Bolt-Hole:
A Counterfactual
1836 Hong Xiuquan returns home after failing to pass the state examinations to earn a position in the Chinese bureaucracy. In the throes of depression, he falls ill and dies in bed [1].
1840s-early-1850s A period known as the "Yangtse Troubles" by some European historians, but properly applying equally to the southwest of China. It consists of a period of extensive disruption to social order in south-central China. The Troubles are brought on in part by ethnic strife and an overabundance of unmarried men stemming from routine female infanticide. Extensive banditry, piracy, and incidences of petty warlords establishing personal fiefdoms are counteracted as much by local vigilantism as by the state itself.
1851-1871 The "Long Rebellions" - a series of five internal military conflicts within China, most involving outright attempts to overthrow the Qing dynasty. The period's widespread destruction, economic collapse, plague, and famine collectively result in tremendous loss of life and reveal the severe weakness of the state. Most accurate sources place the collective death toll from the rebellions and their aftermath between 8 and 12 million [2].
1851-1857 Fazei (Long Hair) Rebellion. The gradual organization of existing vigilante groups along the Yangtse under urban councils become viewed as an increasing threat to the rule of the Qing. Initially formed to combat bandits and river pirates, the groups increasingly target especially corrupt or unpopular state officials. A great deal of the animosity directed toward the groups is the influence in the councils, percieved and occasionally real, of foreign ideas.
Matters come to a head when a military force attempting to suppress the movement is defeated outside Nanjing. The rebellion expands under a banner of Qing deposition, reaching as far upriver as Wuhan and east to Wuxi before finally being brought to heel. Though devastating in itself, the rebellion is primarily of importance to the period because of its role in sparking similar uprisings throughout China. The rebels earn their name for sporting traditional Confucian hairstyles instead of the state-mandated queue of the Qing. [3]
[1] In OTL Xiuquan recovered after having a series of intensely vivid dreams, reread a pamphlet given to him by a missionary, decided he was the son of God and Jesus' brother, led a vigilante group of pseudo-Christians in battling bandits, pirates, and temple owners, faced persecution for his anti-government rhetoric, led the so-named Taiping Rebellion to overthrow the state, and ruled the center of China for a decade and a half. In TTL he doesn't.
[2] This is certainly an unpleasant result - if the high estimate is right it roughly matches OTL's Holocaust for death toll - but it's worlds better than the historic outcome. Reliable estimates for the Taiping Rebellion (1851-1864) alone typically place the loss of life between 20 and 30 million, and exclude the three contemporaneous rebellions. Those in turn took on the scale they did because the state prioritized the Taiping conflict. The last did not come to an end until 1877.
In other words, there are by 1871 at least 13 million more living people in China, and most of the difference is in the country's economic and geographic heartland. I will, for the purposes of making up statistics, assume the number spared is 15 million.
[3] This is pretty much the sequence of events that brought open military conflict between the Taiping and Qing in OTL, and occurs in the same year. Although the Taiping movement far predated 1851, the rebellion was really triggered only by the (failed) reaction of the Qing to what was otherwise not an active rebellion. The movement has less lead-up than its OTL sibling, but broader appeal due to the fact that Christianity is associated with the movement's fringe, rather than at its head. As to why it fails earlier, the movement has no clear leader or even localized group of leaders until its extinction. This allows the Qing to wrap it up piece by piece without facing the massed field armies of the historical Taiping.
Honestly, there was probably going to be some sort of revolt along the Yangtse or south of it in that decade. The pressures were just too strong to avoid it entirely. I chose an identical start date to the OTL Taiping Rebellion because changing the date would require writing four or five alternate conflicts instead of two and a half.
I'm really okay with the implicit laziness.
A Counterfactual
1836 Hong Xiuquan returns home after failing to pass the state examinations to earn a position in the Chinese bureaucracy. In the throes of depression, he falls ill and dies in bed [1].
1840s-early-1850s A period known as the "Yangtse Troubles" by some European historians, but properly applying equally to the southwest of China. It consists of a period of extensive disruption to social order in south-central China. The Troubles are brought on in part by ethnic strife and an overabundance of unmarried men stemming from routine female infanticide. Extensive banditry, piracy, and incidences of petty warlords establishing personal fiefdoms are counteracted as much by local vigilantism as by the state itself.
1851-1871 The "Long Rebellions" - a series of five internal military conflicts within China, most involving outright attempts to overthrow the Qing dynasty. The period's widespread destruction, economic collapse, plague, and famine collectively result in tremendous loss of life and reveal the severe weakness of the state. Most accurate sources place the collective death toll from the rebellions and their aftermath between 8 and 12 million [2].
1851-1857 Fazei (Long Hair) Rebellion. The gradual organization of existing vigilante groups along the Yangtse under urban councils become viewed as an increasing threat to the rule of the Qing. Initially formed to combat bandits and river pirates, the groups increasingly target especially corrupt or unpopular state officials. A great deal of the animosity directed toward the groups is the influence in the councils, percieved and occasionally real, of foreign ideas.
Matters come to a head when a military force attempting to suppress the movement is defeated outside Nanjing. The rebellion expands under a banner of Qing deposition, reaching as far upriver as Wuhan and east to Wuxi before finally being brought to heel. Though devastating in itself, the rebellion is primarily of importance to the period because of its role in sparking similar uprisings throughout China. The rebels earn their name for sporting traditional Confucian hairstyles instead of the state-mandated queue of the Qing. [3]
[1] In OTL Xiuquan recovered after having a series of intensely vivid dreams, reread a pamphlet given to him by a missionary, decided he was the son of God and Jesus' brother, led a vigilante group of pseudo-Christians in battling bandits, pirates, and temple owners, faced persecution for his anti-government rhetoric, led the so-named Taiping Rebellion to overthrow the state, and ruled the center of China for a decade and a half. In TTL he doesn't.
[2] This is certainly an unpleasant result - if the high estimate is right it roughly matches OTL's Holocaust for death toll - but it's worlds better than the historic outcome. Reliable estimates for the Taiping Rebellion (1851-1864) alone typically place the loss of life between 20 and 30 million, and exclude the three contemporaneous rebellions. Those in turn took on the scale they did because the state prioritized the Taiping conflict. The last did not come to an end until 1877.
In other words, there are by 1871 at least 13 million more living people in China, and most of the difference is in the country's economic and geographic heartland. I will, for the purposes of making up statistics, assume the number spared is 15 million.
[3] This is pretty much the sequence of events that brought open military conflict between the Taiping and Qing in OTL, and occurs in the same year. Although the Taiping movement far predated 1851, the rebellion was really triggered only by the (failed) reaction of the Qing to what was otherwise not an active rebellion. The movement has less lead-up than its OTL sibling, but broader appeal due to the fact that Christianity is associated with the movement's fringe, rather than at its head. As to why it fails earlier, the movement has no clear leader or even localized group of leaders until its extinction. This allows the Qing to wrap it up piece by piece without facing the massed field armies of the historical Taiping.
Honestly, there was probably going to be some sort of revolt along the Yangtse or south of it in that decade. The pressures were just too strong to avoid it entirely. I chose an identical start date to the OTL Taiping Rebellion because changing the date would require writing four or five alternate conflicts instead of two and a half.
I'm really okay with the implicit laziness.