DBWI : No Tibetan Conquest of China

Dolan

Banned
As you know it, the Chinese Ming Dynasty was fighting for survival against fiscal turmoil and peasant rebellions in the late 16th century until their fall.

The Chaos and Civil Wars in China practically invites a slew of neighboring conquerors coming to prey upon the fallen nation, but the Tibetans stood out. Under the 4th and then the 5th Dalai Lama, they end up conquering China using a combination of military might and Buddhist propaganda, that the 5th Dalai Lama finally end up taking his seat in the Forbidden City as the first Arhat-Emperor (Luohan-Huangdi), and from the point on, China is under the rule of Tibetan Buddhist Theocracy.

Sure, unlike what is basically every other dynasty of China, it was believed that the Arhat-Emperor, that is also Dalai Lama, reincarnations of Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva, that will reincarnate after death and this the line is believed to be an unbroken series of reincarnations.

Now, there are indeed other competitors in this regard, there are some Mongol Warlords, some Manchu Warlords, Japan enroachments is within memory, and even the short-lived Shu dynasty... And considering the age, maybe Europeans want some say in this matter too...

What if the prize of Mandate of Heaven was not attained by Dalai Lama but by another, more secular pretender?
 

Dorozhand

Banned
The Great Shu was definitely the best bet. Sichuan proved an ideal starting position for an ambitious warlord like Zhang Xianzhong. He strengthened agricultural production through land reform and raised an impressive army for his campaign. The Hongguang court, meanwhile, was so unstable that the south basically fell in his lap and the Dashing King's state died with him at Shanhaiguan. He had the country unified under the Shu, but the war to take Beijing back from the Manchu distracted him from the threat of the Tibetans to the west and the Mongols to the north. The Chakar were united and wanted a do-over of the Tumu Crisis, while the millenarian Buddhist rebellions that coincided with the invasion caused the situation to spiral out of control. The allegiance of the Chakar supreme Khan to the Dalai Lama with the foundation of the Great Wan only sealed the Shu's fate. Things could easily have gone differently, though, especially if Zhang had dealt with the western rebels sooner rather than trying to take back Beijing for the third time.

Shu.png


We see here that the Shu had for the most part finished the job
 
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And considering the age, maybe Europeans want some say in this matter too...
Not gonna lie, it would be freaking hilarious to see a Spanish conquest of China, something like a couple hundred men could just waltz into Beijing...
http://www.samuelhawley.com/imjinarticle3.html

Despite these difficulties, the Spanish had not been in the Philippines for five years when individuals began urging a move against China. One of the first was the Augustinian friar Martin de Rada, in a letter to the viceroy of New Spain in 1569. The Philippine colony was fairing poorly, de Rada wrote, so poorly that people were dying of hunger. But the effort was worthwhile, for “If his Majesty wishes to get hold of China, which we know to be a land that is very large and rich and of high civilization, with cities, forts, and walls much greater than those of Europa, he must first have a settlement in these islands….” The enterprise, though outwardly daunting, stood in de Rada’s opinion a great chance of success, for “the people of China are not at all warlike. They rely entirely on numbers and on the fortification of their walls. It would decapitate them, if any of their forts were taken. Consequently, I believe (God helping), that they can be subdued and with few forces.”

Four years later the ship’s captain Diego de Artieda took up the cause in a report sent directly to the Spanish monarch King Philip II in Madrid. He repeated de Rada’s assertions of the Chinese being an easy target for conquest, and offered to lead a preliminary expedition to explore the coast and ascertain “how both trade and conquest must be carried on there.” All he needed was two ships of 250 tons each, and a total of just 80 well-armed men. As for the Philippines, which were yielding little in the way of riches, Captain de Artieda advised that they be abandoned, “for it grieves me to see so much money wasted on a land which can be of no profit whatever.”

... it'll be like taking candy from a baby, what could possibly go wrong?
 
I don’t think the mongols or Jurchens are really relevant competitors for the Wan, considering they’d been staunch adherents of Tibetan Buddhism for a long time, which has for centuries been the basis of widespread and (with a few notable exceptions) unflinching loyalty to the Wan.
 
I don’t think the mongols or Jurchens are really relevant competitors for the Wan, considering they’d been staunch adherents of Tibetan Buddhism for a long time, which has for centuries been the basis of widespread and (with a few notable exceptions) unflinching loyalty to the Wan.

Might they have been competitors if they'd followed some other religion?
 

Dolan

Banned
Might they have been competitors if they'd followed some other religion?
Maybe? Or if the Fourth Dalai Lama end up content with just keeping Tibetan independence instead of "Fulfilling" the Millenarian Buddhist Peasant Rebellions that happened against Ming and later Shu dynasty?

While the Tibetan language and culture stay as the Buddhist liturgical language, the Wan Arhat-Emperors, owing to their succession-by-reincarnation rule end up actually coming from all over China, as there are Mongol-born, Jurchen-Born, as well as Han-Born Dalai Lama after the sixth.

Yes, the Wan Dynasty end up being Tibetan only in their Monastic culture and education. The Dalai Lama seems to have the penchant in reincarnating into poor, but devout Buddhist family after the sixth.
 
For starters, Chinese literature would change greatly. Jia Baoyu's family had risen to prominence as gentry-priests to the 8th Luohuang, and the associated lifestyle and experiences (e.g. the luxury time needed to study Tibetan cosmology) greatly influenced his masterwork Dream of Mount Meru, which called back to Journey to the West without wallowing in its legacy while also subtly criticizing the obscurantism and overreliance on Vajrayana commentaries that characterized the early Wan's intellectual climate.

While Dorozhand has suggested one way to achieve a Shu Dynasty unification of China, another option would be for the alliance between the Oirats led by the Khoshuud and the Gelug priesthood to break down. While the relationship between Oirat and Tibetan became mostly streamlined in the middle to later Wan (Oirats usually serving as military commanders and provincial prefects while the Tibetans shared the bureaucracy with the Chinese newcomers), some of the episodes of the early Wan (the scheming, failure, and execution of Soyombo Khan, immortalized in the Song of Qinghai) show a different pattern. Maybe have some of these tensions arise even earlier, with the Khoshuud seeking to displace the Dalai Lama as supreme authority rather than accrue authority by shoring up the Dalai Lama and ruling in his name. The latter route led to the prize of China; the former could easily have led to ruin.

I can't help but feel that a China without the Wan would be more peaceful. For those dissatisfied with the Tibetans' rule, even Chinese Buddhism started to lose its appeal. Consequently, many of these people created new schools of "revivalist" Confucianism and Daoism, or joined one of the millenarian cults. Really, one could argue that the Lotus and Lamb (White Lotus rebellion, whose leaders were influenced by Christianity) and the neo-Confucian Lu Mengxun Rebellion were both inevitable.

The Wan managed to triumph over both despite them occurring at nearly the same time, which certainly speaks to its dynamism over the late 1700s and early 1800s. However, by this point the damage had already been done: China's traditional religious syncretism had started to fall apart, as being a Buddhist led to being called "pro-Wan" and accused of "preferring Yi to Hua". The centuries-old coexistence of Yi and Hua within Chinese Buddhism came to be ignored, and this ideological change took place most prominently among that class of Chinese who came to perceive the Tibetan regime as a hurdle to their own personal advancement and as a malign presence in the lives of their fellow Chinese, especially the less fortunate. This cocktail of personal ambition and ethnically-defined altriusm fueled Lu's rebellion as it raged through Shandong and Jiangsu. In later times, it fueled combative attitudes in increasingly frequent and public debates and polemical feuds among the intelligentsia, which were then the most ethnically diverse class in China. It was at this time that the slogan of "黜斬後元" (Chu Zhan Hou Yuan, "Dismiss/Cut Away the Later Yuan"), referring both to the Oirat Mongol involvement in the Wan's rise and the supposedly anti-Chinese nature of the dynasty's rule. Though the Wan dynasty did squeak past the year 1900, I'm sure we can agree that what times followed were... interesting, in the Chinese sense.
 
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Dorozhand

Banned
Another PoD could potentially be a successful Shu reconquest of Beijing (called Nandu during the Later Jin period)

I think this could be accomplished if Emperor Wen of Later Jin had lived longer. The bullet he took at Song-Jin likely gave him the series of strokes that did him in, so avoiding that could have prolonged his reign, with the effect of worsening tensions between traditionalist Manchu and Mongols and those who embraced Tibetan Buddhism. He is quoted to have said:

" The Mongolian princes are abandoning the Mongolian language; their names are all in imitation of the lamas "

He referred to the Tibetan Buddhists as "liars" and "incorrigibles" and his vocal opposition to the conversion of his people resulted in the rebellion that brought Emperor Wu to power. Indeed, it was his father's strokes that encouraged Yebušu to devote himself to Vajrayana in the first place, and side with the Buddhist rebels against Hooge's traditionalists. The unity Emperor Wu achieved when he purged the Manchu nobility allowed him to collect higher taxes from his loyal landowners, using the money to shore up defenses on the frontiers in Zhili. These fortifications armed with "red barbarian cannons" would devastate the Jiantong Emperor's army in his three attacks, while the oceanic navy he acquired from a Nan Ming turncoat was lost to shore bombardment. His death was a disaster, and the ten year old Dingxi Emperor's regency could not hold the country with a much reduced army even without their infighting. They were in denial about the Thunderbolt Rebellion right up until Xi'an was lost, and by then it was too late.

With Emperor Wen still in power in Later Jin, the fortifications of Emperor Wu might never have been built, and the Shu army might have taken the city back. Emperor Wen was so anti-Buddhist by the end of his life that I suspect the Later Jin might even have fallen into prolonged civil war considering what happened between the princes IOTL. In this case, even the sixteen prefectures might be regained. Not only would this strengthen the dynasty with more soldiers and taxes, but avoiding the bleeding white of the army would likely have resulted in the rebellions, if they had still occurred, being dealt with along with the Tibetan invasion, which relied on a great deal of luck. It might even have been defeated in Dingxi era if the regency had acted decisively rather than allow the rebellion to flourish, considering that the loss of Xi'an signaled the weakness of Shu to the Khoshud and solidified Chakhar support for their campaign. The 20,000 Shu troops in the city resisted for thirteen days against 200,000 poorly armed rebels. Reinforcements could have brought victory, but they just never came.

The other thing about Emperor Wen of Later Jin surviving longer would be an antagonistic relationship with the developing Mongol-Tibetan polity. The Later Jin going to war with the Tibetans could have allowed the Dingxi Emperor to escape to Hangzhou as had been planned. This could have resulted in a stabilized situation with a Great Wan ruling in the west, the Later Jin ruling the northeast, and a Southern Shu centered on the Chang Jiang. There were Shu forces in the south that surrendered to the Wan IOTL that could have resisted if the emperor and the government had escaped Luoyang.
 
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Dorozhand

Banned
Many have commented on the irony of the meaning of 定熙 , or Stable and Flourishing, being used as an era name at such a time. The name was actually chosen by Li Dingguo, who had been one of the Jiantong Emperor's earliest allies. Li's magnanimity and compassion had notably tempered Zhang's characteristic rage and paranoia, especially in regards to the scholar-officials that Li protected from the emperor's bloodlust at great cost to his own safety in defying the orders of Wang. It was only their personal closeness by which Li moved the emperor to investigate the cause of the fire and punish those responsible rather than simply kill all 10,000 of the civil service candidates as Wang had advised. Li's untouchability is widely thought to have been the dynasty's saving grace.

However, his increasingly pacifistic view on rebellion against the regime may have contributed to the dynasty's fall. While the much-hated chancellor Wang Zhaolin had ordered numerous unnecessary massacres, with unnecessary cruelty, during the process of smashing resistance to the Great Shu, and his radically anti-religious liquidation of temples and monasteries across the country in order to pay for the war effort did much to stoke hatred of the regime among those of a religious inclination, it also secured the dynasty's foundation. Wang saw in Zhang a second Hongwu Emperor, and followed him to the ends of the earth, while the much-praised Li Dingguo who led the regency after executing Wang, reversed many of these policies at a time when the empire was still not entirely consolidated. He may even have harbored ambitions for the throne himself.

While the Jiantong reign (建统) was to "Establish Collectively" by forcing all to contribute their part to rebuilding the country and destroying the Later Jin, Li Dingguo had a vision of now distributing this wealth in the form of civil rather than military construction, and offering to rebuild temples that had been desecrated during Jiantong era; collective establishment leads to stable flourishing. However, this seems to have simply opened the door for the rightfully bitter and resentful to spread their resentment against the Shu. While the anti-religious policy might have been better never to have been, to abruptly go back on it may have been a far worse move, considering how vulnerable the situation was with the emperor's untimely death. Not to mention the ongoing rebellion of Feng Shuangli and his short-lived Great Xue, which he founded after the emperor had been killed and the army threatened to disperse. While the Xue held the northern forts and kept the lid shut on the Later Jin (paving the way for the near-total absorption of China proper into the Wan) his army also was attempting to seize control of the north ostensibly for the purpose of the country's defense. While Feng declared that his allegiance was still with the Shu, this was obviously a ruse, and if the Wan had been neutralized the King of Xue would have been the next problem on the Dingxi Regency's list.

The Hongwu Emperor, whose dynasty survived thanks to his ruthlessness, was praised in the imperial period. The Jiantong Emperor, whose dynasty did not, has a much more divisive legacy, even though the two were kindred spirits who used much the same methods. If anything, Zhu Yuanzhang was far more ruthless than Zhang in destroying everyone who had ever helped him after obtaining power, and this sadly may have been the only reason he kept that power for his children to inherit. Zhang had a much larger soft spot in his heart for the "old jackals" he knew from his bandit days, but though they are very useful when obtaining power they are extremely dangerous after power is secured. If the Great Shu had survived, the Jianwen era that Dingxi mirrored might have to have yielded to a Yongle-style restoration of absolute, grandiose terror.
 
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Contrary to what other members have been saying, I'm going to suggest that the Jin are in fact, doomed and would not have conquered China even if they kept rolling straight sixes. The Jurchen State following Nurhaci's victory was strong and manned by military geniuses, yes, but it was also undergoing a population explosion without periodic "cullings" (read: genocide) by Ming armies. A population explosion, I must add, during the Maunder Minimum, when the Little Ice Age was at its worst. Manchuria was on the brink of a famine--and therefore on the brink of civil war. It was why Prince-regent Daišan was so anxious to enter the North China Plain during the reign of the child-Emperor Dorgon and start looting the fertile fields of the area.

When the Later Jin ultimately entered a war of attrition with the Great Shun and later the Great Shu, its finances and grain supply were pushed to the limits, while the Han Chinese states could rely on a (relatively) stable supply of grain from Jiangnan. The Jin were on the way down, and that fate was only sealed by the Koreans choosing to turn on the Jurchens and Prince Abahai's (Khong Tayiji, for the Mongols amongst you) rebellion. The Jin's civil war was a symptom, not the cause of Jin decline. It was a twist of fate that after Abahai's heir, Emperor Wen defeated the Koreans and Dogron (a victory paid for by royal marriages to the Chakar and Wan loans), Manchuria was so devastated and underpopulated that it could avoid famine. The Jin would never have defeated the Han States in time to save herself. Vassalage to the Wan or any other dynastic power was an inevitability.

As an aside, maybe the Shu secure a victory by winning the Battle of Dartsedho, securing the Tea Horse Road and defeating the Khoshuud before they become an existential threat?
 
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Dorozhand

Banned
Prince Abahai's (Khong Tayiji, for the Mongols amongst you)

I may have it wrong, but I was under the impression that Abahai was a misnomer invented by a Russian priest and was never used by him. IIRC Hong Taiji was indeed his original personal name. At any rate, I've always heard him referred to as Emperor Rui, the posthumous name given during Emperor Wen's reign. Emperor Wen respected his father deeply and seems to have inherited a distaste for Vajrayana from him, hence calling him the "Astute/Farsighted Emperor" of Later Jin for his state-building achievements and his independence from the Lamas.

On a related note, another possibility to save China from the Wan might be to prevent the Ming alliance with Ligdan Khan. They gave him 20,000 taels of silver a year in exchange for "pacifying the border" and he made full use of these funds to recruit dissatisfied Han and Manchu to his cause and procure Ming weapons for his campaigns against the western khans. He embraced Gelug under the influence of his vassal Badma Erdeni, securing the support of Güshi Khan as well as a great many Khalkha peoples. Güshi Khan needed allies for his conquests in Moghulistan and to crush his son Tashi Batur's rebellion in Qinghai, and fellow-Gelug Ligdan's rising star was just the sort of ally he needed.

Ligdan Khan's revival of the Borjigin fortunes and unification of the Eastern Mongols was primarily a religious affair. Basically the result of his conversion to Gelug and alliance with both the Ming and the Khoshuud, as well as the anti-Buddhist stance of Emperors Rui and Wen of Later Jin causing many Mongol peoples to abandon the Manchu and flock to Ligdan's banner. However, IIRC he was an adherent of the Karma Kagyu when he first embraced Buddhism in the 1610s. Considering the purges Güshi Khan enforced on the rival sect, including the murder of two of his own sons, I don't think Ligdan remaining Karma Kagyu would have endeared him to the Khoshuud leader, and the alliance may have fallen apart under strain of religious strife. With the Khoshuud, Chakhar, Northern Oirat, and Later Jin all at war with one another, the Great Shu would have had significantly more room to breathe and grow at their expense.
 

Dorozhand

Banned
Didn't Christianity become the religion of dissent against the Wan with many Chinese nationalists being converts to Catholicism?

Along with Islam. But the biggest force of them all was the emergence of the Nanxing Faith in the mid 19th century. For those unfamiliar, it's a supposed revival of the ancient religion of the early State of Chu centered on the deification of Jilian, the founder of Chu, as a water god. It placed him within a trinity composed of Gaoyang the sky god and Zhurong the luminous god, unified in the form of Nanxing the "pole-star of the south", who descended from the throne at the center of the southern sky to give birth to the sun and humanity, at the cost of throwing the heavens into eternal discord in its absence. It is said that if humanity will come to understand that we are all its children and live lives of compassionate thinking, we will learn to use our power of perception to see the south polar star, placing Nanxing back in their rightful throne and righting the universe under our own power, doing heaven a favor equal to the favor heaven gave to us. It's spread was central to the revival of South Chinese identity and nationalism and lead directly to the Great Chu Rebellion.

The Baha'i Faith also became popular in Tibet, Korea, and North China in the late 19th century after the last Chu pockets were crushed. It is still widespread in Korea and Shaanxi, despite the Mohist-Technocratic Jian'ai Yunguo's anti-abrahamism campaigns during its rule of the north-west in the 1950s. The mid-century was a strange time in the west.
 
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