AHC/WI: Christian East and Southeast Asia 15-16th Centuries

How to get majority Christianity in China, Korea, Japan, and Southeast Asia during this time period and explain the effects. Would Christianity be more like a separate sect like Mormonism or a sect close to Christianity?
 

Yuelang

Banned
POD for Dutch East Indie and Malays is actually simple. Stop the British from enacting decree and laws of ethical colonial politics under Rafless (in Napoleonic era), which ends up guaranteeing freedom of religion and preserve Islamic influences.

Without that, we will all turned into Filipinos with different languages.

Have Daendles stay and you'll have largely Protestant Indonesia (Raffles actually end Christianization in West Indonesia)
 
Well...the Korea situation can progress a la OTL, mostly. Simply keep the Japanese from annexing and brutalizing the peninsula. They repressed the Christian population, both there and in the Home Islands. [Rather ironically, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, iirc, had the largest Christian populations in Japan. The West actually nuked the cities that had the strongest (sort of) spiritual ties with them.] Also make Christianity more accepted? Imperialism that allows a European power to take much larger swaths of China, the Americans/Russians split or open up Korea earlier than OTL (with eventual reunification guaranteed, there was no Marxism when this was first proposed), and more missionaries in Japan. At least in East Asia, this can go a number of ways, especially speeding up certain OTL events. Following the US/Russia split of Korea, the idea of a Greek/Russian Orthodox North Korea is fucking hilarious. "We are the Best Korean Byzantium! All hail the Dear Basileus and Eternal Autokrator!" OTL ROK, especially in women above the age of 35, is already Christian up the wazoo.

Don't know much about SEAsia. Someone else may enlighten us. I'm genuinely curious to know about potential Christianization in areas apart from the Philippines. They're already devout Catholics, mostly.
 
Well...the Korea situation can progress a la OTL, mostly. Simply keep the Japanese from annexing and brutalizing the peninsula. They repressed the Christian population, both there and in the Home Islands. [Rather ironically, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, iirc, had the largest Christian populations in Japan. The West actually nuked the cities that had the strongest (sort of) spiritual ties with them.] Also make Christianity more accepted? Imperialism that allows a European power to take much larger swaths of China, the Americans/Russians split or open up Korea earlier than OTL (with eventual reunification guaranteed, there was no Marxism when this was first proposed), and more missionaries in Japan. At least in East Asia, this can go a number of ways, especially speeding up certain OTL events. Following the US/Russia split of Korea, the idea of a Greek/Russian Orthodox North Korea is fucking hilarious. "We are the Best Korean Byzantium! All hail the Dear Basileus and Eternal Autokrator!" OTL ROK, especially in women above the age of 35, is already Christian up the wazoo.

Don't know much about SEAsia. Someone else may enlighten us. I'm genuinely curious to know about potential Christianization in areas apart from the Philippines. They're already devout Catholics, mostly.

Japan is easy but China is hard. And even if both are successful I feel stumped on whether their Christian sects are still deemed by Christian standards "Christian" or a different religion on their own.

And if China Christianizes it will be easy for most of Southeast Asia to follow.
 
Short of outright conquest and genocide at a level that would bankrupt the colonial powers, I don't think it's very possible to convert most of South East Asia to Christianity, especially Muslims. For the latter, you might want to go for a POD earlier than Raffles' ethnic policy (though I don't see a link to the DEA at all), even one that severely limits the early spread of Islam in Arabia, and maybe Buddhism.

Muslim hostility towards Christians in S.E.A. had been boiling over for centuries ever since the Portuguese arrived and seized Goa and Malacca from Muslim powers (Bijapur and Malacca sultanates). If the Portuguese focused more on gaining allies than actually seizing ports to control the trade routes, missionaries in the region might have more success against Muslims populations. Maybe converting the local Rajas and Sultans could work? Problem later on with the British and Dutch East India Companies is that they operate on the basis of business, and not interested in propagating Christianity. Doing the latter actually hurts their trading interests with the locals, not something they're keen at.

Mainland SEA is a whole other bag of 'nope'. Not sure about Myanmar and Indochina (I think there was actually some success in the latter), but Thailand/Siam is a very devout, Buddhist society, very hard for missionaries to penetrate as a whole.

Overall, very hard to repeat the example of the Philippines unless you're the Spanish, but even then, their resources are still pretty limited, and the Muslims in Mindanao are very resistant to conversion, nonetheless.
 
Age of Colonialism PoD? You could make larger Christian minorities through the Jesuits. And maybe break the Dutch and English to keep them from rising.

But that'll only give you Christian minorities in most places other than an enlarged Philippines.

For a truly Christian East Asia you have to go before that.

You could convert the Khanates to certain forms of Christianity, like the Church of the East, or the Armenian Church. (where they'll find the motivation, i have no idea.)

Or even earlier, you could make the Tang dynasty not get rid of non-traditional religions. That might help keep the Nestorians and Manichaeans alive there.

Of course, this is just East Asia. Southeast Asia before colonialism will just be too far and too unimportant to actively send missionaries.
 

Yuelang

Banned
uh, or either Portuguese having a more through and brutal Christianization method, on par with OTL spanish Philiphines.

But still, the independent missionary activities in 18th century actually gain a lot of ground in south Java... only to be rolled back once Raffles ban missionary activities on behalf of his islamic allies.

Get Java converted, the rest of the islands will follow...
 
Short of outright conquest and genocide at a level that would bankrupt the colonial powers, I don't think it's very possible to convert most of South East Asia to Christianity, especially Muslims. For the latter, you might want to go for a POD earlier than Raffles' ethnic policy (though I don't see a link to the DEA at all), even one that severely limits the early spread of Islam in Arabia, and maybe Buddhism.

Muslim hostility towards Christians in S.E.A. had been boiling over for centuries ever since the Portuguese arrived and seized Goa and Malacca from Muslim powers (Bijapur and Malacca sultanates). If the Portuguese focused more on gaining allies than actually seizing ports to control the trade routes, missionaries in the region might have more success against Muslims populations. Maybe converting the local Rajas and Sultans could work? Problem later on with the British and Dutch East India Companies is that they operate on the basis of business, and not interested in propagating Christianity. Doing the latter actually hurts their trading interests with the locals, not something they're keen at.

Mainland SEA is a whole other bag of 'nope'. Not sure about Myanmar and Indochina (I think there was actually some success in the latter), but Thailand/Siam is a very devout, Buddhist society, very hard for missionaries to penetrate as a whole.

Overall, very hard to repeat the example of the Philippines unless you're the Spanish, but even then, their resources are still pretty limited, and the Muslims in Mindanao are very resistant to conversion, nonetheless.

Resistance is one thing. The other is if the Spanish is willing to put resources for invasion. They do have the resources to do it if they put all their might there. They already got manila for China trade. No need for malacca since spain doesn't pass there. They can have a decisive victory over brunei in ttl which doesn't bring them anything. But that is about it for ROI for the spanish.

There must be a reason for spain to conquer the whole south east Asia. Maybe if Portugal and Spain continues its unified crown as an Iberian nation. That would give reason of the conquest of malacca and its surroundings.
 
What do you think about Malaysia? I hope that they don't suffer heavily in their Islamic faith and the Portuguese never penetrate further from their Malacca base into the mainland.
But what about Sabah, Sarawak, Brunei and Indonesian Borneo?
 
I think that to accomplish this, the best way would be to pre-empt the spread of Islam to SE Asia. Once Islam is established, then it becomes much harder to make Christianity more than a minority religion there.

So perhaps a decent PoD would be for Christianity to become more established in South India in the pre-Islamic era. I'm not familiar enough with the exact history of how Christianity spread to South India, so I can't pick an exact divergence. But say <handwave> Christianity of a St Thomas-esque variety becomes about 5% of the population of South India, clustered in the maritime ports which have most contact with SE Asia. In turn, this means that Christianity spreads east via trade contact, much as Hinduism did in OTL, and there's eventually Christianised peoples in Java, Sumatra and Bali, and a heavily syncreticised form of Christianity amongst the Khmer.

That should be enough to get things started.
 
Getting Catholicism through the Japanese Warlord a Period is easy. China and Korea are hard at least for getting their Christianity to be close enough to 'Christian' standards.

Once China converts its mighty influence can cause conversions in mainland Southeast Asia.
 
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