British India vs Hypothetical Qing India: Would anyone have been as exploitative as Europe? No.

Anaxagoras

Banned
Not really. It's comparing an ATL with OTL, that paragraph is just an explanation of why I was inspired to write the post. It's also partly for my own timeline.

Uh huh. And if someone started a thread by saying, "Everyone knows of the glorious benefits the backwards colonized people of India received from the great white people of Britain...", you wouldn't consider that something that should go in Chat?
 
I don't think any other powers could match the cold capitalist calculus of the later European companies; their need for an artificially captive market and massive profits to overcome the risks of colonialism played right into increasing exploitation.

Where I dissent here is the idea that the Qing can conquer/vassalize (parts of) India. Indonesia had Chinese states -- and Burma can be reached via Yunnan. India is farther, and both land routes involve unconquerable hinterlands full of hill tribes.

Even by sea, Tamil Nadu is pretty far away, and has no Chinese presence (unlike greater SE Asia). And unlike the initial and later Europeans, they would be facing peer-level technological competitors with Asian bases (as opposed to the local states the Portuguese fought and the incredibly weakened Portuguese the Dutch mopped up)
 
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The book you are taking with a pinch of salt is the most important and comprehensive history of Qing Xinjiang written in English.
Every historical source or text should be taken with a pinch of salt. We'd have no issue with that statement if the book was written by a euro-centrist. One secondary source, if well regarded, is not the 100% indisputable truth.

Sinophone Muslims were, although it is clear that they were conceived as "familiar strangers," while the Manchus themselves took the examinations, of course. Besides, imperial exams were not the hallmark of the Qing imperial system as a whole. The Qing empire enforced uniformity in some areas (the rule of avoidance applied for most officials of all ethnicities, for example) but compartmentalized each conquered society to ensure maximal stability. None of the largely hereditary hakim begs of the Tarim Basin took the exams, yet they held great power in the cities they were assigned. Conversely, very few of the people who took the exams served in the Tarim Basin. Should we complain that the Manchus were prejudiced in favor of the Turkestanis and against the Han Chinese because very few Han Chinese were allowed hereditary rank? Or should we complain that the Qing were too partial to the Mongols because the Mongols could rise very high without taking the examinations? Of course not. There is no evidence that the Qing even viewed Xinjiang as China until the 1830s at the earliest; it was always "beyond the pass," to be contrasted with the "inner land" (neidi; peraphrasis for China proper) and governed with different regulations. And there is no evidence that these different regulations represented racism favoring Chinese over others.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, at the very least. But I'm happily educated on the matter of the examinations. It certainly reinforces the idea of vassal/protectorate systems being realpolitik rather than integrating them fully into the same governing system, and supports your position on the more fair Qing. I however wouldn't see this so much as a colony however - it seems more akin to the Ottoman conquest of Egypt, and its maintenance of the Mamluks within the O.E. The idea of familiar strangers does conflict with some other statements that the Qing would treat many as equals.

The Zunghars are an exception during the Qing conquest of Inner Asia, provoked by their consistent resistance to conquest for six decades. The Turkestanis revolted under the two khwaja brothers in 1755-1759, in Ush in 1765, and generally in 1862, as well as many collaborating with the khwaja Jahangir's invasion in 1825-1827. Never was there a genocidal solution to the Turkestanis, and Chinese rebels during the High Qing were also rarely subject to rampant massacres. The Zunghar killings were exceptional, a bureaucratic final solution to the steppe, and the main English source on this treats it as such (China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia, pages 285-286). They were not reflective of typical Qing behavior towards rebels.

So the Panthay rebellion is also atypical? And the treatment of the people of Sichuan during the White Lotus rebellion? Not to repeat Tibet. So far I see mass imprisonment and slaughter not at all unusual, if smattered with examples of promotion. This policy seems pretty consistent, even against people who were ethnic Han. Whilst it may not be a racist policy, it is most certainly atrocious and equal to some of the worst European atrocities.

So if Qing China does something bad, it is genuinely racist behavior. If the contrary happens, it is realpolitik. Could you elaborate on your justification for this?

If Qing China commits genocide, it goes beyond realpolitik into complete atrocity, as it would be for anyone else. When the administration of the periphery is left to the people of the periphery rather than brought under tighter Qing control, I see it as measured and practical, as nobody is being harmed in that process. I still think the Qing should not exactly be admired for their treatment of Christian missionaries.

Do you believe that the Ottoman conquest of the Mamluks is comparable to Erdogan's intervention in Syria? Modern China belongs to a separate tradition of statecraft from imperial China and has entirely different reasons and objectives for overseas expansionism. Nor is modern Africa, the archetypal 3rd World, Early Modern India, among the world's economic centers. The fact that you think this is a "comparable" example is very, very astonishing.

I think they are comparable, but not the same. Both are military actions in the region, one to conquer, the other to pacify a neighbouring region, with no chance to hold territory. But we'd be right that other concerns (i.e. the recent coup, international pressure to prevent a new Mandatory system) would prevent any action akin to that of the Ottoman Empire. My comparison to modern China is to point out that there are plenty of circumstances in which China could be accused of being exploitative.

Also, you're asking us to make predictions on a Chinese state having colonies - something that never happened. The examples from OTL were where some of the worst atrocities the colonisers committed took place, half the reason we have the debate on Qings moral character is that you seem to believe that it is greater than the European powers, based on its policies, and as such wouldn't commit these crimes. So I'm forced to take reference to its contrary policy decisions, and the only other Chinese state that has taken maritime action in the way you suggest. Yes, proto-industrial Qing may not be a resource extractor initially, but they could certainly take advantage of cheaper resources, and the wealth of india to fund their own industrial revolution. After all, China does have its own coal reserves. If the reverse took place in a DBWI - I could well use the fact that England committed one atrocity (the Harrowing) to a rebel group outside of colonisation to show that its moral character (based on policy) was superior and in an England-dominated timeline it wouldn't commit the alt-Qing atrocities. But it did, so there is every chance that the Qing dynasty would too - since it committed more atrocities.

Considering this never happened in the Tarim Basin, care to justify? So far your only serious argument has been the Zunghar genocide, which can be easily demonstrated not to be normal Qing behavior by citing the repeated examples of leniency towards Altishahr, which is so obviously different from the case of India insofar as the Zunghars would have yielded no benefit to the throne even had they not been killed, and which does not take into account the Qing view of India as a center of civilization and the view of Zunghars as mere barbarians who "run to their nests."
I refer you to the treatment of other rebellions.

Citing Taiwan for hypothetical Qing policy in India is akin to citing North America for British policy in India. Taiwan is a settler colony occupied by no states and a lightly settled population vulnerable to disease, which both India and the Tarim Basin would not be under the (High) Qing.

Apart from Qing actively tried to limit settlement of Taiwan, which suggests it wasn't intentionally a settler colony. Plus, the comparisons are in some ways valid - Britain tried to use N.America as a captive market for its goods, used local peoples as allies to ]against rivals.

You realize you have not shown a single example of racism besides the examinations issue (which was never universal in the first place; the Mongols, who did not take the examinations, were explicitly among the Qing elite) and the Zunghar genocide, which as I have shown is easily refutable. Your sole reason for rejecting academic consensus and why Qing patronage of Xinjiang Mongols and Muslims was any more "realpolitik" than the Zunghar genocide is what it feels like to you.

I refer again to Tibet, and whilst not exactly race, the treatment of Christians. Also, "Rejecting Consensus", you've referenced one text! One! I reject your argument that the Qing would not commit atrocities, because its one sided and based on one (if well regarded) text to indicate their moral character, or their policy decisions, despite there being adequate examples of the opposite action.

What do you mean by taking a genocide "into account"? This thread isn't about whether the Qing were morally good, it's about how exploitative a Qing India would be. My point isn't that the genocide didn't matter, rather that it was not reflective of general Qing policies and RogueTraderEnthusiast is ignoring all context on why such polices would not have any precedent or make any sense in India. To draw an analogy, RTE is saying "the Ottoman Empire would have committed genocide on Italians if Mehmed II conquered Italy because of the Armenian genocide."

I'm ignoring no context. Also, I'm not saying that. What I am saying is that you're disregarding or all ignoring all Qing action, or arguments that disagree with your position. The best analogy is that "The Ottoman Empire may have committed genocide on Italians based on their treatment of the Armenian people". You state there is no precedent, but your argument relies on us ignoring all the precedent set up by both European and Arab colonisers to reach your conclusion.
 
Booh, the horrible Europeans, they are intrisically mean.

The Chinese is historically a violent state, with no problem going abroad and smashing entire cultures when possible (see: Vietnam, repeatedly ; Xinjiang).

Of course European colonisation was not a great period of history. Of course there were atrocities. There are atrocities in every war of conquest. It's unfortunately part of the game. We also cannot treat the Europeans as if they were one big block, with everybody intent on colonisation. The French parliament was fraught with opposition to that, and conflicting theories on it.

I am not going to argue taht one of the goal was not exploitation of local resources, of course it was, but we should not forget that a lot of the underlying ideology was humanitarian as well. And that is an ideology that was actually pursued in practice, with doctors going there, education programs, etc...

Was this done in the gentlest way possible? No, probably not. Was European colonisation a completely evil enterprise made my monsters uniquely bent on looting the land? The facts tell us this is not the case either.

Such a massive undertaking has to be replaced in the context and mentalities of the time. We cannot judge this period with our current views. It happened due to a combination of factors (need for resource, mission civilisatrice, interstate competition) that mean that any country in that position would and indeed did do the same
 
One secondary source, if well regarded, is not the 100% indisputable truth.
So you want more sources on my claims on Qing multiethnic policy and their lack of racism? I'm happy to provide as many as you want.
"Tributaries" and "barbarians" could enjoy the same privileges as inhabitants of the core of the empire if they respond to the imperial carrots and sticks as humans were expected to do. Greedy traders and nomads could transform themselves into civilized people's by accepting regulated trade with designated imperial representatives and by making gestures of submission to the emperor [...] Just as domestic rebels were divided into treasonous "bandits" and innocent "coerced followers" [...] so external peoples could become either loyal tributaries or alien enemies. (China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia, page 548)

The Qing conceived of themselves as rulers of a pluralistic, multiethnic empire. They regarded the peoples inhabiting the strategic Inner Asian peripheries as major participants in the imperial enterprise, imperial subjects on equal footing with Han Chinese. Peoples speaking a variety of non-Sinitic languages and adhering to Islam, Tibetan Buddhism, and shamanism were encouraged during the eighteenth century to sustain their separate cultures and belief systems. (The Last Emperors: A Social History of Qing Institutions, page 2)
Do you want more?

Not to repeat Tibet. So far I see mass imprisonment and slaughter not at all unusual
The post you quoted has me specifically referencing the High Qing, the century between c. 1683 and c. 1780, when Qing India would be created. None of your examples are from the High Qing. Same for your Christian persecution reference.

And what about Tibet? The Qing hold on it was very loose, intentionally so as not to overburden the Tibetans (just 2,000 troops in Lhasa!) The Qing never committed genocide on Tibet proper, certainly, and the Zunghars devastated it much more. Unless you're referencing the Gyalrongwa/Jinchuan, which 1) are only Tibetan in a vague sense of the term; they didn't accept Tibetan Buddhism or the authority of the Tibetan state and 2) are also not comparable to a hypothetical India.

Yes, proto-industrial Qing may not be a resource extractor initially, but they could certainly take advantage of cheaper resources, and the wealth of india to fund their own industrial revolution.
Unlike Europe, the nature of Qing political economy made this extremely unlikely without an abandonment of the Mencian system, which would mean so dramatic a political shift from the High Qing order that it would be meaningless to call it a "Qing" India, insofar as such a state would have abandoned most of the ideology (I.e. Mencius-oriented system of welfare and economic development and state acceptance of other civilizational traditions, such as Tibetan Buddhism) of the High Qing order. My argument is not based on examples as you seem to think; rather, the nature of Chinese political theory made intentional economic exploitation by the state unthinkable to officials. I outlined this in the OP by citing Wong.

Apart from Qing actively tried to limit settlement of Taiwan, which suggests it wasn't intentionally a settler colony.
It depended, Lan Dingyuan is a good counterexample to state disinterest in Taiwan. But more importantly, the Qing state came to accept it as such; it itself made what was in essence a 'reservation' for the "savages" in the 1720s and perennially changed its size throughout the next century and a half. And considering how Taiwan became a major grain exporter by the late High Qing, the island was for all intents and purposes a settler colony under state supervision, although the state may not have wanted it so.
 
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Booh, the horrible Europeans, they are intrisically mean.

The Chinese is historically a violent state, with no problem going abroad and smashing entire cultures when possible (see: Vietnam, repeatedly ; Xinjiang).

Of course European colonisation was not a great period of history. Of course there were atrocities. There are atrocities in every war of conquest. It's unfortunately part of the game. We also cannot treat the Europeans as if they were one big block, with everybody intent on colonisation. The French parliament was fraught with opposition to that, and conflicting theories on it.

I am not going to argue taht one of the goal was not exploitation of local resources, of course it was, but we should not forget that a lot of the underlying ideology was humanitarian as well. And that is an ideology that was actually pursued in practice, with doctors going there, education programs, etc...

Was this done in the gentlest way possible? No, probably not. Was European colonisation a completely evil enterprise made my monsters uniquely bent on looting the land? The facts tell us this is not the case either.

Such a massive undertaking has to be replaced in the context and mentalities of the time. We cannot judge this period with our current views. It happened due to a combination of factors (need for resource, mission civilisatrice, interstate competition) that mean that any country in that position would and indeed did do the same


The humanitarian ideology was one of history's first great PR campaigns. Lofty humanitarianism had always accompanied colonial violence, from de las Casas to missionary charities. One could not exist without the other -- the explorer and exploiter opened up the hinterland so that the missionary could go forth and convert, and the murdered/kidnapped missionary provided immediate pretext for colonization. The humanitarians also kept the labor force healthy and able to work, and provided contacts in the deep hinterland that could work with company agents.

Even the idea of uplifting the natives ultimately placed them as lower-level participants in a wider colonial construction -- turning them into Christian subjects led by the paternal European metropole, with their advancement posited as the key to cultural unity and, more importantly, economic benefit (since said natives could then act as more manpower for advanced economic activities instead of being basic-level labor).

Education programs were, in most if not all cases, a way to create local elites whose privileges were dependent on colonialism and whose culture tended more towards the colonizer than the colonized. These colonies also needed low-level administrators, with positions filled by evolues and co-opted Christians.

These 19th century attempts at humanitarianism and education were inextricably bound up in the profit motive, just as the Christianization of the Americas and elsewhere was bound up in resource extraction and the encomiendas. Europe realized their crimes, by Enlightenment and Christian means -- but the humanitarian efforts were either culturally imperialist or ultimately complicit in the creation of a European super-stratum above the conquered colonial society. Humanitarians created civil society from the ashes of the old order -- and what is civil society but the genteel branch of the elite control of civilization? Churches, schools, hospitals -- all provide more Europeans dependent on colonialism and more institutions to bolster and flesh out the naked economic exploitation of the colony.

Now for the edge: contemporary NGOs and humanitarians are the handmaidens of the neoliberal order, successors in paternalistic ideology and paternalistic action to the Christian imperialists of old just as the neoliberal order is but the smiling successor of the West's brutal world-imperial economic complex.
 
Now for the edge: contemporary NGOs and humanitarians are the handmaidens of the neoliberal order, successors in paternalistic ideology and paternalistic action to the Christian imperialists of old just as the neoliberal order is but the smiling successor of the West's brutal world-imperial economic complex.
Oh I agree with you here.

However, the missionary and the sword did not always go hand to hand in French colonialism. It actually clashed quite a bit in Indochina.

However I would say your argument makes every actor of the process into a self serving monster, which I don't believe was the case.

Beyond that, my point is that any country in that situation would have done the same and that the only reason it became a European symbol is because Europe did it bigger than everybody else, thanks to way superior technology and a complex set of circumstances.
 
I think the reason we see maritime colonialism as European is because colonialism *is* European. Firstly, going out to Asia and the Americas and forcibly creating a new market by destroying local actors could only have been done by Europe -- only Europe was cut off from the wider Islamo-Indian-Chinese and Islamo-African trade universes, and only Europe had the technology to both sail to Asia and to conquer places like Malacca and Calicut with a few men while also negotiating for basing rights. Only the Europeans had the particular bourgeoisie and banking systems necessary for joint-stock companies. Only the Europeans, via the Andes, had the silver to break into China. Only the Europeans conquered in the name of outright profit -- this distinction can also be seen in their almost industrial systems of agricultural slavery.

And sure, there were clashes between missionaries and conquerors -- de las Casas being the first great example. But while actors fought on the ground, both sides served to reinforce the overall control of the colony by the metropole. Only the most radical outright called for decolonization. I'd say the missionaries were in many cases the dupes, caught up in propaganda and God -- the smiling, naive counterpart to the rapacious capitalism of company agents and European commanders.

My argument does make monsters of these men -- because I see colonialism as a monstrosity itself. A highly interesting and compelling monstrosity, but ultimately one that created a global capitalist system that exploits people to this day.
 
So you want more sources on my claims on Qing multiethnic policy and their lack of racism? I'm happy to provide as many as you want.
"Tributaries" and "barbarians" could enjoy the same privileges as inhabitants of the core of the empire if they respond to the imperial carrots and sticks as humans were expected to do. Greedy traders and nomads could transform themselves into civilized people's by accepting regulated trade with designated imperial representatives and by making gestures of submission to the emperor [...] Just as domestic rebels were divided into treasonous "bandits" and innocent "coerced followers" [...] so external peoples could become either loyal tributaries or alien enemies. (China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia, page 548)

The Qing conceived of themselves as rulers of a pluralistic, multiethnic empire. They regarded the peoples inhabiting the strategic Inner Asian peripheries as major participants in the imperial enterprise, imperial subjects on equal footing with Han Chinese. Peoples speaking a variety of non-Sinitic languages and adhering to Islam, Tibetan Buddhism, and shamanism were encouraged during the eighteenth century to sustain their separate cultures and belief systems. (The Last Emperors: A Social History of Qing Institutions, page 2)
Do you want more?
That certainly adds more weight to your argument rather than the opinion of one historian.


The post you quoted has me specifically referencing the High Qing, the century between c. 1683 and c. 1780, when Qing India would be created. None of your examples are from the High Qing. Same for your Christian persecution reference.

Well, you never stated that, you said during the Qing. Not the High Qing, which lasted what, 97 years, starting just after the destruction of the Heavenly Kingdom. That is an absurdly small window to judge the behavior of a centuries long dynasty, or predict their behavior, especially outside of that window.

And what about Tibet? The Qing hold on it was very loose, intentionally so as not to overburden the Tibetans (just 2,000 troops in Lhasa!) The Qing never committed genocide on Tibet proper, certainly, and the Zunghars devastated it much more. Unless you're referencing the Gyalrongwa/Jinchuan, which 1) are only Tibetan in a vague sense of the term; they didn't accept Tibetan Buddhism or the authority of the Tibetan state and 2) are also not comparable to a hypothetical India.

Tibet after the White Lotus Rebellion had huge areas literally resettled in freshly built stockades. I don't know what to make of that other than imprisoning an entire culture because it disagreed with Qing rule. Thankfully it isn't genocide, but forcing everyone out of their homes into what I can only interpret as prison camps is atrocious.

Unlike Europe, the nature of Qing political economy made this extremely unlikely without an abandonment of the Mencian system, which would mean so dramatic a political shift from the High Qing order that it would be meaningless to call it a "Qing" India, insofar as such a state would have abandoned most of the ideology (I.e. Mencius-oriented system of welfare and economic development and state acceptance of other civilizational traditions, such as Tibetan Buddhism) of the High Qing order. My argument is not based on examples as you seem to think; rather, the nature of Chinese political theory made intentional economic exploitation by the state unthinkable to officials. I outlined this in the OP by citing Wong.

Well, if you're going to insist on a China governed by a specific set of principles and policies, rather than the policies and pressures of that state, then you'll always get the India that you want. Political theory always changes as pressures prove it to be unsustainable. It may even be the case that Qing India is so radically different from Qing China that Mencian ideals are disregarded in the region as an obstruction to stability. However, I would still be honest enough to call it a Qing India.
 
@El Yanqui , I am not on my computer so can't make the answer your post deserves but I fully disagree.

Oman did commercial colonialism, Vietnam had settler colonies in Ciampa, Zeng He was also a brutal at times assertion of strength for commercial purposes and I'm sure I could find more examples
 
I do not think Chinese governance of the Tarim basin is good evidence for prospective Chinese governance of India. Control of the Tarim basin was for the purpose of securing trade routes. Your incentives there are to maintain stability and not upset the locals too much, so that trade passes through unhindered. A theoretical occupation of Indian principalities would be to have a source of raw materials, whereby your incentive is to minimise the cost of raw materials for domestic benefit. That encourages price controls and monopsony buying power. Note the difference in governance between French Quebec and the French Congo. Or, indeed, British Singapore and British India.

I would also contest the notion that racism would be lessened. Slavery cemented racial hierarchies for Africans in places where slavery was present, but didn't affect India. Well into the 1800s intermixing happened with Indians, despite British involvement in slavery for centuries at that point. Strong racism did not happen until the mid-1800s with the Raj bringing over a different class of Brits, and a much greater economic disparity having emerged between Britain and India by that time. Even then, the Indian zamindars and princes were not looked down upon that much. I imagine Chinese racism to Indians will similarly depend on the scale of economic difference between natives and colonialist.
 
Hold up. Has there even been any discussion of how China ended up with Indian territories on the Coromandel coast or in the OTL Madras presidency? How would China even under a peak Qing period (I'll admit this much, I know nothing about China except the Han Dynasty and a little bit about the start of the Ming) be able to fund a conquest of the principalities of the south?

Travancore at this time was at it's height, they had past victories against foreign European states such as the Dutch and the Portuguese. Technologies that European nations had were already pouring in to the nations, as the French gave steam technology and firearm technology to the nation's army. The VOC were almost expelled from the mainland of the sub-continent due to a very harsh treaty imposed on them by Travancore and thus they had gained pre-eminence among all of the states of the south. Kochin was the other powerful state, but they were more trade focused. The British took nearly forty years to make Travancore into a principality paying tax to the Madras Presidency and even then they had a revolution that nearly ousted the British.

In the north the situation was a bit different, the countries were weary from war and invasion, nearly a century of intrigue and internecine warfare had destroyed manpower reserves as well as beuaracratic insitutions. Yet an invasion over Tibet is hard and once again European technologies are more advanced than Qing technologies in warfare and class insitutions.
 
@ Shahrasayr

You're confusing the Malabar and Coromandel Coasts. Both Travancore and Calicut were Malabar states, while the Coromandel before the return of the Marathas in 1740 was ruled in the south by the nawab of Arcot and in the north by the nizam of Hyderabad. The latter was a considerable power, if constantly harassed by the Marathas in this time period. The former, by contrast, was surrounded by enemies all throughout its land frontier - the Marathas in the northwest and the nizam in the north (who claimed sovereignty over Arcot) - and was not a particularly militarily powerful state. Neither Arcot nor Hyderabad were very stable; they both collapsed into succession wars in the late 1740s, allowing the Europeans to seize de facto control over Arcot - and note that both the CIO and the EIC had less than 12,000 men total during this time period.
 
That certainly adds more weight to your argument rather than the opinion of one historian.
Is it my turn to ask for academic sources on your claim that the Qing were a racist empire, which you have not given at any point so far (while accusing me of not sourcing enough)?

Well, you never stated that, you said during the Qing. Not the High Qing, which lasted what, 97 years, starting just after the destruction of the Heavenly Kingdom.
I urge you to read the word between "during the" and "Qing were" in the paragraph you quoted.

The Taiping Heavenly State began in 1851 and ended in 1864, with the fall of Nanjing, and the entire Taiping civil war occurred some eight decades after the High Qing period had ended (if we consider the White Lotus rising of Wang Lun in Shandong, 1774, as the end of the era). So I'm afraid I'm not sure what you're referring to. From context it appears that you're talking about the fall of the Ming, but the Ming had de facto ended in 1659, and neither the Three Feudatories nor the Zheng state after 1662 wanted to resurrect the Ming (the Zheng state asked to be a tributary of the Qing empire with the same relationship as between China and Korea - see Conflict and Commerce in Maritime East Asia: The Zheng Family and the Shaping of the Modern World, c. 1620-1720).

The reasons I mention specifically the High Qing are numerous:
  • The High Qing was the epitome of the Qing order, an era of prosperity when everything seemed to be going right. In my opinion, looking at the acme of Qing (and, insofar as the Qing were the completion of the late imperial Chinese civilization, Chinese) development is more fruitful to answering the question of what a Qing India at its height would look like rather than looking at a very strained empire of a very strained society.
  • The existence of Southeast Asian colonies would relieve pressures on China itself by allowing for more frontier expansion in extremely fertile yet lightly inhabited areas, such as the Mekong Delta. The halting of frontier expansion in the 1780s was a major factor in the end of the High Qing era of prosperity, responsible for the White Lotus rising: "But over the course of the late eighteenth century, as population density in the northeast continued to climb, the productivity of many farms declined due to the exhaustion of the topsoil and erosion from denuded hillsides. This economic strain compounded the built-in social tensions between multiple landlords and their tenants, between older natives and new arrivals, and between highland and lowland cultural groups." (The Great Qing: China's Last Empire, page 156) A successful maritime Qing China implies that the High Qing period would last much longer.
  • Qing India would be lost (or at least fundamentally transformed) once the High Qing period has ended, even without European involvement, just as the Qing de facto gave up much of western Xinjiang to the Khanate of Khoqand and gave Khoqand immense extraterritorial privileges in Xinjiang (The Empire and the Khanate: A Political History of Qing Relations with Khoqand c. 1760-1860; tariffs in Qing cities would be handed over to Khoqand and Khoqandi agents had jurisdiction over foreigners in the Tarim Basin). The post-High Qing era was marked by "state retreat" which native Indian powers would be sure to exploit.
Tibet after the White Lotus Rebellion had huge areas literally resettled in freshly built stockades.
Tibet was so loosely ruled that some historians don't even count it as part of the Qing empire (e.g. Frederick W. Mote, Imperial China, 900-1800). Please give me an academic source for this claim. You realize the White Lotus Rebellions were a Han Chinese phenomenon?

Political theory always changes as pressures prove it to be unsustainable.
Mencian Confucianism was the state ideology of imperial China. To give it up is equivalent to the Soviet Union giving up Communism entirely - even more of a shift, actually, because Mencian obligations of the Confucian welfare state were simply a fact of statecraft. It was only the shocks of Western intrusion that made China abandon it; the burdens of ruling the Tarim Basin, a region far more hostile to China than India in terms of economic development, religious landscape (Islam being generally more hostile towards infidel rulers than Hinduism), or terrain, provided for regional innovations but the basic system was retained. Not only that, India has traditions of welfare that can be easily matched to Chinese practices (taccavi famine relief, for example, which the Company was reluctant to give). A non-Confucian Qing China would still be Qing, but it would be a fundamentally different state from the High Qing.

Control of the Tarim basin was for the purpose of securing trade routes.
Actually, it was for political purposes; as Zuo Zongtang said, control over the Tarim Basin was necessary to control the Mongols, and control over the Mongols was necessary to control Belijing. Although the Qing heavily taxed the trade routes, Xinjiang was always, without exception, a net loss as an economic venture that always needed hefty subsides from the state treasuries.

A theoretical occupation of Indian principalities would be to have a source of raw materials
Please reread the R. B Wong citation in the OP. The Qing political economy, once they had given up much of the steppe model and established themselves as Chinese emperors, would find it difficult to accept conquering a territory only as a "source of raw materials" without security needs. If the Qing wanted a source of raw materials, one wonders why the Qing emperors bought rice and wood from Thailand when they could have conquered it with the very large army they had and forced the population into a rice-growing and tree-growing plantation economy, or why they traded with Japan for the all-important copper instead of constructing a navy and attacking it. A hypothetical Qing India would most likely also be for political reasons, like Taiwan and Xinjiang were; to guard against European incursion, for example.
 
@ Shahrasayr

You're confusing the Malabar and Coromandel Coasts. Both Travancore and Calicut were Malabar states, while the Coromandel before the return of the Marathas in 1740 was ruled in the south by the nawab of Arcot and in the north by the nizam of Hyderabad. The latter was a considerable power, if constantly harassed by the Marathas in this time period. The former, by contrast, was surrounded by enemies all throughout its land frontier - the Marathas in the northwest and the nizam in the north (who claimed sovereignty over Arcot) - and was not a particularly militarily powerful state. Neither Arcot nor Hyderabad were very stable; they both collapsed into succession wars in the late 1740s, allowing the Europeans to seize de facto control over Arcot - and note that both the CIO and the EIC had less than 12,000 men total during this time period.

You're right about the Malabar and Coromandel mix-up, I just had a bit of a brain fart then. And I completely agree taht the succession crisis in Arcot can be exploited, but the power struggle in the Nizamate was quickly resolved and put to rest by Sultan Asaf Jah.

But you forget about one key player in both the Coromandel and Malabar politics; the Kingdom of Mysore. Mysore had not only subsumed a lot of pre-existing infrastructure in the area, but they also implemented their own. The British conquest of Mysore was almost a fluke, had not constant betrayals happen in the past few wars as well as the gates being opened to the British in the Siege of Mysore, their supplies would have run out and the tables would have been turned in the war. Do the Chinese really have the capacity to implement an invasion of states as well established?
 
Huh, that's what you call Hyderabad. For some reason I thought it was "nizamdom." Is Bengal a "nawabate" then?

the Kingdom of Mysore
I was thinking of the time period before Haidar Ali formally overthrew the Wodeyars in 1761. I've been trying and failing to find an article titled "Warfare and State Finance in Wodeyar Mysore" (not on Jstor for some reason), so I can't give a detailed comment about Mysore. But per War, Culture, and Society in Early Modern South Asia, 1740-1849, the Wodeyars were doing their best to make Mysore a strong South Indian power but failing (from page 72):
The Mysore state was a strong and weak state at the same time. It was strong because it had access to large amount of revenue and considerable animal resources. It was weak because state power was dependent on a series of alliances as regards both internal as well as external affairs. Before the rise of Haidar Ali, the Mysore state failed to translate its sophisticated fiscal structure into an instrument geared for regular revenue collection. The fiscal crisis was accelerated by the repeated invasion of other indigenous powers, and this prevented the growth of a centralized monarchical army in Wodeyar Mysore.​
I don't think Mysore had any great power on the coastline before Haidar Ali's rise to power in the late 1750s, but I could be wrong. You probable know a lot more about India than I do.
 
Is it my turn to ask for academic sources on your claim that the Qing were a racist empire, which you have not given at any point so far (while accusing me of not sourcing enough)?
I am primarily disputing your claim that it was anti-racist, the burden of proof lies on you in this circumstance. I won't pretend to be a scholar of Chinese history, but when I've put forward genuine atrocities, you've either dismissed them out of hand, considered the entire race of no value to the Qing (Dzughars), or failed to explain their actions. I'll happily make reference to the claims of "Familiar strangers", which is not unlike the Roman practice of "Noble Heresies".

I urge you to read the word between "during the" and "Qing were" in the paragraph you quoted.

Read your first post, you used the term "High Qing" exactly no times. You've moved the goal post to suit your argument, or failed to make the argument you thought you made at the time.

The Taiping Heavenly State began in 1851 and ended in 1864, with the fall of Nanjing, and the entire Taiping civil war occurred some eight decades after the High Qing period had ended (if we consider the White Lotus rising of Wang Lun in Shandong, 1774, as the end of the era). So I'm afraid I'm not sure what you're referring to. From context it appears that you're talking about the fall of the Ming, but the Ming had de facto ended in 1659, and neither the Three Feudatories nor the Zheng state after 1662 wanted to resurrect the Ming (the Zheng state asked to be a tributary of the Qing empire with the same relationship as between China and Korea - see Conflict and Commerce in Maritime East Asia: The Zheng Family and the Shaping of the Modern World, c. 1620-1720).

Again, part of the Qing, but I'll admit I got a few things mixed up there (not the least the dates of the THS. I've accidentally conflated the White Lotus rebellion with the Tibetan rebellion of 1905. I was making no reference to the Ming whatsoever. The White Lotus Rebellion led to the mass imprisonment in the areas near Sichuan.

The reasons I mention specifically the High Qing are numerous:
  • The High Qing was the epitome of the Qing order, an era of prosperity when everything seemed to be going right. In my opinion, looking at the acme of Qing (and, insofar as the Qing were the completion of the late imperial Chinese civilization, Chinese) development is more fruitful to answering the question of what a Qing India at its height would look like rather than looking at a very strained empire of a very strained society.
  • The existence of Southeast Asian colonies would relieve pressures on China itself by allowing for more frontier expansion in extremely fertile yet lightly inhabited areas, such as the Mekong Delta. The halting of frontier expansion in the 1780s was a major factor in the end of the High Qing era of prosperity, responsible for the White Lotus rising: "But over the course of the late eighteenth century, as population density in the northeast continued to climb, the productivity of many farms declined due to the exhaustion of the topsoil and erosion from denuded hillsides. This economic strain compounded the built-in social tensions between multiple landlords and their tenants, between older natives and new arrivals, and between highland and lowland cultural groups." (The Great Qing: China's Last Empire, page 156) A successful maritime Qing China implies that the High Qing period would last much longer.
  • Qing India would be lost (or at least fundamentally transformed) once the High Qing period has ended, even without European involvement, just as the Qing de facto gave up much of western Xinjiang to the Khanate of Khoqand and gave Khoqand immense extraterritorial privileges in Xinjiang (The Empire and the Khanate: A Political History of Qing Relations with Khoqand c. 1760-1860; tariffs in Qing cities would be handed over to Khoqand and Khoqandi agents had jurisdiction over foreigners in the Tarim Basin). The post-High Qing era was marked by "state retreat" which native Indian powers would be sure to exploit.
  • Since you've moved the goalposts firmly here, I'll argue against them. Looking only at the best part of the Qing ignores what the officials of a Qing Empire would do when times are bad. It would be like looking at the best parts of British Indian rule and pretending that is all it will be, or the best parts of the Napoleonic Era.
  • So you're explicitly stating that even a High Qing China would be focusing on exploiting its colonies for food production. At least we're now looking at active exploitation by the Qing (High or no).
  • So the conclusion is a brief period of exploiting India for food production and creating new Chinese agricultural settler colonies. This is starting to sound less like British India, and more like Rhodesia. I'll give the Qing more credit as they're not likely to immediately leave, and they have a larger settler population to work with to provide greater staying power.

Tibet was so loosely ruled that some historians don't even count it as part of the Qing empire (e.g. Frederick W. Mote, Imperial China, 900-1800). Please give me an academic source for this claim. You realize the White Lotus Rebellions were a Han Chinese phenomenon?

As stated above, I got myself a bit mixed up - lots of rapid reading to do, very little time.

Mencian Confucianism was the state ideology of imperial China. To give it up is equivalent to the Soviet Union giving up Communism entirely - even more of a shift, actually, because Mencian obligations of the Confucian welfare state were simply a fact of statecraft. It was only the shocks of Western intrusion that made China abandon it; the burdens of ruling the Tarim Basin, a region far more hostile to China than India in terms of economic development, religious landscape (Islam being generally more hostile towards infidel rulers than Hinduism), or terrain, provided for regional innovations but the basic system was retained. Not only that, India has traditions of welfare that can be easily matched to Chinese practices (taccavi famine relief, for example, which the Company was reluctant to give). A non-Confucian Qing China would still be Qing, but it would be a fundamentally different state from the High Qing.

I stand by my claim. Just because it isn't High Qing, we rightfully agree is Qing, but you said it wouldn't be a "Qing" India. It would be, but not High Qing, more likely it would be referred to as "Colonial Qing", or "Post Mencian Qing", or named after the politician/thinker that suggested that Mencian teachings aren't required for Indians.

However, to try and reach an amicable resolution - if you're insisting on an India ruled by High Qing principles? Chances are it will start of good, and continue to be better than British India in many cases whilst those principles are maintained. I have little faith however, that they'd survive political or economic expediency. If they do, and I simply underestimate the political will to maintain those principles, then woo!
 
I'll happily make reference to the claims of "Familiar strangers", which is not unlike the Roman practice of "Noble Heresies".
The Qing did not call the Hui familiar strangers; it actually protected them against Confucian moralists who claimed Islam was barbaric and wanted to ban it. The "familiar strangers" is a reference to a book, Familiar Strangers: A History of Muslims in Northwest China, which argues that Chinese society (not the state) saw them as such.

considered the entire race of no value to the Qing
That comes directly from Peter C. Perdue, China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia (Harvard University Press, 2005): "The Qing army did not need more Central Asian warriors; it already contained Manchus and docile Khalkha Mongols." So yes, they served no value to the Qing, as nomads were mainly of military value and were often an economic burden on the state otherwise. I don't see why you're accusing me of stating a fact?

Read your first post
I assumed it would be clear I'm referring to the 18th century, since the Qing were in no capacity to conquer India in either the preceding or the succeeding century. Similarly, if someone made a thread on Ottoman India, I would assume they are referring to the 16th century height of Ottoman expansionism in the Indian Ocean. But you're right, I should have been clearer.

what the officials of a Qing Empire would do when times are bad
There were multiple time frames when things could have gone bad during the High Qing - the great harvest failure of 1757-1759, for example, when Gansu Province produced less than 55% of its ideal grain yields at the same time that large armies were passing through it to conquer Xinjiang. Through efficient relief programs the Qing were able to stop the harvest failure from disrupting the military campaigns or sparking rebellions. So no, what the officials of a Qing empire at its height would do during times of crisis can be discerned by looking at the High Qing era alone.

a brief period of exploiting India for food production
In Southeast Asia, not India. Read what I say carefully. Southeast Asia had an extremely light population density, and High Qing policy encouraged colonization of sparsely populated areas. India, by contrast, was densely populated and thus unsuitable for Chinese colonization. There's a reason I singled out India specifically and not Qing maritime imperialism as a whole. In Southeast Asia Chinese imperialism would look significantly more like South Africa or the Americas, and consequently much darker than in India, which would not be significantly different from policy towards Qing China.

I have little faith however, that they'd survive political or economic expediency.
And why is that? There is no economic expediency to speak of; the Qing state made 80 million taels annually and could afford to regularly cancel taxation for entire provinces (some years there were more provinces not paying taxes than paying them). Political expediency generally works against oppression and exploitation.
 
Huh, that's what you call Hyderabad. For some reason I thought it was "nizamdom." Is Bengal a "nawabate" then?


I was thinking of the time period before Haidar Ali formally overthrew the Wodeyars in 1761. I've been trying and failing to find an article titled "Warfare and State Finance in Wodeyar Mysore" (not on Jstor for some reason), so I can't give a detailed comment about Mysore. But per War, Culture, and Society in Early Modern South Asia, 1740-1849, the Wodeyars were doing their best to make Mysore a strong South Indian power but failing (from page 72):
The Mysore state was a strong and weak state at the same time. It was strong because it had access to large amount of revenue and considerable animal resources. It was weak because state power was dependent on a series of alliances as regards both internal as well as external affairs. Before the rise of Haidar Ali, the Mysore state failed to translate its sophisticated fiscal structure into an instrument geared for regular revenue collection. The fiscal crisis was accelerated by the repeated invasion of other indigenous powers, and this prevented the growth of a centralized monarchical army in Wodeyar Mysore.​
I don't think Mysore had any great power on the coastline before Haidar Ali's rise to power in the late 1750s, but I could be wrong. You probable know a lot more about India than I do.

Yeah that's the term for it. Bengal was either referred to as the Direct Territories of the Nawab of Bengal or the Nawabate of Bengal in documents penned circa. 1750s. After that they prefered the former since the Nawab's power really had been broken and the latter term implied a degree of sovereignty that the British couldn't allow.

And all the problems about Wodeyar Mysore you list are definitely true, but one of the main reasons that Mysore couldn't implement logical and practical tax standards was because of the sheer amount of decentralisation in the state, which Haidar Ali capitalised on and subsequently resolved. And as for no coast line, it's true in a sense but Keladi was a loyal vassal of Wodeyar Mysore and they provided a safe port for trade to flow into Mysore in the form of Mangalore. And of course later their defiance to Haider Ali was noted and they were crushed, being subsumed into Mysore proper. But the Keladi dominions were on the Malabar coast so it is kinda missing the point.
 
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