China was not unified under a single dynasty

That's going to be moderately hard. There's really next to nothing keeping china geographically separated.
 
What if China was never unified under a single dynasty? I think the POD would be in the Warring States period.

As a fan of the Three Kingdoms period, it would be interesting if Wei, Shu and Wu all managed to survive and form their own national identities. All three kingdoms collapse were essentially their own doing anyway so have some competent leadership and the three kingdoms period can drag on and on until theres no desire left to restore a unified China.
 
That's going to be moderately hard. There's really next to nothing keeping china geographically separated.

Aside from mountains. And rivers. And deserts.

Which isn't to say that China doesn't have many advantages that made remaining a coherent entity easier than say, the Roman Empire, but it wasn't effortless.

As a fan of the Three Kingdoms period, it would be interesting if Wei, Shu and Wu all managed to survive and form their own national identities. All three kingdoms collapse were essentially their own doing anyway so have some competent leadership and the three kingdoms period can drag on and on until theres no desire left to restore a unified China.


Really not likely. As soon as Wei gets some long-term competent leadership, Shu and Wu are toast. Which is probably why Liu Shan's descendants gave him the posthumous name 'the Deep-thinking Duke'. Taking the money and running was the best bet by that time.
 
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the best bet is have Qin Shihuang never unite China in the first place... :D so all the future "Chinese" will regard united China as ASB :eek:

I don't know, from known records, there were about 1,800 fiefdoms in the early Zhou, but at the start of the Spring and Autumn era, there were only 124, at the beginning of Warring States right after the partition of Jin, there were a dozen, and then right before Qin Shihuang's conquer spree there were only 7+a puppet of Qin left.
 
Well of course there's nothing really stopping perpetual division from happening... but after the 'first' unification and especially after the Han adoption of Confucianism (although most other ideologies similarly propagated this view) Chinese unification became to be seen as the 'normal' state of affairs. So, for example, a Three Kingdoms PoD will be slightly harder for the sole reason that the strongest power at the time will always seek domination, rather than balancing. This was so even considering the 200+ years of division under the Northern-Southern Dynasties.

So the Warring Kingdoms PoD would be your best bet, although there is much to be said about a PoD where Xiang Yu fends off Liu Bang and, as he sort of did OTL, relinquishes local control back to the nobles of the pre-Qin Warring States.

The effects of Chinese disunity will be pretty big. Certainly you would see identities like 'Chu' or 'Qin' develop in China - the Warring States used different scripts, and the Chu language was even linguistically different from the other Chinese languages. You'd also see much more experimentation with different social forms and an attendant diversification of social thought. Chinese expansion into the North, the West and, more consequentially, the South wouldn't have happened in the dramatic way that it did OTL.
 
Also if China never unites the constant competition and waring between the various kingdoms would encourage and foster technological development so maybe China won't be caught in a high-level equilibrium trap and stagnate but instead progress to a Chinese industrial-revolution.
 
Also if China never unites the constant competition and waring between the various kingdoms would encourage and foster technological development so maybe China won't be caught in a high-level equilibrium trap and stagnate but instead progress to a Chinese industrial-revolution.

Well they certainly wouldn't go into a high-level equilibrium trap because with constant war and demands for soldiers the individual Chinese states wouldn't be able to lower labor costs to a level where machinery becomes irrelevant.

I'm not sure about technological development, to be honest. After all, India was in constant military competition as well but it similarly fell behind the West. I do think technological adaptation would be much faster, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the Chinese will develop more technology.
 
I understand that the idea of unified "China" pre-dated Shi Huangdi and the Qin dynasty. The notion of the Shang and Zhou states as "unitary" was already there (I won't discuss the whole can of worms of the Xia).
It was not really bound to happen, but I get the impression that the Warring States sort of intended to reunify the country already (except probably the Yue, which do not matter in this context).
 
I'm not sure about technological development, to be honest. After all, India was in constant military competition as well but it similarly fell behind the West. I do think technological adaptation would be much faster, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the Chinese will develop more technology.
Perhaps a divided China would create diversity in the Chinese academics, unlike Confucianism being the major thought in OTL?
 
Perhaps a divided China would create diversity in the Chinese academics, unlike Confucianism being the major thought in OTL?

That's why I separated technological adaptation from technological development (innovation is perhaps the better word). Yes, a divided China would definitely mean that the different Chinese states will all experiment with and adopt the best ideas (or risk death). So for example, if Qin begins using gunpowder effectively in battle, then Zhao/Qi etc. will also adopt gunpowder in battle relatively quickly.

But it doesn't follow from this that China will discover gunpowder any earlier than it did OTL, because innovation is dependent on more factors than simple state-to-state competition - especially in ancient China, where the state didn't really play a role in technological research. In fact, constant war may well prevent the capital/knowledge accumulation that contributed to Imperial China's discoveries/inventions.

It was not really bound to happen, but I get the impression that the Warring States sort of intended to reunify the country already (except probably the Yue, which do not matter in this context).

I'm not so sure about that, especially since so much of our knowledge of Chinese history comes with the tint of Imperial Confucianism, which of course emphasizes unity of country and all that.

I don't doubt that all three major strands of Warring States thought - Mohism, Confucianism, and Taoism - hearken back to the 'Golden Ages' of the Three Emperors/Zhou/Xia respectively. But of the three, only Confucianism really argued for unification. And certainly as far as rulers were concerned, the main focus was on 'strengthening the state', which is qualitatively a different thing from 'unifying China'.

I see Confucius' emphasis on order and his admonition that 'order yourself -> your family -> your country -> All Under Heaven' as the clearest sign that Confucius sees the 'ideal state' of China as unification. But this is a tenet that seems native only to Confucianism.

Mohism (the larger school during the Warring States), for example, argues that 'aggressive wars' should not be fought... which seems to indicate that he really didn't see Chinese unification as an ideal.

Taoism is even more explicit in that it states that all human activity should follow the 'natural flow' (or Tao) and seek to 'rule by not-ruling'. Given that the 'natural state of affairs' during Lao-Tzu's time was disunity, it doesn't seem likely that Taoism advocates for unification as well.

Lastly, we have Legalism, which does seem to regard the prior period of Chinese unification to be a Golden Age to be emulated ('In years past, those controlled All Under Heaven first controlled their people') but doesn't actually deal with the issue of Chinese unification in the contemporary period, which seems to suggest that it views unification as a sort of unattainable ideal. At the very least, Legalism doesn't aim for unification per se - any unification that comes about is more a by-product of state-maximization than a deliberate attempt to reinstate a united China.

I don't want to claim that the elites of the Warring States wanted China to stay divided whatever the circumstances, but I do think that unification per se was very low on their list of priorities, much lower than the more pressing issue of maximizing state power vis-a-vis their neighbors.

As an example, when the Legalist Qin was planning to extinguish the Eastern Zhou in 288BC they were more than happy to divide 'the world' into two, with Qin being the Western Empire and Qi being the Eastern Empire (both rescinded their titles within a week). When the Qin did eliminate the Zhou Emperor in 256BC King Zhaoxiang didn't try and take his place as Emperor of China. I would argue that the unification of China was a by-product of both increasing Qin power, the inability of the other Warring States to balance it out, and the uniquely megalomaniacal person of Qin Shihuang, rather than some deliberate policy to effect unification.
 
Mohism (the larger school during the Warring States), for example, argues that 'aggressive wars' should not be fought... which seems to indicate that he really didn't see Chinese unification as an ideal.

Mohism wasn't actually the largest school, as none of the major states adopted their thoughts. However, they are the most powerful school if one don't count the support from the states.
 
I don't think China can be not unified.
When you see spread of Chinese civilization, then it started from central point of large, flat and fertile North Chinese Plain (Chinese heartland).
In Europe it started from periphery, Greece and Roman.
Only Charlemagne could unite Europe, but it was too much diversified by that time. SO after his dead it is easily integrated by its fault line.
 
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