It's nice to see that the Gorkhas are colapsing. I never like them.
That's racist.
Look to the West Volume V: To Dream Again
- Thread starter Thande
- Start date
That's racist.
Okay. I never like the fact that they conquered Tibet. I don't actually know who Gorkhas are. (is that racist too... ?
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Ninja'd.
I'll take your word for it. I wouldn't myself know whether a river border is better defensible than a non-river one.
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Okay. I never like the fact that they conquered Tibet. I don't actually know who Gorkhas are. (is that racist too... ?
Nah, just joking, mate.
Thande
Donor
Okay. I never like the fact that they conquered Tibet. I don't actually know who Gorkhas are. (is that racist too... ?
The Gorkhas (spelled Gurkhas in OTL) are a people from Nepal who have a reputation in the former British Empire (along with the Sikhs) as producing some of the most deadly warriors who have ever walked the earth. Their signature weapon is the kukri knife. They have been in the news in recent years because some of their veterans had not been treated well by our government pensions-wise and the actress Joanna Lumley, whose father had fought alongside them in the war, campaigned for them to get their fair treatment.
One of my grandfathers fought in the Pacific in WW2 and ended up in a Japanese POW camp: he would tell stories about how Japanese sentries, who had the whole bushido honour thing going on and would never show weakness before anyone, running in terror and refusing to go out on patrol because of the Gurkhas and their mastery of jungle and mountain warfare. They would come out to relieve their predecessor only to find his decapitated head spiked on a bayonet and no visible sign of anyone having been there. It was a powerful psychological thing.
I remember actually being surprised when I did research for this TL and finding that the Gurkha Empire had been made to pay homage to the Qing Dynasty at one point (in fact, that's to do with how Tibet first came under Chinese influence, which obviously has had repercussions to the present day)--just because the stereotype of the Gurkhas in the British imagination is that they are effing invincible. So to an extent putting a different version of that confrontation in TTL, some years after the OTL one, is my way of poking holes in 'commonly held notions' of history--like Britain's establishment being impossible to overturn, France being unable to find constitutional stability or Germany's unification inevitably causing a European war.
Swedish military advisors show up in lots of real places. They were one of the main groups involved in pre WWII Ethiopia.
Thande
Donor
"Silkworm poison" - do I spot a Bridge of Birds reference?
Not on purpose as I'm not familiar with that* - I was just trying to think of a distinctively Chinese poison and came up with Gu.
(Random insight: I bet this chocolate mousse company doesn't sell its products well in China...)
*Though it does sound interesting from the Wiki description, as someone who's familiar with the format in Journey to the West.
I think you just explained how Mussolini so effortlessly could colonize Abyssinia in the 1930s.
With the Upper Yellow River contested, the remnants of the Qing are going to see their relationship with Mongolia change. There's no practical way for them to get a Chinese army around to the Mengu-Feng border, so the Mongolians will effectively be left to defend themselves. And any Qing offensive in the west will likewise rapidly become a matter of exhorting allies rather than ordering subjects.
Not to say that they're about to lose the Mongolias, but their retaining them will have to depend on a special relationship and careful treatment. For reference, see the northern dynasties of the North-South period, but especially the Sui, Tang, and former Qing.
They could mitigate that if they were willing to lay down the cash for a rail line all the way into Outer Mongolia, but otherwise pride swallowing is very much called for.
Side note: Is the Huang He not going to shift its course in this timeline?
Not to say that they're about to lose the Mongolias, but their retaining them will have to depend on a special relationship and careful treatment. For reference, see the northern dynasties of the North-South period, but especially the Sui, Tang, and former Qing.
They could mitigate that if they were willing to lay down the cash for a rail line all the way into Outer Mongolia, but otherwise pride swallowing is very much called for.
Side note: Is the Huang He not going to shift its course in this timeline?
Like your treatment of the Japanese. The Meiji Restoration and the great sovereign industrial and colonial powerhouse of the Far East being subverted in the most undignified manner conceivable.
Thande
Donor
Good point, I've been dreading keeping track of how the Chinese rivers will change and whether the changes in TTL would affect it.
We have incredibly high standards on this forum when it comes to doing your research when if you write a timeline with a PoD in the 1720s about a British monarch slipping on his coronation carpet, you are expected to be able to account for how the course of Chinese rivers change in the mid-19th century as a consequence of this in a plausible manner...
Alex Richards
Donor
We have incredibly high standards on this forum when it comes to doing your research when if you write a timeline with a PoD in the 1720s about a British monarch slipping on his coronation carpet, you are expected to be able to account for how the course of Chinese rivers change in the mid-19th century as a consequence of this in a plausible manner...
This is why most published AH works would fail to win a Turtledove.
Well, that was a nice update. If I had to summarise it, it would go like:
Maori being Maori, exporting their martial prowess around Asia (and even going to Europe eventually!), China fighting China, Asian Powers Rising.
Yeah, I don't know anything about this stage in asian history OTL, so not really any constructive criticism here.
Though it makes me wonder, what is your inspiration for an update like this? And how is it written? For example, did you have the events planned long in advance, and was the Maori mercenary a late addition to that plan or was it an integral part from the start?
A final point, it's cool how you fill every nook and cranny of the globe its own unique interesting place, not that this isnt the case OTL, but you really do the idea justice. Keep it up!
Maori being Maori, exporting their martial prowess around Asia (and even going to Europe eventually!), China fighting China, Asian Powers Rising.
Yeah, I don't know anything about this stage in asian history OTL, so not really any constructive criticism here.
Though it makes me wonder, what is your inspiration for an update like this? And how is it written? For example, did you have the events planned long in advance, and was the Maori mercenary a late addition to that plan or was it an integral part from the start?
A final point, it's cool how you fill every nook and cranny of the globe its own unique interesting place, not that this isnt the case OTL, but you really do the idea justice. Keep it up!
Thande
Donor
Well, that was a nice update. If I had to summarise it, it would go like:
Maori being Maori, exporting their martial prowess around Asia (and even going to Europe eventually!), China fighting China, Asian Powers Rising.
Yeah, I don't know anything about this stage in asian history OTL, so not really any constructive criticism here.
Though it makes me wonder, what is your inspiration for an update like this? And how is it written? For example, did you have the events planned long in advance, and was the Maori mercenary a late addition to that plan or was it an integral part from the start?
A final point, it's cool how you fill every nook and cranny of the globe its own unique interesting place, not that this isnt the case OTL, but you really do the idea justice. Keep it up!
I plan out the broad strokes in advance but then change my mind as I write it, I didn't plan to link up the Apehimana and Second Riverine War plot strands until I sat down to write this.
You don't want to know how many different draft versions of the outcome of the Great American War I went through...though I can't discuss that as we haven't actually seen the 'when the dust has settled' full outcome yet.
I suspect you'd need a pretty specialized degree to really "know," but I can say having a military frontier on the river is definitely bad news. That thing's going to silt up somewhere inconvenient, there'll be a big rain, and that'll be that.
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We have incredibly high standards on this forum when it comes to doing your research when if you write a timeline with a PoD in the 1720s about a British monarch slipping on his coronation carpet, you are expected to be able to account for how the course of Chinese rivers change in the mid-19th century as a consequence of this in a plausible manner...
Well, yes and no. In this case, I can recall only one timeline that dealt with it that wasn't a Taiping timeline (and so just including OTL's current events).
Imagine the equivalent taking place in alternate history of the West - a nearly inevitable, man-made disaster, quite likely to kill a million people (on the low end!). And no one included it. If something like that took place west of Russia or north of Mexico - the Potato Blight, say - and someone left it out of their TL without explanation? We'd tear into them, and we wouldn't be entirely wrong in doing so.
But place that horrendous human cataclysm completely outside the Western world, and then we start talking about high standards. It's understandable, but....
Well the fact that so many of them were written by Turtledove probably doesn't help, ironically enough.