AHC: American Colonies in China

PatrickS

Banned
I want to do a timeline where the European Powers and the US carve up China into colonies.

How could the US get one? What PODs are needed for them to want one?

I want to do a timeline where the US puts an American who family is from China as Empress in the land they control.

Image a more expanded America
 
I want to do a timeline where the European Powers and the US carve up China into colonies.

How could the US get one? What PODs are needed for them to want one?
Most of the major imperial powers did have colonies in China in OTL (UK-Hong Kong, Germany-Qingdao, France-Kwang Chou Wan, etc.). It would be relatively easy for the US to get a similar territory for itself, probably in the late 19th or early 20th century.

I want to do a timeline where the US puts an American who family is from China as Empress in the land they control.
Why would the US government do that?

Imagine a more expanded America
I think you're going to do well here. :D
 
The Americans rivaled the British in the tea trade, but Americans don't like tea. Also, they don't have opium, so inferior tobacco must be used

The Americans liked tea just fine for a long while. And there are quite a few Americans who like tea quite a lot; haven't you ever heard of iced tea?

Historically, the United States was in fact one of China's major trading partners from even before we got firm control of ports on the West Coast, a period termed the "Old China Trade". Due to the various political traditions of the United States during the 19th century and our military weakness, however, we opted not to take control of specific ports, but instead favored an "open" system. It is likely that a different formation could lead to taking a treaty port like Hong Kong or Qingdao.

EDIT: Sorry, I had to go to dinner and needed to be brief. Let me expand a bit; clearly, at its formation the OTL United States had something of a bent against Empire in the European sense, at least outside of North America (inside, everyone was fair game), and a considerable investment and interest in trade. This informed imperialistic efforts by the United States, in that it took a somewhat more indirect route than was common to what we think of as Western colonization, in that it was focused less on controlling territory and more on influencing governments to have open trade and favor American commerce (as it still is, in fact). Very much and perhaps unsurprisingly like British efforts in the Persian Gulf (eg., the UAE), in Southeast Asia (eg., Brunei), and in India itself (in the form of the princely states), the United States preferred friendly local governments to direct control. This may perhaps have also been influenced that most areas of American interest were governed by states that could be influenced and controlled indirectly, rather than needing an Army presence; where interest and statelessness coincided, as in the Pacific or much of North America, again it reverted towards a more typical governing role.

As for the case of China specifically, colonies in the African or Southeast Asian sense are unlikely for any power. The territory and population that would need to be controlled were immense, and essentially all the benefits of colonization (open markets and so on) could be acquired by instead coopting the Qing government, which in fact was exactly what was done. It was far cheaper and easier to rely on Chinese agents to keep order than to try to colonize China themselves. In fact, in most colonies the colonizers coopted local governing structures of this type, it was just that they were vastly weaker relative to Western militaries than even the late Qing military was, so this influence became direct control relatively quickly. The most likely path for any such colonization to take is the way it went in India, where colonizing powers gradually supplanted central authority for a variety of reasons, until they ended up ruling the place anyways. This was more or less what was happening in China with divisions into spheres of influence and so on, except that the spread of Western ideas into China, the overthrow of the Qing, and World War I all ended up slowing down the process, and the Japanese invasion and World War II pretty much killed it.
 
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The Americans liked tea just fine for a long while. And there are quite a few Americans who like tea quite a lot; haven't you ever heard of iced tea?

I am aware of that, and I myself drink hot tea daily, and am an American, but not enough drank it to get them to stay on it after the cultural separation from England (1780s and 90s), and also iced tea isn't real tea, real tea is drunk at 125°F.

Anyways, you could get a china trade based on porcelain and silk.
 
I want to do a timeline where the European Powers and the US carve up China into colonies.

We don’t do colonies, though. If we annex territory, it’s to become a state. Equal representation and all that jazz.

That makes things problematic for grabbing a significant parcel of land in China. Not because of population or anything, but because we’d have to project power to protect it.

It also brings up the question of why. Maybe you can an early industrial US to see good business interests there COMBINED with holding moral superiority over the Europeans, as while they’d be going there for colonies, we’d be going there to establish a territory.

A century (or under) of US ownership, business, infrastructure, etc. and the statehood question would start to come up.

Image a more expanded America

Well, anyway, I love you. :D
 

SinghKing

Banned
We don’t do colonies, though. If we annex territory, it’s to become a state. Equal representation and all that jazz.

That makes things problematic for grabbing a significant parcel of land in China. Not because of population or anything, but because we’d have to project power to protect it.

It also brings up the question of why. Maybe you can an early industrial US to see good business interests there COMBINED with holding moral superiority over the Europeans, as while they’d be going there for colonies, we’d be going there to establish a territory.

A century (or under) of US ownership, business, infrastructure, etc. and the statehood question would start to come up.

Just like in Puerto Rico, eh...?
 
I am aware of that, and I myself drink hot tea daily, and am an American, but not enough drank it to get them to stay on it after the cultural separation from England (1780s and 90s), and also iced tea isn't real tea, real tea is drunk at 125°F.
It hardly matters whether or not it's "real" tea for the purposes of merchants trading with China. It still consumes tea, meaning that they still need to buy it from China.

(And for the record, although I only drink hot tea, iced tea is still "real" tea)

Anyways, you could get a china trade based on porcelain and silk.
As I said, there was a China trade, the Old China Trade. It was reasonably important during the early 19th century, as a matter of fact, and involved exports of opium (from Turkey and clandestinely from India), ginseng (which grows in the Appalachians), and furs to China in exchange for silver and Chinese products like, yes, porcelain and silk (as well as others). It only ended because of the First Opium War and the Treaty of Nanking, which prompted the United States to seek a similar treaty, but subsequently the Chinese trade remained fairly important. That's where things like the Open Door policy came from; trade with China was fairly important, but the United States didn't have a sphere of influence, and preferred open access to China.
 
We don’t do colonies, though. If we annex territory, it’s to become a state. Equal representation and all that jazz.

That makes things problematic for grabbing a significant parcel of land in China. Not because of population or anything, but because we’d have to project power to protect it.

It also brings up the question of why. Maybe you can an early industrial US to see good business interests there COMBINED with holding moral superiority over the Europeans, as while they’d be going there for colonies, we’d be going there to establish a territory.

A century (or under) of US ownership, business, infrastructure, etc. and the statehood question would start to come up.

We've done colonies with no intention of statehood in the past (Philippines). I don't think it's too far-fetched for the US to pick up a small concession, then grant it independence later on.
 
We've done colonies with no intention of statehood in the past (Philippines). I don't think it's too far-fetched for the US to pick up a small concession, then grant it independence later on.

No, it probably isn't. The best chance would probably be to have Spain pick one up at some point--perhaps they take Macau from Portugal and keep it. Then, during the Spanish-American War (ignoring the fact that kicking the Portuguese out of Macau in the 1640s probably affects the formation of the United States), Macau is taken by the United States and made a territory like the Philippines, only to be taken by the Japanese during World War II. It might be made independent or handed over to the Republic of China after that...
 
Doesn't help that you have to have a U.S. that would even have the political will to hold any overseas territory, and the reach. You won't see such a thing happen until after the Civil War, and the US has the time to focus away from internal problems to overseas.

Look at the case of North Borneo. In 1865, the U.S. originally acquired a ten-year lease for the spit of land to establish a colony/trading post (technically it was the Consul who acquired it and then sold it to the American Trading Company in Hong Kong). Within a year, the colony was defunct.

You're going to have to wait until decades after the War, and after Reconstruction, for the U.S. to really look outward. That, or you'll have to alter the war to either occur earlier, or for it to end sooner and not be as damaging.
 
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