"By comparison" being the operative term. While the US Reconstruction was messy and fraught with violence, the former rebels didn't go and try overthrowing/conquering neighboring governments and pillaging neighboring countries for decades after the war (King of Dingling and the Haw Wars). They also weren't rampaging around the border until crushed for another 7 years after the main conflict ended. Most notably, the Black Flags became powerful enough that, after the Black Flags fled into Vietnam to escape Qing reprisal, the Vietnamese government just let them be. And their extortion schemes made them rich enough to attract American and European soldiers of fortune.
Speaking of bloody how exactly deadly this American taiping or in this case 30 years war will get
Why do you think you'll be more likely to have a 30-years war than American Taiping rebellion one?
Hmmm oh you're right about that so maybe the Chinese rulers who see the shitshow of a Taping rebellion in the Americas will make some decisions to not repeat the same Horror on its own soil
How would religious turmoil in America affect matters in China, outside of the missionary Hong Xiuquan meeting not being in China potentially?
Qing leadership during this era was not noted to be very adept at learning from their own mistakes, let alone the mistakes of other nations on the other side of the world. Case in point: the fact that there were 2 Opium Wars. Also the defeats in the Sino-French War, Sino-Japanese War, Boxer Rebellion.
Well,it doesn't necessarily have to, it's just a question of whether we're transplanting the Taiping situation onto American affairs, or having them run parallel.
What I'm saying is that the situation in the US has almost no bearing on the situation in the Qing Empire, so the US having some nonsense happening wouldn't logically change much in China, unless it happened much much earlier than the Taiping Rebellion, in which case butterflies abound. Transplanting it doesn't make sense since the core issues (standard of living plummeting, overpopulation and lack of land, an epidemic of opium, racial tensions between the Manchu and the Han Chinese, humiliating defeats, inability for young men to get married due to female infanticide skewing the gender ratios, millenarianism (the White Lotus and other such rebellions also had religious undertones)) are still present with or without the US. Even without the Taiping Rebellion, Qing China was a powderkeg.
Yeah, that's fair, Qing China was logically already heading towards that path. I suppose the era will be defined by the time two pretty major countries were taken over by cults.
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Dude just make a TL work already because you can only see come make a story about thisThen they strike. Thundering out of the plains, the valleys and the mountainsides comes a tide of murderous bandits with God on their lips.
Now, in order for American!Taiping to actually cause the US government as many problems as actual!Taiping did for the Qing, you need to add in several additional factors, because the Qing were facing seven simultaneous crises that severely hampered their ability to crush the Taiping.
Clearly, the US government needs to be weakened and the rebels need to be strengthened, but it's also obvious that China's problems can't be translated into 1800s America very well. But let's start with some ideas:1. A combination of century-old government policies meant to curb under-reporting on provincial census figures, and a massive growth in population in the meantime, mean that by the 1840s the tax structure is meant for a population that's only a third of China's actual size. So the government is missing out on a massive amount of revenue.
2. Due to complete reliance on Spanish silver since the Ming dynasty, there is no standard currency in China. Due to recent developments in the Americas, the Spanish galleons have stopped coming and now there is a massive silver crunch and what few taxes are being levied are not getting paid.
3. The Qing government functions on the libertarian model: almost all things we take for granted as things the government takes care of are actually done by local landowners who cooperate with the local governor, and are paid out of the governor's own pocket. Governors basically rely on these families for everything.
4. Government officials are terminally underpaid, meaning they have to resort to massive corruption just to fill their budgets. Due to stuff related to Problem #1, the budgets that the governors get are meant to be used on a population a third of its actual size.
5. The government exams are draconian beyond belief. Less than 1% of test-takers pass, and studying to pass one can easily take 30 years of your life. This means that there is actually a shortage of government officials as is, never mind all the additional stuff the government is just not doing. And what about the failures? Ordinarily, failed students would go back to their provinces and serve in government-affiliated roles: teachers, investigators, tax collectors, etc, etc. But due to recent developments, there's a lot of unrest among them. This is the social stratum where Hong Xiuquan came from.
6. A massive problem with native opium smuggling from Sichuan and Yunnan. You heard me right: native opium production. The British ain't got shit on these guys, and it's estimated by gov't officials that illegal opium consumption is costing the Qing economy around 50% of what it could be earning. Modern estimates cut that down from 50% to 20%, but that's still a massive problem. Moreover, bans on opium consumption since the 1730s mean that just taxing it (which they eventually end up doing in the 1850s, and would prove massively profitable) is politically unpopular.
7. Oh, and the British. Compared to everything that came before, the First Opium War was basically just the straw that broke the camel's back, and the Second Opium War was just adding more straw.
Note: for a general overview of the above, watch the following videos:
The Economy of Imperial China: Migration, Tensions and Trade
In the last episode, we looked over some of the basic structure of China's pre-industrial economy, focusing on what had long been the heartland of the countr...
Now, credit where credit's due: the Qing weren't ignorant of these problems and there were actually government officials and even members of the imperial family(1) who knew about them and wanted drastic reforms. In fact, the issue of reform was so prominent that the Qing court was riven with factionalism as different officials presented different plans for how to deal with each of these problems. Sadly, a few avoidable political missteps (Prince Gong being passed over for the throne, Cixi's rise to power) combined with the general devastation caused by the Taiping Rebellion to delay the start of China's modernization by over 50 years, by which time too much damage had been dealt and it was too late to avoid the 1911 Revolution. Had those circumstances been avoided, the Qing could've easily fully reformed their government and modernized just as their rivals in Japan and Russia had.
But I digress...
(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Gong
1. The American!Taiping don't pop off until after the Civil War, which gives them two-three generations to ferment and gain followers. This will make up for the US military's greater competence compared to the Qing by increasing the number of rebels.
2. Political corruption on the level of Boss Tweed is even worse in the 50s-70s. This damages public confidence in the government, makes the Civil War last longer as the military is frequently interfered with to its detriment, and generally makes American politics an absolute mess. By the end of it, almost every major city is run by its own local political clique, with the federal government's will being sporadically enforced at best.
Sorry, did I say clique? I may have given away the game...
3. Due to all of the above, there is a growing disillusionment with the American system. Before the rebellion shows everyone just how bad everything has gotten, most people are convinced that the system has merely been led astray by corrupt men and believe it can be fixed. After the rebellion, many people will be convinced that the American system was never going to work and begin looking abroad for political systems to emulate. Many turn to communism. Others just want to take their state out of the Union and go their own way.
I think it could be always possible that the rebellion in China is very different than the OTL one even if the American Taiping doesnt affect it directly
Hong met that missionary in the 1830s, so the PoD would have to be earlier than that and significant enough that missionaries aren't going to that part of China, I'd imagine. There was quite an effort to proselytize in China at the time and it didn't have to be that particular missionary. He didn't actually pay the Christian pamphlets any mind until he had multiple fever dreams from nervous breakdowns, so simply having Christian materials on hand would do the trick. The man was seeking answers for his fever dreams and he wanted something that claimed to be divine and not something he grew up with (otherwise he would've not founded a cult or at least based it on traditional Chinese beliefs). And the US having a mess of a time doesn't change Hong's life other than that. He's probably gonna be born, do the same things, fail the exam (1% chance of passing, after all), and have the same reaction.
I think John Brown being more competent is key but I think not in the way you suggest. I think if John Brown is competent in garnering even more widespread sympathy (and he actually had it in heaps, both in the US and abroad) he could be hailed a martyr in not just a political sense but also religious.
Now you made me imagine Hong starting an cultivation-based genocide cult
