AHC: China remains significantly strong by the 1800s

RousseauX

Donor
The problem with the Qing was that even when suffering from an existential crisis (the West), they couldn't reform because they were too afraid of putting guns into hands of the peasants.
To be fair the exact same thing was true of Han dynasties.

The Ming basically had a sweet deal going on (most of the silver from the New World ended up in their coffers without the having to do anything), so they didn't really do that much, especially since the threat from the Mongols was gone by the late 1400s.
Yes, this is true too
 
To be fair the exact same thing was true of Han dynasties.

As for your assessment that any dynasty controlling the Northern Plains automatically becomes conservative, I do note that the security issues and paranoia about being attacked by horse peoples from the North tends to override fun new ways of governing and doing business. When the horse people took over, society in China tended to be a bit more dynamic, if more violent.

The Qing were some kind of anomaly but that's because they put an end to the nomadic threat for good by the 1750s. After that, they were too afraid to rock the boat since the only thing that could overthrow them was The People (tm).

Lo and behold, The People (or at least the Warlords) overthrew the Qing.
 
The Qing were some kind of anomaly but that's because they put an end to the nomadic threat for good by the 1750s. After that, they were too afraid to rock the boat since the only thing that could overthrow them was The People (tm).

Lo and behold, The People (or at least the Warlords) overthrew the Qing.
What if the Qing faced some sort of existential crisis earlier on (say, a Taiping Rebellion that comes in 1800 rather than 1840) that forced it to see the writing on the wall? The Manchus could then ease their way into some kind of constitutional system where the imperial family keeps its prestige and official position while actual political power is increasingly turned over to Han officials by 1900. Keeping the Manchu rulers around would be useful for keeping Tibet, Mongolia, and Xinjiang in the fold, and they were so sinicized by 1800 that it's hard for me to see the Han officialdom stabbing them in the back just because of their ethnicity.
 

RousseauX

Donor
As for your assessment that any dynasty controlling the Northern Plains automatically becomes conservative, I do note that the security issues and paranoia about being attacked by horse peoples from the North tends to override fun new ways of governing and doing business. When the horse people took over, society in China tended to be a bit more dynamic, if more violent.

The Qing were some kind of anomaly but that's because they put an end to the nomadic threat for good by the 1750s. After that, they were too afraid to rock the boat since the only thing that could overthrow them was The People (tm).
That is actually pretty true, but the exact same thing applied to Han Chinese dynasties as well (the fear of Warlordism after the Tang).

The Song for instance, had a weak military which eventually led to its defeat by the Barbarians.

I simply don't think fear of the Han was a decisive factor, for the simple reason that most Han dynasties feared the peasantry as well.

It does lead to a degradation of the upper crust of the civil service though, as talented Han are excluded in favour of Manchus instead. But it seems that the civil service of every late dynasty is pretty corrupt and useless anyway.

The reason why the northern dynasties tend towards conservatism also had to do with the fact that the north provided enough economic resource as to sniffle innovation, while the southern dynasties had to rely on commerce and therefore prove to be more innovative.

China's real weakness was the same weakness it always had, it had a highly centralized but weak government. Which simultaneously find it difficult control the countryside when under pressure, and does not give enough regional autonomy for regions to find their own solution to problems. This was exacerbated in the 19th century as the Chinese population quadrupled without a similar rise in government staff or efficiency.

Ultimately I think the best plausible choice for the Qing court was probably to get better at playing the foreigners off against each other. A pragmatic court might be able to, for instance, play the role of a French client state against the British for a while, or ally with the British against the Russians in Manchuria etc.

The best choice overall though for the early Qing emperors to pull off what the Tokugawa Shogunate managed in Japan: establish a strong, centralized government with a bureaucrat class that extends down to below the county level (which imperial China never had). Hence a "Chinese Meiji" is much more plausible.
 

RousseauX

Donor
What if the Qing faced some sort of existential crisis earlier on (say, a Taiping Rebellion that comes in 1800 rather than 1840) that forced it to see the writing on the wall? The Manchus could then ease their way into some kind of constitutional system where the imperial family keeps its prestige and official position while actual political power is increasingly turned over to Han officials by 1900. Keeping the Manchu rulers around would be useful for keeping Tibet, Mongolia, and Xinjiang in the fold, and they were so sinicized by 1800 that it's hard for me to see the Han officialdom stabbing them in the back just because of their ethnicity.

I don't see why they would do better, between the Taiping and 1911 lie a period of almost half a century, and the Qing hobbled along. They did a lot better than most people give them credit for (never had to formally give up large swath of territory), but still nowhere that would count as good.
 
I don't see why they would do better, between the Taiping and 1911 lie a period of almost half a century, and the Qing hobbled along. They did a lot better than most people give them credit for (never had to formally give up large swath of territory), but still nowhere that would count as good.
My rationale was first that we could avoid Cixi or someone like her, but perhaps she was more a product of her time rather than a major figure who ruined the Qing, idk. The bigger idea was based on the fact that in in the 1900s, the Qing dynasty did indeed make some salient reforms, such as the implementation of a Prussian-based constitution. The Taiping Rebellion happening 40 years earlier might thus see such a constitution being introduced earlier as well.
 
One wonder if the Manchu invasion was repelled or never came to be, what would have taken it's place... another peasant rebellion ending in another dynasty? Would China have been stronger, more open, etc.. or the reverse.. hummm.
 
The Ming basically had a sweet deal going on (most of the silver from the New World ended up in their coffers without the having to do anything), so they didn't really do that much, especially since the threat from the Mongols was gone by the late 1400s.

Well, the Qing still got most of the sliver from the West. I don't see a point in here.
 
The Han dominated dynasties were not much better with regards to innovation (see the Ming) than the foreign dynasties were.

Any Chinese dynasty which keeps control of the northern plains tend towards conservatism eventually.

What made you think the Ming dynasty was averse to innovation? Does closing foreign trade necessarily stifle innovation? You should know that Ming China also had one of the world's lowest tax rates and was a hotbed for internal investment (similar to what some may call... capitalism). Similarly, people seem to underestimate the size of musketry and artillery corps in the Ming military (and indeed in all non-Western militaries... I wonder why...) and their willingness to adopt foreign weapons. In fact, not long after seeing the effectiveness of Dutch cannons in battle, the Ming authorities dredged up sunken Dutch ships to recover them for copying. Not long after, natively manufactured "Red Barbarian" cannons played a crucial role in repelling the Manchus in the north.

In my opinion, Europe pulled ahead because the industrial revolution happened in England - and that's due to economic development and policy more than anything else. The steam engine had been invented several times and was present as gizmos in numerous courts as far back as a thousand years before it changed the world. Who's to say that a scientific revolution couldn't have happened in China had there been a need for it? The key for this challenge would then be to create a need for such a revolution to take place in China either as a parallel to the one in England but something entirely different but just as potent.
 

Cryostorm

Monthly Donor
I think the real problem is that China is too big and too small. At its strong points it is the uncontested power in Eastern Asia which gives it little reason to innovate, the same happens to any large dominant nation where internal unrest is a greater threat than external invasions such as Rome, Spain, and several Chinese dynasties. But when it does arrive at its weak points it collapses surprisingly fast and the previous dynasty is replaced by another, either homegrown rebel, the greatly feared internal unrest, or by a rare barbarian dynasty who then fall into the previous too big trap.

China has only rarely found itself split into multiple, and equally powerful, nations and when it does it was never for very long periods of time and each part wanted to unite the whole, just with its particular dynasty in charge. It is like if when Rome fell each part had been taken over by a Roman Dynasty and then fought with the express purpose of reuniting Rome until one did. Europe's problem is that several different barbarian tribes invaded and settled, but were not Latinized, competing versions of Christianity, which Islam's emergence did not help, and the complete collapse of even regional bureaucracies caused the emergence of several strong regional cultures with no real unifying culture, language, or structure the way Han Chinese and the Imperial bureaucracy did for China.

While not a guarantee of sparking an industrial revolution, having China broken up into parts, early Warlord Era, would certainly help. Even if it came down to one of the Warlords doing a Meiji in his particular part of China it would strengthen China overall, even a part of China is larger than most European nations. Having it where one does it and conquers the others or where several modernize to protect themselves from each other would make it where China remains a significant power in East Asia and the world. The last one could even end in a Chinese Confederacy (or the Chinese Union, CU for short) to combat European influence.
 
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I think the real problem is that China is too big and too small. At its strong points it is the uncontested power in Eastern Asia which gives it little reason to innovate, the same happens to any large dominant nation where internal unrest is a greater threat than external invasions such as Rome, Spain, and several Chinese dynasties. But when it does arrive at its weak points it collapses surprisingly fast and the previous dynasty is replaced by another, either homegrown rebel, the greatly feared internal unrest, or by a rare barbarian dynasty who then fall into the previous too big trap.

China has only rarely found itself split into multiple, and equally powerful, nations and when it does it was never for very long periods of time and each part wanted to unite the whole, just with its particular dynasty in charge. It is like if when Rome fell each part had been taken over by a Roman Dynasty and then fought with the express purpose of reuniting Rome until one did. Europe's problem is that several different barbarian tribes invaded and settled, but were not Latinized, competing versions of Christianity, which Islam's emergence did not help, and the complete collapse of even regional bureaucracies caused the emergence of several strong regional cultures with no real unifying culture, language, or structure the way Han Chinese and the Imperial bureaucracy did for China.

While not a guarantee of sparking an industrial revolution, having China broken up into parts, early Warlord Era, would certainly help. Even if it came down to one of the Warlords doing a Meiji in his particular part of China it would strengthen China overall, even a part of China is larger than most European nations. Having it where one does it and conquers the others or where several modernize to protect themselves from each other would make it where China remains a significant power in East Asia and the world. The last one could even end in a Chinese Confederacy (or the Chinese Union, CU for short) to combat European influence.

The contrast of Tang and Song against the Five Dynasties doesn't support this theory.
 
Basically, the allegedly greatest dynasty of China, Tang, is not a Han dynasty.

Not only is this statement false, the fact that arguably the greatest English Dynasty - the Plantagents - would rather speak French than English and rarely spent time in England itself is testimony to how irrelevant that statement is. China is simply too far away from the epicenter of the industrial revolution in 1800.

The industrial revolution is not the result of governmental policy but rather economics and sheer blind luck. Do you think English monarchs really spent time and effort into improving the economy of their country? How many notable economic reforms can you name that was initiated in England prior to the Enlightenment? Only by the time that the industrial revolution is in full swing are its benefits seen and reforms like the Meiji became possible. All that is required for China to remaina world power in the 18th century is for the industrial revolution to happen somewhere closer than the other end of Earth's largest continent.
 
Not only is this statement false, the fact that arguably the greatest English Dynasty - the Plantagents - would rather speak French than English and rarely spent time in England itself is testimony to how irrelevant that statement is. China is simply too far away from the epicenter of the industrial revolution in 1800.

The industrial revolution is not the result of governmental policy but rather economics and sheer blind luck. Do you think English monarchs really spent time and effort into improving the economy of their country? How many notable economic reforms can you name that was initiated in England prior to the Enlightenment? Only by the time that the industrial revolution is in full swing are its benefits seen and reforms like the Meiji became possible. All that is required for China to remaina world power in the 18th century is for the industrial revolution to happen somewhere closer than the other end of Earth's largest continent.
Wrong. The Qing, in their arrogance, decided the rest of the world had nothing to offer. Britain tried to establish trade relations in the 18th Century, and they would only consent if King George III himself came to Beijing and prostrated himself before the emperor. The problem with considering yourself the center of the world is that you surround yourself with people who want to see you taken down a peg.
 
The contrast of Tang and Song against the Five Dynasties doesn't support this theory.

I think it probably does, on a macrohistorical sense. The experience of the Warring Kingdoms shows that countries in tough competition against each other tend to experiment with a lot of ways to better their countries (the period of the '100 schools', for example). Reform occured because of the simple reason that 'if we don't change, we will die', and it occured frequently throughout the period (Shang Yang, Zhao Wuling, Xin Buhai etc). This is not to say that every period of division means progress, but in the long run countries fighting against each other tend to experience less stagnation than those in permanent peace.

I would say the Song is not a good example for your view, since the Song was in competition with the Khitans and the Xi Xia. And reform was a major thread throughout the Song Dynasty.

Of course that still leaves the Tang as an outlier - although, in my opinion, the 'glory days' of the Tang were not structurally that much different from those experienced during the Ming or the Qing. A dynasty succeeds a decrepit one (or really, in the case of the Tang, inherits the very-costly achievements of Sui), and introduces structural changes that reinvigorate society, which grow outmoded through time and eventually lead to regime destruction.
 
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