AHQ: If Ming China desired to conquer the New World, can it do it faster than Spain?

If the Chinese wanted to conquer the New World, can it do it faster than Spain?

  • Ming China can do it faster than Spain.

    Votes: 23 25.8%
  • Ming China can do as fast as Spain.

    Votes: 8 9.0%
  • Ming China will conquer slower than Spain.

    Votes: 58 65.2%

  • Total voters
    89

Lusitania

Donor
The short answer is yes. Ming had huge population. Government promised poor farmers free ship tickets and free land. Thousands farmers would sign up. Within 100 years, British Columbia and Washington States would be full of Chinese settlers.
I am sorry but this seems to ignore all practical experience. What would draw China to the new world? The journey would be long and treacherous. People who arrived would face hostile natives, strange climate and formidable wilderness. Most would be clamoring to return home within a year and few would want to go. Also which lord wants to lose peasants who provide taxes to him?
 
The Chinese population had crashed at the end of the Song dynasty in 1279, from a high of 200 million to 120 million by the beginning of the Ming. It was the greatest population collapse in human history in absolute numbers. The Ming only recovered by 1600.

During its age of discovery in the early 1400s, China had a lower population density than England when it started settler colonies in the New World. Hence the trope that China had plenty of people to send abroad is not backed by evidence. It would be like Europe colonizing the world after the Black Death. There were plenty of abandoned farmland in need of reclaimation at home.

The Spanish conquest was not settler colonization. The Conquistadores didn’t go into the American wilderness to farm, they conquered densely populated agrarian empires to exploit their labor. It was similar to the First Crusade were the Crusaders went and established kingdoms in the holy land, not a colony for growing settler population. The whole convert the heathens angle was part of the scheme. For the conquered to accept Christ also means they accept the overlordship of Christ’s annointed King of Spain.

For Ming China to do what the Spanish did would require them to sail around Africa, cross the mid-Atlantic and trace the coast of Brazil to Panama, from there armies would invade Peru and Mexico and install puppet rulers. Crossing the Pacific and back would have to wait until they figure out the currents.
 
The Chinese only fled and became numerous in South East Asia in the present because of the Qing Dynasty not because of any other reason.
 
I am sorry but this seems to ignore all practical experience. What would draw China to the new world? The journey would be long and treacherous. People who arrived would face hostile natives, strange climate and formidable wilderness. Most would be clamoring to return home within a year and few would want to go. Also which lord wants to lose peasants who provide taxes to him?
Never said anything about plausibility, im only asking if its in China’s ability to conquer faster than Spain did.
 
The Chinese population had crashed at the end of the Song dynasty in 1279, from a high of 200 million to 120 million by the beginning of the Ming. It was the greatest population collapse in human history in absolute numbers. The Ming only recovered by 1600.

During its age of discovery in the early 1400s, China had a lower population density than England when it started settler colonies in the New World. Hence the trope that China had plenty of people to send abroad is not backed by evidence. It would be like Europe colonizing the world after the Black Death. There were plenty of abandoned farmland in need of reclaimation at home.

Hmm,,, does this mean that China has a better chance with a POD that averts that population crash? (no mongol conquest perhaps?)
 
Maybe a merchany republic like Lanfang centered in San Francisco Bay, maybe they are han refugees that escaped qing conquest and wanted a far away place to escape qing's autority, and south east asia wasnt far away enough.
 

Lusitania

Donor
Maybe a merchany republic like Lanfang centered in San Francisco Bay, maybe they are han refugees that escaped qing conquest and wanted a far away place to escape qing's autority, and south east asia wasnt far away enough.
Again almost impossible to do. How would these people sail to. They be refugees. With ships packed with people little to no provisions and no tools or items to take. 3/4 of them starve and die by time they get to Alaska then these half starving people raving hostile natives continue sailing south past the Haida and other strong coastal tribes to reach San Francisco which was also populated by strong tribes? What ever survives travel be absorbed into local tribes and be in no shape to conquer or setup colony.

We keep forgetting this is not crossing Atlantic.
 
Again almost impossible to do. How would these people sail to. They be refugees. With ships packed with people little to no provisions and no tools or items to take. 3/4 of them starve and die by time they get to Alaska then these half starving people raving hostile natives continue sailing south past the Haida and other strong coastal tribes to reach San Francisco which was also populated by strong tribes? What ever survives travel be absorbed into local tribes and be in no shape to conquer or setup colony.

We keep forgetting this is not crossing Atlantic.
Good point, for what I read here, a more aggresive Ming on south west pacific would be quite interesting, maybe the russians conquer Manchuria and Mongolia and China is from that point on governed by Han dynasties?
 
The Chinese population had crashed at the end of the Song dynasty in 1279, from a high of 200 million to 120 million by the beginning of the Ming. It was the greatest population collapse in human history in absolute numbers. The Ming only recovered by 1600.
200 million? Never heard such high estimates, if anything I've heard Song+Jin population peaked at 120 million and collapsed to 60 million in the early years of the Ming dynasty.
 
The Pacific, as others have mentioned, is a lot harder to cross with 15th century tech. Even assuming they want the New World AND want it more than Southeast Asia, India, and East Africa, the logistics are going to slow their efforts.
 
200 million? Never heard such high estimates, if anything I've heard Song+Jin population peaked at 120 million and collapsed to 60 million in the early years of the Ming dynasty.

You’re right. I recalled incorrectly. The Northern Song dropped from 120 million down to 60 million during the Mongol invasion and did not recover until late Ming.

poptrend.gif
 
You’re right. I recalled incorrectly. The Northern Song dropped from 120 million down to 60 million during the Mongol invasion and did not recover until late Ming.

poptrend.gif
I'm not sure about the recovering taking so much, if anything by 1500 it seems it was already at a level similar, I guess that's already "late Ming"?
 
You’re right. I recalled incorrectly. The Northern Song dropped from 120 million down to 60 million during the Mongol invasion and did not recover until late Ming.

poptrend.gif

The Song peak looks odd. How would the population double in a mere century when it didn't do that before? Did they invent new agricultural methods?
 
The Song peak looks odd. How would the population double in a mere century when it didn't do that before? Did they invent new agricultural methods?

It’s usually attributed to the introduction of Champa rice, which produced two crops a year and was drought resistant. Plus improvements in irrigation technique, food production doubled. Later on in the Qing period population will quadruple in part due to New World crops, especially the sweet potato, which did for China what the potato did for Germany and maize did for Italy.

I'm not sure about the recovering taking so much, if anything by 1500 it seems it was already at a level similar, I guess that's already "late Ming"?

Estimates vary, but some do say it recovered by 1500.
 
Or rather have the chinese mass flee yuan like they did with qing.

Chinese emigrants have been settling in low numbers across Southeast Asia since the Song era. Zheng He even killed a Chinese ruler in Palembang and replaced him with a Muslim. Song China certainly had the population for settler colonization, but there was no interest from the state. To be fair Southeast Asia in the 10th-13th centuries was far less economically attractive for immigrants compared to the 18th century.
 
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