AHC: Make the Chinese languages and culture extinct

  • Thread starter Deleted member 67076
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Deleted member 67076

Since China always finds a way to be homogenous and absorb invaders somehow, your challenge is to find a way to have the chinese culture itself be assimilated

With a POD of around, lets say 220 AD, the fall of the Han Dynasty, find a way to make Chinese languages and culture go extinct or at least the way of Western Rome, balkanized and fused by various invasions.
 
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A much harder drive by European powers and Japan could render Chinese language and culture very incapacitated.
 
220 AD can't work. The three kingdoms could resist invasions in their own right and the most likely to be invaded would be Cao Wei the strongest power in terms of military force.
When the Han fell power just simply passed to Cao Wei, with Shu Han and Sun Wu declaring themselves emperors later. Also by that time china was at least stabilized from warlord period prior to it.

You could theoretically try anytime after the death of Emperor Ling in 189 to probably 196 If you a China that can be invaded. By that time Han authority was gone and many warlords were battling each other, coupled with famine and lawlessness.
 

Deleted member 67076

220 AD can't work. The three kingdoms could resist invasions in their own right and the most likely to be invaded would be Cao Wei the strongest power in terms of military force.
When the Han fell power just simply passed to Cao Wei, with Shu Han and Sun Wu declaring themselves emperors later. Also by that time china was at least stabilized from warlord period prior to it.

You could theoretically try anytime after the death of Emperor Ling in 189 to probably 196 If you a China that can be invaded. By that time Han authority was gone and many warlords were battling each other, coupled with famine and lawlessness.

And no groups after that period could assimilate the Han culture?
 
Well when the Manchu and Mongols invaded and in several nomadic dynasty's during periods of civil war they did adopt Han Culture. The only way you could really screw up Han Dynasty China is make Emperor Ling's reign worse. Which is hard to top considering he didn't care for the Government and turned his government over to the corrupt 10 eunuchs. So if you make the eunuchs somehow worse and make the Yellow Turban rebellion last alot longer with bloodier results.

Provided the eunuchs still try to take Ling's heirs hostage and a power struggle breaks out you could see many tribes and foreigners take advantage of the situation how to prevent them from assimilating is the hard part. The most that could out is a potential hybrid of cultures.
 
Have some northern barbarian force conquer northern China and turn the Han culture into something unrecognizable, perhaps they refuse to use the Chinese script. Then southern China collapses and since they all speak their own dialects anyway they become distinct cultures and states.
 
I would hate to see Chinese Culture disappear since it would then possibly butterfly away butterflied shrimp which I love to eat:p:D!! Seriously, perhaps with an increased push by an Islamic nation, China as we know it could adopt either a modified Persian culture along with Arabic script?

I'd hate to see China fall and disappear like Classical Rome/Egypt since besides losing cuisine, we would lose philosophy, medicine, astronomy, printing press, coal, etc.

My 2 cents, Joho:).
 
By 200 CE it's basically not possible without having an impactor strike China as Chinese culture was cemented in Old China and their really were'nt any legitimate threats during the time period.

You can have multiple Chinese states with it as PoD or later, but Chinese culture is something else.
 
Well when the Manchu and Mongols invaded and in several nomadic dynasty's during periods of civil war they did adopt Han Culture. The only way you could really screw up Han Dynasty China is make Emperor Ling's reign worse. Which is hard to top considering he didn't care for the Government and turned his government over to the corrupt 10 eunuchs. So if you make the eunuchs somehow worse and make the Yellow Turban rebellion last alot longer with bloodier results.

Provided the eunuchs still try to take Ling's heirs hostage and a power struggle breaks out you could see many tribes and foreigners take advantage of the situation how to prevent them from assimilating is the hard part. The most that could out is a potential hybrid of cultures.

Even changing a small piece of a culture renders it a new, different culture. Modern Turks eat Mediterranean foods much like the Hellenic-speaking peoples who lived in Anatolia before them, and the Hittites long before them, but they're all recognized as different cultures. Perhaps a good place to start would be to look at the Hellenistic world's fall from grace - Greek went from a language spoken as far as Spain and India to nearly going extinct. That small groups of Turkish conquerers were able to spread their language across a much larger and more settled population is pretty impressive. Could a foreign dynasty in China achieve the same thing?
 
I dont see why this is so hard, if it could happen to Rome,why not to China?

Well, the OP's challenge is to get rid of the Chinese languages. With the Western Roman Empire, the dialects of Latin simply evolved into new languages that were different but still very much related. Having the Chinese languages evolve into new Chinese languages wouldn't accomplish the task. The decline of Greek in large parts of the eastern empire is a better model, or maybe the fall of Coptic in Egypt.
 

Deleted member 67076

By any chance are you a certain Prime Minister of Japan?
Nope I'm Dominican, no chance I'd even get office in Japan, let alone Prime Minister. I just wanted to know why doesn't China ever fall apart like Rome does via invasions or if the culture can be assimilated like the Celts in continental Europe.
 

Deleted member 67076

Well, the OP's challenge is to get rid of the Chinese languages. With the Western Roman Empire, the dialects of Latin simply evolved into new languages that were different but still very much related. Having the Chinese languages evolve into new Chinese languages wouldn't accomplish the task. The decline of Greek in large parts of the eastern empire is a better model, or maybe the fall of Coptic in Egypt.
You don't have to get rid of it, just have the majority not speak from that language family.
 
Well aside from nomadic invaders slaughtering people in the period I suggested, I don't feasibly see how you could make "Chinese" culture extinct. At the most you could have hybrid cultures in the north and with a potential fragmentation of the south into various language groups but wouldn't the cultural influence still exist.
 

Deleted member 43582

I remember that the Tibetian empire was rather big at some point. Wank them a bit and then have Turkic people invade from the west and the Mongols from the north for good measure. Have Vietnam clean up the remnants in south China. Make all of these conquerors very Xenophobic so they don't go native.
 
Nope I'm Dominican, no chance I'd even get office in Japan, let alone Prime Minister. I just wanted to know why doesn't China ever fall apart like Rome does via invasions or if the culture can be assimilated like the Celts in continental Europe.

Geography plays a huge part in it; Core China is mostly flat lands and stuff that are'nt particularly conductive for creating social and lingusitic diversity where-as the Roman Empire was based on a peninsula (that was part mountains and part plains) and tried to rule over a highly geographically diverse area.

Their's also the fact that China assimilated people where-as Rome did'nt really do so outside of Italia.
 
Their's also the fact that China assimilated people where-as Rome did'nt really do so outside of Italia.
And Gaul, and Hispania, and Thrace/Dacia, and Pannonia, and Illyria, and North Africa. Only Gaul, Hispania, and northern Thrace/Dacia still speak a Latin language, but to say Rome only assimilated other Italic peoples is blatantly false.
 
I think it's possible for the Mongols to come close.
When they fought, especially if they fought to end a rebellion to their rule, they had a tendency to destroy irrigation systems and fill in canals. They did this mostly to allow for easier movement in case they had to return--canals and ditches were difficult for their horses to move over. But also, they didn't really trust agriculture--the wanted fields to lie fallow, to return to pasture land.

Secondly, they made a point of asking cities to surrender to them. Cities that did were largely spared (although they would have large numbers of artisans taken away, as well as treasure, etc). But cities that did not, or in times where they wanted to make a point, they were quite willing to kill everyone in the city.

So imagine a TL where the Jin and Song try to resist as long as they can, necessitating a many year long campaign on the part of the Mongols. You'd see city and city razed to the ground, with every inhabitant killed. You'd see a massive die-off due to famine and disease, too, as farmlands were systematically destroyed and farmers fled to the cities for protection. Even after the warfare had ended, it would take generations to build enough dams, irrigation channels, and such to return the land to a semblance of its previous productivity. After the Mongols marched through what is today Iran, it took 300 years for the population to recover to what it had been before. If that happened in southern (Song) China, the bread(rice?) basket of the region... the fall in population would be enormous.

When Kublai Khan established the Yuan Dynasty in 1271, the Mongols had been ruling over China for 50 years, just as Mongol territory. There were no imperial examinations during that time, or any system of Chinese rule. The Yuan Dynasty was established more or less to help the Great Khan rule over his large and restive Chinese populace. If the Chinese population was much, much smaller, I doubt he'd have bothered.

The Mongol rule would eventually end, of course. Their population was simply too small to rule over all of China indefinitely. But if, instead of a few decades of foreign-style rule, there was an interruption of a few centuries... The effect of Mongol culture on Chinese culture would be much, much stronger. The Chinese sense of history would still be strong, but you wouldn't have anyone alive who could still remember what it was like when Chinese ruled China. You might even see Chinese rulers modeling themselves on Mongol styles, the way Tamerlane did.

You can make this even worse if the Jin and Song lands are divided between different Khans after Chingis Khan's death. After the Khans begin to separate into different empires, could have the Jin and Song cultural division last a lot longer, instead of being "unified" into one Mongol Empire.

The effect of all this would be enormous. China would be weaker years down the road, too, would might lead to them being conquered outright by Manchus, Uyghurs, or even eventually European colonies.

It's not impossible to see a modern-day "China" that is a few different nations, each of them poorer than today, with a half-Mongol language and culture.
 
And Gaul, and Hispania, and Thrace/Dacia, and Pannonia, and Illyria, and North Africa. Only Gaul, Hispania, and northern Thrace/Dacia still speak a Latin language, but to say Rome only assimilated other Italic peoples is blatantly false.

Rome incoproated people certainly, but it did'nt assimilate them, afterall, their is no Roman cultural area or nationalism.
 
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