Plausability check late Ming conquest of Macau, Philippines

Could the late Ming have seized Macau and/or Philippines


  • Total voters
    49
Why would the galleons be a hindrance?

Galleon trade = silver trade. not unless you don't know how valuable the silver trade is for the Chinese back then.

I think you can't elide over the differences by saying "regardless of racial caste." What each group would do in response to a Ming invasion is very different; are you including, for instance, the Chinese population in this "loyal spanish/catholic subjects?"

As of worldmapper site, philippine population in 1500 was 8m. Of course this would change by 1600 due to the Spanish disruption of food sources and trade. the 600k loyal spanish subjects is conservative count since they only count church attendance and tributes.

In otl 1603, There was a Chinese rebellion led by a Chinese catholic convert helped by Mandarin Chinese officials which landed in a fleet of large ships. Although spanish peninsulares were outnumbered by the Chinese, the Chinese were still outnumbered if you count the locals as spanish. You also had the Japanese helping the spainiards putting down the rebellion.

So in a way you can say that there was an attempt by the Chinese to invade the philippines in otl which miserably failed.
 

Paul MacQ

Donor
It would be interesting in a number of naval Battles being won by the Spanish and Chinese adopting some of the better aspect of this.

Philippines is much closer to China than to Spain. And attack that takes import Ports requiring Spain to reinforcement taking a very long time to get there might work.

Hire some Dutch or other European that get some Trad concessions thing might get interesting.
 
But the reality is that the Chinese and Japanese attacks were beat in the Philippines (and Macao) as well as the Dutch ones ... Only once, Manila fell into British hands and still the casualties were disproportionate.

“The loss of the Spaniards during the siege included three officers, two sergeants, 50 troops of the line, and 30 civilians of the militia, without reckoning the wounded; the Indians had 300 killed and 400 wounded. The besiegers lost about 1,000 men, of whom 16 were officers. The fleet fired upon the city more than 5,000 bombs, and more than 20,000 balls."

Because of Simon de Anda and the people of the Islands (Spaniards developed an army of 10,000 men (of which 200 Peninsulares), the British were never able to extend their control beyond Manila and Cavite. With the signing of the Treaty of Paris, the British left Manila at the end of March 1764.

So, I don't know how chinese or japanese would have been able to conquer Philippines
 
It would be interesting in a number of naval Battles being won by the Spanish and Chinese adopting some of the better aspect of this.

Philippines is much closer to China than to Spain. And attack that takes import Ports requiring Spain to reinforcement taking a very long time to get there might work.

Hire some Dutch or other European that get some Trad concessions thing might get interesting.

Yes, this is true if you rely on peninsular spainiards as reinforcement. Martin76 put it out nicely how the Spanish will deal with reinforcement during the British Invasion. Use the locals, insulares, mesitizos, Indios as the reinforcement.
 
depdns really, do we know how effective galleons were against east Asian fleets during the time period. It also comes to projection capabilities. Logistics are on the Chinese side definitely for Macau. As for phillipines is doable but you would need to somehow curb the Manchu unification in the north, get rid of the peasant rebellions, or make the Mongol threat to the north not be as effective.

|Really the difficulty of this scenario is inertia. There really was no interest in the Philippines from the emperor's viewpoint since the court at the time believed china was the cente rof the world. So if you can somehow get rid of that inertia to act and inflated sense of false invincibility, then I could see the phillipines taken.

In either case macau would fall if the ming were serious.
 
depdns really, do we know how effective galleons were against east Asian fleets during the time period. It also comes to projection capabilities. Logistics are on the Chinese side definitely for Macau. As for phillipines is doable but you would need to somehow curb the Manchu unification in the north, get rid of the peasant rebellions, or make the Mongol threat to the north not be as effective.

|Really the difficulty of this scenario is inertia. There really was no interest in the Philippines from the emperor's viewpoint since the court at the time believed china was the cente rof the world. So if you can somehow get rid of that inertia to act and inflated sense of false invincibility, then I could see the phillipines taken.

In either case macau would fall if the ming were serious.

Maybe Macau yes, but Philippines I can´t imagine.
 
Galleon trade = silver trade. not unless you don't know how valuable the silver trade is for the Chinese back then.

I'm not that big into East Asian history. Could you clarify what silver trade you're talking about? It's not the one where Europeans were so desperate for Chinese goods that they shipped tons of precious metals to East Asia, a practice that continued until the British began exporting opium from their Indian colonies, is it?

In otl 1603, There was a Chinese rebellion led by a Chinese catholic convert helped by Mandarin Chinese officials which landed in a fleet of large ships. Although spanish peninsulares were outnumbered by the Chinese, the Chinese were still outnumbered if you count the locals as spanish. You also had the Japanese helping the spainiards putting down the rebellion.

So in a way you can say that there was an attempt by the Chinese to invade the philippines in otl which miserably failed.

No, I don't think a local revolt without any state support is in any way a valid comparison to an invasion by Ming China, sorry.

“The loss of the Spaniards during the siege included three officers, two sergeants, 50 troops of the line, and 30 civilians of the militia, without reckoning the wounded; the Indians had 300 killed and 400 wounded. The besiegers lost about 1,000 men, of whom 16 were officers. The fleet fired upon the city more than 5,000 bombs, and more than 20,000 balls."


This can't be right. Where are the hundreds of thousands of loyal Spanish subjects we've been assured existed?
 
depdns really, do we know how effective galleons were against east Asian fleets during the time period. It also comes to projection capabilities.

Dutch warships were significantly superior to those of the Ming; OTOH, the comparisons were in the 1620s, by which point the Ming state was significantly weaker, and at the end of the day the Dutch did lose to the Ming (and Ming pirates).
 
Top