AHC: Ryukyu wank

Yeah, Ryukyu. It's that place that shocked many Europeans, mainly because they didn't believe that such a militarily weak state could remain independent.

With a post-1400 POD, have Ryukyu be a flourishing successful sovereign state today.

Bonus: Ryukyu conquers Taiwan

Bonus bonus: Ryukyu conquers Japan

Bonus bonus bonus: Ryukyu conquers China

Bonus bonus bonus bonus: Ryukyu is world superpower.
 
someone's been playing eu4

Well, I did some research on a similar topic earlier, and...

Ryukyu is dotted with fortresses called gusuku
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gusuku

which are one of the legacies of feudal war among feudal lords called anji or aji
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aji_(Ryūkyū)

These anji were brought into line and subordinated to royal authority by King Sho Shin that was organized into units and subunits.
http://wiki.samurai-archives.com/index.php?title=Military_of_the_Ryukyu_Kingdom

The article that that SamuraiWiki article cites states in the mid-1500s (Sho Nei's reign) that there were 3000 soldiers and anywhere between 50 and 100 ships.
"In terms of the size of Ryukyuan armies, documents connected with Okinawan invasions of other Ryukyu Islands, mobilizations to defend against pirates, and the mobilization to defend against the Satsuma invasion of 1609 indicate a range of between 1000 and 3000 soldiers, with naval flotillas ranging in size from 46 to 100 ships."

Population stats on Taiwan are few and far between but this Wikipedia article estimates maybe 100,000 people before 1600
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Taiwan#Historical

So, 3000 people holding down 100,000 people, across the plains and mountains of Taiwan, is a bit much with some kind of Ryukyuan population wank.

You could get extra population, however, by having the RYukyuans adopt a piecemeal effort at colonization:
1. Building gusukus along the western plains to house farming settlements (essentially walled cities)
2. Try to assimilate natives into the Ryukyuan peerage system, either with trade or offers of protection.
3. Use the extra population gained from Steps 1 and 2 to conquer even more.

Of course, this is dependent on the Ryukyuans not getting swatted immediately upon arriving or bankrupting themselves in the process of colonization later on...

The future of a Ryukyuan Empire might not be in Taiwan, but in Polynesia. I think that Ryukyuans ships made it to Thailand at some point, I'm pretty sure that they can make it to Palau and beyond.

The real challenge, though, is getting Japan to stay out, because the more Ryukyu grows the more appealing it starts to look to Kyoto... or to any of the outlying daimyo capitals, for that matter.
 
If only real-life were as simple as Europa Universalis...

The issue is that if Ryukyu conquers Taiwan (good luck getting past the Taiwanese Aboriginals, by the way), they'd identify as a Taiwanese state rather than Ryukyuan. Taiwan is much more populous and thus would eventually come to dominate Ryukyu, and probably Ryukyuan language would assimilate a decent amount of Taiwanese influence because the majority of Ryukyuans would eventually have significant Taiwanese admixture.

Same goes for Ryukyuans conquering Japan, since they'd just be a Japanese state at that point. Actually, probably even worse than with Taiwan, because Ryukyu would basically end up how they did OTL, just with the added bonus that the ruling shogun (or emperor, who knows) is of Ryukyuan ancestry even though given a few generations he probably speaks standard court Japanese. Ryukyuan languages will be marginalised as well.

China is basically the same way, just even harder.
 
If only real-life were as simple as Europa Universalis...

The issue is that if Ryukyu conquers Taiwan (good luck getting past the Taiwanese Aboriginals, by the way), they'd identify as a Taiwanese state rather than Ryukyuan. Taiwan is much more populous and thus would eventually come to dominate Ryukyu, and probably Ryukyuan language would assimilate a decent amount of Taiwanese influence because the majority of Ryukyuans would eventually have significant Taiwanese admixture.

Same goes for Ryukyuans conquering Japan, since they'd just be a Japanese state at that point. Actually, probably even worse than with Taiwan, because Ryukyu would basically end up how they did OTL, just with the added bonus that the ruling shogun (or emperor, who knows) is of Ryukyuan ancestry even though given a few generations he probably speaks standard court Japanese. Ryukyuan languages will be marginalised as well.

China is basically the same way, just even harder.

The Taiwanese aborigines would be mostly assimilated by the Ryukyuans.
 
The Taiwanese aborigines would be mostly assimilated by the Ryukyuans.

That would suggest they could disappear in vast numbers of Ryukans. Though as there was little in the way of natural resources in those islands, to the point where they were the only Chinese tributary state allowed to give tribute that did not come from their own lands, you might have some moving south. I imagine that if they manage to keep from being puppetized by the Satsuma they could try getting advantage as a trading hub and keep more of the profits. If the Chinese let them. Or the Japanese didn't decide to invade. They had a history of doing that with all their neighbors. Force of habit, maybe.
 
The Taiwanese aborigines would be mostly assimilated by the Ryukyuans.

That's what I implied. Some would survive as separate cultures, but most would go the way that Indians in the most populated parts of Latin America went. But the majority of Ryukyuan speakers and those identifying as Ryukyuan would look far different from the Ryukyuans we know.
 
The Taiwanese aborigines would be mostly assimilated by the Ryukyuans.

That would suggest they could disappear in vast numbers of Ryukyuans..

That's what I implied. Some would survive as separate cultures, but most would go the way that Indians in the most populated parts of Latin America went. But the majority of Ryukyuan speakers and those identifying as Ryukyuan would look far different from the Ryukyuans we know.
Maybe it's because the Ryukyuans (and the Japanese from southern Kyushu) were considered as descendants of Jomon people, and Jomon were speculated as Austronesians.
 
The issue is that if Ryukyu conquers Taiwan (good luck getting past the Taiwanese Aboriginals, by the way), they'd identify as a Taiwanese state rather than Ryukyuan. Taiwan is much more populous and thus would eventually come to dominate Ryukyu, and probably Ryukyuan language would assimilate a decent amount of Taiwanese influence because the majority of Ryukyuans would eventually have significant Taiwanese admixture.

Does anyone have any historical population demographics for the Ryukyus and Taiwan? It seems that, by the modern day, the population of the Ryukyus is around 1.5 million while the modern Taiwanese aboriginal population is a little more than half a million. That's not accounting for the large number of Han Chinese in Taiwan who have some aboriginal heritage, however. It also doesn't necessarily say much about the demographic situation centuries ago, as the population of Japan was apparently more than ten times that of the Philippines in 1830, while in modern times the Filipino population is well on its way to eclipsing Japan, and it's projected to have done so by 2050, without any major changes to the ethnic makeup of the Philippines between then and now.

If the situation then is anywhere near the situation now (a ratio of 3:1 Ryukyuans to Taiwanese Aborigines), there's a chance that Ryukyuan settlers could dominate the island of Taiwan. I don't see why the Taiwanese aborigines have to be absorbed by the Ryukyuans, either - They managed to maintain their ethnic identities in OTL despite the large influx of Han Chinese settlers. It will just be a bit harder for the Ryukyuan settler population outnumber the natives as much as the Han did, given a much smaller source population - Maybe the modern population would be about half Ryukyuan and half indigenous, or a three-way split between settler, native, and mixed-blood, with a mixed-blood population forming a distinctive ethnic group similar to mestizos in the New World.

The idea of Ryukyuan domination of the South Pacific, as someone else suggested, is also interesting.
 
Does anyone have any historical population demographics for the Ryukyus and Taiwan? It seems that, by the modern day, the population of the Ryukyus is around 1.5 million while the modern Taiwanese aboriginal population is a little more than half a million. That's not accounting for the large number of Han Chinese in Taiwan who have some aboriginal heritage, however. It also doesn't necessarily say much about the demographic situation centuries ago, as the population of Japan was apparently more than ten times that of the Philippines in 1830, while in modern times the Filipino population is well on its way to eclipsing Japan, and it's projected to have done so by 2050, without any major changes to the ethnic makeup of the Philippines between then and now.

If the situation then is anywhere near the situation now (a ratio of 3:1 Ryukyuans to Taiwanese Aborigines), there's a chance that Ryukyuan settlers could dominate the island of Taiwan. I don't see why the Taiwanese aborigines have to be absorbed by the Ryukyuans, either - They managed to maintain their ethnic identities in OTL despite the large influx of Han Chinese settlers. It will just be a bit harder for the Ryukyuan settler population outnumber the natives as much as the Han did, given a much smaller source population - Maybe the modern population would be about half Ryukyuan and half indigenous, or a three-way split between settler, native, and mixed-blood, with a mixed-blood population forming a distinctive ethnic group similar to mestizos in the New World.

The idea of Ryukyuan domination of the South Pacific, as someone else suggested, is also interesting.

I think Taiwanese Aboriginals had a much larger population in the past compared to Ryukyuans, just the Chinese assimilated the ones who lived in the best farming areas.

I doubt the Ryukyuans could get to Polynesia/Micronesia, though, since Palau and the Northern Marianas are each over a thousand miles away, most of that across open water far from land, and those are the closest.
 
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