China emerging as the closest thing to a winner in the Final War was also a nice surprise.I think Free China was a really nice subversion of the trend of the "Ultra Dystopic Killpeopleist China" trope too comman around here.
China emerging as the closest thing to a winner in the Final War was also a nice surprise.I think Free China was a really nice subversion of the trend of the "Ultra Dystopic Killpeopleist China" trope too comman around here.
Or another possibility could be Vietnam is able to maintain its independence ala Siam in our world.Maybe Germany could've been the ones to colonize Vietnam if someone absolutely has to?
Siam should have ended up as a British protectorate ITTL based off of being completely surrounded. Also, the Tian dynasty seemed to pop out of nowhere - a more realistic Japanese colonization of China would have been --> China balkanizes into multiple remnants with the toppling of the Qing --> some of these are colonized/proxied by the Europeans/Japanese/Russians/the Vietnamese(?!) --> Japan drives out most of the competitors with the collapse of Russia and European powers --> proclaims dynastically unified Chinese state under the Emperor of Japan or something and banks ironically on Chinese nationalism (reunified even if under a Yamato dynasty, allied to our Japanese benefactors thing)Or another possibility could be Vietnam is able to maintain its independence ala Siam in our world.
Why was Vietnam colonized IOTL?Or another possibility could be Vietnam is able to maintain its independence ala Siam in our world.
France had a history of involvement in Vietnam going back to the 18th century, when they supported the rising Nguyen dynasty against the Tay Son. However, later Nguyen emperors were much less conciliatory towards the West, which often manifested in the suppression of Catholicism. In the mid-1800s, the French Empire wanted a foothold in East Asia and used persecution of Catholic missionaries as a pretext to intervene. After annexing the provinces that would become Cochinchina and establishing a protectorate over Cambodia, they managed to fully subdue Vietnam between 1883 and 1886 and split off the viceroyalty of Tonkin as a separate protectorate. This is a sequence of events that could be avoided without a strong French overseas presence, since the Spanish aren't any stronger and Britain wouldn't need any more colonies in the region.Why was Vietnam colonized IOTL?