AHC: Six Schools, Six Warlords; or: A Far Stranger Warlord Era?
- Thread starter Born in the USSA
- Start date
Yep, just some nameless dead Russian grunt who made it big TTL. If you wanna pull a name out of thin air, by all means, but the constant use of his title actually reflects the importance of the institution he's seeking to represent. Although he's the unquestioned center of the USSR and its web of influences, National Socialist Marxist ideology would actually argue that as a mortal man he could die and be replaced by another Vozhd without interrupting the affairs of state. Also, the Vozhd title was lifted shamelessly from the Let the Eagle Scream! timeline.
The Fall of the White Khanate and the Birth of Populism
The year 1921 would see two pivotal developments in East Asia, though no one at the time could have imagined how intertwined the two events would become in the end. In China, the foundation of the Chinese Communist Party would sow the seeds for a good deal of bloodshed. In Mongolia, meanwhile, the declaration of the White Khanate would lead to much of the same.
Although the Nanjing government had made serious investments in public education and social welfare in keeping with the tenets of Confucian Republicanism, the urban proletariat was still feeling the squeeze as a result of the new policies. Although Georgist land value taxes were used to subsidize the peasantry, the fact of the matter was that the way they were calculated encouraged business owners to make ruthless use of their workers to maximize profits. The taxes were based on unimproved land value, not what was built on the land, so they weren't pegged to productivity. Literally everything from the ground up would be gratis. In an ideal world (for the capitalist class, at least...) this would have been the end of it. People don't act like you hope, however, and workers were beginning to organize under the yoke.
Led by Chen Duxiu and supported less than subtly by the Soviet Union, the new Communist Party came under intense and immediate pressure from the National-Constitutional Front. On the merits some of the proposed reforms would likely have been quite popular, but the combination of powerful business owners in league with the government and a public intensely wary of foreign interference would see the Communist Party outlawed within a year as a subversive organization. Forced underground, the Party came to rely on more intense methods, with the central government growing more intense in turn, creating an expanding cycle of violence.
Although never quite to the level of a civil war, the Conrep crackdown on the CCP would nonetheless see several police actions, local peasant rebellions, and several bombings and assassinations. The breakdown in civil order would see the flourishing of organized crime throughout China, but if one looked at the campaign as an effort to permanently disband the Party and purge the nation of Soviet catspaws it would have to be considered a resounding success. With the USSR having withdrawn support in 1924 as the Vozhd set about consolidating his authority, many disillusioned former party members would head north to fight for a noble ideological struggle: the liberation of Mongolia.
On paper the survival of the White Khanate this long was a stunningly unlikely event. Originally little more than a remnant of the Russian Whites who had nabbed themselves a country, the birth of the Khanate owed itself entirely to Ungern-Sterberg, the only man mad enough to conceive of such an entity. TTL, Futurist competition in Europe drew away the USSR's attention, so what would have been intolerable OTL was allowed to fester. Under the sway of what could charitably be called Zen Nihilism, Death Buddhism, or Annihilation of the Self, the White Khan set about reforging his new nation into a brutal theocracy. He saw conspiracies around every corner, and there were none he so despised as Communists.
Ironically, by cracking down on the Mongolian people in a hallucinatory hunt for Communists, the Khan would ultimately lead to his own undoing. Disaffected CCP members searching for meaning would see the ongoing horrors to the north as a clarion call from a people suffering under reactionary autocracy. The local rebellion against the Khanate would take on an increasingly Marxist flavor (so Ungern was right in the end, I guess?), and Mongolia would become a testing ground for National Socialism put into practice. A local leader would be important, but the contribution of the Chinese exiles would need to be recognized as well. It was a puzzle. Enter Peljidiin Genden.
Denouncing Chen Duxiu as a Trotskyist, Peljidiin quickly made himself available as someone to be counted on. Inspired by Chinese influences, he styled himself Juzi of the new Mongolian Peoples Republic and began laying the foundations of the ideology he would call Populism, a form of Mozism with Marxist Characteristics. The new government would have a series of interlocking goals and priorities that the Juzi believed would become mutually reinforcing.
By 1930 the preparations were ready. With the Second Great War underway, there were no European interlopers who could come to China's aid. And so, in coordination with their allies in Manchuria, the March to the South began.
Although the Nanjing government had made serious investments in public education and social welfare in keeping with the tenets of Confucian Republicanism, the urban proletariat was still feeling the squeeze as a result of the new policies. Although Georgist land value taxes were used to subsidize the peasantry, the fact of the matter was that the way they were calculated encouraged business owners to make ruthless use of their workers to maximize profits. The taxes were based on unimproved land value, not what was built on the land, so they weren't pegged to productivity. Literally everything from the ground up would be gratis. In an ideal world (for the capitalist class, at least...) this would have been the end of it. People don't act like you hope, however, and workers were beginning to organize under the yoke.
Led by Chen Duxiu and supported less than subtly by the Soviet Union, the new Communist Party came under intense and immediate pressure from the National-Constitutional Front. On the merits some of the proposed reforms would likely have been quite popular, but the combination of powerful business owners in league with the government and a public intensely wary of foreign interference would see the Communist Party outlawed within a year as a subversive organization. Forced underground, the Party came to rely on more intense methods, with the central government growing more intense in turn, creating an expanding cycle of violence.
Although never quite to the level of a civil war, the Conrep crackdown on the CCP would nonetheless see several police actions, local peasant rebellions, and several bombings and assassinations. The breakdown in civil order would see the flourishing of organized crime throughout China, but if one looked at the campaign as an effort to permanently disband the Party and purge the nation of Soviet catspaws it would have to be considered a resounding success. With the USSR having withdrawn support in 1924 as the Vozhd set about consolidating his authority, many disillusioned former party members would head north to fight for a noble ideological struggle: the liberation of Mongolia.
On paper the survival of the White Khanate this long was a stunningly unlikely event. Originally little more than a remnant of the Russian Whites who had nabbed themselves a country, the birth of the Khanate owed itself entirely to Ungern-Sterberg, the only man mad enough to conceive of such an entity. TTL, Futurist competition in Europe drew away the USSR's attention, so what would have been intolerable OTL was allowed to fester. Under the sway of what could charitably be called Zen Nihilism, Death Buddhism, or Annihilation of the Self, the White Khan set about reforging his new nation into a brutal theocracy. He saw conspiracies around every corner, and there were none he so despised as Communists.
Ironically, by cracking down on the Mongolian people in a hallucinatory hunt for Communists, the Khan would ultimately lead to his own undoing. Disaffected CCP members searching for meaning would see the ongoing horrors to the north as a clarion call from a people suffering under reactionary autocracy. The local rebellion against the Khanate would take on an increasingly Marxist flavor (so Ungern was right in the end, I guess?), and Mongolia would become a testing ground for National Socialism put into practice. A local leader would be important, but the contribution of the Chinese exiles would need to be recognized as well. It was a puzzle. Enter Peljidiin Genden.
Denouncing Chen Duxiu as a Trotskyist, Peljidiin quickly made himself available as someone to be counted on. Inspired by Chinese influences, he styled himself Juzi of the new Mongolian Peoples Republic and began laying the foundations of the ideology he would call Populism, a form of Mozism with Marxist Characteristics. The new government would have a series of interlocking goals and priorities that the Juzi believed would become mutually reinforcing.
- Adopting a form of State Consequentialism, the MPR began taking steps to needed to begin immediately boosting population and national prosperity to make up the ground lost under the Khanate.
- To this end, the Populist approach to family life was based on the original Mohist principle of Ai, usually translated in the West as "universal love" but more accurately read as "impartial caring". Though good Populists would have family lives remain intact, the children of dissidents or enemies of the people would be raised communally by the state in the hopes of fostering an all encompassing love of country. This approach would prove so successful in the short term it would quickly be imported throughout the Soviet sphere.
- In theory the guiding principle of the civil service was Meritocracy, but old habits die hard, and an oligarchy would quickly develop in short order.
- The greatest divergence between the Populists and the National Socialists was on the matter of culture. Futurist efforts to destroy what they saw as outdated relics had ironically made the Soviet sphere (and the US, ironically enough) bastions of high culture. In Mongolia, the Khanate had appropriated much of the indigenous culture and rendered it unsavory in the process, and the Juzi declared state investment in culture a distraction, adopting an official policy of Minimalism.
By 1930 the preparations were ready. With the Second Great War underway, there were no European interlopers who could come to China's aid. And so, in coordination with their allies in Manchuria, the March to the South began.
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Yes, I known Ungern is an AH cliche but he's just too crazy to ignore. Also, as the coordination between Mongolia and Manchuria would imply, Japan and the Soviet Union are allies TTL. Turns out Futurist countries that wanted to keep their colonies devolved them some governing powers to calm them down. It's not much, but it's a hell of a lot more than Japan is offering (Manchurian "independence" is a joke throughout SE Asia). Reactionary communism makes for strange bedfellows I guess.
Interlude: Golden Circle, Silver Legion: American Exceptionalism at Home and Abroad
Only in America could a major social movement spring up inspired by a movie. Originally working to adapt a version of Thomas Dixon's novel The Clansman, film director D.W. Griffith was beginning to have doubts as to the future of the project. Although he found the material compelling, he began to fear that the works racial content could spark a public backlash. OTL he needn't have worried, outrage in certain circles not having kept the film from incredible popularity. TTL Griffith decides to retool the project in the wake of a particularly strange and harrowing dream. Inspired by the dream, he would set out to adapt a lesser known work by a fairly popular author at the time. Griffith's masterpiece would not be The Birth of a Nation but rather a loose and experimental adaptation of The King In Yellow.
Lifting themes and characters from the novella, Griffith would ultimately meld it with the southern locale and character of The Clansman, producing a genteel world of southern decadence dramatically doomed by what the viewer will realize is the encroaching Civil War. Unlike the script for the original project, The King In Yellow largely downplayed race despite setting the events of the story on an antebellum plantation. Instead, the film focused entirely on the decline of a plantation called Carcosa, culminating in a lavish masquerade ball (featuring the eponymous King in Yellow) as the encroaching Union army begins to ravage the estate.
A blatant lost cause narrative at a time when such things were all the rage, the film was still fairly popular despite the more unusual elements, though not so popular as The Birth of a Nation would have been. Still, just as with that film this one would find an audience, inspire them to say silly words and wear strange costumes and do questionable things. This film would be directly linked to the rebirth of the Knights of the Golden Circle. A smaller organization than the KKK, the KGC catered to a much more elite clientele, serving as something of an extremely classist, somewhat less racist fraternal organization, at least until the onset of the Cultural Revolutions in the Carnaran League.
The Futurists sought to bring every part of society kicking and screaming into the brave new world, and culture was no exception. Crusades against museums and other forms of culture would see concerned art patrons (and no few profiteers), smuggle art and antiquities to wherever they could. Although the Soviet sphere would receive its share, American museums and collections would grow far richer from the slaughter of Europe's history, with several Knights growing even wealthier as a result of the illicit trade. Now flush with spending money, the KGC sought to put it to use.
Having spent years building up their network of political influence, the Circle had little problem advancing their chosen policies into law. Under their influence, military operations throughout Latin America entered a more intense phase to secure concessions for Circle-aligned businesses, and the efforts to "improve" the American economy through deregulation of finance and labor would ultimately reap the whirlwind with the Panic of 1920. Although the Circle's political allies would argue that the Panic was ultimately rooted in the policies of Woodrow Wilson's single term, that wouldn't assuage public outrage, with President Hughes losing his bid for re-election in a landslide. The people were angry, and found an outlet in the form of a new organization decrying corrupt politicians, entrenched wealth, and profiteering foreign interventionism. The Silver Legion had arrived.
Inspired by the works of Edward Bellamy and using his own economic theories as a basis, Thorstein Veblen would found the Silver Legion in 1921 as a mass movement intended to correct the excesses he deemed to be at the heart of the the Panic. Believing that the chief cause of the nation's woes was the overreach of the shortsighted moneyed interest at home and abroad the Legion advocated that the day to day running of the nation be done by a technically literate bureaucracy operating in the public interest, rather than the interests of the the capital class.
The USSR had been watching the tensions in the US for some time, with some in the government even hoping that the formation of the Silver Legion was a sign that America could be coaxed along the path of world revolution. Veblen and the movement he helped to mold were having none of it, denouncing the Soviet government as just another clique using the nation for their own ends. In a letter to Trotsky, Communist Party Executive Secretary C.E. Ruthenberg summed it up best:
"I fear this nation will never answer the call of the international proletariat, that political and social conditions here are made so different from Europe that we may have diverged from our brothers and sisters permanently. If the passions gripping the American people are avowedly not Marxist it can't be said that they are a spearhead for the uncultured Futurists either. Rather, this country is now in the grips of Technocracy, divided into two strains so distinct from one another that they cannot help but look upon the other in disgust. It is my hope that I am wrong, and that my countrymen will come to feel as I do, and stop this madness..."
He would be wrong, of course, but the term stuck. According to his analysis, the two forces gripping American society were divided into two schools he dubbed Liberation (KGC) and Continental (Legion) Technocracy. Despite virulent differences, he argued that the two movements were more similar than they would care to admit. Ideological cross-pollination would ultimately see pragmatic reforms in both movements, ironically making Ruthenberg's pronouncements truer in hindsight than they were when he wrote them.
Lifting themes and characters from the novella, Griffith would ultimately meld it with the southern locale and character of The Clansman, producing a genteel world of southern decadence dramatically doomed by what the viewer will realize is the encroaching Civil War. Unlike the script for the original project, The King In Yellow largely downplayed race despite setting the events of the story on an antebellum plantation. Instead, the film focused entirely on the decline of a plantation called Carcosa, culminating in a lavish masquerade ball (featuring the eponymous King in Yellow) as the encroaching Union army begins to ravage the estate.
A blatant lost cause narrative at a time when such things were all the rage, the film was still fairly popular despite the more unusual elements, though not so popular as The Birth of a Nation would have been. Still, just as with that film this one would find an audience, inspire them to say silly words and wear strange costumes and do questionable things. This film would be directly linked to the rebirth of the Knights of the Golden Circle. A smaller organization than the KKK, the KGC catered to a much more elite clientele, serving as something of an extremely classist, somewhat less racist fraternal organization, at least until the onset of the Cultural Revolutions in the Carnaran League.
The Futurists sought to bring every part of society kicking and screaming into the brave new world, and culture was no exception. Crusades against museums and other forms of culture would see concerned art patrons (and no few profiteers), smuggle art and antiquities to wherever they could. Although the Soviet sphere would receive its share, American museums and collections would grow far richer from the slaughter of Europe's history, with several Knights growing even wealthier as a result of the illicit trade. Now flush with spending money, the KGC sought to put it to use.
Having spent years building up their network of political influence, the Circle had little problem advancing their chosen policies into law. Under their influence, military operations throughout Latin America entered a more intense phase to secure concessions for Circle-aligned businesses, and the efforts to "improve" the American economy through deregulation of finance and labor would ultimately reap the whirlwind with the Panic of 1920. Although the Circle's political allies would argue that the Panic was ultimately rooted in the policies of Woodrow Wilson's single term, that wouldn't assuage public outrage, with President Hughes losing his bid for re-election in a landslide. The people were angry, and found an outlet in the form of a new organization decrying corrupt politicians, entrenched wealth, and profiteering foreign interventionism. The Silver Legion had arrived.
Inspired by the works of Edward Bellamy and using his own economic theories as a basis, Thorstein Veblen would found the Silver Legion in 1921 as a mass movement intended to correct the excesses he deemed to be at the heart of the the Panic. Believing that the chief cause of the nation's woes was the overreach of the shortsighted moneyed interest at home and abroad the Legion advocated that the day to day running of the nation be done by a technically literate bureaucracy operating in the public interest, rather than the interests of the the capital class.
The USSR had been watching the tensions in the US for some time, with some in the government even hoping that the formation of the Silver Legion was a sign that America could be coaxed along the path of world revolution. Veblen and the movement he helped to mold were having none of it, denouncing the Soviet government as just another clique using the nation for their own ends. In a letter to Trotsky, Communist Party Executive Secretary C.E. Ruthenberg summed it up best:
"I fear this nation will never answer the call of the international proletariat, that political and social conditions here are made so different from Europe that we may have diverged from our brothers and sisters permanently. If the passions gripping the American people are avowedly not Marxist it can't be said that they are a spearhead for the uncultured Futurists either. Rather, this country is now in the grips of Technocracy, divided into two strains so distinct from one another that they cannot help but look upon the other in disgust. It is my hope that I am wrong, and that my countrymen will come to feel as I do, and stop this madness..."
He would be wrong, of course, but the term stuck. According to his analysis, the two forces gripping American society were divided into two schools he dubbed Liberation (KGC) and Continental (Legion) Technocracy. Despite virulent differences, he argued that the two movements were more similar than they would care to admit. Ideological cross-pollination would ultimately see pragmatic reforms in both movements, ironically making Ruthenberg's pronouncements truer in hindsight than they were when he wrote them.
- Both movements valued autarky, seeking to create sustainable economic and social units that later theorists would call technates. For the Liberators that took the form of an undoubtedly racialist streak of foreign intervention, often backed by military force. The Continentalists decried such a naked profit motive, relying more on soft power to spread influence and and bring neighbor nations into a mutually beneficial alliances.
- Both movements were inherently oligarchic, supporting the leadership of a small governing group of experts, although what that meant in practice depended on who you were talking to. Although neither wished to do away with democracy, it was thought that unchecked mob rule would lead to ruin. The extent of the franchise and the level of public participation would be hotly debated within both movements.
- Both movements valued technological progress and social reform, although in different ways and for different reasons. For example, Liberators pursued automation to improve efficiency and productivity, and supported prohibition (among other things). Continentalists sought to ease the burden of work through technology, and pushed back against what they decried as attempts to pacify the lives of the working class.
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So from a European perspective Technocracy leaves nobody happy. After a little sorting and a few reforms between '21 and '25, both factions are class-collaborationist though which one is most important is obviously different. That puts off Marxists, but at the same time the US is going through something of an internationalist phase (including serious calls in some corners for joining the League of Nations(!)), which the Futurists despise.
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America TTL is getting real weird and freaky. I love it.
(of course me in TTL would hate it but still)
(of course me in TTL would hate it but still)
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Thanks! I basically wanted the US to be a third way between Futurism and National Socialism, so I started with Technocracy and worked backwards. As for the King in Yellow thing I think it's really strange that the KKK OTL based their entire look on a movie. For the Circle think less "robes and pointed hoods" and more "Masonic-style yellow cloaks and weird white masks".
Also TTL Wilson lost in 1916, but pulled a Jimmy Carter and got involved in all sorts of international diplomacy, so despite it all there's still a League of Nations, and without the stress of the presidency he lives long enough to make progress convincing the US to eventually join it.
Any questions? I start each update with a rough idea and build from there but I'm happy to flesh it out in dribs and drabs.
The Sinkiang Free State and the Great Leap Forward
Of all the states that directly played a part in the Second Warring States Period, the role of what would later be termed the "Sinkiang Free State" was the most unusual, partly because it was never called that at the time. Although the Free State spent a large part of the conflict as an independent unit, it never made a legal claim to be a separate entity, acting (at the highest levels, at least) as a loyal province separated from the Republic government by unfortunate circumstances. This suited the inhabitants just fine, as their de facto independence allowed them to push policies they preferred without fear of undue interference from a central government that had grown concerned with ideologically subversive elements in the lead up to the conflict.
The divergence of Sinkiang would ultimately be rooted in the central government's own Confucian Republican reforms. A major policy advocated by Nanjing was the improvement of education and industrial development as a means of making the nation strong enough to stand against the Great Powers as an equal. The United States was an avid supporter of these reforms, with optimists viewing them as steps that would create a robust democracy and civic culture. Many cynics (especially those among the Golden Circle) also supported these reforms as a means of keeping the immensely valuable Chinese market open to their business interests. While Manchuria had a particularly negative experience with these centralized internal improvement measures, Sinkiang took to them remarkably well, doubtless due to the influence of their governor.
Originally appointed to the province by the Qing, Yang Zengxin was an oddity in the Early Republican Period as the only prominent royalist governor, taking the mantle when the previous Qing governor of the province fled in the face of the Xinhai Revolution. Rather than flee to exile, Yang acquired the support of local religious leaders, crushing the revolutionaries with a force of Muslim Hui soldiers before turning over Sinkiang to Yuan Shikai. OTL, he remained a monarchist, supporting Yuan's ill-fated attempt to become emperor. TTL, things play out rather differently. With Yuan forced to retire in disgrace as a result of what came to be called the Ōkuma Affair, Yang came to question his prior beliefs. He saw Japan exerting its influence in Manchuria, and heard the horror stories pouring out of the coalescing White Khanate. In order to safeguard the region and preserve his own base of power he threw himself eagerly into the Nanjing government's modernization plans, separately inviting in American advisors (by the early 1920s of the much more amenable Continental School of Technocracy) to build upon his modernization agenda.
Although Nanjing would have preferred to strip him of his army, he eloquently made the case that, with the Khanate sharing a border and with the constant problem of Communist agents and more pedestrian banditry throughout China as a whole, the only sensible way to prevent the nation from losing Sinkiang would be to garrison it. The region was simply too large, however, and large numbers of ethnically Han troops would outrage the populace. Really, Yang argued, a reformed and restructured indigenous military would be the only possible solution. Yang's focus was not merely on defense, however. His position relied on the careful balancing of different ethnic and religious groups, and he made liberal use of funding for education and internal improvements to get local power brokers on side while fostering a regional culture highly focused on scientific inquiry and industrial development. Religious authorities argued that this was a continuation of a proud Muslim tradition, and so the populace eagerly went along with these plans to transform Sinkiang into a wellspring of modernization. When Manchuria seceded in 1925, he immediately voiced support for Nanjing, transitioning Sinkiang's new factories to armament production to support the Republican government.
The province was a well oiled machine, and while the fall of the Khanate was greeted with much public enthusiasm, dissenting voices driven out of the Mongolian Populist Party convinced Yang that the threat of Mongolian expansionism could not be ignored. He would be proven correct in 1930, with the beginning of the March to the South. The strategy of the belligerent states was a fairly simple one: Backed by what forces the Soviets could spare for the east, Mongolia would drive into the heart of China while Manchuria, supported by the Japanese Army and Navy would focus on the nation's eastern coast. The communist exiles and Qing remnant would both be avenged, and, the thinking went, separating the Nanjing government from Sinkiang's industrial production would shatter the Republic's ability to regain it's footing. The coastal campaign met with phenomenal early success, with the Republican government forced to flee in the face of the Razing of Nanjing. That would remain the most successful front for Manchuria until the arrival of the Bellamy Nationalist Volunteer Brigades, but Mongolia was having a far harder time of it, being effectively met at every turn by the Sinkiang Model Army.
Contrary to Soviet and Japanese predictions, isolating Sinkiang had not destabilized the region enough to make it vulnerable to Mongolian invasion. In point of fact, although the region had always towed the Nanjing party line it had been essentially independent under Yang's leadership for over two decades, and if the populace had accepted the facade of Republican control, there was no way they were going to just roll over and allow the Juzi to raise their children into loyal Populists.
Historians would later dub the period between the Mongolian invasion and the reunification of the Second Republic the Free State Period, and although Yang's government would continue to publicly adhere to the tenets of Confucian Republicanism, it is abundantly clear that he was actually engaged in a far more interesting project, one he simply called "a Great Leap Forward". Though largely informed by Continental Technocracy in the pursuit of regional autarky in the face of Sinkiang's newfound isolation, it also showed distinct influences from those Populists driven out by the Juzi, notably in the focus on state consequentialism and minimalism, although the latter could be excused in the moment as a wartime necessity. As Sinkiang stabilized, in fact, the region would see a surge in Islamic-influenced modern art, which to this day offers a valuable insight into the unique culture that grew up in the Free State during the period.
The divergence of Sinkiang would ultimately be rooted in the central government's own Confucian Republican reforms. A major policy advocated by Nanjing was the improvement of education and industrial development as a means of making the nation strong enough to stand against the Great Powers as an equal. The United States was an avid supporter of these reforms, with optimists viewing them as steps that would create a robust democracy and civic culture. Many cynics (especially those among the Golden Circle) also supported these reforms as a means of keeping the immensely valuable Chinese market open to their business interests. While Manchuria had a particularly negative experience with these centralized internal improvement measures, Sinkiang took to them remarkably well, doubtless due to the influence of their governor.
Originally appointed to the province by the Qing, Yang Zengxin was an oddity in the Early Republican Period as the only prominent royalist governor, taking the mantle when the previous Qing governor of the province fled in the face of the Xinhai Revolution. Rather than flee to exile, Yang acquired the support of local religious leaders, crushing the revolutionaries with a force of Muslim Hui soldiers before turning over Sinkiang to Yuan Shikai. OTL, he remained a monarchist, supporting Yuan's ill-fated attempt to become emperor. TTL, things play out rather differently. With Yuan forced to retire in disgrace as a result of what came to be called the Ōkuma Affair, Yang came to question his prior beliefs. He saw Japan exerting its influence in Manchuria, and heard the horror stories pouring out of the coalescing White Khanate. In order to safeguard the region and preserve his own base of power he threw himself eagerly into the Nanjing government's modernization plans, separately inviting in American advisors (by the early 1920s of the much more amenable Continental School of Technocracy) to build upon his modernization agenda.
Although Nanjing would have preferred to strip him of his army, he eloquently made the case that, with the Khanate sharing a border and with the constant problem of Communist agents and more pedestrian banditry throughout China as a whole, the only sensible way to prevent the nation from losing Sinkiang would be to garrison it. The region was simply too large, however, and large numbers of ethnically Han troops would outrage the populace. Really, Yang argued, a reformed and restructured indigenous military would be the only possible solution. Yang's focus was not merely on defense, however. His position relied on the careful balancing of different ethnic and religious groups, and he made liberal use of funding for education and internal improvements to get local power brokers on side while fostering a regional culture highly focused on scientific inquiry and industrial development. Religious authorities argued that this was a continuation of a proud Muslim tradition, and so the populace eagerly went along with these plans to transform Sinkiang into a wellspring of modernization. When Manchuria seceded in 1925, he immediately voiced support for Nanjing, transitioning Sinkiang's new factories to armament production to support the Republican government.
The province was a well oiled machine, and while the fall of the Khanate was greeted with much public enthusiasm, dissenting voices driven out of the Mongolian Populist Party convinced Yang that the threat of Mongolian expansionism could not be ignored. He would be proven correct in 1930, with the beginning of the March to the South. The strategy of the belligerent states was a fairly simple one: Backed by what forces the Soviets could spare for the east, Mongolia would drive into the heart of China while Manchuria, supported by the Japanese Army and Navy would focus on the nation's eastern coast. The communist exiles and Qing remnant would both be avenged, and, the thinking went, separating the Nanjing government from Sinkiang's industrial production would shatter the Republic's ability to regain it's footing. The coastal campaign met with phenomenal early success, with the Republican government forced to flee in the face of the Razing of Nanjing. That would remain the most successful front for Manchuria until the arrival of the Bellamy Nationalist Volunteer Brigades, but Mongolia was having a far harder time of it, being effectively met at every turn by the Sinkiang Model Army.
Contrary to Soviet and Japanese predictions, isolating Sinkiang had not destabilized the region enough to make it vulnerable to Mongolian invasion. In point of fact, although the region had always towed the Nanjing party line it had been essentially independent under Yang's leadership for over two decades, and if the populace had accepted the facade of Republican control, there was no way they were going to just roll over and allow the Juzi to raise their children into loyal Populists.
Historians would later dub the period between the Mongolian invasion and the reunification of the Second Republic the Free State Period, and although Yang's government would continue to publicly adhere to the tenets of Confucian Republicanism, it is abundantly clear that he was actually engaged in a far more interesting project, one he simply called "a Great Leap Forward". Though largely informed by Continental Technocracy in the pursuit of regional autarky in the face of Sinkiang's newfound isolation, it also showed distinct influences from those Populists driven out by the Juzi, notably in the focus on state consequentialism and minimalism, although the latter could be excused in the moment as a wartime necessity. As Sinkiang stabilized, in fact, the region would see a surge in Islamic-influenced modern art, which to this day offers a valuable insight into the unique culture that grew up in the Free State during the period.
Although aspects of several of the SWSP ideologies will be incorporated in the end by the Second Republic, a couple of them will spread internationally more or less in their original forms. Most notably (so far), the Great Leap Forward will serve as an example to Middle Eastern states and Nusantara as they begin to grow into their own in the aftermath of the Second Great War, providing a successful example of a path to modernization that doesn't sacrifice Islamic culture in the process. TTL's Vietnam war analogue, meanwhile, would likely revolve around a joint US/ROC effort to subvert a Legalist Revivalist regime that would be a reaction against the Futurist governments in Indochina during the Second Great War. Populism had already left a mark on National Socialism that will continue after the war (especially in India), while Zen Nihilism (which will be covered more thoroughly in the upcoming Maoism chapter) will end up being TTL's answer to Islamic fundamentalism by the end of the century.
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Maoism as a Consequence of the Tibetan Conflagration
Although not technically a party to the Second Warring States period, the situation in Tibet during what was referred to at the time as "the Conflagration" is often seen with the benefit of hindsight as a prelude to the events that would shape the region throughout the first half of the century. This is somewhat similar to Bleeding Kansas, which would presage the American Civil War, and the Spanish Civil War, in which the proxy conflict between the League-backed Republicans and the Soviet-sponsored Reactionaries would serve as a miniature of the coming Second Great War. The Conflagration would be an intense and multisided conflict, and, like the later events in the ROC, would result in the coalescence of a new guiding ideology, in this particular instance Maoism.
Originally a Qing protectorate, Tibet would seize on the collapse of the empire in the Xinhai Revolution as an opportunity to achieve long-sought independence. Though opposed in this endeavor by the new Republic, it had taken the new regime too long to mobilize, allowing British "trade agents" to support the Tibetan independence with an influx of "volunteers" from the British mission in India. Operating as a largely feudal theocracy would naturally lead to resentment among sectors of the population, but the Tibetan army during this early period (with support and training by these "volunteers") would prove largely capable of suppressing attempted revolts. As the structure of global alliances began to change, however, the capability of the army to maintain control would begin to steadily erode.
Before he rose to seize control of the Soviet system, the man who would come to call himself the Vozhd had been enduring what amounted to an exile. Too competent to be cast aside, in 1919 he had been sent south to attempt to foment Communist sympathies in India. The thinking went that success would in turn distract the British Empire, and, if they succeeded in killing him, what would be the loss? Celebrating rather than wallowing in his de facto autonomy of action, the Vozhd would use his adventures in India as a testing ground for his theories on National Socialism, ironically allowing him to introduce the ideology almost fully formed by 1924. Although incredibly conservative by the changing standards of the time, this would in turn push the British into an alliance of convenience with the growing Futurist powers, oddly mirroring the later position of Japan relative to the Soviet Union. Sheer proximity would see the introduction of early National Socialism and Futurist currents into the resistance groups seeking to topple the Tibetan theocracy. Not to be outdone, the Nanjing government would also begin sponsoring Confucian Republican elements in what it continued to claim was an illegitimate wayward territory. It was as an advisor to one of these Conrep groups that Mao Zedong would first enter Tibet.
An enthusiastic supporter of the Xinhai Revolution, Mao had furthered his studies in the aftermath, becoming an avid Marxist. Engaged to marry the daughter of his favorite professor, he was badly shaken in 1920 with the death of his fiance in an automobile accident, sending him into a deep depression that would ultimately change him to his core. It is a frequent exercise of contrafactual theorizing what could have happened to him and to the nation had he remained a Marxist, but it was not to be. After what his contemporaries would later describe as "an almost religious episode", Mao would finally emerge from his depression.
Though still concerned with the plight of the proletariat and peasant classes in China, he had grown wary of what he perceived as Soviet authoritarianism, which he believed would have a negative impact on the newly formed Chinese Communist Party. The fact that his concerns would be validated by the later Mongolian Populists was of little comfort at the time, of course, given the draconian measures the Republican government was taking to suppress them. Filled with a newfound but bone-deep anti-authoritarianism, Mao would begin studying Western modes of political thought, along with such Chinese elements as Taoism and the historical Naturalist School, such syncretism being much in fashion in China and its environs at the time. Greatly moved by the brutality of the Conflagration and hoping to strike a victory for the downtrodden, the man later known as Brother Mao would ultimately travel to Tibet in the hopes of making a difference. And not a moment too soon.
The Tibetan army was having a rough go of it. By 1923, there was a fractious web of revolt spreading through the country. If there was any good news to be had, it was this: the opposition was divided enough to make overpowering the government in Lhasa impossible, and with the National-Constitutional Front busy purging the CCP from the country, their support rebels within Tibet had waned. Seeking an opportunity, Mao requested to travel to Tibet to advise what remained of the Republic-backed rebel faction, a request swiftly granted given his public denouncing of the CCP at its inception. He would find a nation torn asunder, split between a half dozen factions all involved just as much in fighting each other as they were in fighting the Lhasa government. It was in this environment that Mao would distinguish himself, with a small string of noticeable victories to his credit and a commitment to living and working in the same conditions as his troops (because only rats grow fat in wars) endearing him to his men early on, making them receptive to his political theories.
Inspired by currents of Futurism, Socialism and Technocracy, Maoism is best explained using a reference to the Naturalist School that Mao had studied, using a principle he called "the Monad and the Pentagram". The Monad or Yin-Yang was used as a metaphor for production and consumption, or for labor and capital, or for public and private enterprise depending on context, and was meant to symbolize the natural equilibrium that would (or ideally should) exist between each pair of forces. His distaste for authoritarianism called for him to endorse a mixed economic system, under the theory that excessive state control would lead to corruption, while the complete absence of the state would lead to exploitation. The ideal state, by his thinking, would give people a broad latitude to live their lives, interfering only when necessary to prevent one side of the social equation from becoming imbalanced. This is especially clear when one looks at the Pentagram, which he used to represent his views on class.
Inspired by the traditional Four Occupations of East Asian thought and filtered through the concept of the Wuxing, the Pentagram was used by Mao to express his belief in syndicalist cooperation between the social classes, all collaborating to contribute to the ideal state and provide balance to one another.
Having inspired his troops with his leadership skills as well as his ideas, Mao and his renamed Natural Democracy Faction would gather converts as he set about building a broad coalition between fractious rebel groups. Reassuring all parties that he "d[id] not seek to be a warlord, but merely your steadfast brother in this worthy struggle", forming alliances was made easier partially by the syncretic and adoptive nature of his ideology but primarily by the arrival of Death Buddhism to Tibet.
With the fall of the White Khanate in 1925, the survivors of the regime were left with a series of bad options. Remaining in Mongolia to face Populist reprisals was a nonstarter. They had also refused the Vozhd's offer of amnesty and a return home once, and it would not be offered again. That left only one option. With the Nanjing government distracted by the secession of Manchuria and with the interior of the country in a state of disarray, an opportunity had presented itself. It would be this wave of unorthodox converts to Buddhism that would march south to avail themselves of the Lhasa regime, introducing Zen Nihilism into the Tibetan army. A distorted strain of Vajrayana Buddhism developed by Ungern-Sternberg, the White Khan himself, the primary distinction of Zen Nihilism was that the execution of those living outside the bounds of "correct behavior" would prevent them from further accumulating bad karma, and thus "save" them in a roundabout way.
While a stable society would have denounced such madness, the Lhasa regime was growing increasingly desperate as Mao and his Natural Democrats began to unify the remaining rebel elements under their banner. With Soviet-backed unrest expanding in India having drawn away the trade agents and British military advisors, a theological justification for further brutalizing subversives, aided and abetted by zealous Khanate irregulars, began to grow more and more appealing to the overstretched army. As in Mongolia, however, this would backfire by driving more people to Mao's side, until the government could only maintain effective control around Lhasa itself. Even this would falter by 1928 with the death of the Dalai Lama.
Victorious after a long and bloody struggle, the rebels were faced with the most important question for any war: what would happen next? Brother Mao, serving only in an advisory role per his own insistence, devoted himself wholeheartedly to preventing his unlikely coalition from shattering in the aftermath, taking pains to ensure that all the myriad groups could live and work together. Using his natural charisma to his advantage, he was able to convince a critical mass of the population that the only productive way forward was to set aside old animosities, and the Natural Democracy of Tibet would be declared in short order. The light touch would prove to work wonders, keeping the people united in the face of a botched invasion by Mongolia and ultimately going on to inspire the creation of the Second Republic.
Originally a Qing protectorate, Tibet would seize on the collapse of the empire in the Xinhai Revolution as an opportunity to achieve long-sought independence. Though opposed in this endeavor by the new Republic, it had taken the new regime too long to mobilize, allowing British "trade agents" to support the Tibetan independence with an influx of "volunteers" from the British mission in India. Operating as a largely feudal theocracy would naturally lead to resentment among sectors of the population, but the Tibetan army during this early period (with support and training by these "volunteers") would prove largely capable of suppressing attempted revolts. As the structure of global alliances began to change, however, the capability of the army to maintain control would begin to steadily erode.
Before he rose to seize control of the Soviet system, the man who would come to call himself the Vozhd had been enduring what amounted to an exile. Too competent to be cast aside, in 1919 he had been sent south to attempt to foment Communist sympathies in India. The thinking went that success would in turn distract the British Empire, and, if they succeeded in killing him, what would be the loss? Celebrating rather than wallowing in his de facto autonomy of action, the Vozhd would use his adventures in India as a testing ground for his theories on National Socialism, ironically allowing him to introduce the ideology almost fully formed by 1924. Although incredibly conservative by the changing standards of the time, this would in turn push the British into an alliance of convenience with the growing Futurist powers, oddly mirroring the later position of Japan relative to the Soviet Union. Sheer proximity would see the introduction of early National Socialism and Futurist currents into the resistance groups seeking to topple the Tibetan theocracy. Not to be outdone, the Nanjing government would also begin sponsoring Confucian Republican elements in what it continued to claim was an illegitimate wayward territory. It was as an advisor to one of these Conrep groups that Mao Zedong would first enter Tibet.
An enthusiastic supporter of the Xinhai Revolution, Mao had furthered his studies in the aftermath, becoming an avid Marxist. Engaged to marry the daughter of his favorite professor, he was badly shaken in 1920 with the death of his fiance in an automobile accident, sending him into a deep depression that would ultimately change him to his core. It is a frequent exercise of contrafactual theorizing what could have happened to him and to the nation had he remained a Marxist, but it was not to be. After what his contemporaries would later describe as "an almost religious episode", Mao would finally emerge from his depression.
Though still concerned with the plight of the proletariat and peasant classes in China, he had grown wary of what he perceived as Soviet authoritarianism, which he believed would have a negative impact on the newly formed Chinese Communist Party. The fact that his concerns would be validated by the later Mongolian Populists was of little comfort at the time, of course, given the draconian measures the Republican government was taking to suppress them. Filled with a newfound but bone-deep anti-authoritarianism, Mao would begin studying Western modes of political thought, along with such Chinese elements as Taoism and the historical Naturalist School, such syncretism being much in fashion in China and its environs at the time. Greatly moved by the brutality of the Conflagration and hoping to strike a victory for the downtrodden, the man later known as Brother Mao would ultimately travel to Tibet in the hopes of making a difference. And not a moment too soon.
The Tibetan army was having a rough go of it. By 1923, there was a fractious web of revolt spreading through the country. If there was any good news to be had, it was this: the opposition was divided enough to make overpowering the government in Lhasa impossible, and with the National-Constitutional Front busy purging the CCP from the country, their support rebels within Tibet had waned. Seeking an opportunity, Mao requested to travel to Tibet to advise what remained of the Republic-backed rebel faction, a request swiftly granted given his public denouncing of the CCP at its inception. He would find a nation torn asunder, split between a half dozen factions all involved just as much in fighting each other as they were in fighting the Lhasa government. It was in this environment that Mao would distinguish himself, with a small string of noticeable victories to his credit and a commitment to living and working in the same conditions as his troops (because only rats grow fat in wars) endearing him to his men early on, making them receptive to his political theories.
Inspired by currents of Futurism, Socialism and Technocracy, Maoism is best explained using a reference to the Naturalist School that Mao had studied, using a principle he called "the Monad and the Pentagram". The Monad or Yin-Yang was used as a metaphor for production and consumption, or for labor and capital, or for public and private enterprise depending on context, and was meant to symbolize the natural equilibrium that would (or ideally should) exist between each pair of forces. His distaste for authoritarianism called for him to endorse a mixed economic system, under the theory that excessive state control would lead to corruption, while the complete absence of the state would lead to exploitation. The ideal state, by his thinking, would give people a broad latitude to live their lives, interfering only when necessary to prevent one side of the social equation from becoming imbalanced. This is especially clear when one looks at the Pentagram, which he used to represent his views on class.
Inspired by the traditional Four Occupations of East Asian thought and filtered through the concept of the Wuxing, the Pentagram was used by Mao to express his belief in syndicalist cooperation between the social classes, all collaborating to contribute to the ideal state and provide balance to one another.
- Wood was used to symbolize the peasant class, as it was their labor that formed the basis of national growth and vitality.
- Fire represented the proletariat, with the energy of this class transforming and refining the raw products of the peasantry to better serve the nation.
- Earth symbolized the petite bourgeoisie of the middle classes whose actions (as an intermediate class between the proletariat and the haute bourgeoisie) made business and government more efficient and theoretically responsive to local needs and opportunities.
- Metal was used to represent the haute bourgeoisie, who acted at scale to collect the fruits of the labor of the other social classes and enabled the distribution of the same. In the ideal state, moderate regulation would prevent this group from overwhelming the others.
- There were several groups that went unincluded by the traditional four occupations, and so Mao would use water to represent one such group, the clergy, meant to encourage contemplation and harmony between factions and with nature and society more generally.
Having inspired his troops with his leadership skills as well as his ideas, Mao and his renamed Natural Democracy Faction would gather converts as he set about building a broad coalition between fractious rebel groups. Reassuring all parties that he "d[id] not seek to be a warlord, but merely your steadfast brother in this worthy struggle", forming alliances was made easier partially by the syncretic and adoptive nature of his ideology but primarily by the arrival of Death Buddhism to Tibet.
With the fall of the White Khanate in 1925, the survivors of the regime were left with a series of bad options. Remaining in Mongolia to face Populist reprisals was a nonstarter. They had also refused the Vozhd's offer of amnesty and a return home once, and it would not be offered again. That left only one option. With the Nanjing government distracted by the secession of Manchuria and with the interior of the country in a state of disarray, an opportunity had presented itself. It would be this wave of unorthodox converts to Buddhism that would march south to avail themselves of the Lhasa regime, introducing Zen Nihilism into the Tibetan army. A distorted strain of Vajrayana Buddhism developed by Ungern-Sternberg, the White Khan himself, the primary distinction of Zen Nihilism was that the execution of those living outside the bounds of "correct behavior" would prevent them from further accumulating bad karma, and thus "save" them in a roundabout way.
While a stable society would have denounced such madness, the Lhasa regime was growing increasingly desperate as Mao and his Natural Democrats began to unify the remaining rebel elements under their banner. With Soviet-backed unrest expanding in India having drawn away the trade agents and British military advisors, a theological justification for further brutalizing subversives, aided and abetted by zealous Khanate irregulars, began to grow more and more appealing to the overstretched army. As in Mongolia, however, this would backfire by driving more people to Mao's side, until the government could only maintain effective control around Lhasa itself. Even this would falter by 1928 with the death of the Dalai Lama.
Victorious after a long and bloody struggle, the rebels were faced with the most important question for any war: what would happen next? Brother Mao, serving only in an advisory role per his own insistence, devoted himself wholeheartedly to preventing his unlikely coalition from shattering in the aftermath, taking pains to ensure that all the myriad groups could live and work together. Using his natural charisma to his advantage, he was able to convince a critical mass of the population that the only productive way forward was to set aside old animosities, and the Natural Democracy of Tibet would be declared in short order. The light touch would prove to work wonders, keeping the people united in the face of a botched invasion by Mongolia and ultimately going on to inspire the creation of the Second Republic.
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A little late today, I decided to go see that 1917 movie. I'll probably do two chapters to wrap up tomorrow, one about the SGW in broad strokes and the other about the birth of the Second Republic.
Thanks! The first four were actually the basis for the four little stars on the current Chinese flag OTL
Interlude: Same as it Ever Was: The Three Fronts of the Second Great War
Historians in the immediate aftermath of the Second Great War would make repeated note of the unsettling similarities between the two decisive armed conflicts of the early 20th century. For example, both began with the assassination of an Austro-Hungarian, hope for a speedy resolution swiftly faded in the face of a mechanized and bloody stalemate, and the US was widely perceived to have entered the war late and used its relative strength to moralize. The end of both wars would also see major changes to the European colonial empires. This simple analysis is somewhat undone when one looks at the facts, and has since been discarded by serious historians as nothing more than a series of loose coincidences. For example:
Firmly interventionist in the wake of the conflict, the American people became convinced that the lack of US oversight had contributed to the war. This would give President La Guardia the mandate to finally bring the US into the League of Nations on the heels of victory, ironically over the virulent opposition of Henry Ford and the Democrats. After his 1936 reelection (largely seen to have consolidated the Republicans into a Continental faction and the Democrats into a Liberation one), he was also further able to force through a series of structural changes to the League that would preserve US authority for another thirty years in the face of seething Carnaran and Soviet objections. This hegemony wouldn't ultimately last, but such things never do.
- The assassination of the Prime Minister of Austria-Hungary was a false flag to create a pretense for a joint German/Polish invasion of the country, rather than an organic terrorist attack.
- Although territorial change could be measured in a few miles for vast stretches of time, this was a simplistic mask overlaying a nebulous meatgrinder of radical ideological groups fighting house to house rather than the more conventional trench lines that characterized the First Great War.
- Although the US did join the Atlantropan Theater relatively late with its Liberia campaign, this overlooks the Technocratic consolidation in South America and the robust countering of Japan in the Second Warring States Period.
- The First Great War resulted in colonial transfers between the Great Powers, while the Second Great War led to ideologically-motivated decentralization or decolonization of the European colonial empires.
- The Atlantropan Theater would see direct military action in Europe between the Carnaran League (with the big three of Italy, France and Spain, plus an assortment of smaller lesser members in the Balkans and British aerial support) against the Soviet juggernaut acting to support its allies Germany and Poland. At the same time, the Soviets were also diverting resources in an attempt to undermine the League's colonies through the arming and sponsoring of National Socialist groups in Africa and most prominently India. The latter front would absorb most of the attention of the British military, and would serve as a critical drain on the Soviet war machine.
- The Pacific Theater (technically the first, having begun in 1925 with the start of the Second Warring States Period) was primarily the province of Soviet ally Japan, which sought to meddle in the SWSP while simultaneously attempting to absorb European colonies into its Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Met with notable early success, the tide would turn through a combination of factors. First, Futurist nationalist groups (seeing Japan as a Soviet-aligned colonizer) would erupt throughout Indochina, creating a horrendously costly quagmire for the Empire. Second, having been heavily reinforced before the outbreak of the war (based on both Liberation and Continental principles), the Philippines had been successfully garrisoned to fight off a series of attempted Japanese invasions, serving as a dagger aimed at the Japanese supply lines.
- The unofficial American Theater would not feature military actions from the League or the Soviets, and consisted primarily of the US expanding its influence through the sponsoring of Technocratic movements in Latin America, the creation of the Organization of American States, and the crushing of Futurist and National Socialist groups active in the Americas. This consolidation of control would leave the US the strongest superpower in the immediate postwar period.
Firmly interventionist in the wake of the conflict, the American people became convinced that the lack of US oversight had contributed to the war. This would give President La Guardia the mandate to finally bring the US into the League of Nations on the heels of victory, ironically over the virulent opposition of Henry Ford and the Democrats. After his 1936 reelection (largely seen to have consolidated the Republicans into a Continental faction and the Democrats into a Liberation one), he was also further able to force through a series of structural changes to the League that would preserve US authority for another thirty years in the face of seething Carnaran and Soviet objections. This hegemony wouldn't ultimately last, but such things never do.
The end of the war would see the world divided between three factions in a conflict called the Great Game. The Soviet sphere would be reorganized into the Berlin Pact in 1937, and would include unstable India as a massive white elephant. The Carnaran League would remain more or less the same, though the new Futurist regimes in the former colonies are constantly arguing they should have more say in the organization, with factionalism a concern. As for the country that started it all, Austria-Hungary ends up divided between the League and the Pact. Not into anything sensible like Austria or Hungary, but rather into the pretty arbitrary North and South Danubia. Meanwhile, the rather mistakenly named OAS also includes Continental Liberia (made up of a large chunk of West Africa) and the Second Republic.
This tripartite world order will last well into the sixties with creation of the Conservative Alliance between the British Commonwealth (much more centralized than OTL) and the Co-Prosperity Sphere (with Japan having retained Korea and a few extra islands in the wake of the war, but lost Taiwan to an American invasion). Nukes will be developed by the early fifties after the US wastes the thirties and forties on a teleforce boondoggle, but without the use of atomic devices in war mutually assured destruction never develops.
This tripartite world order will last well into the sixties with creation of the Conservative Alliance between the British Commonwealth (much more centralized than OTL) and the Co-Prosperity Sphere (with Japan having retained Korea and a few extra islands in the wake of the war, but lost Taiwan to an American invasion). Nukes will be developed by the early fifties after the US wastes the thirties and forties on a teleforce boondoggle, but without the use of atomic devices in war mutually assured destruction never develops.
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Yan Xishan, the Constitutional Party, and National Syncretism in the Second Republic of China
In the grips of a ten year civil war, the Republic of China ultimately owed its survival to the steadfast support of the United States. The participation of the Bellamy Nationalist Volunteer Brigades had reinforced the overstretched Chinese troops at the lowest ebb of the war after the Razing of Nanjing, and the election of President La Guardia in 1932 would see a swift expansion of direct military conflict in the Pacific Theater beyond the Philippines. A naval campaign against the Japanese supply lines into Indochina and the Nusantara would further tax the overstretched Home Islands, while an inability to replace lost personnel would render Japan vulnerable to an American blockade.
Following an invasion of Taiwan, the US would make landfall in southern China and would immediately begin a surge to topple the Manchurian regime. With the Empire's Japanese advisors pulled back to maintain a hold on Korea, the nation would fall to the joint ROC-American invasion after flight of Emperor Puyi and the execution of the Director in an attempted coup. With the heart of secession under occupation all eyes turned to Mongolia.
The critical problem facing the Mongolian People's Republic could ultimately be traced directly to the Vozhd. Having had his earliest successes in India before seizing control of the Soviet apparatus of state, the Vozhd was irrationally focused on ensuring the success of National Socialism in the subcontinent, ultimately to the neglect of the struggling Populists. Having been repulsed at the border of Tibet, the expeditionary force waging the March to the South became vulnerable to an attack by the Sinkiang Free State on one side and the Chinese army under celebrated general Yan Xishan on the other. Being forced north for the second time would be an unrecoverable blow to the Juzi's regime, and he would take his own life as new Allied Army reached the outskirts of his capital at Urga.
Having snatched victory from the jaws of defeat, the Republic of China was in a position very similar to the Great Powers, overstretched and beset with crippling internal problems. Although the Nationalists had remained the dominant faction in the National-Constitutional Front throughout the Second Warring States period, cracks were beginning to show in this facade as a result of corruption and repression in the domestic arena and what was broadly considered poor prosecution of the war. At American insistence the wartime suspension of civil liberties under President Chiang Kai-Shek would be lifted, to be followed by the nation's first free election since before the death of Sun Yat-Sen.
Seeing an opportunity to tip the balance back in their favor the Constitutional Party would draft Yan as its presidential candidate. He would ultimately use the anemic platform of the party to his advantage, molding it in his image in the wake of his resounding victory at the polls. With a robust popular mandate Yan would hold the Beijing Summit in August of 1936, inviting not only the elderly Yang Zengxin and the still officially advisory Mao Zedong but also the leaders of the Populist and Legalist remnants forced underground by the occupation. Acknowledging the role of the Chinese government in marginalizing the Manchurians and persecuting the CCP in the lead up to the start of the conflict but also refusing to sacrifice hard-fought gains, Yan professed his hope to build an equitable future for all the ethnic and ideological groups in the Republic.
The month long conference would conclude with the creation of the Second Republic and the adoption of a new constitution intended to balance the fractionalizing forces unleashed by the Second Warring States period and based on the newly developed ideology of National Syncretism, also erroneously called Yan Xishan Thought. Combining the Four Principles of the Confucian Republican ideology, the Maoist conception of the Monad and the Pentagram, and a firm commitment to the early republican Five Races Under One Union ideal to serve as a foundation, the constitution of the Second Republic reversed the massive centralization that had occurred under President Chiang. Although the central government would weild authority from the rebuilt capital of New Nanjing (also called the District of Tian), considerable administrative power would be devolved to the five newly created Confederations, inspired by the model established in Sinkiang.
Based on the Tibetan model the new government would guarantee civil liberties, most prominently the freedom of political expression. Meanwhile, the cronyism and corruption that had motivated much of the initial Communist Party critiques of the system and allowed for a spectacular breakdown in the rule of law during the conflict would be remedied by the new government through reforms to the civil service and the elimination of the frequently abused patronage system, combined with serious reforms to the nation's social safety net and system of taxation.
With specific boons directly intended to secure buy in from the various factions and ethnic groups involved in the Second Warring States period the new constitution would be ratified on October 10, 1936, twenty-five years to the day from the start of the Xinhai Revolution. After over a decade of civil war that had left much of the nation in ruins and millions dead, the Second Republic allowed itself to once again hope for the future. The road back from the conflict would not be an easy one, particularly in the tense early decades of the Great Game, but by the waning days of the century China would recover, standing proudly among the Great Powers a free and prosperous nation, the promise of the First Republic finally fulfilled.
Following an invasion of Taiwan, the US would make landfall in southern China and would immediately begin a surge to topple the Manchurian regime. With the Empire's Japanese advisors pulled back to maintain a hold on Korea, the nation would fall to the joint ROC-American invasion after flight of Emperor Puyi and the execution of the Director in an attempted coup. With the heart of secession under occupation all eyes turned to Mongolia.
The critical problem facing the Mongolian People's Republic could ultimately be traced directly to the Vozhd. Having had his earliest successes in India before seizing control of the Soviet apparatus of state, the Vozhd was irrationally focused on ensuring the success of National Socialism in the subcontinent, ultimately to the neglect of the struggling Populists. Having been repulsed at the border of Tibet, the expeditionary force waging the March to the South became vulnerable to an attack by the Sinkiang Free State on one side and the Chinese army under celebrated general Yan Xishan on the other. Being forced north for the second time would be an unrecoverable blow to the Juzi's regime, and he would take his own life as new Allied Army reached the outskirts of his capital at Urga.
Having snatched victory from the jaws of defeat, the Republic of China was in a position very similar to the Great Powers, overstretched and beset with crippling internal problems. Although the Nationalists had remained the dominant faction in the National-Constitutional Front throughout the Second Warring States period, cracks were beginning to show in this facade as a result of corruption and repression in the domestic arena and what was broadly considered poor prosecution of the war. At American insistence the wartime suspension of civil liberties under President Chiang Kai-Shek would be lifted, to be followed by the nation's first free election since before the death of Sun Yat-Sen.
Seeing an opportunity to tip the balance back in their favor the Constitutional Party would draft Yan as its presidential candidate. He would ultimately use the anemic platform of the party to his advantage, molding it in his image in the wake of his resounding victory at the polls. With a robust popular mandate Yan would hold the Beijing Summit in August of 1936, inviting not only the elderly Yang Zengxin and the still officially advisory Mao Zedong but also the leaders of the Populist and Legalist remnants forced underground by the occupation. Acknowledging the role of the Chinese government in marginalizing the Manchurians and persecuting the CCP in the lead up to the start of the conflict but also refusing to sacrifice hard-fought gains, Yan professed his hope to build an equitable future for all the ethnic and ideological groups in the Republic.
The month long conference would conclude with the creation of the Second Republic and the adoption of a new constitution intended to balance the fractionalizing forces unleashed by the Second Warring States period and based on the newly developed ideology of National Syncretism, also erroneously called Yan Xishan Thought. Combining the Four Principles of the Confucian Republican ideology, the Maoist conception of the Monad and the Pentagram, and a firm commitment to the early republican Five Races Under One Union ideal to serve as a foundation, the constitution of the Second Republic reversed the massive centralization that had occurred under President Chiang. Although the central government would weild authority from the rebuilt capital of New Nanjing (also called the District of Tian), considerable administrative power would be devolved to the five newly created Confederations, inspired by the model established in Sinkiang.
Based on the Tibetan model the new government would guarantee civil liberties, most prominently the freedom of political expression. Meanwhile, the cronyism and corruption that had motivated much of the initial Communist Party critiques of the system and allowed for a spectacular breakdown in the rule of law during the conflict would be remedied by the new government through reforms to the civil service and the elimination of the frequently abused patronage system, combined with serious reforms to the nation's social safety net and system of taxation.
With specific boons directly intended to secure buy in from the various factions and ethnic groups involved in the Second Warring States period the new constitution would be ratified on October 10, 1936, twenty-five years to the day from the start of the Xinhai Revolution. After over a decade of civil war that had left much of the nation in ruins and millions dead, the Second Republic allowed itself to once again hope for the future. The road back from the conflict would not be an easy one, particularly in the tense early decades of the Great Game, but by the waning days of the century China would recover, standing proudly among the Great Powers a free and prosperous nation, the promise of the First Republic finally fulfilled.
That's all folks! I reached the endpoint I had in mind when I started posting in the thread, but now I've got a ton of ideas that I'll lay out here to sketch out the TL through the start of the 21st century.
- Given that both National Socialism and Futurism are both incredibly anti-Semitic, there's a good deal of hardship for the Jewish people even without a Holocaust analogue. The scale of the pogroms would result in the League of Nations establishing the Mandate of New Zion in what had formerly been Madagascar. Having used the colony as a dumping ground for Jews during the Futurist period the French government was happy enough to part with it. The influx of Jewish settlers would quickly render the indigenous population a minority, especially following the second wave of settlers arriving in the wake of the formation of the Islamic Republics.
- India (unpartitioned TTL) reorganizes after the SGW into the People's Republic of India. Guided by a Theosophy-influenced variant of National Socialism called Aryanism, the PRI will strike out from the Soviet Sphere in the Indo-Soviet Split of the mid-fifties following the death of the Vozhd.
- Formed shortly after the Vozhd's death, the Conservative Alliance would ultimately outlast several rivals, supporting a series of velvet revolutions that would lead to the collapse of National Socialism in continental Europe, with the void filled by Chartist Conservatism. Basically what constitutes the political center in this timeline, Chartist Conservatism advocates for parliamentary monarchy with some civil liberties. The fact that there were Romanovs in exile in London ready to swoop in helped. In Asia, meanwhile, the other half of the Alliance was able to install a Legalist Revivalist regime in Indochina (at this point basically Chartist Conservatism under another name). Their success was helped in part by competition between Futurist and Technocratic groups in the region preventing the creation of a united front against the Japanese.
- The 1970s would see the creation of Ummaism and the start of the Second Islamic Golden Age. Inspired by the Great Leap Forward, Ummaism would propose that, although all Muslims are united in faith, ethnic differences will lead to strife. Therefore, Muslims should strive to create a coalition of ethnically distinct Islamic Republics. The initial theory would call for the creation of four Islamic Republics to govern the Turkic peoples, Arabs, Persians, and Nusantarans, all engaged in an economic and military alliance. This wave of expansion wouldn't reach it's full conclusion, obviously having scared the bejezus out of everyone (especially their ethnic and religious minorities), but by the modern day the coalition of the Islamic Republics of Turkey, Arabia, Persia and Nusantara are a stable and prosperous faction in the LoN.
- The inherant inefficiency of the Futurist system would see it collapse in the early 1980s, leaving much of Africa and Southern Europe an overindustrialized cultureless backwater. The OAS and the Alliance would engage in what political analysts would call the Scramble for Atlantropa in a bid to expand their respective spheres of influence.
- The 1990s would see Zen Nihilism come roaring back with the formation of Aum Shinrikyo, bringing warfare into the 21st century and ushering in the age of stateless terror groups, cyberwarfare, and the first use of atomic weaponry on a civilian population.
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