Pre-Great War situation (Part 3/3)
Fu Wei Han, The Imperial Sunset: Twilight of the Qing Empire, (Penang Nanyang: 2013)
One could say that the Sino-Japanese War was a mixed blessing for China: it highlighted the weaknesses of the imperial administration, yet showed where the paths to reform should go. But to the Qing reformists that held sway in court, it was nothing short of disaster. That Japan, of all nations, managed to go war with them and actually gain Chinese territory was a giant slap in the face to imperial prestige, and to their ideals of reform. Prior to this, it was thought that military might was all that was needed to ensure imperial strength. Now, it was clear that such actions must be followed with some notion of political or administrative reform.
Thus, with conservative nobles nipping at their heels, the Qing government enacted what we now know as the Thousand Edicts. Taking a leaf from their island neighbour, the years of 1896 and 1897 saw the near-complete overhaul of the imperial system: Sinecure posts were abolished, the imperial examinations modernized, a modern education system promulgated, capital investment and industrialization promoted, and – most importantly – a conscript army along western lines was pushed through, with advisors from Japan and the West being heavily courted for the endeavour. In short, the imperial court wished to achieve what Japan had for the past 50 years, in just five.
1897 was also the year Prince Alin came of age. Since his birth in ‘79, the boy-emperor had been nothing more than a pawn to the court, but his formative years saw diligent tutelage under his mother’s influence and a cadre of reformist ministers, whom tried to instil in him the values of adapting foreign ideas into Chinese society. With his 18th birthday, the court felt ready and dissolved the regency, enthroning Alin with the new title of Emperor Zhangchen. True to form, the new sovereign immediately proclaimed that the empire could no longer function as it once had, and that China should learn from the world beyond if it wished to progress and regain glory.
The court conservatives were horrified. Such drastic changes were contrary to the whole concept of Confucianism and of China, and they pushed hard for such changes to be withdrawn. Others turned to darker methods, and the decade closed with the emperor himself dodging three separate assassination attempts for his reformist attitudes. News of the Zhangchen government’s direction also stoked tension outside the Forbidden City; most welcomed the change in policy, but few enjoyed the disruptiveness that followed. The new mining and railroad concessions were all snapped up by foreign firms, some of which employed the treacherous Christians as their labourers. Industrialisation was also a large problem since Chinese capital was mostly tied up in war reparations to Japan, and what few factories that were built were jerry-rigged and prone to severe accidents.
Equally as disruptive was the imperial government’s new zeal against corruption, especially in the armed forces. Viewing the regionally independent armies and their bickering commanders as China’s weakness (popular rumours had it that several generals had used the Sino-Japanese conflict to enact long-standing grudges), the government began to craft an altogether new army in the Japanese style. Conscription was made mandatory, with the existing forces being the first to be trained, while their commanders were subject to scrubbing inspections and new rules that banned side-hustling. While everyone expected the armies to bristle at this decision, no one expected that a few generals would break off over the restrictions and become warlords in their own provinces.
This, coming on top of the anti-Christian persecutions wreaking havoc on the coast, quickly frayed the stability of the land. By 1903, Qing China was an empire partially in revolt…
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Desmond Lim, The Complex of the Chinese: 1896-1905, (Kenyalang Press: 1989)
…If history is truly written by the masses, then no example would be better than that of Qing China after the Sino-Japanese War. At this point, the national emotions of shame and humiliation were nothing new for the empire, but the recent war added a new sting to the wound. Even after the wars and annexations between China and the Great Powers, there was at least a notion of Zhungguo in respect to regional and cultural terms; that imperial superiority in art, culture, and military might would be unquestioned in at least the immediate Sinosphere. That Japan, of all nations, managed to fight and win territory and prestige destroyed that notion. Tokyo’s rise shattered what’s left of the cultural status quo.
For many peasants and townsfolk, their first reactions were to immediately uphold whatever is perceived as Chinese culture and preserve it against hostile elements. Unfortunately, this meant also targeting the most notable sign of foreign influence in the empire: Christian converts. The immediate aftermath of the war saw a dramatic rise in Christian persecutions, more ferocious and brutal than ever before. From Foochow to Tientsin, thousands, then tens of thousands of people fled from their own co-ethnics, moving only at night to evade violent mobs and newly formed secret societies. Whole families with just one Christian convert were targeted, ostensibly for failing to uphold traditional values. The Chinese Muslim community also became targets, but their episode quickly died off when their co-religionists in the Qing armies persuaded the court to impose harsh justice on their perpetrators. Conversely, Christian converts received little sympathy from the half-reformed armed forces, if at all.
With the bloodshed spiralling, the international community posted multiple vessels to keep their own citizens safe and warned Peking of sending troops to back them. Yet for most of the converts, salvation lay in three divergent choices: the coastal cities, the tropical Nanyang, or the Manchurian north.
For nearly all of them, the coastal cities were the first option. The opening of China had resulted in a few cities becoming hubs of Western activity; Hong Kong in particular had grown into a flourishing port, as did Shanghai and Tientsin. As such, these cities quickly became swamped with fleeing converts as they head to them for protection, ignoring imperial decrees and evading stationed sentries intent on halting the flow. Packed to bursting, these refugees spilled over into the surrounding lands, creating new towns, ghettos, and districts wherever they stayed. Friction between the newly-come and the established city folk were intense, with murders and violence breaking out even as both imperial authorities and western churches tried to contain them.
From this, two new choices were presented. One was to head towards the lands and islands of Southeast Asia, known back then as Nanyang to most Chinese. The region had long been a destination for the destitute, whom made it their home after serving their time as coolies or mine labourers. More recently, the rise of colonial empires had created entire new classes of the Nanyang Chinese, ranging from poor Kangchu spice planters to the rich and multi-racial Peranakan families. No wonder then that a fair number of southern Chinese Christians emigrated there after the Sino-Japanese War, with some estimations putting the number of migrants from 30,000 to as high as 300,000, though no one is certain. Settling down in Sundaland and Indochina, the newcomers were both boon and headache to the native and colonial governments, with their very presence unleashing unexpected consequences down the decades…
But not everyone headed south. Another option, favoured mostly by northern converts, was to head in the opposite direction, towards Manchuria. The frontier region had been forced open to outside investment following the war, and many western companies were out to hire prospective labourers. In the tension-filled air, rumours quickly abounded of the firms promising to protect the rights of Chinese Christians, sending a veritable flood of them towards the northeast. Despite prohibitive decrees, imperial scouts, and mobs of anti-Christian forces on the roads, around 20,000 to 60,000 converts and their families arrived to Manchuria by sea, hoping to become employed and protected by the new mining concerns mushrooming across the region. The firms’ foreign owners, most of whom were Japanese or Russian in origin, hadn’t actually promised such religious safeguards, but press-fuelled international opinion firmly made it clear what should be done for the newcomers, and to those that sought to harm them…
…The most confusing – and some would say, unsettling – part in the “Migration of Converts”, was the outsized role played by secret societies during the period. The Final Fifteen Years saw a large wellspring of brotherhoods, gangs, and heterodox militias coalescing across the eastern half of Qing China. Though the reasons for their formation during this era are still unclear, it was certain that local millennialism, combined with unusually dry seasons and the recent defeats in wars, played a role in their proliferation. While some were nothing more than religious groups, others – like the Society of Crimson Swords – were partial militias fuelled by a heterodox mix of Buddhism, Taoism, and traditional ancestor worship [1]. More disturbingly, some of these groups saw China as a land in danger and were near-puritanical in enforcing traditional customs and expunging Christian worship. Some of the worst murders in the era were done by groups like the Crimson Swords, whom began espousing to drive the “Foreign Devils” from the Sinosphere entirely.
Caught up in the events, the Qing government was divided on what to do. Many officials called for a crackdown to ensure general peace. Equally as many sought a dialogue with them to ensure an outer bulwark against foreign intrigue. Provincial lords were just as disunited, with many notables clamping down hard on the secret societies while others flirted with them in an effort to gain leverage with the imperial court. For the Crimson Swords, their nature piqued the interests of several officials of Shandong province in 1902, whom were secret sympathisers. Led by the prefectural archivist Li Hong, the bureaucrats wanted to learn more about the beliefs and motivations of this ascendant and outspoken brotherhood.
For Li Hong, he also brought some papers and inks to record his observations. As an archivist, perhaps he knew of the power of words…
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Zhang Vasiliy Anatolievich, The Imperial Web of East Asia: A History (Sekvoyya: 1994)
…When King Sojong proclaimed the birth of the Korean Empire from the Gyeongbok Palace and retitled himself emperor, he never imagined that his domain would be a hotly contested spot between two ascendant superpowers.
His wife did.
Whatever her faults, Empress Myeongseong was far more astute and observant than her husband, noting early on the murky threats that lay for the new nation. Japan was feeling myopic over their conduct in the war, yet it still viewed Korea as a place for expansion. Similarly, the faraway gaze of Russia has also resulted in some jostling in the new imperial court, with some officials urging the couple to err westward to St. Petersburg and the government therein. A hedging reformist, Myeongseong decided to err towards the latter and converse more with Russian envoys on administrative reforms. She also managed influencing the court to open military channels to China, which was already stitching-up its hitherto independent armies.
To the Japanese government, her actions were deeply enraging, and expansionist cliques quickly deduced that Korea would never be taken with her at the helm. However, the botched assassination plots of 1897 and 1899 only served to cleave a deeper wedge between Tokyo and Seoul, with the royal family evacuating to the Russian embassy each time for safety [2]. From then on, both the emperor and empress were escorted by a double contingent of half-reformed local troops and Russian military attaches, and by 1900 the Korean reforms took a distinctly Russian character: while administrative restructuring occurred at the local and even regional levels, executive power began to accrue at the hands of the royal court, and especially among Myeongseong’s family members.
And this was just some of the many, many complications that drove East Asia in the build-up to the Great War.
To put it simply, the nations of China, Japan, Russia, and Korea all realized that the regional status quo has shattered. But in its wake, conflicting policies arose as to what should be done. China’s reforms were done in the context of an empire fighting to maintain Confucian conservatism and international relevancy. Japan viewed itself as an ascendant nation and wanted a piece of Qing and Russian power. Russia herself aimed for regional expansion for both resources and prestige, and Korea attempted to play each side with the other in the hope of not being swallowed up.
Perhaps equal to the Korean complication was Manchuria. Swamped with Japanese and Russian mining companies, and with thousands of Christian converts arriving every year for protection against bigoted violence, there was severe international pressure to stabilize the region before tensions between various parties boil over into a bloodbath. The yellow press of Europe and the Americas called for aid and even intervention, though few western Powers wanted to go that far. It also didn’t help that the Peacemaker of Europe, Russia’s Tsar Alexander III, died in December 1901 from kidney failure, leaving his son Nicholas II to solve the Manchurian Crisis.
Goaded by international pressure to protect the converts, and following the policies already planned by his father for the region, Nicholas began to expand Russian influence into Manchuria, pushing for railroad concessions, extraterritorial rights, and for Russian mining firms to accept Christian (and especially Orthodox) workers. He also publicly donated funds to build churches and relief centres across the Chinese northeast, while his government warned Peking of severe retribution lest it continue to neglect its Christian minorities.
These actions rankled the Qing court, but they were too busy combating internal discord to act decisively against their neighbour. It also unsettled Japan, whom wanted no part in the religious debate whatsoever. Seoul’s conservatives were horrified by the Manchurian example, and quickly plotted their next move against the reformists and the royal family.
Globally, the complications also began to push several nations to new system of alliances. Japan, whom long sought control over Korea, viewed Russia as a potential threat and drifted towards St. Petersburg’s naval antithesis, Great Britain. The Korean court – or at least the reformist nobles – favoured a closer relationship with Russia while the conservatives erred to China; both sides didn’t want any notion of forming an agreement with Japan. China was too busy dealing with itself to care for global balances of power, though several nobles noted that a Russo-Japanese conflict could deflect pressure for the Qing government to bow towards either side…
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Notes:
First off, apologies for the long delay! I wasn't joking when I said domestic stuff in my family got bad. Hopefully the update makes up a bit for my long absence!
1. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you one of the TTL iterations of the Boxers! The OTL group would not be present here, due to circumstances being different, but some of the driving forces of the group (local millennialism coupled with the cultural backlash from the Sino-Japanese war) are still present, so it wouldn’t be too much to imagine a proliferation of secret societies in the following years.
2. IOTL, the Japanese managed to assassinate Empress Myeongseong/Queen Min by this point. Her TTL version is much luckier.
