The Pacific World

I've lurked for an unbelievable amount of time, enjoying timelines while adding none myself. So today, I felt that should change. But first I had to pick something that wasn't done yet and at least somewhat matched what I knew about history. East Asia timelines tend to feature a superpower-Chinese giant, something I think appeals to both Western cliches of the "sleeping giant", and Chinese cliches of victimization and the immutability of "China". That's fun and interesting of course, but it creates a room for something very different. The POD is Chinese, but my biggest goal is to slowly expand the scope of uh...divergence, in an enjoyable way. So here is The Pacific World (the title should mean something very different than what is expected), hopefully a very different timeline.

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"One cannot even walk down the streets of downtown London without on October Seventh without an obligatory Maitreya float attracting attention on the streets. Yet, Ten Seven means so much more in the study of history. Even though the foundation of the Manchu dynasty had been already shaken by rebellion in Northern Szechuan and the endemic corruption that hobbled any response, Ten Seven proved something entirely new. Underneath all of the authority of the state and hundreds of years of traditions, an Emperor and a peasant were no different in one important aspect: they could both bleed and die quite easily."

- Excerpt from Newspaper Column (source: The Guardian), James Lee
 
Not as familiar as I'd like to be in the history of this area. If you could expand a little it would be great.
 
BTW, I hate Wade-Giles but I have to use it. :(

Also, while it's a real pain in the butt for authors to split up updates excessively, I really don't like to sit on completed entries. Does anyone have any ideas on how to handle this?

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"Although the Ming Dynasty had been seen as a wealthy, but decadent state, it had much more humble origins in a White Lotus sect in Guangzhou that had rebelled and eventually toppled the ruling Mongol dynasty. A somewhat Millenarian ideology, the White Lotus would reemerge time after time, except this time to haunt the Manchu Dynasty. Just as a disgusted reaction to the inability of the Ch'ing Dynasty to suppress White Lotus rebels, supposedly due to corrupt officials, defined the early reign of the Chiach'ing Emperor, the White Lotus would mark the end of his reign. Even though the Emperor had brought the war to a close by 1804, it had taken more than ten million lives, exposed dangerous rivalries between officials, and the fundamental weakness of the Manchu state. On October 7th, now known as Ten-Seven Day in overseas Chinese communities, members of the Eight Trigrams Society, a White Lotus offshoot in Shantung Province, coordinated an ambush on the Imperial Convoy outside of the Forbidden City. Regardless of the cultural mythology that has defined this event so intensely, the results by the end of the day were undeniable: both the Ch'ing Emperor and his oldest surviving son were dead, and Peiping burned."

- The Decline and Fall of the Ch'ing Empire, Joseph Stalvern

"Unlike the Ottoman Empire, the other great Eastern Empire, that of the Manchu's, had a simple and peaceful succession model ever since the K'anghsi Emperor enshrined the tradition of secretly choosing his successors. Despite the short debate over the Yungcheng Emperor's succession, the Manchu Empire typically had seamless successions, a remarkable feat considering the historical absence of the rule of law in both Manchu and Chinese governance. The aftermath of the 1813 assassination of the Ch'ing Emperor, including an intense court fight in spite of the dearth of potential successors and ambition among them and the hesitance of bureaucrats to reveal the official will, suggests that the system of secret handpicked successors fell apart because of a simple reason: there was no contingency plan in the event of the Emperor and his hand-picked successor expiring simultaneously."

- Models of Imperial Succession: A Comparative Analysis of the Ottoman and Ch'ing Empires (1st year term paper), Dylan Spunckler
 
BTW, I hate Wade-Giles but I have to use it. :(

All the cool kids use pinyin these days.

Anyway, 1804 is a bad POD for a White Lotus timeline, since the rebellion was basically burned out by then anyway. Even if you kill the emperor, Mianning is old enough to take the throne without any major bumps in the road, so there's no succession crisis. I don't see how the shattered remnants of the rebellion will be able to capitalize. Or is your POD an earlier Eight Trigrams Rebellion? I feel like you're conflating the two uprisings. At this point OTL the Eight Trigrams were three guys in a tent somewhere in Hebei.

I'd also dispute your characterization of the Ming as a White Lotus sect, but that's neither here nor there. It's cool to be enigmatic or whatever, but you should be more clear about what you're trying to do here, because right now it doesn't make much sense.
 
I was actually putting the divergence at the Eight Trigrams attack on the Forbidden City in 1813. OTL, a branch-off of the Eight Trigrams (who were somewhat related to the White Lotus kind of), tried to assassinate the Emperor. It wasn't particularly successful, but it was kind of important because Mianning (who was the Emperor's oldest son; his first-born son died very young) got a little extra fame for personally fighting off some of the rebels. And the Jiaqing Emperor just didn't really have many kids...
 
I'm going through time pretty quickly, but I think this will slow down as more things get butterflied into being different. I don't really think it's worth it to write in depth about OTL things (especially in the West) until they actually change, so yeah.

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"The Chienhe Period

Although having been successful in their surprise attack on the Emperor's convoy, the rapid reaction of the local Bannermen Garrison in Peking easily cleansed the city of rebel forces. For a week, Peking fell under military control as Qing forces fiercely controlled the flow of information. Ch'ing reprisals against local communities are recorded to be very brutal and meticulous, further leading to the unreliability of sources.

Very little is known about the court struggle, but it is generally believed that court mandarins favored the Jiach'ing Emperor's fourth son, while the local garrison tried to force the third son onto the throne. (Biddle 103) However, in the end, a "will" was produced by the Grand Secretary, claiming that the Emperor's true will for a successor had been discovered.

Emperor Chienhe ascended to the throne at the age of 17, but despite being well-old enough to rule in his own name, quickly failed to make any impact. For example, under long-standing tradition, newly crowned Emperors toured the country, paying out of the Imperial Treasury to repair dykes and other irrigation infrastructure across the nation as a way to legitimize their rule. (Hiss, 41)

However, for a variety of reasons, this never happened. The Imperial Treasury was already drained, having never ever recovered from the White Lotus rebellion. In addition, one of the Emperor's first edicts was to restore state funding for many impoverished banner garrisons in the frontier regions, something that even more deeply strained the treasury. Others also believe that there was simple resistance towards the idea of the Emperor leaving the Forbidden City due to security reasons. Indeed, the Emperor would only leave the Forbidden City three times in his life, every single time to the Winter Palace in Mukden.

The Chienhe period was marked by many of the same problems that faced the previous era. Although strengthened funding for the military led to a temporary lull in rebellious incidents, silver outflows continued. Even funding for irrigation infrastructure remained at record lows.

Another issue that galvanized the court was the growing opium trade. In response to the strict Ch'ing controls on port trading, especially in Canton, Western merchants quickly turned to opium as a way to skirt strict regulations. By the start of the Chienhe Period, Western merchants were importing over 12,000 chests of opium a year.

The Chienhe Period ended in 1842, going into history as a relatively uneventful period. However, his second son, the new Hsinch'i Emperor, was determined to leave a deeper mark on history..."

- An Introduction to the History of Greater East Asia, James Roy, 1961
 
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