Look to the West Volume IX: The Electric Circus
- Thread starter Thande
- Start date
Looks like Kolvus took the petrodollar a bit too literally to actually make it work eh?
It's still called the Eternal State in 2020?
Could've sworn we had confirmation the OE was no longer Societist by the present (unlike, say, Yapon). Hmmm...
I continue to enjoy this volume, it's a pity the size of the thread doesn't do it much justice.
Besides being interesting in itself the Societist "oil coin" shows that the Combine does not bother with the sort of economic orthodoxies which crashed the USSR, making it a more dangerous enemy. I wonder if the Societists will be formulating anything similar to the Soviets' OTL Brezhnev Doctrine at this point to justify "fraternal assistance" to fellow Zones so as to avoid embarassments over stuff like the oil situation.
I also wonder how the Russian economy is doing these days, and if the methods which allowed it to generate so much heavy industry in the 1890-1930 period without crippling social unrest still work in the Electric Circus era. It's one thing to do such a stunt for a while but quite another to keep it up indefinitely.
Besides being interesting in itself the Societist "oil coin" shows that the Combine does not bother with the sort of economic orthodoxies which crashed the USSR, making it a more dangerous enemy. I wonder if the Societists will be formulating anything similar to the Soviets' OTL Brezhnev Doctrine at this point to justify "fraternal assistance" to fellow Zones so as to avoid embarassments over stuff like the oil situation.
I also wonder how the Russian economy is doing these days, and if the methods which allowed it to generate so much heavy industry in the 1890-1930 period without crippling social unrest still work in the Electric Circus era. It's one thing to do such a stunt for a while but quite another to keep it up indefinitely.
There was a reference to a riot in Alexandria and “State” police getting involved - an analogue of the PRC like Danubia would be to a surviving Red Yugoslavia
Also, Italy looks like it’s making itself a target of the Societists by both policy and geography
Corea practicing autarky is .. weird because the factors that gave rise to North Korean autarky are totally absent here and its Empire is just *Orissa/Odisha and Southern Japan, which isn’t much
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Just wanted to say that I’ve loved this timeline for years (when I’ve just been lurking on this site) and am delighted that it’s still going. There are many timelines in here that are fantastically well written and interesting, but this is the only one I can think of that goes into such detail and is so well plotted out that it feels like it could actually be an real alternate history of humanity.
Agreed. I often feel like I am learning just as much about (OTL) finance, film making, computer technology, chemistry and some of the other issues that have been debated in this and recent volumes through the TTL descriptions and the footnotes as I am about the geopolitical situation in the world of Look To The West, and the LTTW context helps to make reading about it more interesting than it would otherwise have been.
Hopefully Thande's Saga of Dentistry will be resolved swiftly.
Now this sounds crazy, but the Societist Combine could wait until all the major powers develop nukes, and then send agents and spies to turn the four great powers against each other so they nuke each other, and then expand when N. america, Diversitarian Europe, Russia and China are nuked off the map.
The other Societist states will be impacted by fallout and will depend on the Combine for food aid, esp Japan and Danubia. Although distance and fellow ideologies prevent incorporation, they are now on Good Terms or else, and can be promised with the following loot:
- Danubia: Europe outside of those areas occupied by the Eternal State or Combine
-the Eternal State: pre-1922 borders plus Iran and Central Asia
- Japan; all of East Asia
- the Combine could expand in the post-nuclear chaos to include at least in terms of influence
• the entire Novamund
• all of Western Europe
•as much of Subsaharan Africa, India and SE Asia they can grab
Admittedly this is inspired by Separated at Birth’s Final War and What Madness Is This 1.0
The other Societist states will be impacted by fallout and will depend on the Combine for food aid, esp Japan and Danubia. Although distance and fellow ideologies prevent incorporation, they are now on Good Terms or else, and can be promised with the following loot:
- Danubia: Europe outside of those areas occupied by the Eternal State or Combine
-the Eternal State: pre-1922 borders plus Iran and Central Asia
- Japan; all of East Asia
- the Combine could expand in the post-nuclear chaos to include at least in terms of influence
• the entire Novamund
• all of Western Europe
•as much of Subsaharan Africa, India and SE Asia they can grab
Admittedly this is inspired by Separated at Birth’s Final War and What Madness Is This 1.0
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With Carolina thought being popular in the early 19th century, I would think that the major powers would put more support in to intelligence and counterintelligence agencies then otl.
Yes, and I was assuming they didn’t catch that - the “Revisionist Totalitarians try to divide earth among themselves” scenario is too “interesting” in this case to not think about - combining expansion after one’s rivals have nuked each other
Also it would be in line with past Meridian false flag ops and the Doctrine of the Last Throw
Also I assume societist Combine leaders thought of a plan to divide[1] the earth
[1] Nonsocietists go first, the others can be dealt with later, and distance will prevent direct incorporating, plus othrr societists are useful for expanding into regions like Central Asia which are difficult to reach
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To be honest, I'm sure that it will at least cross one official's mind in the Combine that it really would be easier to just start over from scratch than wear down the Diversitarians by attrition once threshold bombs are commonplace. What better way to enforce pacifism than by just getting rid of all of your enemies? Given that we know more than 100 such bombs are used ITTL's future it seems that a similar thought occurs in their opponents as well...
To what extent are Danubia and the Eternal State treated as entities that can be …. negotiated with by the Combine, like plans for future expansion that involve throwing a bone in the form of a Zone or two. I guess Yapontsi ZoneEastAsia was an asspull on my part involving OTL 20th century history and geograohy
Thande
Donor
Happy Resurrection Sunday and thanks for all the well wishes. The dental operation went smoothly in the end and I've recovered enough to be able to write the usual update on schedule (see next post). At least that is out of the way!
Not the most appropriate update for Easter, seeing as I think it mentions just about every religion other than Christianity, though I suppose at least it does involve a kind of resurrection or rebirth for China.
Not the most appropriate update for Easter, seeing as I think it mentions just about every religion other than Christianity, though I suppose at least it does involve a kind of resurrection or rebirth for China.
314
Thande
Donor
Part #314: The Phoenix and the Ashes
“THE AGE OF THE CRAFTSMAN, PROLONGED
Exhibition of Franciscan Viennese and Beiqing Dynasty Ceramics
In this new installation at the Imperial Thorntonian Museum of Art, explore the intricate and unmatched craftsmanship from two very different nations that held firm against the tide of anonymous process-production. In the Vienna of 1825 or the Beijing of 1885, even the most everyday of crockery was the unique and never-repeated product of a single artist’s mind.
Exhibition will run September 14th 2020 – January 31st 2021
Book tickets via Motext page 11P-559”[1]
- Hand-made advertisement seen on Jones Avenue, Fredericksburg, ENA.
Photographed and transcribed by Sgt Bob Mumby, December 2020
*
(Dr Wostyn’s note)
Merde... So those jokers thought they could get rid of me, hein? Well, more fool them. The Chinese Aerospace History Exhibition in Philadelphia was actually rather enlightening, and relevant for our tale here. I could also discuss my remarkable experiences on the railway services of this nation, which, I have to say, compare rather favourably to those of its counterpart from our timeline. But, as I have a sense of control and relevance when it comes to these things, (coughs pointedly) we will instead begin with an interesting recording I made in Philadelphia...
*
Extract from recorded talk at the Chinese Aerospace History Exhibition in Philadelphia by Aero Major Liang Yaqin, recorded December 2nd, 2020—
Note: This recording is of a lower quality than most included in this package and was made impromptu by Dr Wostyn after the talk had already begun.
—hao. No, louder! Ni-hao! That’s right! That’s how you say hello! ...Well, actually in China today that would be considered kind of archaic, maybe! But you can tell your friends anyway! (Chuckles)
My name is Liang Yaqin and I am a retired officer of the Imperial Chinese Aero Force, the Zhongguo Kongjun, with the rank of kongjun shao xiao. (Pause) I will not ask you to say those ones with me, haha! (Audience laughter) In English my rank translates to your rank of Aero Colonel. (Impressed murmurs) I was one of only the second class of female cadets in the Kongjun after it was opened to women in 1974, ten years after your own Imperial Aero Force did the same. My sisters and I had to fight hard to prove ourselves, as I’m sure you can imagine. (Sound of agreement from audience)
Now behind me is a Meizhou Industries MZ-11 Qingniao fighter drome. I have actually flown one of these before. As part of a museum display flight, I am not that old! (Audience chuckles) The MZ-11 is still an iconic aerocraft in China today, and it is probably not like many aerocraft you have seen before. It is a one-decker drome, but with an air-cooled aeroscrew engine. You can see the aerodynamic body; the part you can see is made mainly of an alumium alloy, but it is bonded to wooden construction. There is an enclosed ‘bubble’ cockpit. The Qingniao was a big step forward for China, but she also lacks many of the things we would take for granted now. There is no Photel or Photrack set, not in this early model at least. Though she can carry rocket missiles, they are unguided. And of course there is no surge engine and no surfinal components. Qingniao pilots had to do many things themselves that ypologists at ground control will do today.[2]
The name Qingniao means Bluebird, by the way. But it is not the bluebird you have here in America. When old Chinese legend and poetry talks about the bluebird, we probably mean the blue magpie which is endemic to China.[3] This MZ-11 was far from the first Chinese aerodrome, of course. To explain where she came from, we have to go back to the beginning.
Wu Mengchao, a pioneering industrialist and friend of the Xuanming Emperor, is often cited as the spiritual founder of the Chinese Aero Force.[4] The important work was done by other people, of course, how d’you say, less colourful characters? (Audience chuckles) Wu knew that China had to catch up to the recent technological development in Europe and here in the Novamund. He was interested in many things, but aerocraft was a big one. Wu pushed for the creation of the Kongjun as a separate branch of the military, making China one of the first countries to do so. He helped finance the building of the great steerables that filled the skies in the 1880s, protecting Chinese cities from attack and also serving to transport wealthy civilians from place to place. Wu was fascinated when the first proper aerodrome was flown in 1888 – here you say it was Tibbetts and FitzGeorge, do you not? (Audience reaction) Very well.[5] Wu saw immediately that the heavier-than-air aerodrome had the potential to make the balloon steerable obsolete. Unfortunately, with typical audacity and impatience, he got himself killed in an early test of a rocket-powered aerodrome just three years later in 1891.
I say it was unfortunate. Obviously it was unfortunate for Lord Wu, but it was also unfortunate for China’s aero forces. The Emperor was inconsolable at the loss of his friend and refused to be reminded of his death, to the point that the court avoided mention of the Kongjun at all. That meant that development stalled just before the Pandoric War, and our then-enemies in Siam had an opportunity to catch up. China was still lagging behind Europe and the Novamund in aero development, but we threw away an advantage over Siam.
In the Pandoric War we flew mostly steerables still, but some aerodromes appeared. The best-known was the Fuzhou Mechanics FZ-3 fighter, a two-decker canvas drome which is on display at the other end of this hall. Although the Siamese had been able to catch up to some extent, our brave pilots still mostly ruled the skies against their Thonburi TB-2 Garuda three-deckers. When the Emperor passed away after the war, it was the exploits of heroic pilots in these clashes that reawakened public interest in flying.
Yes, we were flying and fighting well. But we got a rude wakeup call once Siam was subdued and then the northern traitors entered the war. Of course, they really had nothing they could throw at us; their backwards rulers thought making paper aerodromes was dangerously modern. (Audience laughter) But, of course, it was the Eluosi-ren, the Russians, who were really in charge. Russian aerodromes painted with Beiqing symbols, flown by Russian pilots, flew against ours. Our boys were brave and experienced, and we won that war and reclaimed our lost lands. But we did so partly because the Russians were already fighting on two fronts and could not spare many men. Every time our pilots went up against the Russian aerodromes, they took three losses for every kill they made. It was clear we were still behind the technological curve.
Under the next Emperor, the Huifu Emperor, we began to work to modernise our dromes. This work was driven by Zhuo Xinliang, the Marquess of Beihenan, who had served as a pilot in the war despite his aristocratic background. Lord Zhuo is considered the second father of the Kongjun after Wu Mengchao, and could be almost as bold. He was an early advocate of the idea that the steerable had now been surpassed by the aerodrome, and China needed to focus on the latter. Throughout the 1910s, aero development received especial focus, until by 1922 we had almost completely closed the gap with Europe and the Novamund. China’s obvious military strength helped dissuade others from starting wars. As you know, China was neutral in the Black Twenties. (Audience reaction) I know that is controversial here. But from our point of view, we reclaimed the last of our lands and secured peace with Siam in return for not a shot fired. One of your Roman statesmen once said ‘If you would seek peace, prepare for war’. By showing ourselves to be strong we had avoided war. But, of course, we could not avoid the plague.
The Aero Force played an important role in supplying Chinese cities during the long periods of enforced quarantine the government used to try to stop the spread of the plague. In this time, steerables could still be useful. Nonetheless, work continued at a slower place on military craft as well. At the time of the political crisis over the death of the Huifu Emperor, prototypes of this MZ-11 had begun to be flown.
Now, great breakthroughs in aeronautics have certainly happened in peacetime, but it’s a truism that many of the biggest ones have been associated with periods of warfare. The skies above a modern battlefield are like a field of Paleian competition between aerocraft designs, in which the strong survive and the weak are preyed upon.[6] It is a much more noticeable, and dramatic, effect for aero warfare than on the ground or even at sea. My counterparts in the Army and Navy can talk about breakthroughs in protgun or warship design, but it is in the air that a seemingly minor advantage can make the difference, not only between victory and defeat, but between victory and irrelevance. A good, effective aerodrome fighter could be obsoleted in the space of weeks by an enemy craft that had slightly superior speed and turning. It mattered not how good the first fighter’s guns were if she never got to train them on her foe. Intelligence analysis was focused sharply on aero battles, looking for signs of such crucial changes. Sometimes it might not be a whole new design, but merely an upgrade to an existing craft. Or even an accidental discovery, such as a damaged fighter being patched up in such a way that revealed the aerodynamic impact of the rivetheads in her usual construction. Those advantages were hugely valuable, as often they allowed a nation to upgrade her entire fleet of aerocraft in a matter of days or weeks and outflank the enemy’s progress, rather than needing to build new designs from scratch.
I go into all this to explain some of the problems which China, and Siam, had in the early part of what you call the Electric Circus or Second Interbellum period. I know that here in the Empire, and in Europe, it is often thought of as a golden age of progress and economic prosperity. That was true in only the second half of that period in China. Though we had avoided war in the Black Twenties, we had suffered from the plague, and then were plunged into political crisis, rebellion and natural disaster. The 1930s are not looked on with fondness in Chinese folk memory. The great irony was that, having avoided the peer-to-peer war which you had faced here in America, and also in Europe, we lacked that competitive environment to maintain the near-parity in aero design we had worked so hard to obtain. On the battlefields in Poland, the impact of the plague, it’s true, had reduced the impact of aerocraft on the overall conflict and so reduced the tendency to drive designs towards improvements. But here in America, especially in your War of 1926 against the Societists (Audience reaction) you were able to recognise issues with your aerocraft and improve them. You realised the impact of the hiveship on naval warfare before anyone else, other than the Societists themselves perhaps. You moved ahead, while we were left behind.
To return to the Qingniao. In 1930, Prince Zhuzhong, as he then was, crossed the Himalayas with most of the Army of Jushina. The Great Crossing is an event that really deserves to be more explored in depictions on the big screen, because it was a remarkable feat of logistics. In China we prefer to forget the circumstances, as we would rather not think about a difficult and problematic era which saw a military intervention in government, as well as what followed after. But what Zhuzhong and General Ling’s staff officers achieved is objectively greatly impressive. The army was split into three main parts, crossing the Himalayas at mountain passes including Qiangla, Zerila and Naidula.[7] Remember that this was a modern army; they did not merely have to consider infantry and horses, but also protguns and artillery, some of which were disassembled and brought over the mountains, others secretly transported by ship and overland from Jiaozhi Province.
Aerocraft played a crucial role in the Crossing. Steerables carrying Photel sets floated above the mountains to coordinate the movement of troops through the challenging terrain, and the supply lines keeping them alive. Aerodromes scouted out the lands ahead of them and ensured that reports of avalanches or other problems were conveyed to the relevant staff officers so troops could be pre-emptively rerouted. It was in this humble role that some of the first Qingniao prototypes saw service, and often captured the imagination of the fascinated Tibetan peasants who saw them overhead. A Buddhist monk named Zamnang wrote a poem, ‘The Steel Dragonfly’, which has provided the lyrics of the unofficial anthem of the Chinese Aero Force – though pedants still point out that the construction of the Qingniao involves rather little steel, as opposed to wood and alumium alloy! (Audience laughter)
Prince Zhuzhong arrived in Xi’an, the temporary capital, in February 1930, using the railways to beat other claimants there. If you are not aware, China was gripped by a succession dispute after the passing of the Huifu Emperor and his chosen heir, Zhuling, having been driven half-mad by plague fever. He threatened to drive China back into a period of darkness and ignorance. Zhuling and Zhuzhong were the only two realistically possible successors to the Huifu Emperor, but there were other prominent figures of importance as well. Ding Guoyang, Duke of Cao, had become de facto Chancellor during the Emperor’s recent illness, while Marshal Huang Mengjin controlled the powerful Southern Marches Army along the border with Siam.[8]
As you may know, Prince Zhuzhong sought to avoid civil war by calling upon our One Hundred and Eight Mandators, members of all classes chosen by lot, to elect an Emperor by the popular will that we name the Mandate of Heaven. This was a remarkable innovation in Chinese history. The Mandators deliberated for much time, but eventually chose Zhuzhong over Zhuling. Then and now, there has been much criticism made of this – were the Mandators effectively threatened by Zhuzhong’s military force, for example. But Marshal Huang initially favoured Zhuling and he also controlled a powerful force – more powerful in some ways. It does appear the Mandators did genuinely believe that Zhuling becoming Emperor would be a disaster for China and should be avoided.
Remarkably, Zhuling accepted the judgement of the Mandators. So did Marshal Huang. Unfortunately, Huang then fell ill – not of the plague, but of malaria he had contracted in Guilin. In his absence, his subordinate General Mu Hailin – curse that traitor’s name a thousand times! – attempted to seize control of the Southern Marches Army. Mu supported Zhuling, not out of any personal conviction, but because he was ambitious for power and thought he could use the...damaged prince as a puppet. He had Zhuling kidnapped, amassed an army of legitimist supporters from within the Southern Marches Army while ordering the rest to demobilise, and then marched on Hanjing. Mu was a technically proficient modernist – showing his hypocrisy in supporting the Regressive Zhuling – and used this to great effect to control the narrative. He had the Lectel lines cut and the Photel in Hanjing corrupted in order to prevent the people of Hanjing, both small and great, from learning of the Mandators’ decision.
This is where the Qingniao first became an icon. The engineer and retired pilot Liu Zhonghan had developed a two-seater version of this fighter for training purposes. Seeing one opportunity to head off a rebellion and civil war before it could begin, Prince Zhuzhong approached Liu and asked him to fly his two-seater Qingniao to Hanjing with a very important passenger: himself.
Many called the prince, the new Emperor-to-be, reckless. Aerocraft were highly unreliable back then, and to fly to Hanjing from Xi’an, a thousand miles, was far more than the two-seater Qingniao’s untested, estimated range. Three times, Liu and the incognito Emperor had to land at aerofields of dubious loyalty and refuel their distinctive aerocraft. But now Mu’s destruction of communication lines worked to Zhuzhong’s advantage, ensuring that word of his approach did not leak out. Zhuzhong presented himself in the Fenghuanggong in Hanjing on March 22nd 1930, bearing a scroll marked with the chops of all the 108 Mandators, declaring himself to have the Mandate of Heaven.[9] In accordance with law and custom, he then prayed to Heaven and underwent the enthronement ceremony of the dengji. This is our equivalent of your coronations, but our emperors do not use crowns. The important step is their enthronement upon the Longyi, the Dragon Throne.[10]
It must be admitted that the ceremony was rather unorthodox, being rushed and lacking the usual mourning rituals in the presence of the body of the preceding emperor. Nonetheless, Zhuzhong had secured the key support of powerful ministers and businessmen in the city, and was seated on the throne facing south as the Edict of Accession was sealed. The Edict was then brought out into Zhongyou Square and read to the assembled people, who ceremonially knelt to honour the new Emperor.[11] Zhuzhong chose the regnal name of Shengjian, meaning ‘Life and Health’. Like many people in the 1930s, he was fascinated with the then-recent work of archaeologists in uncovering Egypt’s ancient history.[12] One discovery was that the names of Pharaohs were often suffixed with the Egyptian phrase, I will probably mispronounce this, ankh wedja seneb. It means ‘Life, Prosperity and Health’, just as we in China append wansui or ‘Ten Thousand Years’ to the Emperor’s name. The Shengjian Emperor, as we must now call him, was interested in the idea of an equivalence between the ancient civilisations of Egypt and China; the difference was that China had a cultural continuity back to our beginning, which had been largely lost in Egypt.
So from the start, the Shengjian Emperor’s reign was associated with this lovely aerodrome. He was literally the Emperor who had came down from the sky and proclaimed Heaven’s favour, and to the simple peasants in the north and west, this went a long way to gaining their support over Zhuling. His bold move had strangled General Mu’s coup attempt in the cradle. There was still a small rebellion to put down, and the Qingniao played a role in this. Naturally, the drome that had saved the Empire saw rapid production and further improvement. The last of Mu’s forces were defeated in July 1930 and Mu himself was executed for treason. Prince Zhuling was rescued, and chose to retire anonymously to a monastery to prevent his person being used to attack his brother or undermine the state. While he retained some...peculiar ideas, he is honoured today for this selfless action. A few loyalists to Zhuling nonetheless ignited small revolts in the backward north, but once again these were put down.
However, the Shengjian Emperor then faced a new crisis. Bringing the Army of Jushina, both Imperial troops and local Jushina sepoys, over the mountains had helped save China from full-blown civil war. But it had also left nothing in place to hold down Jushina, which proved to be a powder keg. The Tuichu jushina yundong, the Leave Panchala Movement, had been plotting behind the scenes, the terrorist scum (Audience murmurs) and now seized this moment to unleash their full fury on the innocent Buddhists of the territory. They had formed an alliance with the fearsome Gorkhas of the mountains, fellow Hindus who had preyed on defenceless Tibetan Buddhist monasteries in the past, like the Vikings in the history of your mother country. The Gorkhas had allowed Shengjian’s troops to pass eastwards to China, but now blocked their return with effective Kleinkrieger attacks. The treacherous Bengalis sat on their hands and refused to allow our troops to traverse the passes, now it was vital. And as Paresh Anand’s gang of bloody-handed murderers slaughtered Buddhist children, a call went up to heaven for the Emperor to do something.
Once again, the Qingniao would be called upon to rule the skies...
*
(Dr Wostyn’s note)
I will leave it there, as I think it is clear that Colonel Liang’s interesting lecture then became less than unbiased. In place of this, I will return to an extract from an earlier lecture of some relevance.
*
Extract from recorded lecture on “The Modern History of China, Part 3” by Dr Ambrose Renfrew and Dx Xu Jingyi, recorded October 16th, 2020—
...and so began the disastrous attempt by Emperor Shengjian’s armies to try to hold on to Jushina, or rather, to reclaim it from the revolt which had already defeated the skeleton garrisons left there. The LPM, a disparate and diverse group, lacked a unified leadership. Paresh Anand’s group in Sangam rose to prominence because they had successfully suborned a group of sepoys whom the Chinese had thought loyal to their regime. When the Chinese did manage to clear the northern passes of Gorkhas and move some troops through to attack northern Panchala, Sangam was well behind the front line of the fighting in cities like Kanpu’er, Qiao-en-pu’er and Lekenao.[13] Thus, Anand’s group survived and grew stronger as other local groups grew weaker from fighting Shengjian’s armies, until they were well placed to dominate power in the new Panchala at the end of the conflict. Otherwise, Narayan Kumar and his son Ram might only have been footnotes to history.
Yes. The Jushina War is a Heritage Point of Controversy, and would be even without the ASL declaring it to be one. (Audience chuckles) In China we learn that Anand’s men were going around burning down stupas with Buddhist innocents locked inside, killing men, raping women and kidnapping children to be raised as Hindus. (More subdued audience reaction) Doubtless in Panchala they learn that our soldiers did the same to them. It is certainly true that we committed crimes de guerre, bombing from the air against the Shiraz Edict and using death-luft. It was a horrible, bloody conflict that lasted for three years in earnest and six more in aftermath, but left shadows across Asia for generations to come.
Yes, I can understand if Jingyi is reluctant to discuss it. Think of how controversial something like the Superior Troubles are here, and this was far worse. I won’t even try to go into the loss of life and suffering here. By the end of 1933, the Chinese government had internally acknowledged that there was no prospect of being able to hold on to the whole of Jushina, or Panchala. The priorities were shifted to trying to control certain areas to provide safe havens for Buddhist and Muslim loyalists, protected by Chinese troops, to prevent civilians from being attacked by the LPM militias. The LPM essentially wrote the playbook used by many later terrorist groups you may be more familiar with, including the mobile bomb and the holocaust bomber.[14] (Subdued audience reaction) Chinese soldiers often could not tell friend from foe, and the LPM exploited this ambiguity both ways – infiltrating attackers and also goading the Chinese into attacking what turned out to be civilian sites. Unfortunately, as Jingyi said, some Chinese commanders were all too eager to swallow the bait. As well as being horrific and shameful in itself, this served the LPM’s cause by beginning to turn moderate Hindu opinion against the Chinese.
Several factors worked against the Chinese. As well as fighting a new kind of warfare that no-one truly understood, they were hampered by resupply problems. The Gorkhas ensured that the Chinese never truly held the Tibetan mountain passes securely again, with random attacks reawakening paranoia after weeks or months of apparent peaceful transit. The Bengali government had adopted an officially anti-colonial position, which deepened after Russia’s disastrous attempt to reclaim Pendzhab in 1935-6. The Bengalis refused to allow the Chinese to use the mountain passes they controlled. Bengal never officially supplied the LPM with arms as they did to the Sikhs against the Russians, too concerned about LPM crimes de guerre aimed at Muslims and other non-Hindus. However, arms shipments to the north were fungible, and some high-caste Hindus in the Bengali government surreptitiously worked with the more corrupt Sikh rebel groups to funnel arms intended for the Sikhs to the LPM instead.
I might say that some in China still insist we would have won if we had worked with the Russians rather than at cross-purposes. I don’t think that is true, and it would also have been too high a price to pay, given the Russians’ track record at the time in betraying their onetime friends. But that’s another discussion.
Thank you, Jingyi. Despite all those factors I mentioned, the Chinese did manage to hold on for a while because Delhi, their other client state, was Muslim-dominated and remained loyal out of fear of a rising Panchala.[15] Delhi functioned to serve as a stepping stone for resupplying Chinese forces, and the Chinese pioneered the so-called ‘aero-bridge’ tactic of bringing men and supplies by air over the Himalayas, building bigger aerodromes than ever before to do so. Of course, the Himalayas were a formidable barrier, and many of these early craft crashed. Sometimes it’s claimed that more Chinese soldiers died in aero accidents than at the hands of the LPM, though this is an exaggeration.
It was already clear by 1938 that now even Delhi’s support could not stop all of the old Jushina from being overwhelmed. Shengjian continued to support Delhi with troops and used Delhi as the final choice of a safe refuge for Buddhist and Muslim refugees, but many were still left behind to the tender mercies of the LPM. By now, the same Chinese public who had been baying for LPM blood in 1930 were now growing weary of the long war. And there was worse to come, wasn’t there, Jingyi?
Sadly, yes. 1939 saw the biggest and most destructive flood of the Yangtze and Huai Rivers in history. Heavy rainfall was the primary cause, but after the fact, engineers said it had been worsened by the flood defences being neglected during the plague years and then the Jushina war years. Nanjing, or Jiangning, was devastated. The Grand Canal filled Gaoyu and Hongze lakes and the flood crumbled. There were local food shortages as the farms, which had only just recovered from the losses of the plague years on rural labourers, were now ruined. Charity was even offered by the Siamese, the Pérousiens and you Americans, which at the time was seen as an insult. China had been humiliated, losing on the battlefield to a ragtag band of terrorists and in her heartland to natural disaster.
The Emperor Shengjian was profoundly affected by this. He spent hours praying to Heaven and publicly humbled himself before the people. He said that the floods were a sign that his actions in Jushina were contrary to the will of Heaven, and he would change his policy accordingly.
In reality, of course, he’d probably already decided to abandon all attempts to reclaim Jushina by this point. The troops sent to Delhi were retained, for the present, but discussed far less publicly.
Yes, well...Shengjian had no intention of losing the Mandate of Heaven which he had acquired under such unusual circumstances. Part of his humility was that he accepted the foreign charity that had been offered, taking the shame on himself rather than on the people. His traditionalist gestures helped secure support once again from the rural people and northerners who had formerly backed his brother.
Now, Shengjian embarked on a new direction. China had turned inward for too long, consumed with her own concerns, being left behind as the world’s economic direction had shifted. The Emperor refocused on the future. China turned a corner, and finally joined the age of prosperity that you here in America associate with the Second Interbellum. Perhaps it was the arrogance of our neutrality in 1922, our confidence that China could stand alone and aloof, that had been the real sin against Heaven. The Feng Dynasty was founded by men who knew that Neo-Confucian isolation under alien rule had made us weak, and to engage with the world was a sign of strength, not dishonour. It may have been delayed a few years, but the 1940s would see the electrical revolution sweep across China as well.
And our understanding of our power structures was also changing. The One Hundred and Eight Mandators had gone from a mere symbolic rubber stamp to a body that had, alloyed to circumstance, luck and favour, decided the result of a succession dispute. Accordingly, powerful men now began looking for ways to influence and control the Mandators. Lord Ding remained the strongest figure in the government besides the Emperor, but he was growing old and questions began to be asked about where power would be held in the future.
A new China had been born, bloodied by failure in Jushina, but embracing modernity in technology, prosperity and constitutional speculation. We understood that we were not facing a unique reversal, but were part of a global trend. Russia, France and others were also in retreat from India, for better or for worse. When, in 1945, there was an abortive attempt by Societists to take over Formosa, we also began to understand that we were not alone, but part of a transoceanic order of nations under threat from the black flag. An order that would soon begin in earnest, as the cry of freedom for Africa was answered by France...
[1] ‘Franciscan Viennese’ means ceramics from Vienna in the age of Francis II, i.e. the time period when the Hapsburgs were intransigently against most technological innovation. The Thorntonian is named for Frederick Thornton, an ATL cousin of OTL’s William Thornton (who went on to be the architect of the Capitol). Of course, the craftsmen who were forced to make bespoke individual items at low profit margins would probably have different opinions to the latter-day critics bemoaning how awful the anonymity of process-production (mass production) is...
[2] The MZ-11 Qingniao is not closely analogous to any OTL aircraft, but is roughly at a similar level of the OTL French Morane-Saulnier M.S.406.
[3] Today in OTL referred to, more specifically, as the red-billed blue magpie (Urocissa erythroryncha).
[4] See Part #263 in Volume VII.
[5] As noted in Part #201 in Volume V, who takes the crown of the first flight is disputed in TTL on nationalist grounds (indeed, as it is in OTL).
[6] In OTL we would refer to Darwinian selection.
[7] These are the Sinicised Tibetan names; in OTL they are more usually called Lipulekh, Jelep La and Nathu La respectively. Note that the Chinese had obtained permission to use passes in Bengali territory, although Liang doesn’t mention this.
[8] There is no single post of Chancellor in China at this point, with the role being split between several figures. Colonel Liang means that Ding had become so powerful that he was effectively running the whole civil government as though he was Chancellor in name, even though his theoretical title was Foreign Minister.
[9] The Fenghuanggong or Phoenix Palace was the primary seat of government in Feng China since the early nineteenth century, though at this point it is one of four due to the rotating capital setup. It was purpose-built by the ‘Phoenix Men’ who founded the dynasty and is located near the site of the old Nanyue Kingdom Palace, likely a symbolic choice. Its architecture is Ming Revival but its internal construction was modern (for the 1820s) with many European innovations incorporated.
[10] This is not the same as the physical Dragon Throne in the Forbidden City in Beijing, which was retained by the Beiqing Dynasty. The Feng founders had a new throne commissioned in the new palace in Hanjing (Guangzhou). It was sometimes referred to as the Fenghuangyi or Phoenix Throne, but this was officially frowned upon, as the name Dragon Throne has a long metonymic association in China and not using it would be seen as casting doubt on the legitimacy of Feng rule.
[11] Colonel Liang is naturally not covering all the details here, and as she says this was a rushed ceremony lacking many parts regardless, but the Feng ceremony of enthronement already represented an innovation over the Ming-Qing practices that preceded it. Notably, the koutou (kowtow) is replaced with kneeling alone, possibly attributable to European influence. In addition, Zhongyou Square stands in for Tiananmen Square in Beijing and the simpler geography of the palace within the city (no isolated Forbidden City or ceremonial gates) has streamlined the process, reflecting the different constitutional role of the Emperor with respect to the people under Feng rule.
[12] This is at a much earlier stage than OTL because of the lack of discovery of the Rosetta Stone, so it took many more years to decipher hieroglyphs. As Liang says, cultural Egyptomania will be more of a feature of the 1930s-50s era in TTL.
[13] Kanpu’er, Qiao-en-pu’er and Lekenao are Sinicised names for Kanpur, Jaunpur and Lucknow respectively. Recall that Sangam is the usual name in TTL for Allahabad/Prayagraj.
[14] I.e. the car bomb and the suicide bomber. ‘Holocaust’ originally referred to an animal sacrifice in which the sacrifice is completely consumed in fire. In OTL this meaning has been largely displaced by use of the term to refer specifically to the genocide of six million Jews and others by Nazi Germany; in TTL it has instead been applied to the concept of a suicide bomber who sacrifices their own life to kill others.
[15] ‘Delhi’ refers to a substantial area and not just the titular city, taking in most of the OTL Indian state of Haryana and about the western one-fifth of Uttar Pradesh. ‘Muslim-dominated’ reflects demographic changes as a result of the Great Jihad, though it refers to control of powerful positions as well as a demographic majority. In OTL the city of Delhi currently has an overwhelming Hindu majority, but this is also due to demographic changes; at the time of the census of British India in 1891, it was only about 56%-41% Hindu-Muslim.
[16] See Part #212 in Volume V.
“THE AGE OF THE CRAFTSMAN, PROLONGED
Exhibition of Franciscan Viennese and Beiqing Dynasty Ceramics
In this new installation at the Imperial Thorntonian Museum of Art, explore the intricate and unmatched craftsmanship from two very different nations that held firm against the tide of anonymous process-production. In the Vienna of 1825 or the Beijing of 1885, even the most everyday of crockery was the unique and never-repeated product of a single artist’s mind.
Exhibition will run September 14th 2020 – January 31st 2021
Book tickets via Motext page 11P-559”[1]
- Hand-made advertisement seen on Jones Avenue, Fredericksburg, ENA.
Photographed and transcribed by Sgt Bob Mumby, December 2020
*
(Dr Wostyn’s note)
Merde... So those jokers thought they could get rid of me, hein? Well, more fool them. The Chinese Aerospace History Exhibition in Philadelphia was actually rather enlightening, and relevant for our tale here. I could also discuss my remarkable experiences on the railway services of this nation, which, I have to say, compare rather favourably to those of its counterpart from our timeline. But, as I have a sense of control and relevance when it comes to these things, (coughs pointedly) we will instead begin with an interesting recording I made in Philadelphia...
*
Extract from recorded talk at the Chinese Aerospace History Exhibition in Philadelphia by Aero Major Liang Yaqin, recorded December 2nd, 2020—
Note: This recording is of a lower quality than most included in this package and was made impromptu by Dr Wostyn after the talk had already begun.
—hao. No, louder! Ni-hao! That’s right! That’s how you say hello! ...Well, actually in China today that would be considered kind of archaic, maybe! But you can tell your friends anyway! (Chuckles)
My name is Liang Yaqin and I am a retired officer of the Imperial Chinese Aero Force, the Zhongguo Kongjun, with the rank of kongjun shao xiao. (Pause) I will not ask you to say those ones with me, haha! (Audience laughter) In English my rank translates to your rank of Aero Colonel. (Impressed murmurs) I was one of only the second class of female cadets in the Kongjun after it was opened to women in 1974, ten years after your own Imperial Aero Force did the same. My sisters and I had to fight hard to prove ourselves, as I’m sure you can imagine. (Sound of agreement from audience)
Now behind me is a Meizhou Industries MZ-11 Qingniao fighter drome. I have actually flown one of these before. As part of a museum display flight, I am not that old! (Audience chuckles) The MZ-11 is still an iconic aerocraft in China today, and it is probably not like many aerocraft you have seen before. It is a one-decker drome, but with an air-cooled aeroscrew engine. You can see the aerodynamic body; the part you can see is made mainly of an alumium alloy, but it is bonded to wooden construction. There is an enclosed ‘bubble’ cockpit. The Qingniao was a big step forward for China, but she also lacks many of the things we would take for granted now. There is no Photel or Photrack set, not in this early model at least. Though she can carry rocket missiles, they are unguided. And of course there is no surge engine and no surfinal components. Qingniao pilots had to do many things themselves that ypologists at ground control will do today.[2]
The name Qingniao means Bluebird, by the way. But it is not the bluebird you have here in America. When old Chinese legend and poetry talks about the bluebird, we probably mean the blue magpie which is endemic to China.[3] This MZ-11 was far from the first Chinese aerodrome, of course. To explain where she came from, we have to go back to the beginning.
Wu Mengchao, a pioneering industrialist and friend of the Xuanming Emperor, is often cited as the spiritual founder of the Chinese Aero Force.[4] The important work was done by other people, of course, how d’you say, less colourful characters? (Audience chuckles) Wu knew that China had to catch up to the recent technological development in Europe and here in the Novamund. He was interested in many things, but aerocraft was a big one. Wu pushed for the creation of the Kongjun as a separate branch of the military, making China one of the first countries to do so. He helped finance the building of the great steerables that filled the skies in the 1880s, protecting Chinese cities from attack and also serving to transport wealthy civilians from place to place. Wu was fascinated when the first proper aerodrome was flown in 1888 – here you say it was Tibbetts and FitzGeorge, do you not? (Audience reaction) Very well.[5] Wu saw immediately that the heavier-than-air aerodrome had the potential to make the balloon steerable obsolete. Unfortunately, with typical audacity and impatience, he got himself killed in an early test of a rocket-powered aerodrome just three years later in 1891.
I say it was unfortunate. Obviously it was unfortunate for Lord Wu, but it was also unfortunate for China’s aero forces. The Emperor was inconsolable at the loss of his friend and refused to be reminded of his death, to the point that the court avoided mention of the Kongjun at all. That meant that development stalled just before the Pandoric War, and our then-enemies in Siam had an opportunity to catch up. China was still lagging behind Europe and the Novamund in aero development, but we threw away an advantage over Siam.
In the Pandoric War we flew mostly steerables still, but some aerodromes appeared. The best-known was the Fuzhou Mechanics FZ-3 fighter, a two-decker canvas drome which is on display at the other end of this hall. Although the Siamese had been able to catch up to some extent, our brave pilots still mostly ruled the skies against their Thonburi TB-2 Garuda three-deckers. When the Emperor passed away after the war, it was the exploits of heroic pilots in these clashes that reawakened public interest in flying.
Yes, we were flying and fighting well. But we got a rude wakeup call once Siam was subdued and then the northern traitors entered the war. Of course, they really had nothing they could throw at us; their backwards rulers thought making paper aerodromes was dangerously modern. (Audience laughter) But, of course, it was the Eluosi-ren, the Russians, who were really in charge. Russian aerodromes painted with Beiqing symbols, flown by Russian pilots, flew against ours. Our boys were brave and experienced, and we won that war and reclaimed our lost lands. But we did so partly because the Russians were already fighting on two fronts and could not spare many men. Every time our pilots went up against the Russian aerodromes, they took three losses for every kill they made. It was clear we were still behind the technological curve.
Under the next Emperor, the Huifu Emperor, we began to work to modernise our dromes. This work was driven by Zhuo Xinliang, the Marquess of Beihenan, who had served as a pilot in the war despite his aristocratic background. Lord Zhuo is considered the second father of the Kongjun after Wu Mengchao, and could be almost as bold. He was an early advocate of the idea that the steerable had now been surpassed by the aerodrome, and China needed to focus on the latter. Throughout the 1910s, aero development received especial focus, until by 1922 we had almost completely closed the gap with Europe and the Novamund. China’s obvious military strength helped dissuade others from starting wars. As you know, China was neutral in the Black Twenties. (Audience reaction) I know that is controversial here. But from our point of view, we reclaimed the last of our lands and secured peace with Siam in return for not a shot fired. One of your Roman statesmen once said ‘If you would seek peace, prepare for war’. By showing ourselves to be strong we had avoided war. But, of course, we could not avoid the plague.
The Aero Force played an important role in supplying Chinese cities during the long periods of enforced quarantine the government used to try to stop the spread of the plague. In this time, steerables could still be useful. Nonetheless, work continued at a slower place on military craft as well. At the time of the political crisis over the death of the Huifu Emperor, prototypes of this MZ-11 had begun to be flown.
Now, great breakthroughs in aeronautics have certainly happened in peacetime, but it’s a truism that many of the biggest ones have been associated with periods of warfare. The skies above a modern battlefield are like a field of Paleian competition between aerocraft designs, in which the strong survive and the weak are preyed upon.[6] It is a much more noticeable, and dramatic, effect for aero warfare than on the ground or even at sea. My counterparts in the Army and Navy can talk about breakthroughs in protgun or warship design, but it is in the air that a seemingly minor advantage can make the difference, not only between victory and defeat, but between victory and irrelevance. A good, effective aerodrome fighter could be obsoleted in the space of weeks by an enemy craft that had slightly superior speed and turning. It mattered not how good the first fighter’s guns were if she never got to train them on her foe. Intelligence analysis was focused sharply on aero battles, looking for signs of such crucial changes. Sometimes it might not be a whole new design, but merely an upgrade to an existing craft. Or even an accidental discovery, such as a damaged fighter being patched up in such a way that revealed the aerodynamic impact of the rivetheads in her usual construction. Those advantages were hugely valuable, as often they allowed a nation to upgrade her entire fleet of aerocraft in a matter of days or weeks and outflank the enemy’s progress, rather than needing to build new designs from scratch.
I go into all this to explain some of the problems which China, and Siam, had in the early part of what you call the Electric Circus or Second Interbellum period. I know that here in the Empire, and in Europe, it is often thought of as a golden age of progress and economic prosperity. That was true in only the second half of that period in China. Though we had avoided war in the Black Twenties, we had suffered from the plague, and then were plunged into political crisis, rebellion and natural disaster. The 1930s are not looked on with fondness in Chinese folk memory. The great irony was that, having avoided the peer-to-peer war which you had faced here in America, and also in Europe, we lacked that competitive environment to maintain the near-parity in aero design we had worked so hard to obtain. On the battlefields in Poland, the impact of the plague, it’s true, had reduced the impact of aerocraft on the overall conflict and so reduced the tendency to drive designs towards improvements. But here in America, especially in your War of 1926 against the Societists (Audience reaction) you were able to recognise issues with your aerocraft and improve them. You realised the impact of the hiveship on naval warfare before anyone else, other than the Societists themselves perhaps. You moved ahead, while we were left behind.
To return to the Qingniao. In 1930, Prince Zhuzhong, as he then was, crossed the Himalayas with most of the Army of Jushina. The Great Crossing is an event that really deserves to be more explored in depictions on the big screen, because it was a remarkable feat of logistics. In China we prefer to forget the circumstances, as we would rather not think about a difficult and problematic era which saw a military intervention in government, as well as what followed after. But what Zhuzhong and General Ling’s staff officers achieved is objectively greatly impressive. The army was split into three main parts, crossing the Himalayas at mountain passes including Qiangla, Zerila and Naidula.[7] Remember that this was a modern army; they did not merely have to consider infantry and horses, but also protguns and artillery, some of which were disassembled and brought over the mountains, others secretly transported by ship and overland from Jiaozhi Province.
Aerocraft played a crucial role in the Crossing. Steerables carrying Photel sets floated above the mountains to coordinate the movement of troops through the challenging terrain, and the supply lines keeping them alive. Aerodromes scouted out the lands ahead of them and ensured that reports of avalanches or other problems were conveyed to the relevant staff officers so troops could be pre-emptively rerouted. It was in this humble role that some of the first Qingniao prototypes saw service, and often captured the imagination of the fascinated Tibetan peasants who saw them overhead. A Buddhist monk named Zamnang wrote a poem, ‘The Steel Dragonfly’, which has provided the lyrics of the unofficial anthem of the Chinese Aero Force – though pedants still point out that the construction of the Qingniao involves rather little steel, as opposed to wood and alumium alloy! (Audience laughter)
Prince Zhuzhong arrived in Xi’an, the temporary capital, in February 1930, using the railways to beat other claimants there. If you are not aware, China was gripped by a succession dispute after the passing of the Huifu Emperor and his chosen heir, Zhuling, having been driven half-mad by plague fever. He threatened to drive China back into a period of darkness and ignorance. Zhuling and Zhuzhong were the only two realistically possible successors to the Huifu Emperor, but there were other prominent figures of importance as well. Ding Guoyang, Duke of Cao, had become de facto Chancellor during the Emperor’s recent illness, while Marshal Huang Mengjin controlled the powerful Southern Marches Army along the border with Siam.[8]
As you may know, Prince Zhuzhong sought to avoid civil war by calling upon our One Hundred and Eight Mandators, members of all classes chosen by lot, to elect an Emperor by the popular will that we name the Mandate of Heaven. This was a remarkable innovation in Chinese history. The Mandators deliberated for much time, but eventually chose Zhuzhong over Zhuling. Then and now, there has been much criticism made of this – were the Mandators effectively threatened by Zhuzhong’s military force, for example. But Marshal Huang initially favoured Zhuling and he also controlled a powerful force – more powerful in some ways. It does appear the Mandators did genuinely believe that Zhuling becoming Emperor would be a disaster for China and should be avoided.
Remarkably, Zhuling accepted the judgement of the Mandators. So did Marshal Huang. Unfortunately, Huang then fell ill – not of the plague, but of malaria he had contracted in Guilin. In his absence, his subordinate General Mu Hailin – curse that traitor’s name a thousand times! – attempted to seize control of the Southern Marches Army. Mu supported Zhuling, not out of any personal conviction, but because he was ambitious for power and thought he could use the...damaged prince as a puppet. He had Zhuling kidnapped, amassed an army of legitimist supporters from within the Southern Marches Army while ordering the rest to demobilise, and then marched on Hanjing. Mu was a technically proficient modernist – showing his hypocrisy in supporting the Regressive Zhuling – and used this to great effect to control the narrative. He had the Lectel lines cut and the Photel in Hanjing corrupted in order to prevent the people of Hanjing, both small and great, from learning of the Mandators’ decision.
This is where the Qingniao first became an icon. The engineer and retired pilot Liu Zhonghan had developed a two-seater version of this fighter for training purposes. Seeing one opportunity to head off a rebellion and civil war before it could begin, Prince Zhuzhong approached Liu and asked him to fly his two-seater Qingniao to Hanjing with a very important passenger: himself.
Many called the prince, the new Emperor-to-be, reckless. Aerocraft were highly unreliable back then, and to fly to Hanjing from Xi’an, a thousand miles, was far more than the two-seater Qingniao’s untested, estimated range. Three times, Liu and the incognito Emperor had to land at aerofields of dubious loyalty and refuel their distinctive aerocraft. But now Mu’s destruction of communication lines worked to Zhuzhong’s advantage, ensuring that word of his approach did not leak out. Zhuzhong presented himself in the Fenghuanggong in Hanjing on March 22nd 1930, bearing a scroll marked with the chops of all the 108 Mandators, declaring himself to have the Mandate of Heaven.[9] In accordance with law and custom, he then prayed to Heaven and underwent the enthronement ceremony of the dengji. This is our equivalent of your coronations, but our emperors do not use crowns. The important step is their enthronement upon the Longyi, the Dragon Throne.[10]
It must be admitted that the ceremony was rather unorthodox, being rushed and lacking the usual mourning rituals in the presence of the body of the preceding emperor. Nonetheless, Zhuzhong had secured the key support of powerful ministers and businessmen in the city, and was seated on the throne facing south as the Edict of Accession was sealed. The Edict was then brought out into Zhongyou Square and read to the assembled people, who ceremonially knelt to honour the new Emperor.[11] Zhuzhong chose the regnal name of Shengjian, meaning ‘Life and Health’. Like many people in the 1930s, he was fascinated with the then-recent work of archaeologists in uncovering Egypt’s ancient history.[12] One discovery was that the names of Pharaohs were often suffixed with the Egyptian phrase, I will probably mispronounce this, ankh wedja seneb. It means ‘Life, Prosperity and Health’, just as we in China append wansui or ‘Ten Thousand Years’ to the Emperor’s name. The Shengjian Emperor, as we must now call him, was interested in the idea of an equivalence between the ancient civilisations of Egypt and China; the difference was that China had a cultural continuity back to our beginning, which had been largely lost in Egypt.
So from the start, the Shengjian Emperor’s reign was associated with this lovely aerodrome. He was literally the Emperor who had came down from the sky and proclaimed Heaven’s favour, and to the simple peasants in the north and west, this went a long way to gaining their support over Zhuling. His bold move had strangled General Mu’s coup attempt in the cradle. There was still a small rebellion to put down, and the Qingniao played a role in this. Naturally, the drome that had saved the Empire saw rapid production and further improvement. The last of Mu’s forces were defeated in July 1930 and Mu himself was executed for treason. Prince Zhuling was rescued, and chose to retire anonymously to a monastery to prevent his person being used to attack his brother or undermine the state. While he retained some...peculiar ideas, he is honoured today for this selfless action. A few loyalists to Zhuling nonetheless ignited small revolts in the backward north, but once again these were put down.
However, the Shengjian Emperor then faced a new crisis. Bringing the Army of Jushina, both Imperial troops and local Jushina sepoys, over the mountains had helped save China from full-blown civil war. But it had also left nothing in place to hold down Jushina, which proved to be a powder keg. The Tuichu jushina yundong, the Leave Panchala Movement, had been plotting behind the scenes, the terrorist scum (Audience murmurs) and now seized this moment to unleash their full fury on the innocent Buddhists of the territory. They had formed an alliance with the fearsome Gorkhas of the mountains, fellow Hindus who had preyed on defenceless Tibetan Buddhist monasteries in the past, like the Vikings in the history of your mother country. The Gorkhas had allowed Shengjian’s troops to pass eastwards to China, but now blocked their return with effective Kleinkrieger attacks. The treacherous Bengalis sat on their hands and refused to allow our troops to traverse the passes, now it was vital. And as Paresh Anand’s gang of bloody-handed murderers slaughtered Buddhist children, a call went up to heaven for the Emperor to do something.
Once again, the Qingniao would be called upon to rule the skies...
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(Dr Wostyn’s note)
I will leave it there, as I think it is clear that Colonel Liang’s interesting lecture then became less than unbiased. In place of this, I will return to an extract from an earlier lecture of some relevance.
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Extract from recorded lecture on “The Modern History of China, Part 3” by Dr Ambrose Renfrew and Dx Xu Jingyi, recorded October 16th, 2020—
...and so began the disastrous attempt by Emperor Shengjian’s armies to try to hold on to Jushina, or rather, to reclaim it from the revolt which had already defeated the skeleton garrisons left there. The LPM, a disparate and diverse group, lacked a unified leadership. Paresh Anand’s group in Sangam rose to prominence because they had successfully suborned a group of sepoys whom the Chinese had thought loyal to their regime. When the Chinese did manage to clear the northern passes of Gorkhas and move some troops through to attack northern Panchala, Sangam was well behind the front line of the fighting in cities like Kanpu’er, Qiao-en-pu’er and Lekenao.[13] Thus, Anand’s group survived and grew stronger as other local groups grew weaker from fighting Shengjian’s armies, until they were well placed to dominate power in the new Panchala at the end of the conflict. Otherwise, Narayan Kumar and his son Ram might only have been footnotes to history.
Yes. The Jushina War is a Heritage Point of Controversy, and would be even without the ASL declaring it to be one. (Audience chuckles) In China we learn that Anand’s men were going around burning down stupas with Buddhist innocents locked inside, killing men, raping women and kidnapping children to be raised as Hindus. (More subdued audience reaction) Doubtless in Panchala they learn that our soldiers did the same to them. It is certainly true that we committed crimes de guerre, bombing from the air against the Shiraz Edict and using death-luft. It was a horrible, bloody conflict that lasted for three years in earnest and six more in aftermath, but left shadows across Asia for generations to come.
Yes, I can understand if Jingyi is reluctant to discuss it. Think of how controversial something like the Superior Troubles are here, and this was far worse. I won’t even try to go into the loss of life and suffering here. By the end of 1933, the Chinese government had internally acknowledged that there was no prospect of being able to hold on to the whole of Jushina, or Panchala. The priorities were shifted to trying to control certain areas to provide safe havens for Buddhist and Muslim loyalists, protected by Chinese troops, to prevent civilians from being attacked by the LPM militias. The LPM essentially wrote the playbook used by many later terrorist groups you may be more familiar with, including the mobile bomb and the holocaust bomber.[14] (Subdued audience reaction) Chinese soldiers often could not tell friend from foe, and the LPM exploited this ambiguity both ways – infiltrating attackers and also goading the Chinese into attacking what turned out to be civilian sites. Unfortunately, as Jingyi said, some Chinese commanders were all too eager to swallow the bait. As well as being horrific and shameful in itself, this served the LPM’s cause by beginning to turn moderate Hindu opinion against the Chinese.
Several factors worked against the Chinese. As well as fighting a new kind of warfare that no-one truly understood, they were hampered by resupply problems. The Gorkhas ensured that the Chinese never truly held the Tibetan mountain passes securely again, with random attacks reawakening paranoia after weeks or months of apparent peaceful transit. The Bengali government had adopted an officially anti-colonial position, which deepened after Russia’s disastrous attempt to reclaim Pendzhab in 1935-6. The Bengalis refused to allow the Chinese to use the mountain passes they controlled. Bengal never officially supplied the LPM with arms as they did to the Sikhs against the Russians, too concerned about LPM crimes de guerre aimed at Muslims and other non-Hindus. However, arms shipments to the north were fungible, and some high-caste Hindus in the Bengali government surreptitiously worked with the more corrupt Sikh rebel groups to funnel arms intended for the Sikhs to the LPM instead.
I might say that some in China still insist we would have won if we had worked with the Russians rather than at cross-purposes. I don’t think that is true, and it would also have been too high a price to pay, given the Russians’ track record at the time in betraying their onetime friends. But that’s another discussion.
Thank you, Jingyi. Despite all those factors I mentioned, the Chinese did manage to hold on for a while because Delhi, their other client state, was Muslim-dominated and remained loyal out of fear of a rising Panchala.[15] Delhi functioned to serve as a stepping stone for resupplying Chinese forces, and the Chinese pioneered the so-called ‘aero-bridge’ tactic of bringing men and supplies by air over the Himalayas, building bigger aerodromes than ever before to do so. Of course, the Himalayas were a formidable barrier, and many of these early craft crashed. Sometimes it’s claimed that more Chinese soldiers died in aero accidents than at the hands of the LPM, though this is an exaggeration.
It was already clear by 1938 that now even Delhi’s support could not stop all of the old Jushina from being overwhelmed. Shengjian continued to support Delhi with troops and used Delhi as the final choice of a safe refuge for Buddhist and Muslim refugees, but many were still left behind to the tender mercies of the LPM. By now, the same Chinese public who had been baying for LPM blood in 1930 were now growing weary of the long war. And there was worse to come, wasn’t there, Jingyi?
Sadly, yes. 1939 saw the biggest and most destructive flood of the Yangtze and Huai Rivers in history. Heavy rainfall was the primary cause, but after the fact, engineers said it had been worsened by the flood defences being neglected during the plague years and then the Jushina war years. Nanjing, or Jiangning, was devastated. The Grand Canal filled Gaoyu and Hongze lakes and the flood crumbled. There were local food shortages as the farms, which had only just recovered from the losses of the plague years on rural labourers, were now ruined. Charity was even offered by the Siamese, the Pérousiens and you Americans, which at the time was seen as an insult. China had been humiliated, losing on the battlefield to a ragtag band of terrorists and in her heartland to natural disaster.
The Emperor Shengjian was profoundly affected by this. He spent hours praying to Heaven and publicly humbled himself before the people. He said that the floods were a sign that his actions in Jushina were contrary to the will of Heaven, and he would change his policy accordingly.
In reality, of course, he’d probably already decided to abandon all attempts to reclaim Jushina by this point. The troops sent to Delhi were retained, for the present, but discussed far less publicly.
Yes, well...Shengjian had no intention of losing the Mandate of Heaven which he had acquired under such unusual circumstances. Part of his humility was that he accepted the foreign charity that had been offered, taking the shame on himself rather than on the people. His traditionalist gestures helped secure support once again from the rural people and northerners who had formerly backed his brother.
Now, Shengjian embarked on a new direction. China had turned inward for too long, consumed with her own concerns, being left behind as the world’s economic direction had shifted. The Emperor refocused on the future. China turned a corner, and finally joined the age of prosperity that you here in America associate with the Second Interbellum. Perhaps it was the arrogance of our neutrality in 1922, our confidence that China could stand alone and aloof, that had been the real sin against Heaven. The Feng Dynasty was founded by men who knew that Neo-Confucian isolation under alien rule had made us weak, and to engage with the world was a sign of strength, not dishonour. It may have been delayed a few years, but the 1940s would see the electrical revolution sweep across China as well.
And our understanding of our power structures was also changing. The One Hundred and Eight Mandators had gone from a mere symbolic rubber stamp to a body that had, alloyed to circumstance, luck and favour, decided the result of a succession dispute. Accordingly, powerful men now began looking for ways to influence and control the Mandators. Lord Ding remained the strongest figure in the government besides the Emperor, but he was growing old and questions began to be asked about where power would be held in the future.
A new China had been born, bloodied by failure in Jushina, but embracing modernity in technology, prosperity and constitutional speculation. We understood that we were not facing a unique reversal, but were part of a global trend. Russia, France and others were also in retreat from India, for better or for worse. When, in 1945, there was an abortive attempt by Societists to take over Formosa, we also began to understand that we were not alone, but part of a transoceanic order of nations under threat from the black flag. An order that would soon begin in earnest, as the cry of freedom for Africa was answered by France...
[1] ‘Franciscan Viennese’ means ceramics from Vienna in the age of Francis II, i.e. the time period when the Hapsburgs were intransigently against most technological innovation. The Thorntonian is named for Frederick Thornton, an ATL cousin of OTL’s William Thornton (who went on to be the architect of the Capitol). Of course, the craftsmen who were forced to make bespoke individual items at low profit margins would probably have different opinions to the latter-day critics bemoaning how awful the anonymity of process-production (mass production) is...
[2] The MZ-11 Qingniao is not closely analogous to any OTL aircraft, but is roughly at a similar level of the OTL French Morane-Saulnier M.S.406.
[3] Today in OTL referred to, more specifically, as the red-billed blue magpie (Urocissa erythroryncha).
[4] See Part #263 in Volume VII.
[5] As noted in Part #201 in Volume V, who takes the crown of the first flight is disputed in TTL on nationalist grounds (indeed, as it is in OTL).
[6] In OTL we would refer to Darwinian selection.
[7] These are the Sinicised Tibetan names; in OTL they are more usually called Lipulekh, Jelep La and Nathu La respectively. Note that the Chinese had obtained permission to use passes in Bengali territory, although Liang doesn’t mention this.
[8] There is no single post of Chancellor in China at this point, with the role being split between several figures. Colonel Liang means that Ding had become so powerful that he was effectively running the whole civil government as though he was Chancellor in name, even though his theoretical title was Foreign Minister.
[9] The Fenghuanggong or Phoenix Palace was the primary seat of government in Feng China since the early nineteenth century, though at this point it is one of four due to the rotating capital setup. It was purpose-built by the ‘Phoenix Men’ who founded the dynasty and is located near the site of the old Nanyue Kingdom Palace, likely a symbolic choice. Its architecture is Ming Revival but its internal construction was modern (for the 1820s) with many European innovations incorporated.
[10] This is not the same as the physical Dragon Throne in the Forbidden City in Beijing, which was retained by the Beiqing Dynasty. The Feng founders had a new throne commissioned in the new palace in Hanjing (Guangzhou). It was sometimes referred to as the Fenghuangyi or Phoenix Throne, but this was officially frowned upon, as the name Dragon Throne has a long metonymic association in China and not using it would be seen as casting doubt on the legitimacy of Feng rule.
[11] Colonel Liang is naturally not covering all the details here, and as she says this was a rushed ceremony lacking many parts regardless, but the Feng ceremony of enthronement already represented an innovation over the Ming-Qing practices that preceded it. Notably, the koutou (kowtow) is replaced with kneeling alone, possibly attributable to European influence. In addition, Zhongyou Square stands in for Tiananmen Square in Beijing and the simpler geography of the palace within the city (no isolated Forbidden City or ceremonial gates) has streamlined the process, reflecting the different constitutional role of the Emperor with respect to the people under Feng rule.
[12] This is at a much earlier stage than OTL because of the lack of discovery of the Rosetta Stone, so it took many more years to decipher hieroglyphs. As Liang says, cultural Egyptomania will be more of a feature of the 1930s-50s era in TTL.
[13] Kanpu’er, Qiao-en-pu’er and Lekenao are Sinicised names for Kanpur, Jaunpur and Lucknow respectively. Recall that Sangam is the usual name in TTL for Allahabad/Prayagraj.
[14] I.e. the car bomb and the suicide bomber. ‘Holocaust’ originally referred to an animal sacrifice in which the sacrifice is completely consumed in fire. In OTL this meaning has been largely displaced by use of the term to refer specifically to the genocide of six million Jews and others by Nazi Germany; in TTL it has instead been applied to the concept of a suicide bomber who sacrifices their own life to kill others.
[15] ‘Delhi’ refers to a substantial area and not just the titular city, taking in most of the OTL Indian state of Haryana and about the western one-fifth of Uttar Pradesh. ‘Muslim-dominated’ reflects demographic changes as a result of the Great Jihad, though it refers to control of powerful positions as well as a demographic majority. In OTL the city of Delhi currently has an overwhelming Hindu majority, but this is also due to demographic changes; at the time of the census of British India in 1891, it was only about 56%-41% Hindu-Muslim.
[16] See Part #212 in Volume V.
The Chinese Withdrawal from Panchala strengthening Chinese democracy reminds me of how Charles de Gaulle’s withdrawal from Algeria (if the references to terrorism are a parallel) and its effects on France.
also is this France backing uprisings inSocietist Africa or European Africa?
also is this France backing uprisings inSocietist Africa or European Africa?
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Lycaon pictus
Donor
At least he's being honest. What makes Diversitarianism such a dystopian horror is that a government can get away with just about any atrocity, and when you pile the evidence to the skies in front of them, they can reply, "That's just, like, your opinion, man" or "Agree to disagree." (What about actual genocide? According to the internal logic of Diversitarianism, blasting a color out of the Rainbow forever should be the one unforgivable crime. Is it seen that way, or is it just another Heritage Point of Controversy to play with?)