beijing, to be used in one or another of Yongsheng’s endless projects – reorganization of the military, modernization of the education system, subsidies for private investors and money to establish state-owned enterprises . . . the list went on and on, a reflection of just how far China had to go.
Excerpted from “Night of the Long Knives,” by Angelique Lugosi. University of Bratislava Press, 2002.
- If you’ve gotten everything that you ever dreamed of, what do you do next? This was the dilemma faced by the leaders of the Taiping Kingdom after they wrested their independence away from the Qing Dynasty in 1860. In any event, rather than being able to enjoy the fruits of victory, the Taiping promptly stumbled headfirst into another crisis, this one wholly self-inflicted. It was a crisis of leadership. After the Saturday Night Massacre and subsequent Silent Coup in 1854, power had been shared between 杨秀清 (Yang Xiuqing) and 石达开 (Shi Dakai), who ruled the nation through the 使徒会 (Shitu hui, or Council of Apostles). While Yang and Shi had joined forces to overthrow Hong Xiuquan, the two men had never been close, and the Silent Coup had been launched as much out of mutual self-preservation as any other reason. As the years dragged on a rift began to develop between the two, whose cause lay in Yang’s jealousy of Shi, the rebellion’s greatest general and the man who received the lion’s share of the credit for the victories of the Taiping forces (5). After the war against the Qing ended, relations between Yang and Shi continued to deteriorate until they reached the point of barely restrained hostility. To a neutral observer, the situation must have seemed maddening; after all, Yang and Shi agreed on nearly every issue of importance – the need to modernize the fledgling Taiping Kingdom, the urgency of creating a less ad hoc system of government, and the importance of reassuring the scholar-bureaucrat and merchant elites while still retaining the affections of their base of support among the lower classes of society. Yet the same neutral observer would have to conclude that the personal issues between the two men made their continued coexistence impossible, and that one of them would have to go.
It seemed as though Shi Dakai was destined to emerge victorious from the clash of personalities he was engaged in. Shi was a brilliant general and a skilled administrator, and had many friends in the Taiping military. But Yang Xiuqing held one vital trump card – his seemingly endless network of spies and informants, which was so all-encompassing that he was popularly nicknamed 章鱼王, the Octopus King (Western readers of a certain age may remember Richard Henry’s classic 1962 film Octopussy, which brilliantly parodied this prevailing image of Yang). Yang made his move on the evening of July 6th, 1861, a date that has gone down in history as 长刀之夜 (Chang dao zhi ye, or Night of the Long Knives). On that fateful night, Yang’s operatives – disguised as bandits – broke into Shi Dakai’s residence, killing him and his entire family. The Wing King, Lord of Five Thousand Years, was no more. Other groups of Yang loyalists fanned out across 天京 (Tianjing), killing more than two dozen of those closely associated with Shi Dakai. When the sun rose the next day, Yang Xiuqing was the sole and unquestioned power in the Great Kingdom of Heavenly Peace.
Yang’s move against Shi was aided by the incredible air of opacity that surrounded the leading figures of the Taiping, and indeed, of the government itself (6). Recall that the Taiping Kingdom was a state based on a lie – that Hong Xiuquan, for six years now confined to his palace, was the omnipotent and semi-divine Heavenly King. Yang also took advantage of the people’s enduring fear of the Qing, announcing that the great leader Shi Dakai had been murdered in his home by agents of the Yongsheng Emperor, and urging eternal vigilance on the part of the populace to prevent such an incident from occurring again. A few generals close to Shi realized what had happened and decamped to the Taiping client kingdom of Pingnan Guo to seek refuge with Sultan Du Wenxiu, among them being 刘永福 (Liu Yongfu), 陈坤书 (Chen Kunshu), and 李容发 (Li Rongfa). But in general, Yang had little trouble convincing the general populace to accept his version of events, and quickly began appointing those he trusted to positions of responsibility in the army. Indeed, it was Yang’s shining moment. Not only had he managed to overthrow Hong Xiuquan, but he had also succeeded in outmaneuvering Shi Dakai and placing himself at the center of the Taiping Kingdom. Yang began to institute his own program of modernization, continuing to incorporate Confucian philosophy into Taiping Christianity so as to reassure the elites while also beginning to lay the groundwork for establishing state institutions on a provincial and local level. In retrospect, this programme seems to have been achieving success – a functioning bureaucracy was formed as well as a state education system, and some progress had been made in the Taiping’s attempts to reach out to foreign nations. Yet things were not going fast enough for Yang Xiuqing, who since reaching the pinnacle of power had become steadily more megalomaniacal and convinced that any endeavor he pursued was destined for success. In his eyes, the successful modernization of the Taiping Kingdom demanded the mass mobilization of the entire citizenry, and a truly radical course needed to be pursued. And thus it was that the Cultural Revolution began . . .
NOTES
(1) Note that one part of the OTL Hundred Days Reform that isn’t being pursued is constitutionalism and democracy. Yongsheng may be a modernizer, but he’s also an absolute monarch, and he’d very much like to remain one.
(2) Meaning in a future entry, of course.
(3) And if you liked that Cultural Revolution reference, just wait until the next installment.
(4) OTL this was a huge problem – local officials had gotten so powerful during the Taiping Rebellion that they could more or less do what they wanted. In effect, the inmates were running the asylum. In this timeline, the threat of the Taiping really is the impetus for the more vigorous attempts at modernization that we’re seeing. Yongsheng isn’t above saying, “If you don’t embrace Western science and technology the Taiping will, and then they’ll invade us and eat your family and AAAAAAAAAAHHHH!”
(5) This actually happened as well OTL, which was one reason that I had Shi and Yang’s coup occur relatively early – they hadn’t had enough time to realize that they hated each other yet.
(6) I’ve alluded to this before, but Taiping China is shaping up to be a seriously wacky place. It’s going to be one of those countries where power changes hands every six months and only about twelve people are in a position to figure out what just happened. Just your average totalitarian techno-bureaucratic oligarchy with theocratic trappings, I guess.
*And that’s the first postwar installment of the timeline. The next entry is mostly going to be about the Cultural Revolution, with a brief detour to describe Qing military modernization. Then I’m going to get into economic development and social changes in both countries before talking a bit about foreign policy and yet another rebellion that the Qing have to deal with. As always I’d love to hear everyone’s input, especially on what I should be doing with countries besides China – I don’t think that anything so far would have caused much of a ripple effect anywhere else, but if you think otherwise I’d be very interested to hear it.
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Part #7: You Say You Want A Revolution . . .
“其政闷闷,其民淳淳。其政察察,其民缺缺。祸兮福之所椅,福兮祸之所伏。孰知其极。其无正。正复为奇,善 复为妖。人之迷,其日固久.”
Excerpted from “The Cultural Revolution,” by Keith Yap. 1998.
- The Cultural Revolution – or to use its full title, 现代化文化大革命 (Xiandaihua wenhua da geming, or the Great Modernizing Cultural Revolution) – began in April of 1864, and was the result of 杨秀清 (Yang Xiuqing)’s dissatisfaction with the slow progress of the modernizing initiatives that had been undertaken since his consolidation of power three years earlier. Yang feared a renewed outbreak of war with the Qing Dynasty to the north, and believed that only through wholesale adoption of Western science, technology and culture could the Taiping Kingdom prevail in what he assumed to be the inevitable conflict that lay ahead. One area in which Yang had unquestionably achieved success in the previous three years was the reorganization of the Taiping government at a national level. The Ministries of War, Trade, Finance, Education, and Foreign Affairs were all founded during between 1861 and 1864, and while finding enough qualified bureaucrats proved difficult, the officials selected to staff these offices made some headway in establishing the foundations of a functioning government (1). Yet their successes pale in comparison to the misdeeds committed by those whom Yang selected to run the other bureaucracy founded during this period – the infamous 真理部 (Zhenli bu, or the Ministry of Truth). The Ministry of Truth was the nexus of Yang Xiuqing’s secret police and propaganda operations, both of which grew steadily more extensive. Modern historians date the beginning of the Cultural Revolution to the April 16, 1864 memo sent by Yang to Minister of Truth 姚文元 (Yao Wenyuan), in which Yang ordered Yao to increase the amount of propaganda devoted to promulgating the cult of personality that was becoming a larger and larger part of Taiping life . . .
While Yang Xiuqing became increasingly megalomaniacal after becoming the sole power in the Taiping Kingdom, he had lost none of the political instincts which had elevated him to such lofty heights. Thus, Yang’s cult of personality was not centered on himself, but rather on the man whom he had deposed ten years ago – Hong Xiuquan, the Heavenly King. Yao obliged Yang, issuing what has become known to posterity as the Little Red Book. It is incumbent upon this historian to note that what Yao produced was in fact neither little, red, nor a book, but was instead a proclamation delivered to village headmen with orders to display it prominently in the public square. The proclamation, purporting to be a revelation from God to the Heavenly King, stressed the importance of building a nation united by “Confucian Christianity” and constantly modernizing and looking towards the future (2). Rallies began to spring up across the nation, as peasants waved hand-painted signs saying, “战无不胜的基督儒教,天王思想万岁!” (Zhan wu bu sheng de Jidurujiao, Tianwang sixiang wansui, or “Confucian Christianity is invincible; long live Heavenly King Thought!”)
Yang Xiuqing had succeeded in mobilizing the citizenry; now he needed to decide exactly what he wanted them to do. It is no exaggeration to say that the entire Cultural Revolution was characterized by this sort of incoherence. Yang Xiuqing knew that he wanted the nation to modernize, and he also knew that he wanted the populace as a whole to participate in these efforts. But he was never quite clear on how he wanted this to happen (3). As a result, the Cultural Revolution lurched from one idea to the next, with assorted groups of society being mobilized seemingly every other week in the name of some task or other. One week citizens would be ordered to build a factory in their town for the construction of a given “implement of modernization”; the next week new orders would come down from Tianjing, and the new priority would be study sessions on the principles of Confucian Christianity; the week after that the priority would be the re-education of those citizens deemed to harbor “unmodern thoughts”, and so on and so forth. There were some common threads running through all facets of the Cultural Revolution, though, and one of those was the relentless attempt to industrialize Taiping China (4). Another was the total revamping of the educational system. During this period, educated youth from privileged families were often “sent down” (下放) to the countryside to teach villagers about modernization, Confucian Christianity, and the social reforms that were also being implemented during this period. Other aspects of the movement were emphasized for a time and then unceremoniously abandoned, chief among them being land reform. At one point during the Cultural Revolution the state took control of all private property; later, the state divested itself of all property and granted every citizen an equal share of land by simply calculating the area of the Taiping Kingdom and dividing it by the number of citizens, only to change course once again and drop the entire idea of land reform altogether at a later date. There were also periodic purges, although despite the claims of some revisionist historians, the evidence indicates that fewer than five thousand people were executed for 反现代化之罪犯 (fan xiandaihua zhi zuifan, or “anti-modernization crimes”) during the entire Cultural Revolution. The literati came in for the harshest treatment during this period, and entire families of scholar-bureaucrats simply disappeared. Yet in an example of the contradictions of the revolution, another high-income group – the merchants and traders of the South – were held up as exemplars of modernization for their willingness to “work with foreign friends and bring new ideas to the Taiping Kingdom.” On hearing this, the merchants simply shrugged and went back to making money . . .
Foreign reactions to the Cultural Revolution were wildly mixed and ranged from enthusiastic endorsement to utter bewilderment; the latter probably being the most prevailing emotion among foreign observers of the movement. Some saw the Cultural Revolution as a necessary step that Taiping China needed to take in order to lift itself into the first rank of nations, while more were shocked at what they perceived to be China’s deliberate destruction of much of its traditional culture. Other observers were more blasé about the significance of the entire movement; the British soldier and author Henry Knollys chose to paraphrase Macbeth, writing of the Cultural Revolution, “It is full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” It is interesting to wonder what might have happened had the Cultural Revolution ever taken an anti-foreign turn and threatened European interests. Would have there been a Third Opium War, and would such a conflict have resulted in the quick death of the Taiping Kingdom? In any event, foreign trade was one of the only facets of life that continued completely uninterrupted during the Cultural Revolution, and so foreigners were content to merely shake their heads and wonder what the Taiping would do next (5).
Excerpted from “The Hundred Flowers Movement,” by June Parker. 1942.
- Yang Xiuqing had survived three years of the Cultural Revolution without any threats to his power emerging, but he overreached in the spring of 1867, when he began to hint that the army would be the next institution to be “reformed and modernized.” This caused considerable consternation among the commanders of the Taiping military; although the previous three years had given absolutely no guide to what Yang meant when he said “reform and modernization,” the generals decided that enough was enough, and that they could not leave anything to chance. Contact was made with 刘永福 (Liu Yongfu), 陈坤书 (Chen Kunshu), and 李容发 (Li Rongfa) – three Shi Dakai loyalists and former generals who had fled to 平南国 (Pingnan Guo) after Yang took power. The budding plot received covert aid from Sultan Du Wenxiu himself, who knew that his kingdom would only survive as long as the Taiping did and was increasingly concerned at the events taking place in Tianjing. The plan was set into motion on June 4th, 1867, when Liu, Chen, and Li – who had sneaked into the Taiping Kingdom with a coterie of elite troops – set upon Yang Xiuqing as he left his office in the Ministry of Truth. For once, Yang’s network of spies failed him; perhaps he had simply grown so secure in his power that he had begun to think that no misfortune could befall him. This proved to be an inaccurate assumption. Like so many people who had defied him over the years, Yang Xiuqing simply disappeared. The Cultural Revolution was over after three tumultuous years, and the 百花运动 (Bai hua yundong, or Hundred Flowers Movement) had begun . . .
As Liu Yongfu said – although it was issued as a proclamation from the Heavenly King – “Let a hundred flowers bloom, and ten thousand schools of thought contend.” Despite these lofty words, the generals who took over power in the Taiping Kingdom opted for cosmetic rather than wholesale changes to the system of government originally instituted by Yang Xiuqing. “Confucian Christianity” remained the official ideology of the state; likewise, the divinity of Hong Xiuquan was not repudiated, but rather was affirmed by the new regime, who stated that Yang Xiuqing had “erred in interpreting the divinely words of the Heavenly King, and thus resigned from power.” A later statement issued by the new regime summed up Yang’s legacy rather neatly; he was adjudged to have been “seventy percent right and thirty percent wrong.” Furthermore, the Ministry of Truth was merely downsized, and was not abolished. Still, the Hundred Flowers regime brought stability to a government that had been sorely in that quality. The 使徒会 (Shitu hui, or Council of Apostles) was reorganized, and the heads of all major government ministries were guaranteed a seat, as were the commanding officers of the Taiping Army and Navy. Where the Hundred Flowers Regime was truly revolutionary was in its reformation of local government and institution of limited democracy. Citizens were required to participate in yearly elections to choose a village or town head, who would be responsible for local governance and would participate in an annual caucus of sorts with the provincial governor – who was appointed by the Council of Apostles – and other town and village heads from that province. This was initially intended merely as a way to give citizens an outlet for voicing their concerns, but these annual provincial congresses (dubbed 徒弟会, or Council of the Acolytes) steadily grew in importance as time passed (6). The reorganization of the Council of Apostles meant that for the first time, power in the Taiping Kingdom was not concentrated in the hands of one or two men. In addition to Liu Yongfu, Chen Kunshu, and Li Rongfa, the list of influential individuals in the new regime included 李世贤 (Li Shixian), 陈玉成 (Chen Yucheng), and 谭绍光 (Tan Shaoguang). With their coup complete, the Hundred Flowers Regime continued trying to modernize the Taiping Kingdom – but unlike Yang Xiuqing, they were careful to always have a plan . . .
NOTES
(1) OTL the Taiping couldn’t attract any of the scholar-bureaucrat class, but ITTL Yang Xiuqing’s integration of Confucianism into the Taiping theology has helped to co-opt some members of this group.
(2) “Confucian Christianity” is the name that’s going to be used for the Taiping’s continuing mashup of Confucianism and Christianity.
(3) This sentence could alternatively be read as, “Although subversivepanda knew that he wanted to write about an alt-Cultural Revolution in the Taiping Kingdom, he had no idea exactly what this entailed.”
(4) TTL’s Cultural Revolution is different from OTL’s in several ways. First, there’s more than a bit of Great Leap Forward tossed in there. Secondly, it’s not nearly as destructive, due to the total absence of coherence from the top. If they’d pursued a policy like Yongsheng is doing, or even kept on the path that Yang Xiuqing had originally chosen, the Taiping would be farther along in their modernization attempts. But unlike OTL, this Cultural Revolution isn’t going to completely screw things up.
(5) Right now foreigners kind of view the Taiping like you would a crazy uncle – you know, the one that’s always doing things like taking up skydiving or leaving his wife for a nineteen year old yoga instructor. No one sees them as a threat and they’re not hurting business, so people just shake their heads and say, “Those crazy Taiping. What will they think of next?”
(6) Like I’ve said before, Taiping government is going to be really messed up. There are going to be a lot of coups, and the institution of limited local democracy is really going to toss a wrench in things down the road.
*The next few updates will tackle economic modernization, social changes, and foreign policy in both Chinas. I’ll also try to squeeze in an explanation of how Pingnan Guo is developing. Those updates will take me to roughly 1875, and at that point I’m planning to do kind of an “around the world” post talking briefly about non-China places and people and how things have diverged (if at all) in the twenty-five years since this timeline started. So if there’s a place or a person that you’d specifically like mentioned, just let me know and I’ll be sure to include him, her, or it. Thanks for reading, and keep on letting me know what you think of things so far.
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Part #8: Money . . . It’s A Gas
“治大国,若烹小鱼。以道莅天下,其鬼不神,非其鬼不神,其神不伤人。非其神不伤人,圣人亦不伤人。夫雨不 相伤。故德交归焉.”
Excerpted from “The Growth of Private Enterprise in Qing China,” by J.A.K. Gladney. 1985.
- As the Yongsheng Emperor’s quest to modernize China and reform its economy continued, he was forced to confront not only an inefficient and hidebound bureaucracy but also more than a millennia’s worth of cultural prejudices against merchants and wealth that did not come from the land (1). Yongsheng dealt with this problem head-on, embarking on a “Grand Tour” of his domains in 1864. This tour focused especially on the new treaty ports that had been established in the Treaty of Tianjin, which were among the most vibrant places in Qing China – in particular the “Big Four” cities of Lianyungang, Qingdao, Dalian, and Tianjin itself. During his tour Yongsheng made a special point of singling out entrepreneurs and merchants for commendation, culminating in his famous statement 发财是光荣的 (facai shi guangrong de, or “To get rich is glorious”) (2). The following year, in 1865, Yongsheng made the decision to open Qing China to foreign capital and investment completely, not only in those cities which had been previously designated as treaty ports. Lured by the cheap labor and the possibility of tapping into what seemed like a limitless market, Western industrialists began to make large-scale capital investments in Qing China during the mid-to-late 1860s. British and French concerns led the way, as relations between these two countries and Qing China grew steadily closer after the signing of the Treaty of Tianjin. The Yongsheng Emperor also sought to incentivize private enterprise – at the urging of Zhang Zhidong, Li Hongzhang, Zeng Guofan, and Zuo Zongtang, the so-called “Gang of Four” – via tax breaks and the creation of “Special Modernization Zones,” which were deliberately placed away from treaty ports so as to encourage development in the inland regions of Qing China. The process was long and slow; one does not simply change a mindset and a culture overnight. Yet gradually the Yongsheng Emperor’s efforts began to bear fruit . . .
In sectors that were deemed vital to the national interest, such as munitions and ordinance, Yongsheng’s government generally chose to develop and modernize the military through the establishment of state-owned enterprises (SOEs). These enterprises were staffed by a combination of government bureaucrats and foreign experts, and certainly for the bureaucrats – who had studied Confucius, not Adam Smith – it must have been something of a shock. As was the case with virtually every facet of Yongsheng’s modernization plan, there were significant growing pains, and the state-owned enterprises initially suffered from a combination of incompetence, inefficiency, and corruption. The highly public execution of several corrupt managers of SOEs in 1868 certainly contributed to the increased productivity of these enterprises in the following years. Naturally, all of these modernization initiatives cost money, and Yongsheng sought to defray some of the stress he was putting on the imperial treasury by auctioning off concessions – everything from mining rights in Shaanxi Province to the right to build a railroad in Hubei Province was sold, mostly to foreign investors, although the Qing government instituted a requirement that foreigners purchasing concessions outside of Special Economic Zones were required to have a Chinese partner. Some of Yongsheng’s schemes were brilliant successes; others fell flat. But as a whole, Qing China moved rapidly towards industrialization and modernization during the self-strengthening period.
Excerpted from “The Cartelization of the Taiping Economy,” by Teresa Carvalho. 1979.
- Even more than in Qing China, Taiping efforts to modernize and develop the economy were hindered by a lack of individuals with capital to invest. After all, the rebellion’s support had been drawn disproportionately from the lower classes of society, and many of the scholar-bureaucrat class were still leery of fully participating in the affairs of the new kingdom where they somewhat reluctantly lived. There was one sector of society with both capital to spare and entrepreneurial spirit: the merchants of the southern cities, especially those who lived in the old treaty ports of Xiamen, Fuzhou, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. These merchant houses were truly family businesses, consisting of lineages which had been trading for hundreds of years in some cases. The Taiping governments of both Yang Xiuqing and the Hundred Flowers Regime began to give these merchant lineages loans and tax breaks in an attempt to encourage them to invest in new sectors of the economy. Thus, the power of the southern merchant families grew, until a small number of these groups essentially dominated the Taiping economy. They were able to accomplish this in part due to the lower level of foreign investment in Taiping China as opposed to Qing China. Cool relations with Britain and France put a damper on joint ventures involving interests from those countries – though both nations, especially Britain with its Hong Kong colony, conducted large amounts of commerce and trade with the Taiping Kingdom, investment was largely restricted to treaty ports, and the warm relations between those countries and Qing China led to more British and French business moving north. While American and especially Russian investors made some inroads into the Taiping market, it made for only a moderate amount of foreign capital entering the country (3).
Thus began the 企业联合组织化 (qiye lianhe zuzhihua, or cartelization) of the Taiping economy. The 五大家庭 (wu da jiating, or Five Great Families) developed into corporate behemoths that exercised monopoly control over many sectors of the Taiping economy (4). At first the Five Families often fought each other, as in the Telegraph War of 1870, when the Chen family of Guangzhou and the Zhao family of Xiamen engaged in what amounted to a gang war for six months over who would control the telegraph system that the government was contracting to build in Jiangsu Province. As time went on the Five Great Families began to take a more conciliatory approach towards each other, choosing to allow each and every family cartel to amass monopoly power in certain sectors; for example, the Wen family of Fuzhou controlled 95% of railroad lines in the Taiping state in 1880. The government increasingly chose to cooperate with the rapidly coalescing cartels in the name of modernization, in one case moving an entire village thirty miles to the site of a new factory and informing the villagers that they were now all employees of the Wang cartel’s new smelting concern. Relatively little individual entrepreneurship occurred during the postwar period, as modernization efforts were either directed at establishing state-owned enterprises – as with the Qing – or simply granting the emerging family cartels license to develop and dominate a particular sector of the economy.
NOTES
(1) China historically considered merchants pretty much lower than dirt on the social ladder; if I remember correctly even peasants were above them based on the logic that everyone produced something except merchants. So that perception is going to be tough to overcome, although not as much in the Taiping state.
(2) In OTL a Chinese political leader also made this statement, but that leader was Deng Xiaoping, and it came during his Southern Tour in the late 1980’s (at least I think that’s when it was).
(3) Russia is increasingly growing closer to the Taiping, seeing them as a counterweight to Qing China and to the British and French; remember, the Crimean War still occurred in this timeline just as it did OTL, as things had barely started to diverge then.
(4) These are going to be a lot like the 財閥 (zaibatsu) conglomerates that developed OTL in imperial Japan.
*A relatively short update today, mostly because I’m not sure how many people will find the details of mid-19th century alt-Chinese economic development and modernization all that interesting. Next post will be on social issues/policy/changes, and I’ll try to work in a description of Pingnan Guo as well. After that will be a post on the foreign policy of both Chinas in the postwar period. As always, thanks for reading.
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Part #9: Freedom’s Just Another Word For Not Having To Bind Your Feet
“绝圣弃智,民利百倍。绝仁弃义,民复孝慈。绝巧弃利,盗贼无有。此三者,以为交不足。故令有所属。见素抱 朴,少私寡欲.”
Excerpted from “The Taiping Social Revolution,” by Gloria Friedan. 1965.
- The world had never before seen a society quite like the one that gradually developed in the Taiping Kingdom. Perhaps the most startling aspect of this society to foreign visitors was the Taiping policy of complete equality between the sexes, which had been a point of emphasis since the first days of the rebellion (1). During the revolution women had served in combat roles in the Taiping military, and even after the war ended the Taiping government continued to make gender equality one of the bedrock principles of the Heavenly Kingdom. Concubinage, foot binding, and prostitution were all capital crimes – but the Taiping went further than this, allowing women to assume positions in society that even the most outspoken Western advocates of women’s rights found shocking. Women were allowed to own property (at least during those points when there was property to be owned and one of the land reform campaigns was not ongoing); they were also allowed to divorce their husbands and control money in their own right. An even more radical departure from the norm was the Taiping policy of allowing women into the political life of the kingdom. Women were allowed to take the Taiping civil service examinations, and after the Hundred Flowers Regime instituted a system of limited local democracy in the late 1860’s, women were not only allowed to vote but also allowed to stand in elections for positions in village and town leadership (2). In practice, there were some limits to gender equality; no woman held a seat on the 使徒会 (Shitu hui, or Council of Apostles) until 1891, and many of the Taiping elite continued to keep concubines in defiance of the law prohibiting it (3). And of course there was the Heavenly King, who possessed a harem containing more than two hundred concubines. Nevertheless, it is inarguable that the women’s liberation movement truly began in Taiping China; in time, it would spread across the globe.
Taiping society was also characterized by an ideology that seemed to be a contradiction in terms. Naturally, we refer to 基督儒教 (Jidurujiao, or Confucian Christianity). This belief system, part religion and part moral philosophy, was a bizarre blend of the Bible, Confucian classics, and the words of Taiping leaders themselves (usually issued in the form of a “revelation” from God to the Heavenly King, Hong Xiuquan) (4). Initially Hong Xiuquan declared that he was God’s second son and Jesus’ younger brother; after the Silent Coup of 1854, it was declared that Hong himself was a deity along with God and Jesus. Still later, after Yang Xiuqing’s efforts to lure scholar-bureaucrats into the Taiping fold by re-introducing Confucianism as an integral part of Taiping ideology, Confucius was declared to be God’s younger brother in 1873. Taiping ideology was thus a mishmash of ideas that sometimes contradicted each other or one of the regime’s signature policies; neither the Bible nor the 论语 (Lunyu, or Analects) have much to say in support of gender equality, after all. There was thus considerable internal dispute during the early years of the Taiping Kingdom (and the later ones, as well) over what exactly “Confucian Christianity” was supposed to mean. Taiping leaders chose to resolve doctrinal issues in the same way they handled other difficult questions – after deciding what course to pursue, they would simply issue a proclamation in the Heavenly King’s name declaring that God had told him that in the case of whatever happened to be in dispute at the time, Interpretation A – which always happened to be the one favored by whoever was in control of the Council of Apostles at the time – was the correct path for the Taiping Kingdom to take (5).
Although individuals in the Taiping Kingdom – especially women – possessed a great deal of personal freedom, society as a whole was tightly monitored and controlled by the central government. The 保甲 (baojia) system, in which family units were grouped together for purposes of social organization, was expanded; every ten families made up a bao, and every hundred families constituted a jia. Each bao and each jia elected a leader, whose duty it was to report to the village or town head, who was originally appointed by the central government and was later elected by residents of that village, town or city. Not only were taxes collected through the baojia system, but a host of other social functions were organized around these units as well. Child care was the responsibility of designated persons in each bao and jia, as women took advantage of gender equality policies to enter the workforce en masse during the 1860s. Furthermore, leaders of each bao and jia were required to prepare annual reports attesting to the political reliability – or lack thereof – of every member of the multi-family social group which they oversaw. The baojia system was a means of maintaining social cohesion and ensuring control of the populace by the central government . . . (6)
Excerpted from “From Farm to Factory: Social Changes in Qing China During the Reform and Opening Period,” by Ibrahim Mohammed. 1943.
- The Yongsheng Emperor’s modernization initiatives spurred a vast internal migration within Qing China, as citizens flocked from the countryside to cities in which new industries were proliferating and more lucrative employment opportunities were to be found. These migrants poured into cities like Tianjin, Qingdao, Beijing, and Xi’an, straining the local infrastructure and earning them the enmity of more established residents, who lamented the increased crowding and higher crime that inevitably came along with these migrants. Yet despite the grumbling and caviling, migrants continued to move from the country to the cities, with seemingly no end in sight. Additionally, the Yongsheng Emperor encouraged migration to the traditional peripheries of China – remote places like Qinghai, Gansu, Mongolia, Xinjiang, and Tibet (7). This was mostly a move to strengthen Qing control in these regions; the Russian Empire had begun to make frequent incursions into these regions, seeking signs of Qing weakness and hoping to make these areas their own. The peripheral regions of China were also inhabited mostly by non-Han minorities, and whether they were Uighurs, Mongols, or Tibetans, none of them had too much love for the Qing Dynasty. Yongsheng thus chose to incentivize migration to these regions by granting those who wished to move special tax exemptions and ceding large tracts of land to emerging communities of Han migrants. Although local sensitivities were often offended (8), the peripheral regions of the Qing Dynasty gradually grew more integrated into the nation as a whole.
Excerpted from “Pingnan Guo: A New History,” by Xi Jinping. University of Kunming Press, 1991.
- 平南国 (Pingnan Guo, or the Peaceful Southern Country) had achieved its independence for two reasons. One was that Sultan Du Wenxiu had cooperated extensively with the Taiping rebels; the other was that Yunnan was so far away from Qing centers of power that it was really quite difficult for them to do much about Pingnan Guo. The new nation essentially operated as a client state of the Taiping Kingdom – although Du Wenxiu’s authority was unquestioned inside Pingnan Guo, foreign policy was made and conducted only after consultation with the Council of Apostles in Tianjing. For without the aid of the Heavenly Kingdom, Pingnan Guo was certain to be re-conquered by the Qing, with inevitably fatal results for those who had participated in the revolution that had given the country its independence. During the postwar period, the Taiping and Pingnan Guo militaries were integrated, and generals from both nations worked on developing strategies for the next war with the Qing, which they assumed was inevitable.
杜文秀 (Du Wenxiu) faced another, more pressing challenge: how to unite the people of Pingnan Guo into something even remotely resembling a nation. While the rebellion had been led by Hui Muslims, of which Du Wenxiu himself was one, the majority of Pingnan Guo citizens were not Muslim. Indeed, the new country was home to a bewildering assortment and variety of ethnic groups; everyone from the Yi to the Bai to the Tai to the Dai to the Mosuo to the Miao to the Naxi to the Yao to the Tibetans to the Zhuang to the Hani called Pingnan Guo home (9). Du Wenxiu’s primary challenge, then, was ensuring that he was not simply replacing a Manchu regime with a Hui Muslim regime; whatever government was to be established had to have the support of all major ethnic groups if the state of Pingnan Guo was to endure. He began by sending emissaries to the leaders of the major population groupings of the country, inviting them to send representatives to his capital of 昆明 (Kunming). The remoteness of Pingnan Guo is illustrated by an apocryphal story – one group of Du’s emissaries, supposedly arriving at a village deep in 西双版纳 (Xishuangbanna), were greeted by the village headman, who asked, “Tell us, who now sits on the Dragon Throne?” In any event, government in Pingnan Guo came to be explicitly organized on the basis of ethnicity; each major group selected a representative to head one of the newly-established government ministries, and a substantial degree of autonomy was devolved to local leaders (10). Thus, while Du ruled from his palace in Kunming as the “Sultan of Pingnan Guo,” the nation was by no means a purely Muslim state, although the Hui were in fact overrepresented in positions of national authority. Practical challenges abounded in modernizing Pingnan Guo, and the combination of decentralization and the country’s remoteness retarded Du’s efforts substantially. Yet slowly, Pingnan Guo began to change from a collection of ethnic groups to a nation. One overlooked step in this transformation was Du’s decision – harshly criticized at the time – to make Chinese Pingnan Guo’s national language, as it was a lingua franca of sorts. Roads were built, schools were established, and Pingnan Guo began to grow . . .
NOTES
(1) I’m not just making this up; OTL the Taiping actually did establish a policy of equality between the sexes, although it was enforced less than rigorously.
(2) Recall that this system of “limited local democracy” was established after the Hundred Flowers Coup that toppled Yang Xiuqing. The initial intent was simply to give citizens an avenue to voice their concerns to the relatively-insulated national government. As time goes by, the Taiping are going to find that “limited democracy” really doesn’t work so well.
(3) This is also as per OTL. ITTL, there’s a sort of Animal Farm dynamic forming in Taiping China: “All Taiping are equals, but some Taiping are more equal than others.” So there are the beginnings of a double standard between the elite and everyone else, which might or might not result in the formation of a hereditary elite class. Not sure yet, although in some cases – like the cartels I wrote about yesterday – it will definitely happen.
(4) “Confucian Christianity” is going to be really messy. I could write an entire book about it.
(5) Remember that the Taiping Kingdom’s entire raison d’etre is based to some extent on the idea that Hong is a demi-god. So saying that something comes from him has a way of ending the argument pretty fast.
(6) OTL some form of the baojia system was used by several different dynasties.
(7) The Qing think that they own Tibet, as do the British and the Russians, so that’s good enough for me.
(8) More on this in the next entry.
(9) I could keep on going here, but I don’t think too many people would appreciate it. Anyway, there are a cubic shitload of ethnic groups that live in Yunnan/Pingnan Guo.
(10) Think OTL Lebanon, but more ethnic groups and they don’t all hate each other.
*Women’s rights! Internal migration! Pingnan Guo! The fun never stops around here. The next entry will deal with Qing and Taiping foreign policy in the post-rebellion period. Then will come the “around the world” post, in which I deign to talk about countries other than China, although they really do not deserve much notice. Damn barbarians. If there’s a place/person/thing that you’d especially like to see mentioned, just let me know and I’ll make sure to include him/her/it. And as always, thanks for reading.
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Part #10: Diplomacy Is Like A Box Of Chocolates . . .
“勇于敢则杀,勇于不敢则活。此两者或利,或害。天之所恶,孰知其故.”
Excerpted from “Qing China and the Great Game,” by Sergei Morimoto. 1980.
- After the end of the Taiping Rebellion in 1860, one of Qing China’s most pressing priorities was consolidating their rule in the vulnerable periperhal regions of the empire, which were being eyed hungrily by the Russians. The Yongsheng Emperor incentivized colonization of the far western regions and Manchuria, hoping that an influx of Han migrants would integrate these areas more fully into the Qing state. This policy proved to be a double-edged sword; while the new arrivals did indeed boost the Qing presence, they also invariably angered locals. In some places, nothing came of this but grumbling, but in 新疆 (Xinjiang) it resulted in revolution. In 1867 Yaqub Beg declared himself king of Kashgar, and soon the entire region of Xinjiang was engulfed in rebellion. Ironically, Yaqub Beg – who just two years earlier had been forced from Tashkent by the Russians – now began to receive funding from them, as they saw an opportunity to capitalize on Qing weakness and take Xinjiang for themselves. The situation quickly worsened for the Qing, as Muslims from Gansu to Shaanxi rose in rebellion as well (1). Yongsheng quickly sent an army under the command of 李鸿章 (Li Hongzhang) to put down the rebellion. This army met with success surprisingly quickly; the Muslim rebels spent as much time fighting each other as they did fighting the Qing, with disputes constantly flaring up along ethnic lines and pitting Hui against Uyghur. Additionally, despite receiving some funding from Russia, the rebels were unable to win the full support of the Taiping Kingdom, which sent them some token support but was too preoccupied with internal matters – the end of the Cultural Revolution and the establishment of the Hundred Flowers Regime – to put much effort into aiding the rebels.
Li’s army pressed into Gansu Province, defeating the rebel leader 马化龙 (Ma Hualong) outside of 西宁 (Xining) in 1868; Ma Hualong was captured and sentenced to death by slow slicing after the battle. The following year, Li Hongzhang marched on into Xinjiang and crushed the army of Yakub Beg near Kucha, taking advantage of the Qing army’s superior training and weaponry. Active resistance ended after the Battle of Kucha, although a low-level guerilla campaign continued in Xinjiang and western Gansu until the early 1870s. Many Muslims, fearing Qing retribution after the fall of the rebellion, fled south and sneaked into Pingnan Guo via the porous border that separated the Qing province of 四川 (Sichuan) from that country (2). In the aftermath of the rebellion, relations between Qing China and Imperial Russia – which had already been cool at best – worsened further, as the Qing rightly suspected Russia of playing a role in inciting the Muslims of the West to rebel. This only pushed the Qing closer to Great Britain, with whom their relations were better in any event. A minor kerfuffle between the two nations did occur, however, in 1871, when a British surveying team was caught mapping Tibet, whose borders were closed to all outsiders; they were promptly put to death on the orders of the local Qing 大臣 (dachen, or imperial resident) (3). Both sides attempted to smooth over the unfortunate incident – the Qing apologized, sacked the offending resident, and paid an indemnity to the families of the dead surveyors, while the British apologized for illegally entering Tibet. The incident did worry the Yongsheng Emperor, who started to wonder just who, if anyone, he could really count on.
Excerpted from “Qing-Taiping Relations in the Post-Revolution Period,” by Mario Rasmussen. 2003.
- During the post-revolution period, the Qing and the Taiping were mostly content to lob verbal grenades at each other rather than the genuine article. Still, the lack of any formal peace treaty or even an armistice meant that the two nations were technically at war, and at least fifty small-scale confrontations occurred along the fifteen-hundred mile border that divided Taiping China and Qing China between 1860 and 1875 (4). Yet neither country was especially interested in war during this period; both were focused on modernization and had internal issues to worry about, specifically the fall of the Yang Xiuqing regime for the Taiping and the ethnic unrest among Muslims in the Far West for the Qing. In fact, the incident that brought the two Chinas closest to war during this period was not a border clash, but rather the 琉球危机 (Liuqiu weiji, or Ryukyu Crisis), which took place in 1875. Since the early 17th century, the Ryukyu Islands had paid tribute to both Qing China and to Japan; in the 1870s, the Taiping attempted to annex some of the southern Ryukyus near the island of 台湾 (Taiwan), which they had controlled since 1858. This prompted an immediate response from both Qing China and from Japan, who each sent a fleet to the area and warned the Taiping in no uncertain terms that any attempt to annex a portion of the Ryukyus would result in war. The Taiping backed down, and this incident is generally considered to mark the beginning of the alliance between Qing China and Japan (清日联盟, or Qing Ri lianmeng), which would play such an important role in world affairs in the years to come. For now, it was merely one more occasion in which Qing China and Taiping China came to the edge of war, but ultimately decided that peace was the better option.
Excerpted from “Taiping Foreign Policy in the Late 19th Century: The Southern Obsession,” by Jan van der Smoot. 1946.
- Since the War of Chapdelaine’s Head, relations between Taiping China and both Great Britain and France had been poor. The Taiping resented the forced legalization of the opium trade, which they even more than the Qing viewed as a social ill, and they further resented the right of Catholic missionaries to travel and proselytize, viewing it as a pronounced insult to Confucian Christianity. Britain in particular simply had too many interests in Taiping China – including the colony of Hong Kong – to walk away, as some suggested doing after the rapprochement with Qing China. Trade continued as it always had in the treaty ports, although the Taiping refused to allow much British and French investment outside these areas, instead preferring to look elsewhere – to Russia, the United States of America, and emerging powers such as Germany. Relations between Taiping China and Great Britain stabilized in the late 1860’s, but the Franco-Taiping rivalry had just begun.
France’s 1864 annexation of Cochin-China alarmed the Taiping, who had been attempting to establish influence in Southeast Asia in their own right with the help of their client state of Pingnan Guo. The further annexation by the French of Cambodia in 1869 sent Tianjing into quite a state, as the Hundred Flowers Regime feared that France and Britain would simply divide Southeast Asia between them, leaving the Taiping Kingdom entirely surrounded by unfriendly nations (5). The Taiping thus started to step up their overtures to local rulers. They were aided in this by the example of Pingnan Guo – a nation that was under the Taiping umbrella and thus free from foreign imperialism of any sort. In 1868, the Taiping, in coordination with Pingnan Guo and the Nguyen Dynasty of Vietnam, established the 黑旗军 (Heiqi jun, or Black Flag Army) (6). The Black Flag Army was supposedly a loose agglomeration of bandits; in fact, it was made up almost entirely of soldiers from the Tiaping and Pingnan Guo armies and was commanded by the American adventurer Frederick Townsend Ward, who had previously served in the Taiping military. The Black Flag Army quickly endeared itself to the Nguyen Dynasty by suppressing several hill tribes, after which they began to “extort” commerce on the Red River (in fact the monies went to the Nguyen Dynasty, which did not have the wherewithal to impose duties and fees on river trade itself). In 1873 the Black Flag Army first came to the attention of the French, after the explorer Francois Garnier, who had been sent to Hanoi to resolve a commercial dispute, decided that the time was ripe to conquer the region for France. The Nguyen Dynasty called on the Black Flags, who entered Hanoi and killed every man in Garnier’s small force, including Garnier himself (7). The incident was a great embarrassment to the French, who had not intended for Garnier to take such extreme steps, but it did not put an end to their quest for empire. Although the European defeats of the early 1870s temporarily put a damper on French ambitions with regard to Southeast Asia, their eyes were still firmly set on Annam and Tonkin (8). Meanwhile, the Taiping Kingdom attempted to deepen ties with Siam . . .
NOTES
(1) This rebellion mirrors the Dungan Rebellion of 1862-77 in OTL. It’s not nearly as chaotic, though, because the Taiping aren’t prominently involved (OTL a stray Taiping army showed up and basically kicked off the action) and the Qing are much more with it.
(2) OTL they mostly fled to Russia. Fewer flee ITTL because the rebellion is less intense, but those that do mostly go to Pingnan Guo due to its status as a “Muslim country” (even though it’s really not, as discussed in the previous post).
(3) The British did this as well OTL, although they were never caught in the act.
(4) It’s kind of like the present situation between North and South Korea, except that neither Taiping China nor Qing China are run by lunatics.
(5) This fear probably wasn’t justified – the British and the French were colonial rivals, not allies – but it worried the Taiping nonetheless.
(6) OTL the Black Flag Army was mostly made up of ex-Taiping and bandits. Its leader was Liu Yongfu, who ITTL is one of the most prominent figures of the Hundred Flowers Regime.
(7) Lest I be accused of Sino-wankery, I’d like to point out that this incident happened in OTL almost exactly as I described it here.
(8) OTL the French annexed Annam in 1874; their timetable for that is slowed a bit in this timeline due to events which will be described and explained in the next post.
*A bit of foreign policy there, as you can see some alliances starting to form in East and Southeast Asia. As mentioned previously, the next entry will be the long-awaited “around the world” post, in which I talk about non-China places. I’ve so far managed to write a new entry every day, but this one will probably be a bit lengthy and require some research, so it might take a couple of days. And if there’s anything that people specifically want mentioned, just let me know. As always, thanks for reading.
OBLIGATORY ADMINISTRATIVE STUFF: I’ve never written a timeline before, so please be gentle when telling me how much I suck. This timeline will describe an alternate Taiping Rebellion, that being the civil war which tore China apart in the mid-19th century. I’ve never been much for the “1899: Important Thing Happened” style of alternate history, so I’m going to take a kind of history book approach to what happened, with occasional first-person bits. Additionally, there won’t be one big point when everything changes; rather, there will be a series of small unfortunate events (unfortunate if you’re a fan of the Qing Dynasty, that is). The real exciting stuff will start around 1850, but this post will mostly be about setting the stage for what’s to come. And . . . that’s it for the obligatory administrative stuff! So we begin.
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Introduction: The Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost, and the Other Guy
Excerpted from “Hong Xiuquan: The Man, the King, the God,” by Honda Keisuke. People’s University of Tokyo Press, 1979.
- 洪秀全 (Hong Xiuquan) was a man who could safely be discounted. For there were millions of others exactly like him. Born in the village of 福源水(Fuyuanshui) in Guangdong on January 1st, 1814 as 洪仁坤 (Hong Renkun), his parents, 洪兢扬 (Hong Jingyang) and 王氏 (Wang Shi) were members of the semi-proletariat middle-peasant class. Hong Xiuquan thus came of age under the thumb of the imperialist exploiting classes, who for centuries had held the laboring peasant masses in a state of feudal quasi-serfdom.
Hong was by all accounts a dutiful student, although his formal education was cut short at the age of fifteen, when his parents could no longer afford tuition fees. He continued studying on his own, and in 1836 traveled to the provincial capital of 广州 (Guangzhou) to take the civil service examinations. He returned home empty-handed, as did more than 95% of all those who attempted to earn degrees. Hong’s humble class origins worked against him; although examples of poor men who earned a degree and went on to fame and fortune were heavily publicized, in reality most of the degrees went to privileged scions of the reactionary elite classes. Hong sat the exams three more times, failing on each occasion. It was after his third failure that he had his first dreams, or “revelations” as they would later be called. Although previous scholarship has placed Hong Xiuquan in the role of proto-Marxist revolutionary, I will use a post-Modernist-neo-structuralist-anti-colonialist-deconstructo-formulistic Fourth Wave Marxism-Fukuzawaism (1) approach to argue that in fact, Hong was . . .
Excerpted from “The Birth of the Red Heresy,” by Paolo Bellucci. University of Florence Press, 1950. (2)
- In 1837, after failing the civil service examinations for the third time, Hong Xiuquan slipped into a fit of delirium, probably brought on by a combination of stress and shame. In the words of the famous Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, it was “the panic attack that changed the world.” The series of dreams that Hong had in this state have been written about and dramatized a thousand times. This volume will content itself with the facts. Hong later claimed that in his dreams he saw an old man complaining that men were worshipping demons instead of him, followed by Confucius being tortured for his sins and then repenting. In his most vivid hallucination, Hong dreamt of being brought to heaven on the wings of angels and meeting a golden-bearded man who ordered him to rid the world of evil, after which he took out Hong’s organs and replaced them with new ones. Most critically, the bearded man addressed Hong as “Younger Brother.”
Hong saw no greater meaning in these dreams for six years, until in 1843 he failed the examinations for the fourth time. It was then that his cousin Li Jingfang gave him the book 劝世良言 (Quan shi liang yan, or Good Words to Exhort the World), a Christian tract by the writer Liang Afa. Thus was the Red Heresy born; Hong immediately connected the tenets of Christianity to his dreams from six years earlier. He saw himself as the adopted younger brother of Jesus Christ, who had been sent by God to rid China of Confucianism and found a new heavenly kingdom. Hong’s first converts were his cousins Feng Yunshan and Hong Rengan, who had also repeatedly failed the civil service examinations. After being forced out of their village by Confucians, the three men traveled to 广西 (Guangxi Province), where they began to preach and by 1850 had assembled a group of at least 10,000 converts, known as the 拜上帝会 (Bai Shangdi hui, or God-Worshippers Society).
Excerpted from “Bad Houseguests: The History of the Kejia People,” by Allison Seymour. New York: Goldman, Sachs and Company, 2002.
- Although much has been written about the religious dimensions of the Taiping Rebellion, relatively little mention has been given to its origins as an ethnically-based movement. In fact, Hong Xiuquan, his cousins, and the core of the Taiping army and administration were members of the 客家 (Kejia) minority. The 客家 (Kejia, or Hakka, literally meaning “guest people”) have a long and complicated history . . .
The earliest supporters of the Taiping Rebellion came not only from the Kejia, but from another prominent ethnic minority in Southern China – the 壮 (Zhuang) people. In effect the Taiping Rebellion began as an uprising by disaffected minority peasants, spurred into action by their charismatic leader.
NOTES
(1) This would be 福澤諭吉 (Fukuzawa Yukichi), who in the real world was an incredibly influential Japanese philosopher, educator, and political theorist. I have plans for him.
(2) Hong’s heterodox interpretation of Christianity has been dubbed “The Red Heresy” due to a mistake made by his former teacher, American missionary Issachar Jacox Roberts. As Hong’s fame grew, so too did Roberts’, and in 1858 he published a book detailing his experiences entitled My Name is Red. This title was chosen based on Roberts’ mistaken belief – his Chinese wasn’t that great – that the “Hong” in Hong Xiuquan was written with the character 红, which means red. In fact it’s written with the character 洪, which means vast or grand. Roberts was unaware of this fact, and even if he had been, My Name is Vast just doesn’t sound as good. Like all misunderstandings it spread rapidly, unchecked by the truth, and even today Hong Christianity is commonly referred to as the “Red Heresy,” and the Great Kingdom of Heavenly Peace is often simply known as “Red China.”
*Careful readers will notice that everything so far pretty much happened in real life – there’s not too much alternate in this history yet. Sorry. I did it this way because the Taiping Rebellion isn’t as well known in the West as it might be, and thus I thought it was important to establish the context in which it occurred. Next update coming tomorrow.
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Part #1: Nobody Expects the Taiping Revolution!
Excerpted from “The Beginning of the Beginning: The Taiping Rebellion, 1851-53,” by Marmaduke Tickled-Pinkington. Cambridge University Press, 1983.
- The 太平天国 (Taiping tianguo, or Great Kingdom of Heavenly Peace) was proclaimed by Hong Xiuquan in January of 1851 from his power base in eastern Guangxi Province. Hong’s army, which now numbered more than 20,000 men and women, had been allowed to flourish unmolested by local Qing bureaucrats, who were spending much of their time and energy attempting to put down another rebellion, that of the 天地会 (Tiandihui, or Heaven and Earth Society) (1). By the time they noticed the clouds gathering overhead, the storm had already begun. On January 1st, 1851, Qing troops sallied forth in an attempt to crush the rebels at Jintian Village, only to be defeated in an ambush. Thus began the opening phase of the Taiping Rebellion, often known as the 金田超义 (Jintian chaoyi, or Jintian Uprising). The two armies fought a series of engagements over the next six months, in which neither side was able to strike a decisive blow in the dense jungles of Guangxi. The Qing armies failed to destroy the rebels; likewise, the Taiping were unable to break out of Guangxi and strike north. However, the Jintian Uprising must on balance be regarded as a victory for the Taiping rebels, who merely by surviving attracted substantial popular support and gained needed materiel for the campaigns to come.
In 1852 the Taiping succeeded where they had failed the previous year and broke out of Guangxi, successfully conquering the city of 长沙 (Changsha, capital of Hunan Province) after a prolonged siege. The Army of Heavenly Peace – an oxymoron if there ever was one – continued their onslaught, taking the cities of 汉口 (Hankou) and 武昌 (Wuchang) in late 1852 and marching through the central 长江 (Chang River) valley on the way to their ultimate goal – 南京 (Nanjing), the Southern Capital (2).
Excerpted from “The Rape of Nanking,” by Rose Zhang. University of California Los Angeles Press, 1992. (3)
- One of the more overlooked atrocities in modern history happened in March of 1853, when Hong Xiuquan’s “Army of Heavenly Peace” entered and sacked the ancient city of Nanking. This enormous and disciplined band of fanatics swept aside all resistance, destroying the Qing defenders utterly and murdering at least 50,000 prisoners of war who had surrendered after the battle. The victorious legions of God’s second son then tore through the city itself, burning and killing indiscriminately as they went. One survivor later wrote: “Buckets of blood were spilled indiscriminately . . . I saw one group of them cutting [a man’s] organs out and feeding them to him . . . after three days of terror the skies roared and the rains begin to fall, as if even the gods themselves were saying ‘Enough.’ Only then was the blood and offal cleansed from the streets of Nanjing.” After the massacre was concluded, Hong Xiuquan declared Nanjing as the capital of the Great Kingdom of Heavenly Peace, renaming the city 天京 (Tianjing, or Heavenly Capital) and converting the residence of the local Qing administrator into his 天王府 (Tianwang fu, or Palace of the Heavenly King). Dark days had come to the Middle Kingdom, and even darker ones lay ahead . . .
Excerpted from “What If?: Conterfactuals That Could Have Changed the World,” edited by Scheherazade Wang and Rajiv Martinez. University of Antananarivo Press, 1966.
- In 1853 the Taiping were ascendant, having taken the city of Nanjing and extended their control over much of southern China. Their strength was mirrored by the weakness of the Qing, a dynasty in decline that was poised on the brink of disaster. What if the Taiping had taken advantage of the momentum they possessed and launched a campaign aimed at 北京 (Beijing) itself? It is highly possible – even probable – that the 清朝 (Qing Dynasty) would have crumbled before them. (4)
Hong Xiuquan chose a different approach, preferring to consolidate his gains and re-order the army and administrative structures of his fledgling kingdom. One of the greatest strengths of the rebellion lay in the Army of Heavenly Peace, which was organized, disciplined, and utterly fanatical. Known as the 长毛 (Changmao, or Long Hair) by their Qing adversaries, the army was drawn almost totally from the lower classes and even included female soldiers in combat roles, although units were strictly segregated by sex.
Naturally, the Taiping government was headed by Hong Xiuquan himself, who ruled as the Heavenly King from his palace in the newly-renamed city of 天京 (Tianjing). In a move that was little-noticed at the time, Hong chose to retire from the daily affairs of government in favor of spending more time receiving visions from God – a decision he would later live to regret. While Hong was still unquestionably the paramount leader of the kingdom, increasing amounts of power devolved upon five provincial rulers, who were themselves named as “kings” by Hong. Of these men, the first among equals was 杨秀清 (Yang Xiuqing), the 东王 (Eastern King) and de facto prime minister. Yang, a former firewood salesman, employed a vast network of spies and was known for his eagerness to amass as many titles as he could; his nemesis was 韦昌辉 (Wei Changhui), the 北王 (Northern King). The Southern and Western Kings, Feng Yunshan and Xiao Chaogui, both died in separate engagements in 1852; most of their power was taken by Yang Xiuqing, although some fell to 秦日刚 (Qin Rigang), the 燕王 (Yan wang, or Swallow King). Finally, there was 石达开 (Shi Dakai), the rebellion’s most capable general, who was given the title 翼王五千岁 (Yi wang wuqiansui, or the Wing King, Lord of Five Thousand Years). Old rivalries quickly came to the fore, and soon these men were spending as much time fighting with each other as they were with the armies of the Qing . . . (5)
Excerpted from “The Saturday Night Massacre: Inside the Taiping Coup,” by Archibald Cox. Washington: Watergate Press, 1974.
- The internecine rivalries that had plagued the Heavenly Kingdom since its inception came to a head on the night of September 1, 1854 in the famous 周六半夜大屠杀 - Zhouliu banye datusha, or Saturday Night Massacre - as it has come to be called by Western scholars; Taiping historians prefer the more anodyne 天京事件 (Tianjing Incident). Regardless of the term used to describe the events of that night, they were anything but incidental. Since the fall of Nanjing, Eastern King Yang Xiuqing had steadily amassed power to the point where had earned the enmity not only of his longtime rival, Northern King Wei Changhui, but also of Hong Xiuquan himself. Yang and Hong had fundamental disagreements regarding the scale of the reforms to be implemented in the Heavenly Kingdom; unlike Hong, Yang thought that Confucianism was compatible with the Taiping brand of heterodox Christianity. After one incident in which Yang suggested to Hong that the two of them should be regarded as equals, the Heavenly King decided that enough was enough, and ordered Wei Changhui, Qin Rigang and Shi Dakai to kill Yang Xiuqing and all of his followers. Ironically, the Saturday Night Massacre actually began on the previous day – Friday, August 31 – when Wei and Qin’s troops entered Tianjing (Shi Dakai had yet to arrive) and descended on Yang’s residence – only to discover that their arrival had been anticipated. Yang’s labyrinthine network of spies had alerted him to the coming storm, and thus the armies of Wei and Qin were greeted with organized resistance from Yang’s followers. A night of battle ensued under the red lanterns in the streets of Tianjing. Wei and Qin’s forces eventually gained the upper hand and forced the Yang loyalists into a fighting retreat to the outskirts of the city, but were unable to consummate the victory. As dawn broke they moved through the now-ruined western quarter of Tianjing, summarily executing all those sympathetic to Yang who were still left – and some others who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Shi Dakai, the Wing King, Lord of Five Thousand Years, arrived at noon the following day with his army. Though his orders stated in no uncertain terms that he was to do away with Yang Xiuqing, upon his arrival Shi attempted mediation between the two sides, hoping that a settlement could be reached. His attempts were for nought, and after receiving several increasingly irate messages from the Heavenly King telling him to get on with it, Shi prepared to complete the defeat of Yang Xiuqing. As Shi was organizing the disposition of his forces, a bedraggled servant from his household stumbled into camp and delivered the news that Shi’s entire family had been killed – executed by Wei and Qin’s forces the night before. Though revisionist historians have suggested that the servant – whose name is lost to posterity – was in fact one of Yang’s many spies, there is no evidence to support this contention, and in any case his report was indisputably correct. That evening, when Shi Dakai did make his attack, it was not against the Yang loyalists, but was rather a surprise descent on the unprepared armies of Wei and Qin. What ensued was not a battle, but a rout. Qin Rigang was killed in the engagement, while Wei Changhui was captured and executed the following day; he was strapped to the mouth of a cannon which was then fired. Chronicler 邢立臣 (Xing Lichen) later wrote, “A haze of blood filled the sky, and for three days thereafter the crows feasted on the man who had once been the King of the North.” Shi Dakai and Yang Xiuqing met in a dilapidated teahouse in the southern quarter of Tianjing at the stroke of midnight, after their shared adversaries had been crushed. No record of what was said at that meeting survives, but their actions thereafter speak for themselves. For Hong Xiuquan never again left the Palace of the Heavenly King . . . (6)
NOTES
(1) The 天地会 was a secret society dedicated to overthrowing the Qing Dynasty and restoring the Ming Dynasty.
(2) So named because it was the capital of China for a few hundred years, until the 永乐 (Yongle) Emperor moved it to Beijing because . . . well, because he felt like it, and he was the emperor.
(3) This timeline’s version of the Rape of Nanjing happens a little earlier. The “author” of this “excerpt” is more than a little biased – there were only light massacres in reality, and the city was definitely not sacked or anything.
(4) This would be another great starting point for a Taiping Rebellion timeline, as there was a significant chance that had the Taiping gone for the jugular, the Qing would have collapsed. Needless to say, I’m going in a different direction.
(5) They were a fractious bunch, those Taiping.
(6) So obviously, this is the point of divergence. Originally I had planned a series of small events instead of one big thing, but I kept on landing here. Quite a bit of what I described actually happened in the real world: Hong and Yang had a falling out, and Hong ordered the others to get rid of him. Our first divergence is that in the real world, Yang was taken unawares. I have him finding out about the plot in advance due to his network of spies (which he was indeed famed for). Likewise, Shi Dakai did in fact show up late to the party, and his entire family was actually killed by Wei Changhui’s troops, and he did really turn and destroy Wei and Qin’s armies. The big difference is that in the real world, Yang was already dead, so Shi wasn’t technically disobeying Hong. In my timeline Yang is still alive, so when Shi learns of the deaths of his family and goes apeshit, he’s also aiding Yang Xiuqing and in effect pitting himself against Hong Xiuquan. Thus, he and Yang cooperate and stage a quasi-coup (it’s a bit complicated, as will be explained in the next entry) out of self-preservation as much as anything else – it was either Hong or them. Other divergences in this POD: the real Tianjing Incident took place in 1856; mine occurs in 1854. Furthermore, in real life the incident unfolded over a period of weeks. I compressed the timeline of the events, more for simplicity’s sake than anything else, as I couldn’t keep track of when everything was supposed to be happening. Hey, it’s alternate history, right?
I know that’s a rather long-winded explanation, but especially since the POD is so dramatic I feel compelled to provide some justification for it. I think I’m on reasonably solid ground here, given that a lot of what I described actually did take place, but comments, suggestions and criticism are all welcome. The next update is coming on Thursday. And thanks to everyone who's commented so far.
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Part #2: The Twelve Puppeteers
Excerpted from “Governance in the Heavenly Kingdom,” by Caroline Zuma. University of Toronto Press, 1982.
- How do you solve a problem called Hong Xiuquan? This was the dilemma faced by 石达开 (Shi Dakai) and 杨秀清 (Yang Xiuqing). While it must have been tempting to make a public spectacle of his downfall, or simply to announce that the Heavenly King had suffered a fatal accident, Shi and Yang realized that without Hong’s presence the rebellion was doomed to collapse. After all, it was Hong’s charisma and leadership that had united the rebels into a cohesive force and given them strength and purpose. But the main reason why Hong could not simply be dumped in a ditch was religious in nature. The Heavenly Kingdom itself was based on the idea that Hong was the son of God and the brother of Jesus Christ – and one does not simply depose the divine. Thus, instead of tearing Hong down, Shi and Yang built him up, issuing a series of declarations that both proclaimed his divinity and announced that he was retiring from earthly affairs to commune with his father and older brother, God and Jesus Christ. While these grand proclamations were being issued, including one which stated that Hong and his scions would rule the Heavenly Kingdom for ten thousand years, Shi and Yang were creating the structures of a new government. Thus was the 使徒会 (Shitu hui, or Council of the Apostles) formed. Supposedly established to “faithfully interpret and execute the divine words of the Heavenly King (遵奉地解释,执行天王神圣之懿旨) (1),” in fact the Council of Apostles was the body through which Shi and Yang ruled the Taiping Tianguo. Most of the twelve members of the council were firmly in the pockets of Shi and Yang, although there were some members who were powerful in their own right, most notably the brilliant naval commander 唐正才 (Tang Zhengcai). Shi and Yang’s silent coup was immeasurably aided by the air of ambiguity that surrounded the entire enterprise. Most people had no idea what had actually happened, and even some members of the Council of Apostles were under the illusion that Hong was still in charge. (2) Hong had surrendered responsibility for the day-to-day affairs of the kingdom the year before of his own accord, and thus most people found it quite easy to believe that he would retire from temporal affairs completely. In any event, a great deal of the army was personally loyal to Shi Dakai . . .
Thus it was that Hong Xiuquan lived out the remainder of his days under de facto house arrest in the Palace of the Heavenly King, which he never again left. He was watched at all times by the 天王保护队 (Tianwang baohu dui, or Guardians of the Heavenly King) – more commonly known to Western readers as the Red Guards - which were an elite unit handpicked by and loyal to Yang Xiuqing, who ensured that Hong stayed right where he was. It is said that Hong’s chefs – also handpicked by Yang – put copious amounts of opium in the Heavenly King’s meals. Hong’s days were spent in a drug-addled haze; his nights were spent with one or more of his two hundred concubines. (3)
Excerpted from “Taiping Social Policy: A Study in Contradictions,” by Jehoshaphat Trumbull. University of British Columbia Press, 1922.
- The Taiping Kingdom was, on paper at least, inarguably the most progressive and egalitarian society in the world. A policy of strict equality between the sexes was declared; women were allowed to take the civil service examinations and serve in combat roles in the military. Prostitution and polygamy were banned on pain of death – although many Taiping leaders continued to keep concubines – and foot binding, slavery, opium, and gambling were also proscribed (4). The society that Hong Xiuquan created also leaned towards Marxism (although Hong wouldn’t have known Marx from a hole in the ground). Private property was abolished and society was declared to be classless. Taiping society also had a theocratic bent: the subject of the civil service examinations was changed from the Confucian classics to the Bible, and all citizens were required to undergo baptism and convert to Christianity.
In the early years of the Taiping, this society essentially existed only on paper. Civil administration ranged from shaky to nonexistent, and most of the Taiping social reforms were not implemented in the countryside. It was probably best for all concerned that the Taiping didn’t try too hard to enforce these policies, especially the more esoteric ones. For example, Hong decreed that the sexes should be strictly separated and that even married couples must not live together or . . . do other things that married couples often do (5). This policy was unceremoniously abandoned after the Silent Coup that followed the Saturday Night Massacre of 1854. Taiping internal policy changed dramatically after the fall of Hong and the rise of Yang Xiuqing and Shi Dakai to prominence. Yang, who had always been a modernizer – it was he who had previously agitated for the change to a solar instead of a lunar calendar – embraced Western ideas, calling on citizens to build a 和谐社会 (hexie shehui, or Harmonious Society) that was rooted in 科学发展 (kexue fazhan, or Scientific Development). Yet he also softened restrictions on the practice of Confucianism and property ownership. (6) Yang had long believed that Confucian morality was compatible with the Taiping brand of Christianity, and thus he allowed Confucianism to resume its role in the lives of the people. This trend culminated in 1877, when the Council of Apostles announced that they had received a “revelation” from Hong Xiuquan stating that just as he was Jesus’ younger brother, so too was Confucius God’s younger brother, who had been sent to Earth to spread morality and right thinking . . . (7).
Excerpted from “History of the Qing Dynasty, 1644-1976: The Reign of the Xianfeng Emperor,” by Maarten Maartens. University of Leiden Press, 2002.
- The 咸丰帝 (Xianfeng Emperor) was the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time. After all, the Dragon Throne was no place for an opium-smoking, alcoholic teenager. Yet when his father the 道光帝 (Daoguang Emperor) died in 1850, Xianfeng (then known as Prince Yizhu) came to power at the tender age of nineteen. The newly-crowned emperor, a fervent traditionalist who believed in the inherent superiority of China over the encroaching Westerners, was almost immediately confronted with a challenge of a different sort – the Taiping Rebellion. Xianfeng could only watch in horror as the Army of Heavenly Peace swept through southern China, culminating with their capture of Nanjing in March of 1853, only two years after the rebellion had begun. He responded to the Taiping threat by sending several prominent officials south with a mandate to crush the rebellion. The most notable of these officials was 曾国藩 (Zeng Guofan).
Zeng rose to prominence when he recaptured the cities of Hankou and Wuchang from the Taiping in 1852, although the Taiping quickly re-re-captured them. He was quickly noticed by the court, which appointed him to the Board of War and gave him carte blanche to take any and all measures necessary to put down the rebellion. In response to the imperial command Zeng raised a new force - 湘军 (Xiang Army) – and managed to stop the Taiping Army’s northern advance in the summer of 1853, after which they took the defensive and focused on consolidating their gains. The following year, as the factional feuding within the Taiping government worsened, Zeng’s Xiang Army attacked, pushing the Army of Heavenly Peace out of 江苏省 (Jiangsu Province). As 1855 began, it seemed that the tide had turned in favor of the Qing. It hadn’t. (8)
NOTES
(1) There’s a good chance that I butchered that translation.
(2) This is going to cause some trouble later on, but at the beginning the fact that no one really knew what was happening was critical to the success of Shi and Yang’s coup, which was made even easier by the fact that Hong was such a nutter that people could easily see him leaving public life completely to hang out with God.
(3) So don’t feel too sorry for Hong. Sure, he’s not allowed to leave his home, but it is a palace. Plus he doesn’t have to do any work, he’s treated like a god, given vast amounts of drugs, and gets the run of the harem to boot. Talk about the hardest job you’ll ever love . . .
(4) The Taiping attitude towards opium is definitely going to cause some problems down the road. Bet on it.
(5) Hong actually did decree that married couples could not live together or have sex. Did I mention that he was a crazy person? In real life this “reform” was dropped in 1855, as Yang Xiuqing’s power grew. In this timeline, Yang can grant the people of the Heavenly Kingdom conjugal visits a year earlier. PARTY!
(6) This is absolutely critical for the medium to long-term survival of the Taiping state. OTL one of the main reasons why they failed was a total inability to co-opt any of the scholar-bureaucrat class, who were understandably a bit turned off by the Confucius hate as well as some of the reforms that would hit them where it hurts – the wallet. With a new regime in charge, most of Hong’s crazier ideas are thrown out, and in particular the Taiping become more congenial to Confucianism. While they’re not exactly going to win the allegiance of the Chinese elite overnight, they will be able to co-opt a solid core of scholar-bureaucrats, which will enable them to actually administer the territory that they own.
(7) Yes, the Taiping Kingdom is shaping up to be a seriously weird place: a proto-Marxist modernizing totalitarian bureaucratic oligarchy, with a theocratic element tossed in for fun. And just to make things really weird, that theocratic element is Christianity with increasing amounts of Confucianism grafted on. Call it Christianity with Chinese Characteristics.
(8) So if you’re keeping score at home, from 1851 to early 1853, the Taiping pretty much kicked the Qing around. Things started to stabilize in mid-to-late 1853, and in 1854 the Qing regained some of their lost territory.
*Again, a big thank-you to everyone who has read and commented on this timeline so far. I’m always open to any suggestions or criticism that people have. In the next entry (which will probably be finished either tomorrow or Friday) things really start to heat up . . . and the foreign devils make their first appearance. Exciting times are ahead . . .
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Part #3: Frying Pans And Fires And Rocks And Hard Places
“善为士者不武,善战者不怒,善胜敌者不与,善用人者为之下。是谓不争之德,是谓用人之力,是谓配天之极. ”
Excerpted from “The Nian Rebellion,” by Abdullah Watson. 1997.
- If the only problem faced by the Qing had been the Taiping Rebellion, things still would have been difficult for the dynasty. With the addition of another revolution to the mix, the Xianfeng Emperor could have been forgiven for considering himself cursed. Unlike the Taiping Rebellion, the 捻军起义 (Nian jun qi yi, or Nian Rebellion) was not motivated by ethnic, class or religious considerations. Instead, the revolutionaries were driven simply by anger at a government that had failed them. The 黄河 (Yellow River) had flooded in 1851, causing massive loss of life; in the wake of this disaster no help came from Beijing, which was both broke and busy. When the river flooded again in 1855 and relief was again slow to arrive, many citizens decided that enough was enough. They were led by the charismatic 张乐行 (Zhang Lexing), who organized the revolutionaries into a well-organized guerrilla force that relied on cavalry in attack and the impregnability of their fortified cities in defense. The timing of the rebellion was disastrous for the Qing, who had been making gains against the Taiping in 1854. Now the Qing armies were cut off from their supply lines, and another hostile force had suddenly emerged behind them. The Taiping seized on the opportunity presented to them by the Nian Rebellion, sending troops under the command of the general 赖文光 (Lai Wenguang) to aid Zhang Lexing and his revolutionaries.
Beijing responded, sending an army commanded by the Mongolian general 僧格林沁 (Senggelinqin) to put down the rebellion. Yet the Qing were unlucky once more; Senggelinqin’s army was ambushed by Nian rebels west of 济南 (Jinan) in October of 1855, and the general himself was killed. In a last-ditch attempt to avert total disaster, Zeng Guofan detached a portion of his army under the command of 左宗棠 (Zuo Zongtang), one of his most trusted subordinates, and sent them north to battle the Nian. Showing the skills that would later earn him a place on menus worldwide (1), Zuo’s army achieved some notable successes against the Nian, even capturing Zhang Lexing in 1856. Yet even as Zuo waged his campaign against the Nian, the decision to send him north left the Qing armies in the field against the Taiping outnumbered and undermanned. The Taiping were not in a position to take full advantage of this; after all, Shi Dakai was not present, having embarked on the famous 南伐 (Nan fa, or Southern Expedition). Yet they still held the advantage and achieved some breakthroughs, most famously in July of 1856 when the Taiping Navy, under the command of 唐正才 (Tang Zhengcai), captured the city of 上海 (Shanghai) in a daring amphibious assault.
Excerpted from “The Panthay Rebellion,” by Ono Kanji. People’s University of Sapporo Press, 1963.
- The 杜文秀起义 (Du Wenxiu qiyi, or Du Wenxiu Rebellion), also known as the Panthay Rebellion, began in 云南省 (Yunnan Province) in 1856. The revolutionaries were predominantly 回 (Hui), a Muslim minority who had been discriminated against for years by the government of the region. In 1856 local uprisings broke out across Yunnan, and rebels under the leadership of 杜文秀 (Du Wenxiu) captured the city of 大理 (Dali) and declared the establishment of a new nation, 平南国 (Pingnan guo, or the Peaceful Southern Nation). Although the rebellion was primarily a Muslim affair, it was aided by many of the minority groups that were scattered throughout Yunnan Province. It was also aided by another emerging power – the Taiping Kingdom. Troops were detached from Shi Dakai’s Southern Expedition under the command of 李世贤 (Li Shixian) to aid Du Wenxiu and his fellow revolutionaries. In contrast, the Qing Dynasty could offer no help to the officials responsible for the defense of Yunnan; there were simply too many other priorities, and Yunnan was too far away. Although the Qing troops in Yunnan were ably led by 岑毓英 (Cen Yuying) they could only be in one place at a time, and had no chance of being able to put down a province-wide rebellion, especially not once the battle-hardened Taiping Army had arrived on the scene. In Yunnan, the Chinese proverb 天高皇帝远 (Tian gao huangdi yuan, or, Heaven is high, and the emperor is far away) proved to be an all too appropriate summary of the situation for the Qing armies charged with the defense of the province. (2)
Excerpted from “The Southern Expedition,” by Zhang Xiaolong. 1912.
- In the spring of 1855, after he had firmly established his position along with Yang Xiuqing as one of the two main power brokers in the Taiping Kingdom, 石达开 (Shi Dakai) – the Wing King, Lord of Five Thousand Years – prepared for his next campaign against the forces of the Qing. Everyone – including his own staff officers – assumed that Shi would strike north, attempting to defeat the forces of Zeng Guofan and threaten Beijing itself. But Shi Dakai had never been one for conforming to the expectations of others, and decided on an alternative course of action. Instead of going north he went south, driving deep into the rich provinces of 浙江 (Zhejiang), 福建 (Fujian), and 广东 (Guangdong). The campaign itself, known to posterity as 南伐 (Nan fa), or the Southern Expedition, was conducted masterfully and took full advantage of both the weakness of Qing forces in the southeast and the near impossibility that the Qing would be able to reinforce those regions. (3)
As Shi’s armies marched south people flocked to the banner of the Wing King, further bolstering his numbers. Shi won decisive engagements at 衢州 (Quzhou) and 三明 (Sanming) in 1855, and even after detaching part of his forces under the command of 李世贤 (Li Shixian) in 1856 to aid Du Wenxiu’s rebels in 1856, his advance continued. In the fall of 1856 Shi Dakai defeated the last organized Qing resistance outside the city of 肇庆 (Zhaoqing) in Guangdong Province and began to liberate the southeastern coastal cities of 杭州 (Hangzhou), 福州 (Fuzhou), 厦门 (Xiamen), and 广州 (Guangzhou). Yet as Shi’s army took these port cities from the Qing, they also inadvertently opened an unpleasant can of worms. For several of these cities were treaty ports – home to and essentially controlled by foreign traders, who began to take a long look at the power that was rising in the South. In many cases, they didn’t like what they saw . . .
Excerpted from “Foreign Tools and Chinese Ideas: Inside the Qing Modernization Movement,” by Natasha Hu. 2004.
- In 1856 the 咸丰帝 (Xianfeng Emperor) had not yet reached the age of twenty-five – yet he was already an old man. Since assuming the throne he had watched impotently as the empire that he had inherited crumbled before his very eyes. As more and more bad news came to Beijing from the front, Xianfeng – a heavy drinker at the best of times – hit the bottle even harder, frequently disappearing from court for days at a time to drink and pursue one of his other vices, the use of opium. Both his physical and mental health began to deteriorate, and the eunuchs and courtiers of the Forbidden City started to whisper amongst themselves about the emperor’s fading grip on reality. The straw that broke the camel’s back came in February of 1856 when a seasonal flu swept through Beijing. As flu outbreaks go, it was no worse than most years; a few thousand residents of the city died, and ordinarily such an event would have gone unnoticed by the imperial court. But disease cares little for rank or title, and as it happened one of the victims of the virus was Imperial Concubine Yi, who was pregnant with what would have been the Emperor’s first child (4). The loss of his favorite concubine and his unborn child – in addition to the loss of a large chunk of his kingdom – was too much for the Xianfeng Emperor to bear. The hysterical monarch fled to his summer palace at 承德 (Chengde), where he wandered the grounds, rending his garments and tearing his hair. After several days he began to refuse nourishment, and on May 4th, the Xianfeng Emperor passed away.
Given that Xianfeng had died without issue, the throne passed to his younger half-brother 奕欣恭亲王 (Yixin, the 1st Prince Gong). After surviving an assassination attempt on his life by the traditionalist faction at court, Yixin assumed the Dragon Throne in June, taking the regnal name 永胜 (Yongsheng, or Eternal Victory) (5). The newly-crowned emperor bore almost no resemblance to his deceased half-brother; he was dynamic and vigorous. Most importantly, he had long been an advocate of modernization and was passionately interested in Western technology and ideas (6). The situation inherited by Yongsheng was dire to say the least, as the Taiping armies swept through the south with seeming impunity. Yet before he could turn his full attention to the rebellion, Yongsheng had to deal with crisis. For the foreign barbarians were knocking on China’s gates again, and everyone remembered what they had done to the Middle Kingdom only fifteen short years before . . .
NOTES
(1) His name was 左宗棠, but you may know him as General Tso. I am told that his chicken is delicious.
(2) Both the Nian and the Panthay Rebellion did indeed occur in real life. IOTL they failed to really coordinate with the Taiping, and thus all three of the rebellions were eventually put down by the Qing Dynasty. In this timeline, the not-crazy Taiping regime is giving a lot of help to their revolutionary counterparts.
(3) The inspiration for the “Southern Expedition” (itself a shout-out to the Northern Expedition, which happened in 1928) comes from Shi Dakai’s Sichuan campaigns of the early 1860s, which ended in failure. Needless to say, he’s doing better this time around.
(4) This so did not happen in real life. You may know the Imperial Concubine Yi by the title she assumed later – 慈禧太后 (Dowager Empress Ci Xi). IOTL she had the baby – who became the 同治帝 (Tongzhi Emperor) – but she pretty much ruled China in her own right for almost fifty years, screwing things up royally along the way. But now she’s dead. As for Xianfeng’s demise, he really was an alcoholic opium addict with a tenuous grip on sanity, and he pretty much did go crazy and drop dead. IOTL this happened in 1860 and the event that prompted it all was China’s defeat in the Second Opium War. I figured that the combination of greater Taiping success and the death of his favorite concubine and unborn child would have the same effect.
(5) Never let it be said that the Qing Dynasty does not believe in the power of positive thinking.
(6) Prince Gong assuming the throne is the best thing that could happen to Qing China. In real life he was pretty much like I described him here – a firm believer in China’s need to modernize.
*So it’s probably becoming apparent where I’m going with all this by now, but here it is anyway. There’s going to be a Taiping China and a Qing China, and they’re both going to be industrializing as fast as they can, both due to the mentalities of their leaders and fear of each other. Basically, I see your one modernizing China and raise you another.
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Part #4: How to Make Friends and Influence Foreign Devils
“弱之胜强,柔之胜刚,天下莫不知,莫能行。是以圣人云,爱国之垢,是谓社棱主,爱国不祥,是为天下王。正 言若反.”
Excerpted from “Barbarians at the Great Wall: 19th Century Western Imperialism in China,” by X. Egbert Fappington-Twatley. University of Leeds Press, 1989.
- China had been rudely disabused of its arrogance and complacency in 1839, when the British Empire swept aside the armies of the Middle Kingdom and forced the Qing Dynasty to sign the humiliating and unequal 南京条约 (Treaty of Nanjing) in 1842. The French and Americans stuck their feet in the door as well, and the Qing granted them trade privileges and extraterritoriality as well in the Treaty of the Bogue (1843) and the Wangxia Treaty (1844). The treaties were damaging to China in many ways; they undercut the nation’s traditional sense of superiority, allowed the opium trade to continue, and gave foreigners a privileged status above Chinese in several “treaty ports.” Yet the worst part about the unequal treaties was that in each one of them, a clause was inserted allowing for renegotiation after a dozen years had passed. Thus it was that in the mid-1850s the foreigners came back for more concessions – and with China in the midst of revolution, they couldn’t have arrived at a worse time.
The British and the French attempted to begin renegotiation of the treaties in 1855, hoping to gain further concessions, but made little headway with the representatives of the Xianfeng Emperor, a hardcore traditionalist. Had their patience run out and war been declared on the Qing, it certainly would have been the end of the dynasty. But the Xianfeng Emperor died in the spring of 1856 and was replaced by his half-brother, a firm supporter of modernization. The newly-crowned 永胜帝 (Yongsheng Emperor) was such an advocate of Westernization that his nickname at court was 鬼子六 (Guizi liu, or Devil Number Six), a reference to his fondness for the foreign devils and his position as the 六王爷 (Liu wangye, or Sixth Prince) (1). Needless to say, this nickname fell out of fashion once he had been crowned emperor. Yongsheng restarted the treaty renegotiation talks in the summer of 1856, quickly earning himself the admiration of the European negotiators. James Bruce, 8th Earl of Elgin, the lead negotiator for the British Empire, wrote of Yongsheng, “The current emperor of the Celestial Kingdom sits with us for hours and dickers over the smallest clauses, a shocking departure from the remoteness of his predecessors . . . though his amity is beyond reproach and his clear interest in the broader world unquestioned, I wonder sometimes if his true calling is that of a particularly hard-fisted merchant, for on several occasions upon the conclusion of our sessions I have felt compelled to check my purse after leaving, just so as to ensure that it is still there . . .”
The negotiations were not without difficulties. While none of the parties were especially eager to mention it, they all knew that not only did the Qing Dynasty no longer control any of the five cities that had been designated as treaty ports, but even the city in which the treaty itself had been signed was now the capital of a new nation. Yet Yongsheng, knowing that the Qing could not survive another foreign war, persevered and managed to reach an accord with the British and French. The 天津条约 (Treaty of Tianjin) was signed in June of 1857. Naturally, the British and French got pretty much what they wanted – the right to establish embassies in Beijing, the right to travel freely in the internal regions of China, the right of foreign vessels to navigate freely on China’s rivers, and the opening of eight new treaty ports in territory still under Qing control. Furthermore, the opium trade was officially legalized. (2) An additional treaty with the United States was signed a few months later, more or less with the same clauses as the British and French versions. The Yongsheng Emperor had also requested British and French aid in the struggle against the Taiping Kingdom. While neither country was prepared to commit to a full-scale war in China to support the Qing, they did sell weapons and technology and allowed some of their soldiers to “resign” and join the Qing military (3). With the treaties concluded, the Yongsheng Emperor thought that he could turn his full attention back to fighting the Taiping. But there was one foreign power that he had overlooked . . .
Excerpted from “The Second Opium War,” by Svetlana Chandrasekhar. University of Bombay Press, 1955.
- As the Army of Heavenly Peace advanced through southern China – taking control of the treaty ports of 广州 (Guangzhou), 厦门 (Xiamen), 上海 (Shanghai), 宁波 (Ningbo), and 福州 (Fuzhou) in the process – the foreign powers realized that they had no choice but to deal with the fledgling Taiping Kingdom. Britain, France and the United States hoped to force the Taiping to recognize the Treaty of Nanjing and to open more ports to trade The Taiping, on the other hand, were almost naively endearing in their hopes. They assumed that as “fellow Christians”, the Western powers would be eager to form alliances with them and aid in the overthrow of the Qing. The negotiations began in the fall of 1856, and the speed with which each side managed to offend the other was perhaps unprecedented in the annals of diplomacy. The trouble began when the Westerners, still believing that Hong Xiuquan ruled the Taiping, demanded an audience with the Heavenly King himself. Of course, Hong had been under virtual house arrest for the past two years, and the kingdom was ruled by the 使徒会 (Council of Apostles), which was firmly in the pocket of Yang Xiuqing and Shi Dakai. Yang, who did not want to advertise the fact that he had overthrown Hong, tried to delay and prevaricate, but the foreigners continued – loudly and angrily – to demand a meeting with Hong. In desperation, Yang dressed one of his household servants up as the emperor and summoned the foreigners to meet with “Hong Xiuquan” at the Palace of the Heavenly King. The servant, known to posterity only as 小王 (Little Wang), had been ordered on pain of death to commit to no agreements with the foreign dignitaries. As the following transcription of the meeting (taken by secretary to the American delegation Caleb Henry) indicates, Little Wang took his orders all too seriously:
MR. PARKES (British representative): It is our strong desire that Your Majesty’s government recognize the provisions of the Treaty of Nanjing.
EMPEROR HONG (through an interpreter): Perhaps we will do this. But perhaps we will not.
M. DESJARDINS (French representative): I beg Your Majesty’s pardon?
EMPEROR HONG: We will no doubt comply with the provisions of the treaty.
MR. PARKES: That is wonderful news, and my government will be very pleased to hear it.
EMPEROR HONG: Yes, we will naturally comply. Of course we might not comply, in which case we certainly will not have complied.
MR. WILCOX (US representative): Could Your Majesty perhaps be a little . . . clearer?
EMPEROR HONG: Maybe.
M. DESJARDINS (to Mssrs. Wilcox and Seymour): What the devil is he playing at?
MR. PARKES: Maybe it’s an issue of translation.
MR. WILCOX: He looks quite pale, doesn’t he? [to the Emperor] Your Majesty, are you quite well?
EMPEROR HONG: It is difficult to say.
Aside from that comedy of errors, there were other issues that plagued the negotiators. Great Britain demanded legalization of the opium trade, which to the Taiping was completely unacceptable. Religion was another sticking point. The French were insistent on the right of missionaries to evangelize, which offended the Taiping, who insisted that they were already a Christian nation. As Yang Xiuqing famously put it, “应该送你们的传教士到罗马去” (You might as well send them to Rome instead!) (4). Both sides were disgusted with each other, and the casus belli came in December of 1857, when French missionary Auguste Chapdelaine was beheaded by local authorities in Guangxi province for “denying the divinity of the Heavenly King” (否天王之神性), thus leading many satirists to dub the conflict “The War of Chapdelaine’s Head.”
Whether one refers to it as the War of Chapdelaine’s Head or as the Second Opium War, the outcome of the conflict was never in doubt. The Army of Heavenly Peace may have been fanatical, battle-hardened, and disciplined, but it was no match for the Royal Navy. An Anglo-French expeditionary force under the command of Admiral Sir James Hope attacked and occupied 广州 (Guangzhou), while another force led by the French general Jean-Baptiste Louis Gros took Shanghai. In the piece de resistance of the whole affair, a Royal Navy squadron sailed into the mouth of the 长江 (Chang River) basin and bombarded the Taiping capital, 天京 (Tianjing, or the City Formerly Known as Nanjing). After this last flourish the Council of Apostles concluded that they had no choice but to sue for peace, and the 天京条约 (Treaty of Tianjing) was signed on January 14, 1859. The terms of the agreement were harsh – the Taiping were forced to recognize the earlier Treaty of Nanjing, legalize the opium trade, open nine more cities as treaty ports, cede the district of 九龙 (Jiulong) to Britain, and pay an indemnity of eight million taels (5). It is interesting to ponder what would have happened had the Qing been able to apply their full attention to the Taiping during the Second Opium War. But as fate would have it, they were embroiled in a foreign crisis of their own . . .
Excerpted from “The Amur War,” by Marcos Ndebele. 2000.
- For more than a hundred years, the Empire of all the Russias had desired a warm-water port on the Pacific Ocean. Their ambitions were blocked by Qing China and by the Treaty of Nerchinsk, signed by the two nations in 1689, which assigned the land east of the Stanovoy Mountains to China. But as the power of the Middle Kingdom waned, Russia saw an opportunity to seize the moment and capitalize on the weakness of the Qing. Thus it was that after the signing of the Treaty of Tianjin, Russia began to press for territorial concessions in the Amur River valley. Nikolay Muravyov, Governor-General of Irkutsk and Yeniseyisk, pressed an aggressive policy with regard to Russia’s eastern claims, believing that the Qing would back down and agree to negotiate. He would have been right – all evidence suggests that the Yongsheng Emperor was loathe to make war over what he regarded as a frozen wasteland – but Muravyov had underestimated the power of the traditionalist faction in Beijing. This group, which fervently believed in the superiority of China over the foreign barbarians, had been appalled when Yongsheng signed the Treaty of Tianjin and began to make noises suggesting that should he grant yet more concessions to another foreign state it would be clear proof of his unfitness to rule. The only thing that Yongsheng wanted less than a war with Russia was a coup attempt at home, and so when Russian settlers continued to move into the Amur River basin in defiance of the Treaty of Nerchinsk, Yongsheng shocked everyone by declaring war in April of 1858. There were those who noticed that Yongsheng had appointed virtually all of the traditionalist faction to positions of responsibility in the army that he sent north. They were careful not to mention these observations too loudly.
Had the Taiping Rebellion not been a factor, the traditionalists – headed by the Manchu noble 肃顺 (Sushun) and Yongsheng’s younger half-brother 醇贤亲王 (the 1st Prince Chun) – might have had a point. Russian forces in the Far East were small, scattered and poorly trained. But after seven years of war with the Taiping, the Nian, and Du Wenxiu, the Qing military cupboard was more than a little bare. Sushun marched north with an army of mostly local militia, poorly-equipped and poorly-trained with no combat experience. Murayovksy sensibly avoided a general engagement – his forces were vastly outnumbered – instead making use of his Cossacks and fighting a mobile campaign. Sushun’s army blundered back and forth on the frozen plains of Outer Manchuria until Russian reinforcements finally arrived and inflicted a decisive defeat on the Qing forces outside Khabarovsk. After this reverse Yongsheng had no recourse but to sue for peace and the 瑷珲条约 (Treaty of Aihun) was signed in May of 1859. The terms imposed on the Qing by the victorious Russians were harsh; not only did Russia gain territory on the left bank of the Amur River, but they also gained the Ussuri krai, which gave them access to the Pacific Ocean (6). Additionally, the Qing were forced to pay an indemnity of five million taels to Russia (7). In the final analysis, not only did the 黑龙江战 (Amur War) cost the Qing troops and money, it also diverted their attention from the south, where the Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace refused to go quietly into that good night . . .
NOTES
(1) People actually did call him this IOTL, which in my opinion is yet another sign that he’s the perfect guy to be running Qing China right now.
(2) ITTL, Yongsheng does win one concession – there will be no missionaries in Qing China, as he convinces the foreign negotiators that Christianity is so closely associated with the Taiping that a missionary in a Qing village would last about as long as a snowball in hell. Plus, I just saved the 圆明园 (Yuanming yuan). You can thank me later.
(3) I promise that there will be a Frederick Townsend Ward sighting in the next post. Maybe Charles Gordon as well, although I’m not making any promises.
(4) Not an exact translation (which would be something like “You should just send your missionaries to Rome!”), but the interpreter responsible for translating the phrase had an ironic turn of mind.
(5) This is more or less what happened to the Qing after their ill-advised involvement in the Second Opium War IOTL.
(6) Again, these borders correspond to what happened IOTL, although there were two treaties and no wars instead of the sequence of events described above.
(7) Receiving this indemnity (which didn’t happen in real life, as there was no Amur War) will leave the Russians feeling a bit more flush than they did IOTL, and as a result they will not be trying to sell off Alaska.
*So the Taiping and the Qing both get involved in expensive and distracting foreign wars, and as a result kind of forget that they’re supposed to be fighting each other. This will all be detailed in the next post, which will be – drum roll – the end of part one of the timeline. There might be a map involved, although I suck at making them so don’t get your hopes up or anything. Thanks for reading, and please do let me know what you think of things so far.
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Part #5: A Peace of the Pie
“以道佐人主者,不以兵强天下. 其事好还. 师之所处,荆棘生焉. 大军之后,必有凶年.”
Excerpted from “The Taiping Rebellion, 1857-60: The Final Years,” by Marmaduke Tickled-Pinkington. Cambridge University Press, 1988.
- After the debacle that was 1855 and 1856, the Qing Dynasty managed to achieve some notable successes in 1857, the last year of full-scale combat in the Taiping Rebellion. In the north, 左宗棠 (Zuo Zongtang) continued his campaign against the Nian rebels. His capture in 1856 of 张乐行 (Zhang Lexing), the charismatic leader of the rebels, proved to be the point at which momentum shifted from the revolutionaries to the Qing, and in 1857 Zuo’s forces managed to pin the Nian cavalry – which had previously been so effective – behind the walls of rebel-controlled cities in the provinces of Henan and Shandong. Thus, Qing forces were able to take the offensive for the first time, and concentrated on clearing the countryside of the Nian and besieging these fortified citadels, which proved difficult to breach due to the defensive walls that had been constructed around them over a period of decades (1). The artillery that the Qing had been able to purchase from Britain and France after the signing of the 天津条约 (Treaty of Tianjin) was a powerful equalizer to these walls, though, and by the end of 1857 the Nian Rebellion was well on its way to defeat.
The Qing also found success in the southwest, where the forces of both the Taiping and Du Wenxiu’s 平南国 (Pingnan guo, or Peaceful Southern Country) had been threatening to break into the heartland of 四川 (Sichuan) Province. In response to this threat, the Qing sent an army under the command of one of 曾国藩 (Zeng Guofan)’s subordinates, who had distinguished himself in the fighting of the previous years. His name was 李鸿章 (Li Hongzhang). Li’s Army of the Southwest was able to force the Taiping and Pingnan Guo troops back during the summer of 1857, culminating in the Battle of Leshan, which resulted in the defeat of the combined armies of the Taiping Kingdom and Pingnan Guo and their subsequent withdrawal from 四川省. Li Hongzhang continued to secure the Qing’s southwest flank throughout the fall and winter of 1857, putting down a rebellion in 重庆 (Chongqing) that threatened Qing control of eastern Sichuan late in that year. Nevertheless, the Taiping Kingdom also made gains in 1857 as well. Most notably, in September the brilliant naval strategist 唐正才 (Tang Zhengcai) masterminded the Taiping assault on the lightly defended island of 台湾 (Taiwan), which was fully controlled by the Taiping Kingdom at the end of the year (2). It was Tang’s last major victory; he was decapitated by a British cannonball the following year in the War of Chapdelaine’s Head (also known as the Second Opium War).
All of these campaigns were perceived as mere sideshows by the powers in both Beijing and Nanjing, whose attention was riveted on the Anhui-Hubei front, where the armies of Zeng Guofan and Shi Dakai continued to batter each other into increasingly smaller pieces. Neither side was able to gain much of an advantage in the clashes – Shi and Zeng were too familiar with each other at this point, and their armies were evenly matched – so the battles continued inconclusively, with no end in sight for the weary soldiers and citizens on both sides of the fight. Foreigners also began to see action in the war, as well. After the signing of the Treaty of Tianjin, Great Britain and France allowed their soldiers to “resign” and sign on with the Qing, in the hopes of bolstering their new ally without having to do any of the dirty work themselves. One of the most prominent of these volunteers was Charles George Gordon, a captain in the British Army who took service with the Qing and helped to re-organize their armies into a more cohesive force. Gordon’s career ended abruptly when he was killed in a skirmish outside the town of Lu’an in Anhui Province in the spring of 1858, but others followed in his footsteps. The Taiping had their share of 外国专家 (waiguo zhuanjia, or foreign experts) as well, chief among them being the American adventurer Frederick Townsend Ward, who is primarily remembered today for commanding the Black Flag Army during both the 1st and the 2nd Tonkin Incident . . . (3)
Excerpted from “The Phony War,” by Helen Ware. University of Auckland Press, 1951.
- In 1858, the Taiping Kingdom and the Qing Dynasty both became embroiled in foreign disputes – the War of Chapdelaine’s Head for the Taiping and the Amur War for the Qing. Had one of these powers been able to avoid foreign war, they might have gained the upper hand in the seven year war that had ravaged China. But neither of the warring states was able to resist war with the foreigners, and both suffered costly and time-consuming defeats. Thus it was that for the better part of 1858 and 1859, the Taiping Rebellion entered a strange state of stasis, with both the Qing and the Taiping as opposed to each other as ever, but neither able to muster the strength to sally forth in force and deliver a decisive blow to the opponent. Along the nearly 2,000 mile front that extened from 连云港 (Lianyungang) in the east to 成都 (Chengdu) in the west there were numerous skirmishes, but almost no general engagements between the spring of 1858 and the fall of 1859. Citizens on both sides began to call the conflict 假战 (Jia zhan, or the Phony War). Both Beijing and Tianjing issued endless proclamations declaring that victory was imminent, but to the war-weary populace on both sides of the fight it seemed as if the rebellion was destined to go on forever . . .
Excerpted from “The Tacit Peace,” by Harold Jordan. 1919.
- In retrospect, it seems insane that the Qing and Taiping would have considered any course of action other than ending the war between them in 1860. Both sides were exhausted – there had been ten solid years of war, with no end in sight. Both sides were also broke, due to the expense of equipping their armies and paying indemnities stemming from their ill-fated foreign wars. Moreover, the people on both sides had simply had enough of war, whether they lived in Qing or Taiping China. Rebellions broke out in the Qing-controlled region of Turkestan in the spring of 1860, necessitating the formation of yet another pacifying army, while in the Taiping Kingdom the merchants of Guangdong grew restless at the constant disruption of the trade that was their livelihood. Yet political considerations on both sides meant that a peace could not simply be negotiated and agreed upon in public. While the traditionalist faction in the Qing court had been weakened in the wake of the Amur War they were still powerful, and in their eyes it would be absolutely unthinkable for any emperor to sign away more than a third of Great Qing. Meanwhile in the Taiping Kingdom, the Council of Apostles had issued a decade’s worth of proclamations stating that only total victory would be acceptable; furthermore, a crisis of leadership was brewing, as the relationship between Yang Xiuqing and Shi Dakai had steadily deteriorated over the past few years (4). Neither side could talk peace, but both knew that a cessation of hostilities was of paramount importance.
In the spring of 1860 石达开 (Shi Dakai), the Wing King, Lord of Five Thousand Years and one of the two most powerful men in the Taiping Kingdom, took matters into his own hands and secretly sent emissaries to the man he had spent the better part of five years fighting, Zeng Guofan. Zeng reacted cautiously to Shi’s initial overtures – sending his own coded messages to the 永胜帝 (Yongsheng Emperor) seeking guidance – but upon receiving an enthusiastic reply from Yongsheng urging him to find any way possible to end the conflict, Zeng sent secret emissaries of his own to Shi urging a meeting between the two men. These negotiations were pursued so circumspectly that historians are still unaware of the date when an agreement was signed, or even if there was a written agreement at all. But by the summer of 1860 it became clear to observers on both sides that hostilities had ceased between Qing China and Taiping China. Thus began the Tacit Peace, or as it is known in Chinese, 默认平 (Moren ping). After ten years of war, the Taiping Rebellion had come to an end, and now there was not one China, but two . . . (5)
NOTES
(1) OTL the Nian rebels were famous for making use of the defensive walls that ringed the cities of Shandong and Henan, and the rebellion was not completely crushed until 1873.
(2) If ITTL the Taiping hadn’t seized Taiwan, I imagine some enterprising foreign power would have showed up, taken advantage of the Qing weakness, and made a nice little colony for themselves.
(3) A Frederick Townsend Ward sighting (yes, I know he fought for the Qing OTL; ITTL it’s different because . . . well, because I say so)! Hooray! By the way – all that stuff about the Black Flag Army and the Tonkin Incidents? Major foreshadowing . . .
(4) OTL Yang grew more and more jealous of Shi as the latter’s reputation grew. ITTL they join forces for the Silent Coup early enough that there’s no friction, but by now it has definitely developed and will be an issue in the future.
(5) I was going to make a map but didn’t, because I remembered that I suck at cartography. I have it on good authority that a thousand words is worth a picture, so here’s the situation: at the Tacit Peace, the Taiping control OTL provinces of Guizhou, Guangxi, Hainan, Hunan, Guangdong, Jiangxi, Fujian, Zhejiang, Anhui, and Jiangsu, plus Taiwan. Yunnan is a client state of the Taiping (平南国, or the Peaceful Southern Country). The Qing control the rest of China, plus all of Mongolia, plus Korea is a tributary state of the Qing. Their suzerainty is rather theoretical in Xinjiang and Tibet, though. In real life I’m aware that things wouldn’t break down so neatly on current provincial borders, but this will make it way easier for me to calculate population and the like later on, so that’s the way it’s going to be. And if anyone wants to take it upon themselves to make a map . . . Hong Xiuquan bless you.
*And that’s the end of the first section of this timeline. Originally it was going to be the end of the whole thing, but I’ve since realized that there are a number of interesting directions that I can go with this, and will thus keep on writing for a while. The next series of posts will be about the development of both Qing and Taiping China – government, economy, society, and so forth. I’d be eager to hear people’s ideas and input about where I should go with the timeline – all of my ideas are quite unformed from here on out. And thanks for following this! I hope you’ve had as much fun reading this timeline so far as I’ve had writing it. More to come soon.
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Part #6: We Don’t Need No Modernization (Actually, We Really Do)
“江海所以能为百谷王者,以期善下之。故能为百谷王。是以欲上民,必以言下之,欲先民,必以身后之。是以圣 人,处上而民不重,处前而民不害。是以天下乐推不厌。以其不争故,天下莫能与之争.”
Excerpted from “Qing China: A New History,” by Esmeralda Ludendorff-Castro. 2006.
- With the outbreak of peace in 1860, the 永胜帝 (Yongsheng Emperor) was free to concentrate on his true passion – modernizing the structures of Qing government and opening China more fully to the West. After extensive consultation with his advisers, Yongsheng unveiled his modernization programme in a proclamation issued on January 1st, 1861. Even the date of the proclamation was a sign; Yongsheng had chosen the Western New Year’s Day rather than Chinese New Year to announce his reforms. Yongsheng called for a national “self-strengthening movement” (自强运动, or zi qiang yundong), which would merge traditional Chinese thought with Western science and technology to create a stronger, more powerful nation. Yongsheng was not merely content to talk about modernization; he demanded prompt action, and the first phase of his reforms – commonly known as 百日维新 (Bai ri weixin, or the Hundred Days Reform) – sent the remaining traditionalists at court into fits of apoplexy. With a few strokes of his red brush, Yongsheng gutted the civil service examination system that had dominated Chinese intellectual life for a thousand years, replacing it with a test that focused heavily on modern math and science (questions on the Confucian classics were relegated to a nineteen-page supplement at the end of the exam). Yongsheng also reformed the civil service itself, eliminating sinecures and elevating previously low-ranking advocates of modernization to positions of responsibility in the Qing bureaucracy. Furthermore, Yongsheng also issued decrees ordering the complete reorganization of the military and the educational system along Western lines (1). Granted, some of the decrees promulgated during the Hundred Days Reform read more like a wish list than anything else. After ten years of war, the Qing Dynasty simply did not possess the funds necessary to immediately pursue a radical military overhaul while also instituting a national system of education, for example. In an effort to speed up the pace of modernization Yongsheng also pushed for reform of the Chinese economy to encourage capitalism and private enterprise, which will be more fully discussed in later chapters of this volume . . . (2)
Throughout his campaign to reform and modernize China, Yongsheng was guided by a variety of advisers from the imperial bureaucracy. But unquestionably the most influential men during this process are known to us today simply as the 四人帮 (Si ren bang, or the Gang of Four) (3). They were 曾国藩 (Zeng Guofan), 左宗棠 (Zuo Zongtang), 李鸿章 (Li Hongzhang), and 张之洞 (Zhang Zhidong). More than anyone else save for Yongsheng himself, these four men guided China through its sometimes-tumultuous period of modernization – a period that later historians would come to refer to as 改革开放 (gaige kaifang), or “Reform and Opening.” The Yongsheng Emperor used these men almost as his personal auxiliaries, moving them from post to post wherever it seemed as though his decrees regarding reform and opening were being improperly implemented. While this has led some modern “pop historians” to label these men “the Superfriends of modernization,” we should be careful not to analogize them to some sort of mythical traditionalism-fighting superheroes. They were all flawed, and the “Gang of Four” often disagreed with themselves over the proper way to reform China, with Zhang Zhidong in particular urging caution . . .
Yongsheng’s efforts to modernize China did not end after the blizzard of proclamations and decrees that was the Hundred Days Reform. In 1861 he announced the formation of the 总理衙门 (Zongli Yamen, or Office of Foreign Affairs). 1861 also saw the formation of the Imperial Maritime Customs Service, which was originally staffed largely by men from the Qing’s new allies, Great Britain and France. The Customs Service collected tariffs and provided Yongsheng with a steady stream of revenues to continue his modernization projects. Although this proved to be invaluable, the struggle to establish a more effective system for transferring revenues from provincial to national levels of government would continue throughout the 1860’s. Many local officials – who had grown accustomed to treating the areas to which they were assigned almost as personal fiefs during the Taiping Rebellion – were skeptical of Yongsheng’s projects and loathe to hand over taxation monies to the central government. The spectre of the Taiping proved to be of great value to Yongsheng in bringing these recalcitrant local officials to heel, as he grew accustomed to frequently dispatching emissaries to one or another provincial or county-level governor warning them that if they failed to fully exercise their responsibilities to the state, then they could hardly expect the state to protect them in the next war against the Taiping, which at the time seemed inevitable (4). For a traditionalist local official, the only thing worse than being forced to modernize the nation was the thought of being overrun by the Taiping, with all that that entailed – Christianity! Gender equality! Rule by the mob! Thus, provincial units of government were gradually reintegrated into the existing state structures, and revenues began to flow into Beijing, to be used in one or another of Yongsheng’s endless projects – reorganization of the military, modernization of the education system, subsidies for private investors and money to establish state-owned enterprises . . . the list went on and on, a reflection of just how far China had to go.
Excerpted from “Night of the Long Knives,” by Angelique Lugosi. University of Bratislava Press, 2002.
- If you’ve gotten everything that you ever dreamed of, what do you do next? This was the dilemma faced by the leaders of the Taiping Kingdom after they wrested their independence away from the Qing Dynasty in 1860. In any event, rather than being able to enjoy the fruits of victory, the Taiping promptly stumbled headfirst into another crisis, this one wholly self-inflicted. It was a crisis of leadership. After the Saturday Night Massacre and subsequent Silent Coup in 1854, power had been shared between 杨秀清 (Yang Xiuqing) and 石达开 (Shi Dakai), who ruled the nation through the 使徒会 (Shitu hui, or Council of Apostles). While Yang and Shi had joined forces to overthrow Hong Xiuquan, the two men had never been close, and the Silent Coup had been launched as much out of mutual self-preservation as any other reason. As the years dragged on a rift began to develop between the two, whose cause lay in Yang’s jealousy of Shi, the rebellion’s greatest general and the man who received the lion’s share of the credit for the victories of the Taiping forces (5). After the war against the Qing ended, relations between Yang and Shi continued to deteriorate until they reached the point of barely restrained hostility. To a neutral observer, the situation must have seemed maddening; after all, Yang and Shi agreed on nearly every issue of importance – the need to modernize the fledgling Taiping Kingdom, the urgency of creating a less ad hoc system of government, and the importance of reassuring the scholar-bureaucrat and merchant elites while still retaining the affections of their base of support among the lower classes of society. Yet the same neutral observer would have to conclude that the personal issues between the two men made their continued coexistence impossible, and that one of them would have to go.
It seemed as though Shi Dakai was destined to emerge victorious from the clash of personalities he was engaged in. Shi was a brilliant general and a skilled administrator, and had many friends in the Taiping military. But Yang Xiuqing held one vital trump card – his seemingly endless network of spies and informants, which was so all-encompassing that he was popularly nicknamed 章鱼王, the Octopus King (Western readers of a certain age may remember Richard Henry’s classic 1962 film Octopussy, which brilliantly parodied this prevailing image of Yang). Yang made his move on the evening of July 6th, 1861, a date that has gone down in history as 长刀之夜 (Chang dao zhi ye, or Night of the Long Knives). On that fateful night, Yang’s operatives – disguised as bandits – broke into Shi Dakai’s residence, killing him and his entire family. The Wing King, Lord of Five Thousand Years, was no more. Other groups of Yang loyalists fanned out across 天京 (Tianjing), killing more than two dozen of those closely associated with Shi Dakai. When the sun rose the next day, Yang Xiuqing was the sole and unquestioned power in the Great Kingdom of Heavenly Peace.
Yang’s move against Shi was aided by the incredible air of opacity that surrounded the leading figures of the Taiping, and indeed, of the government itself (6). Recall that the Taiping Kingdom was a state based on a lie – that Hong Xiuquan, for six years now confined to his palace, was the omnipotent and semi-divine Heavenly King. Yang also took advantage of the people’s enduring fear of the Qing, announcing that the great leader Shi Dakai had been murdered in his home by agents of the Yongsheng Emperor, and urging eternal vigilance on the part of the populace to prevent such an incident from occurring again. A few generals close to Shi realized what had happened and decamped to the Taiping client kingdom of Pingnan Guo to seek refuge with Sultan Du Wenxiu, among them being 刘永福 (Liu Yongfu), 陈坤书 (Chen Kunshu), and 李容发 (Li Rongfa). But in general, Yang had little trouble convincing the general populace to accept his version of events, and quickly began appointing those he trusted to positions of responsibility in the army. Indeed, it was Yang’s shining moment. Not only had he managed to overthrow Hong Xiuquan, but he had also succeeded in outmaneuvering Shi Dakai and placing himself at the center of the Taiping Kingdom. Yang began to institute his own program of modernization, continuing to incorporate Confucian philosophy into Taiping Christianity so as to reassure the elites while also beginning to lay the groundwork for establishing state institutions on a provincial and local level. In retrospect, this programme seems to have been achieving success – a functioning bureaucracy was formed as well as a state education system, and some progress had been made in the Taiping’s attempts to reach out to foreign nations. Yet things were not going fast enough for Yang Xiuqing, who since reaching the pinnacle of power had become steadily more megalomaniacal and convinced that any endeavor he pursued was destined for success. In his eyes, the successful modernization of the Taiping Kingdom demanded the mass mobilization of the entire citizenry, and a truly radical course needed to be pursued. And thus it was that the Cultural Revolution began . . .
NOTES
(1) Note that one part of the OTL Hundred Days Reform that isn’t being pursued is constitutionalism and democracy. Yongsheng may be a modernizer, but he’s also an absolute monarch, and he’d very much like to remain one.
(2) Meaning in a future entry, of course.
(3) And if you liked that Cultural Revolution reference, just wait until the next installment.
(4) OTL this was a huge problem – local officials had gotten so powerful during the Taiping Rebellion that they could more or less do what they wanted. In effect, the inmates were running the asylum. In this timeline, the threat of the Taiping really is the impetus for the more vigorous attempts at modernization that we’re seeing. Yongsheng isn’t above saying, “If you don’t embrace Western science and technology the Taiping will, and then they’ll invade us and eat your family and AAAAAAAAAAHHHH!”
(5) This actually happened as well OTL, which was one reason that I had Shi and Yang’s coup occur relatively early – they hadn’t had enough time to realize that they hated each other yet.
(6) I’ve alluded to this before, but Taiping China is shaping up to be a seriously wacky place. It’s going to be one of those countries where power changes hands every six months and only about twelve people are in a position to figure out what just happened. Just your average totalitarian techno-bureaucratic oligarchy with theocratic trappings, I guess.
*And that’s the first postwar installment of the timeline. The next entry is mostly going to be about the Cultural Revolution, with a brief detour to describe Qing military modernization. Then I’m going to get into economic development and social changes in both countries before talking a bit about foreign policy and yet another rebellion that the Qing have to deal with. As always I’d love to hear everyone’s input, especially on what I should be doing with countries besides China – I don’t think that anything so far would have caused much of a ripple effect anywhere else, but if you think otherwise I’d be very interested to hear it.
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Part #7: You Say You Want A Revolution . . .
“其政闷闷,其民淳淳。其政察察,其民缺缺。祸兮福之所椅,福兮祸之所伏。孰知其极。其无正。正复为奇,善 复为妖。人之迷,其日固久.”
Excerpted from “The Cultural Revolution,” by Keith Yap. 1998.
- The Cultural Revolution – or to use its full title, 现代化文化大革命 (Xiandaihua wenhua da geming, or the Great Modernizing Cultural Revolution) – began in April of 1864, and was the result of 杨秀清 (Yang Xiuqing)’s dissatisfaction with the slow progress of the modernizing initiatives that had been undertaken since his consolidation of power three years earlier. Yang feared a renewed outbreak of war with the Qing Dynasty to the north, and believed that only through wholesale adoption of Western science, technology and culture could the Taiping Kingdom prevail in what he assumed to be the inevitable conflict that lay ahead. One area in which Yang had unquestionably achieved success in the previous three years was the reorganization of the Taiping government at a national level. The Ministries of War, Trade, Finance, Education, and Foreign Affairs were all founded during between 1861 and 1864, and while finding enough qualified bureaucrats proved difficult, the officials selected to staff these offices made some headway in establishing the foundations of a functioning government (1). Yet their successes pale in comparison to the misdeeds committed by those whom Yang selected to run the other bureaucracy founded during this period – the infamous 真理部 (Zhenli bu, or the Ministry of Truth). The Ministry of Truth was the nexus of Yang Xiuqing’s secret police and propaganda operations, both of which grew steadily more extensive. Modern historians date the beginning of the Cultural Revolution to the April 16, 1864 memo sent by Yang to Minister of Truth 姚文元 (Yao Wenyuan), in which Yang ordered Yao to increase the amount of propaganda devoted to promulgating the cult of personality that was becoming a larger and larger part of Taiping life . . .
While Yang Xiuqing became increasingly megalomaniacal after becoming the sole power in the Taiping Kingdom, he had lost none of the political instincts which had elevated him to such lofty heights. Thus, Yang’s cult of personality was not centered on himself, but rather on the man whom he had deposed ten years ago – Hong Xiuquan, the Heavenly King. Yao obliged Yang, issuing what has become known to posterity as the Little Red Book. It is incumbent upon this historian to note that what Yao produced was in fact neither little, red, nor a book, but was instead a proclamation delivered to village headmen with orders to display it prominently in the public square. The proclamation, purporting to be a revelation from God to the Heavenly King, stressed the importance of building a nation united by “Confucian Christianity” and constantly modernizing and looking towards the future (2). Rallies began to spring up across the nation, as peasants waved hand-painted signs saying, “战无不胜的基督儒教,天王思想万岁!” (Zhan wu bu sheng de Jidurujiao, Tianwang sixiang wansui, or “Confucian Christianity is invincible; long live Heavenly King Thought!”)
Yang Xiuqing had succeeded in mobilizing the citizenry; now he needed to decide exactly what he wanted them to do. It is no exaggeration to say that the entire Cultural Revolution was characterized by this sort of incoherence. Yang Xiuqing knew that he wanted the nation to modernize, and he also knew that he wanted the populace as a whole to participate in these efforts. But he was never quite clear on how he wanted this to happen (3). As a result, the Cultural Revolution lurched from one idea to the next, with assorted groups of society being mobilized seemingly every other week in the name of some task or other. One week citizens would be ordered to build a factory in their town for the construction of a given “implement of modernization”; the next week new orders would come down from Tianjing, and the new priority would be study sessions on the principles of Confucian Christianity; the week after that the priority would be the re-education of those citizens deemed to harbor “unmodern thoughts”, and so on and so forth. There were some common threads running through all facets of the Cultural Revolution, though, and one of those was the relentless attempt to industrialize Taiping China (4). Another was the total revamping of the educational system. During this period, educated youth from privileged families were often “sent down” (下放) to the countryside to teach villagers about modernization, Confucian Christianity, and the social reforms that were also being implemented during this period. Other aspects of the movement were emphasized for a time and then unceremoniously abandoned, chief among them being land reform. At one point during the Cultural Revolution the state took control of all private property; later, the state divested itself of all property and granted every citizen an equal share of land by simply calculating the area of the Taiping Kingdom and dividing it by the number of citizens, only to change course once again and drop the entire idea of land reform altogether at a later date. There were also periodic purges, although despite the claims of some revisionist historians, the evidence indicates that fewer than five thousand people were executed for 反现代化之罪犯 (fan xiandaihua zhi zuifan, or “anti-modernization crimes”) during the entire Cultural Revolution. The literati came in for the harshest treatment during this period, and entire families of scholar-bureaucrats simply disappeared. Yet in an example of the contradictions of the revolution, another high-income group – the merchants and traders of the South – were held up as exemplars of modernization for their willingness to “work with foreign friends and bring new ideas to the Taiping Kingdom.” On hearing this, the merchants simply shrugged and went back to making money . . .
Foreign reactions to the Cultural Revolution were wildly mixed and ranged from enthusiastic endorsement to utter bewilderment; the latter probably being the most prevailing emotion among foreign observers of the movement. Some saw the Cultural Revolution as a necessary step that Taiping China needed to take in order to lift itself into the first rank of nations, while more were shocked at what they perceived to be China’s deliberate destruction of much of its traditional culture. Other observers were more blasé about the significance of the entire movement; the British soldier and author Henry Knollys chose to paraphrase Macbeth, writing of the Cultural Revolution, “It is full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” It is interesting to wonder what might have happened had the Cultural Revolution ever taken an anti-foreign turn and threatened European interests. Would have there been a Third Opium War, and would such a conflict have resulted in the quick death of the Taiping Kingdom? In any event, foreign trade was one of the only facets of life that continued completely uninterrupted during the Cultural Revolution, and so foreigners were content to merely shake their heads and wonder what the Taiping would do next (5).
Excerpted from “The Hundred Flowers Movement,” by June Parker. 1942.
- Yang Xiuqing had survived three years of the Cultural Revolution without any threats to his power emerging, but he overreached in the spring of 1867, when he began to hint that the army would be the next institution to be “reformed and modernized.” This caused considerable consternation among the commanders of the Taiping military; although the previous three years had given absolutely no guide to what Yang meant when he said “reform and modernization,” the generals decided that enough was enough, and that they could not leave anything to chance. Contact was made with 刘永福 (Liu Yongfu), 陈坤书 (Chen Kunshu), and 李容发 (Li Rongfa) – three Shi Dakai loyalists and former generals who had fled to 平南国 (Pingnan Guo) after Yang took power. The budding plot received covert aid from Sultan Du Wenxiu himself, who knew that his kingdom would only survive as long as the Taiping did and was increasingly concerned at the events taking place in Tianjing. The plan was set into motion on June 4th, 1867, when Liu, Chen, and Li – who had sneaked into the Taiping Kingdom with a coterie of elite troops – set upon Yang Xiuqing as he left his office in the Ministry of Truth. For once, Yang’s network of spies failed him; perhaps he had simply grown so secure in his power that he had begun to think that no misfortune could befall him. This proved to be an inaccurate assumption. Like so many people who had defied him over the years, Yang Xiuqing simply disappeared. The Cultural Revolution was over after three tumultuous years, and the 百花运动 (Bai hua yundong, or Hundred Flowers Movement) had begun . . .
As Liu Yongfu said – although it was issued as a proclamation from the Heavenly King – “Let a hundred flowers bloom, and ten thousand schools of thought contend.” Despite these lofty words, the generals who took over power in the Taiping Kingdom opted for cosmetic rather than wholesale changes to the system of government originally instituted by Yang Xiuqing. “Confucian Christianity” remained the official ideology of the state; likewise, the divinity of Hong Xiuquan was not repudiated, but rather was affirmed by the new regime, who stated that Yang Xiuqing had “erred in interpreting the divinely words of the Heavenly King, and thus resigned from power.” A later statement issued by the new regime summed up Yang’s legacy rather neatly; he was adjudged to have been “seventy percent right and thirty percent wrong.” Furthermore, the Ministry of Truth was merely downsized, and was not abolished. Still, the Hundred Flowers regime brought stability to a government that had been sorely in that quality. The 使徒会 (Shitu hui, or Council of Apostles) was reorganized, and the heads of all major government ministries were guaranteed a seat, as were the commanding officers of the Taiping Army and Navy. Where the Hundred Flowers Regime was truly revolutionary was in its reformation of local government and institution of limited democracy. Citizens were required to participate in yearly elections to choose a village or town head, who would be responsible for local governance and would participate in an annual caucus of sorts with the provincial governor – who was appointed by the Council of Apostles – and other town and village heads from that province. This was initially intended merely as a way to give citizens an outlet for voicing their concerns, but these annual provincial congresses (dubbed 徒弟会, or Council of the Acolytes) steadily grew in importance as time passed (6). The reorganization of the Council of Apostles meant that for the first time, power in the Taiping Kingdom was not concentrated in the hands of one or two men. In addition to Liu Yongfu, Chen Kunshu, and Li Rongfa, the list of influential individuals in the new regime included 李世贤 (Li Shixian), 陈玉成 (Chen Yucheng), and 谭绍光 (Tan Shaoguang). With their coup complete, the Hundred Flowers Regime continued trying to modernize the Taiping Kingdom – but unlike Yang Xiuqing, they were careful to always have a plan . . .
NOTES
(1) OTL the Taiping couldn’t attract any of the scholar-bureaucrat class, but ITTL Yang Xiuqing’s integration of Confucianism into the Taiping theology has helped to co-opt some members of this group.
(2) “Confucian Christianity” is the name that’s going to be used for the Taiping’s continuing mashup of Confucianism and Christianity.
(3) This sentence could alternatively be read as, “Although subversivepanda knew that he wanted to write about an alt-Cultural Revolution in the Taiping Kingdom, he had no idea exactly what this entailed.”
(4) TTL’s Cultural Revolution is different from OTL’s in several ways. First, there’s more than a bit of Great Leap Forward tossed in there. Secondly, it’s not nearly as destructive, due to the total absence of coherence from the top. If they’d pursued a policy like Yongsheng is doing, or even kept on the path that Yang Xiuqing had originally chosen, the Taiping would be farther along in their modernization attempts. But unlike OTL, this Cultural Revolution isn’t going to completely screw things up.
(5) Right now foreigners kind of view the Taiping like you would a crazy uncle – you know, the one that’s always doing things like taking up skydiving or leaving his wife for a nineteen year old yoga instructor. No one sees them as a threat and they’re not hurting business, so people just shake their heads and say, “Those crazy Taiping. What will they think of next?”
(6) Like I’ve said before, Taiping government is going to be really messed up. There are going to be a lot of coups, and the institution of limited local democracy is really going to toss a wrench in things down the road.
*The next few updates will tackle economic modernization, social changes, and foreign policy in both Chinas. I’ll also try to squeeze in an explanation of how Pingnan Guo is developing. Those updates will take me to roughly 1875, and at that point I’m planning to do kind of an “around the world” post talking briefly about non-China places and people and how things have diverged (if at all) in the twenty-five years since this timeline started. So if there’s a place or a person that you’d specifically like mentioned, just let me know and I’ll be sure to include him, her, or it. Thanks for reading, and keep on letting me know what you think of things so far.
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Part #8: Money . . . It’s A Gas
“治大国,若烹小鱼。以道莅天下,其鬼不神,非其鬼不神,其神不伤人。非其神不伤人,圣人亦不伤人。夫雨不 相伤。故德交归焉.”
Excerpted from “The Growth of Private Enterprise in Qing China,” by J.A.K. Gladney. 1985.
- As the Yongsheng Emperor’s quest to modernize China and reform its economy continued, he was forced to confront not only an inefficient and hidebound bureaucracy but also more than a millennia’s worth of cultural prejudices against merchants and wealth that did not come from the land (1). Yongsheng dealt with this problem head-on, embarking on a “Grand Tour” of his domains in 1864. This tour focused especially on the new treaty ports that had been established in the Treaty of Tianjin, which were among the most vibrant places in Qing China – in particular the “Big Four” cities of Lianyungang, Qingdao, Dalian, and Tianjin itself. During his tour Yongsheng made a special point of singling out entrepreneurs and merchants for commendation, culminating in his famous statement 发财是光荣的 (facai shi guangrong de, or “To get rich is glorious”) (2). The following year, in 1865, Yongsheng made the decision to open Qing China to foreign capital and investment completely, not only in those cities which had been previously designated as treaty ports. Lured by the cheap labor and the possibility of tapping into what seemed like a limitless market, Western industrialists began to make large-scale capital investments in Qing China during the mid-to-late 1860s. British and French concerns led the way, as relations between these two countries and Qing China grew steadily closer after the signing of the Treaty of Tianjin. The Yongsheng Emperor also sought to incentivize private enterprise – at the urging of Zhang Zhidong, Li Hongzhang, Zeng Guofan, and Zuo Zongtang, the so-called “Gang of Four” – via tax breaks and the creation of “Special Modernization Zones,” which were deliberately placed away from treaty ports so as to encourage development in the inland regions of Qing China. The process was long and slow; one does not simply change a mindset and a culture overnight. Yet gradually the Yongsheng Emperor’s efforts began to bear fruit . . .
In sectors that were deemed vital to the national interest, such as munitions and ordinance, Yongsheng’s government generally chose to develop and modernize the military through the establishment of state-owned enterprises (SOEs). These enterprises were staffed by a combination of government bureaucrats and foreign experts, and certainly for the bureaucrats – who had studied Confucius, not Adam Smith – it must have been something of a shock. As was the case with virtually every facet of Yongsheng’s modernization plan, there were significant growing pains, and the state-owned enterprises initially suffered from a combination of incompetence, inefficiency, and corruption. The highly public execution of several corrupt managers of SOEs in 1868 certainly contributed to the increased productivity of these enterprises in the following years. Naturally, all of these modernization initiatives cost money, and Yongsheng sought to defray some of the stress he was putting on the imperial treasury by auctioning off concessions – everything from mining rights in Shaanxi Province to the right to build a railroad in Hubei Province was sold, mostly to foreign investors, although the Qing government instituted a requirement that foreigners purchasing concessions outside of Special Economic Zones were required to have a Chinese partner. Some of Yongsheng’s schemes were brilliant successes; others fell flat. But as a whole, Qing China moved rapidly towards industrialization and modernization during the self-strengthening period.
Excerpted from “The Cartelization of the Taiping Economy,” by Teresa Carvalho. 1979.
- Even more than in Qing China, Taiping efforts to modernize and develop the economy were hindered by a lack of individuals with capital to invest. After all, the rebellion’s support had been drawn disproportionately from the lower classes of society, and many of the scholar-bureaucrat class were still leery of fully participating in the affairs of the new kingdom where they somewhat reluctantly lived. There was one sector of society with both capital to spare and entrepreneurial spirit: the merchants of the southern cities, especially those who lived in the old treaty ports of Xiamen, Fuzhou, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. These merchant houses were truly family businesses, consisting of lineages which had been trading for hundreds of years in some cases. The Taiping governments of both Yang Xiuqing and the Hundred Flowers Regime began to give these merchant lineages loans and tax breaks in an attempt to encourage them to invest in new sectors of the economy. Thus, the power of the southern merchant families grew, until a small number of these groups essentially dominated the Taiping economy. They were able to accomplish this in part due to the lower level of foreign investment in Taiping China as opposed to Qing China. Cool relations with Britain and France put a damper on joint ventures involving interests from those countries – though both nations, especially Britain with its Hong Kong colony, conducted large amounts of commerce and trade with the Taiping Kingdom, investment was largely restricted to treaty ports, and the warm relations between those countries and Qing China led to more British and French business moving north. While American and especially Russian investors made some inroads into the Taiping market, it made for only a moderate amount of foreign capital entering the country (3).
Thus began the 企业联合组织化 (qiye lianhe zuzhihua, or cartelization) of the Taiping economy. The 五大家庭 (wu da jiating, or Five Great Families) developed into corporate behemoths that exercised monopoly control over many sectors of the Taiping economy (4). At first the Five Families often fought each other, as in the Telegraph War of 1870, when the Chen family of Guangzhou and the Zhao family of Xiamen engaged in what amounted to a gang war for six months over who would control the telegraph system that the government was contracting to build in Jiangsu Province. As time went on the Five Great Families began to take a more conciliatory approach towards each other, choosing to allow each and every family cartel to amass monopoly power in certain sectors; for example, the Wen family of Fuzhou controlled 95% of railroad lines in the Taiping state in 1880. The government increasingly chose to cooperate with the rapidly coalescing cartels in the name of modernization, in one case moving an entire village thirty miles to the site of a new factory and informing the villagers that they were now all employees of the Wang cartel’s new smelting concern. Relatively little individual entrepreneurship occurred during the postwar period, as modernization efforts were either directed at establishing state-owned enterprises – as with the Qing – or simply granting the emerging family cartels license to develop and dominate a particular sector of the economy.
NOTES
(1) China historically considered merchants pretty much lower than dirt on the social ladder; if I remember correctly even peasants were above them based on the logic that everyone produced something except merchants. So that perception is going to be tough to overcome, although not as much in the Taiping state.
(2) In OTL a Chinese political leader also made this statement, but that leader was Deng Xiaoping, and it came during his Southern Tour in the late 1980’s (at least I think that’s when it was).
(3) Russia is increasingly growing closer to the Taiping, seeing them as a counterweight to Qing China and to the British and French; remember, the Crimean War still occurred in this timeline just as it did OTL, as things had barely started to diverge then.
(4) These are going to be a lot like the 財閥 (zaibatsu) conglomerates that developed OTL in imperial Japan.
*A relatively short update today, mostly because I’m not sure how many people will find the details of mid-19th century alt-Chinese economic development and modernization all that interesting. Next post will be on social issues/policy/changes, and I’ll try to work in a description of Pingnan Guo as well. After that will be a post on the foreign policy of both Chinas in the postwar period. As always, thanks for reading.
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Part #9: Freedom’s Just Another Word For Not Having To Bind Your Feet
“绝圣弃智,民利百倍。绝仁弃义,民复孝慈。绝巧弃利,盗贼无有。此三者,以为交不足。故令有所属。见素抱 朴,少私寡欲.”
Excerpted from “The Taiping Social Revolution,” by Gloria Friedan. 1965.
- The world had never before seen a society quite like the one that gradually developed in the Taiping Kingdom. Perhaps the most startling aspect of this society to foreign visitors was the Taiping policy of complete equality between the sexes, which had been a point of emphasis since the first days of the rebellion (1). During the revolution women had served in combat roles in the Taiping military, and even after the war ended the Taiping government continued to make gender equality one of the bedrock principles of the Heavenly Kingdom. Concubinage, foot binding, and prostitution were all capital crimes – but the Taiping went further than this, allowing women to assume positions in society that even the most outspoken Western advocates of women’s rights found shocking. Women were allowed to own property (at least during those points when there was property to be owned and one of the land reform campaigns was not ongoing); they were also allowed to divorce their husbands and control money in their own right. An even more radical departure from the norm was the Taiping policy of allowing women into the political life of the kingdom. Women were allowed to take the Taiping civil service examinations, and after the Hundred Flowers Regime instituted a system of limited local democracy in the late 1860’s, women were not only allowed to vote but also allowed to stand in elections for positions in village and town leadership (2). In practice, there were some limits to gender equality; no woman held a seat on the 使徒会 (Shitu hui, or Council of Apostles) until 1891, and many of the Taiping elite continued to keep concubines in defiance of the law prohibiting it (3). And of course there was the Heavenly King, who possessed a harem containing more than two hundred concubines. Nevertheless, it is inarguable that the women’s liberation movement truly began in Taiping China; in time, it would spread across the globe.
Taiping society was also characterized by an ideology that seemed to be a contradiction in terms. Naturally, we refer to 基督儒教 (Jidurujiao, or Confucian Christianity). This belief system, part religion and part moral philosophy, was a bizarre blend of the Bible, Confucian classics, and the words of Taiping leaders themselves (usually issued in the form of a “revelation” from God to the Heavenly King, Hong Xiuquan) (4). Initially Hong Xiuquan declared that he was God’s second son and Jesus’ younger brother; after the Silent Coup of 1854, it was declared that Hong himself was a deity along with God and Jesus. Still later, after Yang Xiuqing’s efforts to lure scholar-bureaucrats into the Taiping fold by re-introducing Confucianism as an integral part of Taiping ideology, Confucius was declared to be God’s younger brother in 1873. Taiping ideology was thus a mishmash of ideas that sometimes contradicted each other or one of the regime’s signature policies; neither the Bible nor the 论语 (Lunyu, or Analects) have much to say in support of gender equality, after all. There was thus considerable internal dispute during the early years of the Taiping Kingdom (and the later ones, as well) over what exactly “Confucian Christianity” was supposed to mean. Taiping leaders chose to resolve doctrinal issues in the same way they handled other difficult questions – after deciding what course to pursue, they would simply issue a proclamation in the Heavenly King’s name declaring that God had told him that in the case of whatever happened to be in dispute at the time, Interpretation A – which always happened to be the one favored by whoever was in control of the Council of Apostles at the time – was the correct path for the Taiping Kingdom to take (5).
Although individuals in the Taiping Kingdom – especially women – possessed a great deal of personal freedom, society as a whole was tightly monitored and controlled by the central government. The 保甲 (baojia) system, in which family units were grouped together for purposes of social organization, was expanded; every ten families made up a bao, and every hundred families constituted a jia. Each bao and each jia elected a leader, whose duty it was to report to the village or town head, who was originally appointed by the central government and was later elected by residents of that village, town or city. Not only were taxes collected through the baojia system, but a host of other social functions were organized around these units as well. Child care was the responsibility of designated persons in each bao and jia, as women took advantage of gender equality policies to enter the workforce en masse during the 1860s. Furthermore, leaders of each bao and jia were required to prepare annual reports attesting to the political reliability – or lack thereof – of every member of the multi-family social group which they oversaw. The baojia system was a means of maintaining social cohesion and ensuring control of the populace by the central government . . . (6)
Excerpted from “From Farm to Factory: Social Changes in Qing China During the Reform and Opening Period,” by Ibrahim Mohammed. 1943.
- The Yongsheng Emperor’s modernization initiatives spurred a vast internal migration within Qing China, as citizens flocked from the countryside to cities in which new industries were proliferating and more lucrative employment opportunities were to be found. These migrants poured into cities like Tianjin, Qingdao, Beijing, and Xi’an, straining the local infrastructure and earning them the enmity of more established residents, who lamented the increased crowding and higher crime that inevitably came along with these migrants. Yet despite the grumbling and caviling, migrants continued to move from the country to the cities, with seemingly no end in sight. Additionally, the Yongsheng Emperor encouraged migration to the traditional peripheries of China – remote places like Qinghai, Gansu, Mongolia, Xinjiang, and Tibet (7). This was mostly a move to strengthen Qing control in these regions; the Russian Empire had begun to make frequent incursions into these regions, seeking signs of Qing weakness and hoping to make these areas their own. The peripheral regions of China were also inhabited mostly by non-Han minorities, and whether they were Uighurs, Mongols, or Tibetans, none of them had too much love for the Qing Dynasty. Yongsheng thus chose to incentivize migration to these regions by granting those who wished to move special tax exemptions and ceding large tracts of land to emerging communities of Han migrants. Although local sensitivities were often offended (8), the peripheral regions of the Qing Dynasty gradually grew more integrated into the nation as a whole.
Excerpted from “Pingnan Guo: A New History,” by Xi Jinping. University of Kunming Press, 1991.
- 平南国 (Pingnan Guo, or the Peaceful Southern Country) had achieved its independence for two reasons. One was that Sultan Du Wenxiu had cooperated extensively with the Taiping rebels; the other was that Yunnan was so far away from Qing centers of power that it was really quite difficult for them to do much about Pingnan Guo. The new nation essentially operated as a client state of the Taiping Kingdom – although Du Wenxiu’s authority was unquestioned inside Pingnan Guo, foreign policy was made and conducted only after consultation with the Council of Apostles in Tianjing. For without the aid of the Heavenly Kingdom, Pingnan Guo was certain to be re-conquered by the Qing, with inevitably fatal results for those who had participated in the revolution that had given the country its independence. During the postwar period, the Taiping and Pingnan Guo militaries were integrated, and generals from both nations worked on developing strategies for the next war with the Qing, which they assumed was inevitable.
杜文秀 (Du Wenxiu) faced another, more pressing challenge: how to unite the people of Pingnan Guo into something even remotely resembling a nation. While the rebellion had been led by Hui Muslims, of which Du Wenxiu himself was one, the majority of Pingnan Guo citizens were not Muslim. Indeed, the new country was home to a bewildering assortment and variety of ethnic groups; everyone from the Yi to the Bai to the Tai to the Dai to the Mosuo to the Miao to the Naxi to the Yao to the Tibetans to the Zhuang to the Hani called Pingnan Guo home (9). Du Wenxiu’s primary challenge, then, was ensuring that he was not simply replacing a Manchu regime with a Hui Muslim regime; whatever government was to be established had to have the support of all major ethnic groups if the state of Pingnan Guo was to endure. He began by sending emissaries to the leaders of the major population groupings of the country, inviting them to send representatives to his capital of 昆明 (Kunming). The remoteness of Pingnan Guo is illustrated by an apocryphal story – one group of Du’s emissaries, supposedly arriving at a village deep in 西双版纳 (Xishuangbanna), were greeted by the village headman, who asked, “Tell us, who now sits on the Dragon Throne?” In any event, government in Pingnan Guo came to be explicitly organized on the basis of ethnicity; each major group selected a representative to head one of the newly-established government ministries, and a substantial degree of autonomy was devolved to local leaders (10). Thus, while Du ruled from his palace in Kunming as the “Sultan of Pingnan Guo,” the nation was by no means a purely Muslim state, although the Hui were in fact overrepresented in positions of national authority. Practical challenges abounded in modernizing Pingnan Guo, and the combination of decentralization and the country’s remoteness retarded Du’s efforts substantially. Yet slowly, Pingnan Guo began to change from a collection of ethnic groups to a nation. One overlooked step in this transformation was Du’s decision – harshly criticized at the time – to make Chinese Pingnan Guo’s national language, as it was a lingua franca of sorts. Roads were built, schools were established, and Pingnan Guo began to grow . . .
NOTES
(1) I’m not just making this up; OTL the Taiping actually did establish a policy of equality between the sexes, although it was enforced less than rigorously.
(2) Recall that this system of “limited local democracy” was established after the Hundred Flowers Coup that toppled Yang Xiuqing. The initial intent was simply to give citizens an avenue to voice their concerns to the relatively-insulated national government. As time goes by, the Taiping are going to find that “limited democracy” really doesn’t work so well.
(3) This is also as per OTL. ITTL, there’s a sort of Animal Farm dynamic forming in Taiping China: “All Taiping are equals, but some Taiping are more equal than others.” So there are the beginnings of a double standard between the elite and everyone else, which might or might not result in the formation of a hereditary elite class. Not sure yet, although in some cases – like the cartels I wrote about yesterday – it will definitely happen.
(4) “Confucian Christianity” is going to be really messy. I could write an entire book about it.
(5) Remember that the Taiping Kingdom’s entire raison d’etre is based to some extent on the idea that Hong is a demi-god. So saying that something comes from him has a way of ending the argument pretty fast.
(6) OTL some form of the baojia system was used by several different dynasties.
(7) The Qing think that they own Tibet, as do the British and the Russians, so that’s good enough for me.
(8) More on this in the next entry.
(9) I could keep on going here, but I don’t think too many people would appreciate it. Anyway, there are a cubic shitload of ethnic groups that live in Yunnan/Pingnan Guo.
(10) Think OTL Lebanon, but more ethnic groups and they don’t all hate each other.
*Women’s rights! Internal migration! Pingnan Guo! The fun never stops around here. The next entry will deal with Qing and Taiping foreign policy in the post-rebellion period. Then will come the “around the world” post, in which I deign to talk about countries other than China, although they really do not deserve much notice. Damn barbarians. If there’s a place/person/thing that you’d especially like to see mentioned, just let me know and I’ll make sure to include him/her/it. And as always, thanks for reading.
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Part #10: Diplomacy Is Like A Box Of Chocolates . . .
“勇于敢则杀,勇于不敢则活。此两者或利,或害。天之所恶,孰知其故.”
Excerpted from “Qing China and the Great Game,” by Sergei Morimoto. 1980.
- After the end of the Taiping Rebellion in 1860, one of Qing China’s most pressing priorities was consolidating their rule in the vulnerable periperhal regions of the empire, which were being eyed hungrily by the Russians. The Yongsheng Emperor incentivized colonization of the far western regions and Manchuria, hoping that an influx of Han migrants would integrate these areas more fully into the Qing state. This policy proved to be a double-edged sword; while the new arrivals did indeed boost the Qing presence, they also invariably angered locals. In some places, nothing came of this but grumbling, but in 新疆 (Xinjiang) it resulted in revolution. In 1867 Yaqub Beg declared himself king of Kashgar, and soon the entire region of Xinjiang was engulfed in rebellion. Ironically, Yaqub Beg – who just two years earlier had been forced from Tashkent by the Russians – now began to receive funding from them, as they saw an opportunity to capitalize on Qing weakness and take Xinjiang for themselves. The situation quickly worsened for the Qing, as Muslims from Gansu to Shaanxi rose in rebellion as well (1). Yongsheng quickly sent an army under the command of 李鸿章 (Li Hongzhang) to put down the rebellion. This army met with success surprisingly quickly; the Muslim rebels spent as much time fighting each other as they did fighting the Qing, with disputes constantly flaring up along ethnic lines and pitting Hui against Uyghur. Additionally, despite receiving some funding from Russia, the rebels were unable to win the full support of the Taiping Kingdom, which sent them some token support but was too preoccupied with internal matters – the end of the Cultural Revolution and the establishment of the Hundred Flowers Regime – to put much effort into aiding the rebels.
Li’s army pressed into Gansu Province, defeating the rebel leader 马化龙 (Ma Hualong) outside of 西宁 (Xining) in 1868; Ma Hualong was captured and sentenced to death by slow slicing after the battle. The following year, Li Hongzhang marched on into Xinjiang and crushed the army of Yakub Beg near Kucha, taking advantage of the Qing army’s superior training and weaponry. Active resistance ended after the Battle of Kucha, although a low-level guerilla campaign continued in Xinjiang and western Gansu until the early 1870s. Many Muslims, fearing Qing retribution after the fall of the rebellion, fled south and sneaked into Pingnan Guo via the porous border that separated the Qing province of 四川 (Sichuan) from that country (2). In the aftermath of the rebellion, relations between Qing China and Imperial Russia – which had already been cool at best – worsened further, as the Qing rightly suspected Russia of playing a role in inciting the Muslims of the West to rebel. This only pushed the Qing closer to Great Britain, with whom their relations were better in any event. A minor kerfuffle between the two nations did occur, however, in 1871, when a British surveying team was caught mapping Tibet, whose borders were closed to all outsiders; they were promptly put to death on the orders of the local Qing 大臣 (dachen, or imperial resident) (3). Both sides attempted to smooth over the unfortunate incident – the Qing apologized, sacked the offending resident, and paid an indemnity to the families of the dead surveyors, while the British apologized for illegally entering Tibet. The incident did worry the Yongsheng Emperor, who started to wonder just who, if anyone, he could really count on.
Excerpted from “Qing-Taiping Relations in the Post-Revolution Period,” by Mario Rasmussen. 2003.
- During the post-revolution period, the Qing and the Taiping were mostly content to lob verbal grenades at each other rather than the genuine article. Still, the lack of any formal peace treaty or even an armistice meant that the two nations were technically at war, and at least fifty small-scale confrontations occurred along the fifteen-hundred mile border that divided Taiping China and Qing China between 1860 and 1875 (4). Yet neither country was especially interested in war during this period; both were focused on modernization and had internal issues to worry about, specifically the fall of the Yang Xiuqing regime for the Taiping and the ethnic unrest among Muslims in the Far West for the Qing. In fact, the incident that brought the two Chinas closest to war during this period was not a border clash, but rather the 琉球危机 (Liuqiu weiji, or Ryukyu Crisis), which took place in 1875. Since the early 17th century, the Ryukyu Islands had paid tribute to both Qing China and to Japan; in the 1870s, the Taiping attempted to annex some of the southern Ryukyus near the island of 台湾 (Taiwan), which they had controlled since 1858. This prompted an immediate response from both Qing China and from Japan, who each sent a fleet to the area and warned the Taiping in no uncertain terms that any attempt to annex a portion of the Ryukyus would result in war. The Taiping backed down, and this incident is generally considered to mark the beginning of the alliance between Qing China and Japan (清日联盟, or Qing Ri lianmeng), which would play such an important role in world affairs in the years to come. For now, it was merely one more occasion in which Qing China and Taiping China came to the edge of war, but ultimately decided that peace was the better option.
Excerpted from “Taiping Foreign Policy in the Late 19th Century: The Southern Obsession,” by Jan van der Smoot. 1946.
- Since the War of Chapdelaine’s Head, relations between Taiping China and both Great Britain and France had been poor. The Taiping resented the forced legalization of the opium trade, which they even more than the Qing viewed as a social ill, and they further resented the right of Catholic missionaries to travel and proselytize, viewing it as a pronounced insult to Confucian Christianity. Britain in particular simply had too many interests in Taiping China – including the colony of Hong Kong – to walk away, as some suggested doing after the rapprochement with Qing China. Trade continued as it always had in the treaty ports, although the Taiping refused to allow much British and French investment outside these areas, instead preferring to look elsewhere – to Russia, the United States of America, and emerging powers such as Germany. Relations between Taiping China and Great Britain stabilized in the late 1860’s, but the Franco-Taiping rivalry had just begun.
France’s 1864 annexation of Cochin-China alarmed the Taiping, who had been attempting to establish influence in Southeast Asia in their own right with the help of their client state of Pingnan Guo. The further annexation by the French of Cambodia in 1869 sent Tianjing into quite a state, as the Hundred Flowers Regime feared that France and Britain would simply divide Southeast Asia between them, leaving the Taiping Kingdom entirely surrounded by unfriendly nations (5). The Taiping thus started to step up their overtures to local rulers. They were aided in this by the example of Pingnan Guo – a nation that was under the Taiping umbrella and thus free from foreign imperialism of any sort. In 1868, the Taiping, in coordination with Pingnan Guo and the Nguyen Dynasty of Vietnam, established the 黑旗军 (Heiqi jun, or Black Flag Army) (6). The Black Flag Army was supposedly a loose agglomeration of bandits; in fact, it was made up almost entirely of soldiers from the Tiaping and Pingnan Guo armies and was commanded by the American adventurer Frederick Townsend Ward, who had previously served in the Taiping military. The Black Flag Army quickly endeared itself to the Nguyen Dynasty by suppressing several hill tribes, after which they began to “extort” commerce on the Red River (in fact the monies went to the Nguyen Dynasty, which did not have the wherewithal to impose duties and fees on river trade itself). In 1873 the Black Flag Army first came to the attention of the French, after the explorer Francois Garnier, who had been sent to Hanoi to resolve a commercial dispute, decided that the time was ripe to conquer the region for France. The Nguyen Dynasty called on the Black Flags, who entered Hanoi and killed every man in Garnier’s small force, including Garnier himself (7). The incident was a great embarrassment to the French, who had not intended for Garnier to take such extreme steps, but it did not put an end to their quest for empire. Although the European defeats of the early 1870s temporarily put a damper on French ambitions with regard to Southeast Asia, their eyes were still firmly set on Annam and Tonkin (8). Meanwhile, the Taiping Kingdom attempted to deepen ties with Siam . . .
NOTES
(1) This rebellion mirrors the Dungan Rebellion of 1862-77 in OTL. It’s not nearly as chaotic, though, because the Taiping aren’t prominently involved (OTL a stray Taiping army showed up and basically kicked off the action) and the Qing are much more with it.
(2) OTL they mostly fled to Russia. Fewer flee ITTL because the rebellion is less intense, but those that do mostly go to Pingnan Guo due to its status as a “Muslim country” (even though it’s really not, as discussed in the previous post).
(3) The British did this as well OTL, although they were never caught in the act.
(4) It’s kind of like the present situation between North and South Korea, except that neither Taiping China nor Qing China are run by lunatics.
(5) This fear probably wasn’t justified – the British and the French were colonial rivals, not allies – but it worried the Taiping nonetheless.
(6) OTL the Black Flag Army was mostly made up of ex-Taiping and bandits. Its leader was Liu Yongfu, who ITTL is one of the most prominent figures of the Hundred Flowers Regime.
(7) Lest I be accused of Sino-wankery, I’d like to point out that this incident happened in OTL almost exactly as I described it here.
(8) OTL the French annexed Annam in 1874; their timetable for that is slowed a bit in this timeline due to events which will be described and explained in the next post.
*A bit of foreign policy there, as you can see some alliances starting to form in East and Southeast Asia. As mentioned previously, the next entry will be the long-awaited “around the world” post, in which I talk about non-China places. I’ve so far managed to write a new entry every day, but this one will probably be a bit lengthy and require some research, so it might take a couple of days. And if there’s anything that people specifically want mentioned, just let me know. As always, thanks for reading.