Part #202: Middle-earth in the Middle Kingdom
“2 x turkey dhansaks with rice, one with coriander dip and one without = 12R.4f.-m
1 x jiaozi vegetable sharing platter with side order of kimchi borsht = 4R.3f.2m
1 x garlic naan with cocoa dip = 2R.1f.-m
Delivery charge = 1R.-f.-m
Total 19R.8f.2m”
—From the Correspondence of Bes. David Batten-Hale (New Doradist Party--Croydon Urban)
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(Dr. David Wostyn)
—no, I said you SHOULDN’T let Dr Lister do the starting quotes...anyway, I must apologise for the biographical entries, I no longer have access to the proper biographical dictionary we borrowed from a library before, it will have to be the children’s book for now, at least unless there’s a better one here I can find...
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From : “Great Men and Women of World History” by L. H. Hodgkins and P. T. Rendell (2000)—
Tamahimana was a man born into what our own people at the time would have called savagery, but he rose to the very top of civilisation, a great hero and the counsellor of kings. Tamahimana was the son of Apehimana, a great man in his own right. Apehimana had been one of the rangatira chiefs at the very first Hira Hui High Assembly of Autiaraux in the year 1825, rising to power at a young age because of his role in the destruction of the slave ship
El Dorado. Because Apehimana was a great warrior—and because the old men of the Hira Hui feared him—he was soon declared Warlord and sent far away from Autiaraux to protect the islands from other slavers. But Apehimana was not only a defender, but a conqueror. He led a campaign across the Pacific islands that included the conquest of Tonga in 1827, where he chose to settle down. Apehimana had killed the Tongan king and now became a king by his own hand in all but name.
Apehimana was such a great man that his sons thought they would never surpass him, and Tamahimana least of all, for he was the youngest of Apehimana’s many sons by his many wives. While the elder sons vied for position by fighting and conquering, building big palaces and monuments to their own glory, Tamahimana was an imaginative dreamer. He dreamed of sailing the seas not only for war but also just to explore, to travel to other lands not to conquer them but just to prove it was possible. Most of all he dreamed that the Mauré could build a great canoe, bigger than any since the time when they had first come to Autiaraux, a canoe that could sail all the way across the vast oceans to reach the lands of the kéroi, the Europeans. Then the Mauré would have finally proved that they were equal to the peoples that had been visiting them for a lifetime now, sometimes as friends and sometimes as foes.
Though that dream would one day be realised, it would not be Tamahimana who sailed that great canoe: history had other plans for him. Back home in Autiaraux, the Hira Hui gradually became less of a talking shop and more of a real government. Powerful rangatira chieftains no longer only fought for more power for themselves and their own iwi-tribe, but to rule all the Mauré as one nation. To stop domination by one ruler or civil war, the Mauré created a system where one rangatira chief would be chosen to serve as kawana, first among equals, for one year before handing on to another. For a time in the 1840s this system meant that leaders of two powerful factions derived from the two old Mauré alliances took it in turn, but in 1854 a man named Tetumate became kawana. He was of a younger generation, able to see past the old rivalries, and believed the Mauré needed to become one centralised people. He had seen how European visitors could divide them with their schemes and feared what might happen. Tetumate was strong and a visionary but he was also ruthless in the pursuit of his goal. He would not tolerate any Mauré to exist independently outside the authority of the Hira Hui and the Kawana. His opponents in this included the Mauré colony at Mauréville in Antipodea—and Apehimana’s little personal empire on Tonga.
In 1858, thirty-one years after Apehimana had conquered Tonga, when he was seventy years old, a surprise attack by a huge United Mauré fleet fell upon the islands. Apehimana and his men fought bravely but were overwhelmed. Apehimana was slain along with most of his family, but Tamahimana escaped with one hundred warriors who vowed to one day seek revenge on Tetumate. Tamahimana knew that they would have to recover their strength before they could try. So he took his fleet of canoes north. For a time he thought to rebuild his father’s empire on islands that did not yet know the Mauré flag, but there were many more Europeans in these waters who might attack. Tamahimana decided that the only way to be sure of what the Europeans would do would be to rebuild his strength under their very noses. Over the next few years he and his men gradually crossed from one island to another, eventually reaching the Meridian Philippines. The Philippines were overwhelming to the Mauré, who had never seen so many people packed into a land before. Tamahimana decided that Tetumate, with his push for more agriculture and industry, wanted Autiaraux to become like that, and swore anew to oppose him. But Tamahimana also heard of even greater lands to the north, with even more people and opportunities. He was intrigued...
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From: The National Register Atlas of World History, 8th Edition (2002)—
THE SECOND RIVERINE WAR (1863-1868) was the third significant clash between the Beiqing and Feng dynasties of North and South China following the Anqing Incident (1826-1831) and the First Riverine War (1844-1850). The Second War was ultimately foreshadowed by the outcome of the First, which among other things saw Sichuan shift from neutrality to pro-Feng alignment under Viceroy Xie Bokang. Sichuan’s ambiguous and precarious position could only last for so long, and though the Beiqing dynasty was consumed for years by internal difficulties (the death of the Chongqian Emperor and his succession by the Jianing Emperor; war scares with Corea; factionalism and resentment by the Manchu and Mongol minorities for Beiqing policies) it would not stand idly by when Sichuan went from pro-Feng autonomy to outright being a Feng province after the death of Xie Bokang in 1862. The Beiqing, who had finally (if somewhat erratically) turned to modernisation in the years immediately before the Second Riverine War, once again reiterated their view that the Feng were an illegitimate rebellion and open war began again.
If the two Chinas (especially the Beiqing) had not quite modernised their armed forces to the levels that had wrought havoc across North America a decade before, they were nonetheless on the road to industrial warfare and this meant that the titular ‘riverine’ theatre of conflict—the land between the Yangtze and Yellow rivers—was bitterly fought over. Many mercenaries and weapons from the Great American War and European conflicts flowed into the area and turned the war into, as it is poetically known in China, the Battle of Four Thousand Bloodstains.
The ultimate outcome of the war was far more decisive than the grinding pace in the riverine theatre would suggest, thanks to newly Feng Sichuan providing a western theatre. Regions of China which had owed rather theoretical loyalty to the Beiqing following the Reclamation War (1814-1819) were conquered by the Feng, including the prestigious ‘New Great Wall’ forts facing Dzungaria (itself ruled by the Kazakhs and influenced in turn by the Russians). In the second half of the war, it was the conquest of western cities such as Xining, Lanzhou and ultimately Xi’an which decided the fate of the war. The conflict ended in victory for the Feng dynasty, with the full annexation of Qinghai, Gansu, Huijiang and Shaanxi provinces and effective control of all the east south of the Yellow River, including cities such as Luoyang and Kaifeng. The Beiqing were reduced to a husk of their former self, with many commentators predicting they would soon be doomed and China would reunite. Because history is never that simple, the Beiqing would last for decades more...
(Infobox in original atlas with portrait of dark-skinned, tattooed man in Chinese robes)
Tamahimana was a Mauré chieftain who fled his father’s independent island domain after the campaigns of Tetumate (q.v.) He came to the Republic of Formosa in 1861 and then went on to fight in the Second Riverine War, where he and his fellow Mauré fighters acquired a fearsome reputation among their Beiqing opponents. His greatest victory was at the Battle of Suqian (1865) where the Beiqing commander was slain far behind the fighting lines by Tamahimana’s infiltrators, leading to the collapse of the Beiqing position in Jiangsu province. After the war, his fame meant he became a court curiosity to the Xiaohong Emperor and then a trusted counsellor to the Xuanming Emperor when he succeeded his father in 1867. Xuanming attributed to Tamahimana’s support and advice—as someone outside the old power structures of China—his ability to survive political attacks following the embarrassing loss of northern Daiviet to the Siamese in the Second Sino-Siamese War (1869-1871). In the year 1873 Tamahimana left China with the Emperor’s blessing to return to Autiaraux: in 1874 Kawana Tetumate would be found dead under mysterious circumstances that clearly indicated he had lost his
mana. It would be many years before anyone else would introduce the traditional southern Chinese silkworm venom based poison known as
gu to the Pacific Islands.
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From: “Naval Warfare Through the Ages” by Christine Singer—
The first time that two non-European or –Novamundine[1] modern military forces met at sea would be a dramatic event. However it is hard to define exactly what ‘modern’ means in this context and this means it is hard to pin down when the first instance was. For example, the clashes between Corean and Yapontsi naval forces in the Imjin War of the sixteenth century were arguably as modern as anything in Europe at the time (contrary to popular belief, the Yapontsi were using gunpowder and had access to shipbuilding techniques at this time). However, if we are to use the most common ‘know it when I see it’ definition of modern, the most likely suspects are the Second Riverine War (1863-1868) between the two Chinese dynasties at the time, and the immediately following Second Sino-Siamese War (1869-1871) between the southern Feng dynasty and the Siamese empire.
The Second Riverine War was theoretically a conflict between two modernised Chinas, but the northern Beiqing dynasty continued to lag behind, its partnership programmes with Europeans decidedly lacklustre and halfhearted compared to those of the southern Feng. What did not help was Beiqing reliance on Scandinavian military advisors in the 1840s and then, following Scandinavia’s defeat in the Unification War, Jianing fired them without first securing replacements. As the Scandinavians had been particularly heavily involved in the naval modernisation programme, it was in this field that the Beiqing had the most difficulty in the conflict (whereas on land the difference between the two powers’ weaponry and tactics was less noticeable). Although the Beiqing had access to quite modern wooden ships (the first Chinese armourclad would not be built until 1874, and by the Feng), they were ultimately held back by insufficient loyalty and morale on the part of their poorly paid sailors. The Beiqing did not drill their sailors on gunnery or conduct live ammunition training: indeed, when the Beiqing and Feng fleets first met in force at the Battle of Jiaozhou Bay (1864), it was noticed by European observers that many of the Beiqing ships’ guns failed to work altogether. The ultimate cause was apparently corruption, with poorly loyal Beiqing sailors (many of whom had doubtless never expected to have to go to war) having sold the gunpowder from their shells, replaced it with cement and pocketed the difference.[2] Beiqing naval performance improved slightly over the course of the war but the Feng dominated the high seas, especially when Corea joined the war in 1865 and added their own fleet.
Ultimately the parlous state of the Beiqing Navy may therefore give us reasonable grounds for excluding it from the ‘modern’ qualifier, regardless of what it looked like on paper. The Feng and the Coreans both had less ambiguously modern naval forces but they were on the same side, albeit more as barely acknowledged cobelligerents than allies. Under other circumstances the Russo-Lithuanian Pacific Company might have got involved on one side or another, but the war came at a time when much of the company’s efforts were sunk into either consolidating their grip on Yapon or deepening their influence in California, and so uncharacteristically the RPLC played little part in the war. Other European and Novamundine trading companies aided the Feng as before, but—fitting the general trends in the region—compared to the last war they found themselves in a much more subordinate position, with the Feng picking and choosing what weapons and mercenaries they wished to purchase. Events elsewhere also influenced which companies were involved, with more input from the Americans and Meridians (who had absorbed the former Spanish and Portuguese contribution) and less from the French, Belgians and Scandinavians. However, the war did see France gain further influence over the Liaodong Republic (as a consequence of the Republic facing down an increasingly hostile Corea and now lacking any hope of help from the Beiqing) and in 1875 France would sign a lease on the port of Lusan[3] to develop it into a naval base.
In the titular Riverine theatre of the war, things were more evenly matched, with the Beiqing investing in timberclad riverboats armed with guns that usually worked: the riverine navy had been seen as more of a priority in the interwar period. The Feng learned more from riverine tactics that had been used in the Great American War, but overall the two sides failed to make much headway against each other: it was through battles on land, at great cost of human life, that the tide finally turned in favour of the Feng and left all the land between the rivers in their hands. The Yellow River, effectively forming much of the border between the two Chinas after the war, would in turn see rapid militarisation even as the forts and timberclad gunboats on the Yangtze fell into disuse, no longer needed as the Yangtze was now fully within Feng territory. Many of the old gunboats were redeveloped into small freighters or, as more Chinese ports were opened to (cautious and controlled) European trade in the 1880s, even tour boats.
Given all the caveats associated with considering the Beiqing’s naval military forces as ‘modern’, then, a less ambiguous option for the title of first naval conflict between two modern military forces not of European or Novamundine origin would be the following Second Sino-Siamese War. The Siamese Empire had been modernising its military for years and was ready for a rematch following the loss of the First Sino-Siamese War (1832-1838). The sometimes ruthless Feng policies in Feng-occupied northern Daiviet following that war had helped the Siamese cement their grip on what might otherwise be rebellious vassals: the Daiviet people were outraged by the stories told to them by refugees fleeing Feng rule. The Siamese had been preparing for a long time and fought a war in Cambodia in 1853-1856 that resulted in the expulsion of the Belgian Ostend Company and the assertion of control over Cochinchina (southern Daiviet) as well as Annam (northern Daiviet). The victory not only lent general morale to the Siamese but also helped create a narrative that the Siamese were the benevolent protectors of the people of Indochina against all foreign intervention, whether it be European or Chinese.
On land the two sides were fairly even, with the Siamese prevailing more due to the exhaustion of the Feng following the Second Riverine War and the need for troops to hold down some of the newly acquired western provinces. By sea, however, the Siamese Navy triumphed over its Feng counterpart, perhaps because the Feng had grown complacent in their tactics from facing the weaker Beiqing. The most significant naval battle of the war was the Battle of Qiongzhou Strait, where Admiral Devakul defeated Admiral Rui, despite being numerically outmatched, by the application of brilliant new line-breaking tactics that were soon the object of study even in European military acacemies. Devakul proceeded to land troops on Hainan Island and took the capital Qiongshan. Ultimately this did not go any further as Devakul lacked the soldiers to do any more and the Chinese reacquired the island at the peace treaty, but this was still a huge embarrassment for the Feng, particularly in the wake of the great victory of the Second Riverine War. The late nineteenth century in Asia was therefore a period of buildup and brinksmanship by several of the rising great powers, and certainly puts a lie to the Eurocentric term ‘Long Peace’ for this era...
[1] A term used by some authors in TTL as a more neutral descriptor for ‘the Americas’ without saying ‘American’ as that is the specific demonym of the ENA. It is derived from the Latin name for ‘New World’.
[2] Similar problems hampered the Qing Dynasty’s Beiyang Navy in the First Sino-Japanese War in OTL.
[3] AKA Port Arthur in OTL.
Even if my locality is not populated enough to show on the map. Well it wasn't OTL at this point, though it actually has water and can sustain local agriculture, and is at a strategic point of transport, the last stop you can make before entering the seasonally chancy Donner Pass, or whatever it is named ITTL. Viva La Zorra, and here's hoping California is not Burdenist. Every other race has a leg up in California, God forbid the Africans don't. 