POD for a Balkanized China

I am not talking the Warlords, but the Territory whe know as China -- with lots of little independent Kingdoms like the HRE.
 
I am not talking the Warlords, but the Territory whe know as China -- with lots of little independent Kingdoms like the HRE.

DuQuense

If you want something fairly permanent, without a strong desire to 're-unity' the empire possibly the best bet might be just after the establishment of the Han. I was reading a few months ago about this.

The Qin 1st emperor had been a very nasty type and caused a lot of death and destruction. His son had been a pretty incompetent character by most accounts and this had trigger a period of civil war as a number of userpers had rebelled against him. The founder of the Han dynasty, you seems to have been markedly less capable than one of his rivals had finally won out after another period of war.

During the Qin the emperor had also advanced the empire's borders to the north, securing the land inside the loop of the Yellow River, which had previously been occupied by various pastoralist peoples. In response they had established a confederation and during the civil war period reclaimed the territory.

Now the 1st Han emperor organised this huge army which he led north to defeat them and reclaim the land in turn. However he was totally out-manouvered and the entire army forced to surrender.

That's all OTL. Apparently the leader of the confederation was initially intending to slaughter the entire army, including the emperor. However his wife presuaded him to make peace with the Han who realised they could gain influence over the northern tribes by economic means trading with them for items they couldn't produce.

If the army and emperor had been killed it would have led to further instability and disorder and probably another period of civil war. Also at the time much of what we think of as the Chinese heartland was occupied by people who did not consider themselves Chinese and this continued for another few centuries.

Therefore possibly another round of conflict and chaos coupled with strong non-Han communities might have persuaded enough of the Chinese they were better off with smaller, local kingdoms rather than all the problems of someone seeking to establish an over-arching empire, which means crushing everybody else. Possibly some groups unite to defeat one powerful claimant then, rather than agree to one of themselves being an emperor, or falling out over the issues and triggering yet more conflict, decide on an alliance to protect themselves and prevent anyone claiming a centralised throne.

It would be difficult because I think Confusious ideas had already got quite a grip on the Chinese intellectuals but might be about the only way of permanently breaking the idea of empire without massed slaughter of the sort of scale that possibly only the Mongols under Genghis could have tried.

Steve
 
During the Qin (Ch'in) Dynasty (221 B.C. - 206 B.C.), the emperor connected and extended the old fortification walls along the north of China that originated about 700 B.C. (over 2500 years ago), forming the Great Wall of China to stop invading barbarians from the north.

The Emperor standardized Chinese writing, bureaucracy, scholarship, law, currency, weights and measures.
He expanded the Chinese empire, built a capital in Xian, a system of roads, and massive fortifications and palaces.

:eek: All the way back to 200 BC :eek: :eek:
I was think about something around/after 1000 AD.

I suppose if you go this far back you could have a [ Roman type] Empire & several [Napoleon Style] Empires rise and Fall, with the after -- being the small kingdoms regaining their Individuality.
 

Typo

Banned
The largest pieces China could plausibly fall into and stay that way is 2, 3 if you count Manchuria
 
:eek: All the way back to 200 BC :eek: :eek:
I was think about something around/after 1000 AD.

I suppose if you go this far back you could have a [ Roman type] Empire & several [Napoleon Style] Empires rise and Fall, with the after -- being the small kingdoms regaining their Individuality.

DuQuense

I think it would be the most likely time if you wanted a permanent change. The Qin were the 1st true Chinese empire as the earlier ones had been more informal high king sort of affairs and the dynasty in 'power' often lacked any real influence for centuries before they were formally deposed. Coupled with the high degree of standardisation that as you quote the Qin imposed it would already be difficult to fully kill the idea of empire and get something like the Roman fragmentation becoming permanent.

I suppose the other approach might be to have what happened in Europe with some religion taking over the region but fragmenting it into version sects and doctrines. That was probably the single biggest impact Christianity had on Rome as it made [re-]unifying the empire so much more difficult once that mean accepting 'false doctrines'. If you could get something as fractious as Christianity or Islam dominating Chine you might have a similar effect there. Not sure if Buddhism could have that effect?

By about 1000AD the habit of empire and doctrine of its inevitability makes a lasting dis-unity very difficult, unless you have serious population changes which would mean something far worse than what the Mongols did :eek: and you would also need really several different national groups re-established in the region of the modern Chinese heartland.

Steve
 
The largest pieces China could plausibly fall into and stay that way is 2, 3 if you count Manchuria
No?

The larger (and thus, fewer) the pieces, the more likely they are to be re-united.

If China is to stay divided, there must be many polities of varying size, but all too small to project power too far away...

If the states are kept focused on their immidiate surroundings, but unable to control them, China will be dis-united and if not different polities, atleast different reagions and groups of polities will develop different customs and dialects (in the south of China, languages)
 

Typo

Banned
No?

The larger (and thus, fewer) the pieces, the more likely they are to be re-united.

If China is to stay divided, there must be many polities of varying size, but all too small to project power too far away...

If the states are kept focused on their immidiate surroundings, but unable to control them, China will be dis-united and if not different polities, atleast different reagions and groups of polities will develop different customs and dialects (in the south of China, languages)
There are no geographical barriers other than the Yangtze to divide up China.

Historically smaller states which emerged gets swallowed by the larger ones, the -only- real lasting division past the Qin had being a dynasty south of the Yangtze one north of it
 
You could have a very early PoD with Qin shi Huang failing to unite China, and thus China stayed divided between independent kingdoms that have little in common, without a unified Chinese national identity developing.
 

Typo

Banned
China was already somewhat culturally unified before the unification, though we'll never really know how much due to the mass destruction of pre-unification literature during the Qin.
 
There was another fairly recent thread https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=149518 that covered related issues. I posted that it was rather easy to unify the Warring States because they had related cultures and languages (unlike Indian regions) and suggested that "had Ba and Shu unified into a single state holding Sichuan, it might well have been able to defeat the attack from Qin. Such a state would not have been able to unify China easily and would also have had an interest in ensuring that no other state succeeded."
 
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