Well, for the locals there are positives and negatives: yes, on the one hand the highest elite elements aren't native, but on the other hand they don't have to pay anything to China now, and it's not like high elites necessarily have much in common with the commoners anyhow. It could very well work out to be better for them to have a warlord ruling them over being a tributary to China. Especially if the "conquistadors" make extensive concessions to the natives and don't insist on forcing Chinese cultural ideas on everyone (basically they play the part of the Qing (1)), it's quite plausible that they'll be accepted as well as anyone else by the locals.
It's well-known that if given the choice between being fucked by their own or by a foreigner, they prefer their own. Sending tribute to the nomadic barbarians when they had the upper hand was itself preferable for the Chinese. Also, you ignore the local nobility who supported him may now find that he's more dangerous to their position than the last guy. He's going to have to thread the needle between satisfying their interests and those of his lieutenants, which may lead to trouble.
At best, he gets integrated into the local power structure. What I think happens next comes a few posts down.
(1): I see your point, but the Qing are not the best example. Consider the most famous grievance of the Chinese against their rule: the enforcement of the Manchu queue upon the population. Even cousin tribes of the Manchu, who wore slightly different versions of the queue, were forced to adopt the Manchu style. Similarly, like the Mongols before them, the Qing were appalled by the practice of eating dogs among the Chinese and tried to enforce its abolition multiple times. It never stuck.
Note, also, that the locals aren't necessarily the Mesoamericans, but could instead be forces elsewhere, e.g. some adventurer runs off from the trading post in *Portland and conquers a tribe up in Idaho. I doubt the homeland would very much care about a minor barbarian tribe being taken over by some runaway and his friends.
In which case said adventurer has little impact because the people he's taken over are small and worth very little compared to some city-state in Mesoamerica or the Andes. He's certainly not stinking rich like Cortez or Pizarro were after their conquests, so I might even go so far as to argue that he's no Cortez.
Of course whoever takes over at home would like to force the overseas folks to submit and pay tribute, but it's quite plausible that the period of instability lasts for a very considerable period indeed, like the Three Kingdoms and Sixteen Kingdoms periods, which would obviously interfere with that. It's also possible that attempts to crush any breakaway end up bogging down and collapsing like Sui attempts to conquer Korea or Ming attempts to conquer Vietnam.
That would be the time for the colonies to break away, and they could stay broken away for a long time.
However, I do think they will eventually be reconquered or at least forced to send tribute because of two factors:
1. China is way more economically developed and has far greater capacity for shipbuilding and maintaining a navy. It can at the very least make naval trade difficult for ex-colonies (say, the Philippines) which don't want to reintegrate, or to outposts trying to break away (say, Hawaii).
2. America is populated by tribes which are hard to put down, especially once they get hold of horses. Example: Spanish troubles with the Chichimeca and Comanche. These are people who are accustomed to raiding their neighbors and selling slaves every which way. The breakaways would be lucky to avoid getting attacked by them, and they most likely don't have the power to deal with them. The Spanish spent 40 years fighting the Chichimeca, and throughout the course of the war the economy of Mexico was disrupted and the Crown forced to bankroll the fighting.
Once the Chinese turn their eye to the rest of the world, they'll look at these ex-tributaries, some of which are a bit more Chinese than they were last time, and they'll want to reclaim them. In that case, the states which had been Cortezified a few centuries earlier have almost completely absorbed their Chinese overlords. Without immigration from China, there is no
criollo class of Chinese nobility ruling over the locals; they're just something the local families make note of in their genealogies.
In a situation where this Cortez tried to carve out a kingdom while China was united and had regained control of the Pacific, he'd be crushed because he'd be an immediate threat to local tribute.
Obviously, this is made much easier if the "breakaway" is rather a Sinicized native state where the ruling class, even if Chinese, has come to an accommodation with the natives and native culture, as above, or if the attempt at reconquest/subjugation is made after a prolonged period of instability that allows for the Americans to consolidate their defenses and gives them a taste of avoiding tribute to China.
That can be arranged like it was in Singapore: the Chinese merchant community eventually rises to such dominance that it constitutes the entire political class.
Same process was in different stages in Malaya, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Siam (the founder of the current dynasty was of such Chinese descent).
No need for a Cortez, and it's a lot less alarming to the government back home.
Depending on the situation, the warlord may also be able to appease the people at home through some degree of calculated obeisance. In fact, there's a great example from the beginning of the Han Dynasty,
Nanyue, which was founded by a Qin general in southern China/northern Vietnam during the collapse of the Qin dynasty and managed to appease the Han Dynasty well enough to never be overthrow in his lifetime.
Good point. Still was facilitated by the fact that he and his army could flee into that area comparatively easily, but I take the point.
Not really. There are plenty of examples of states that formed from an elite class of outsiders coming in and conquering the land in question, then adapting to local culture and desires. Many of them were even Chinese, or rather were formed in China by non-Sinitic peoples. There is no particular reason why the same couldn't happen in the Americas.
My concerns are that a combination of factors make this very unlikely.
1. At the beginning of the post-discovery era, America will be on the other end of a wide ocean which a Chinese Cortez would be very lucky / well-supplied to cross.
2. At this time, the Chinese are too busy colonizing China itself to bother with the outside.
3. When the connection to America improves, the Chinese government is not going to do much beyond what it did in other places; establish local Chinese immigrants to act as its political proxies, establish tributary status. No need for Chinese generals to be stationed there.
4. Over time, the technology gap narrows and the possibilities for a Cortez become increasingly sparse.
And, of course, depending on the exact details the situation by the time of the collapse at home may look more like 1776 than 1604. Waving hands for a moment, imagine the situation in 1644 of Ming colonies that had been set up beginning around 1500...obviously that is enough time to (conceivably) have a substantial American population, who would probably not be excessively eager to submit to the Qing.
Fair enough; on that scenario you reign uncontested.
That was my mistake. I meant to quickly differentiate between what gave staying power to a colony like British America versus Cortez's Mexico.
He won't have a large Chinese population to count on, and he'll have to acquiesce to the subjects' wishes. He certainly won't be making crazy mad stacks of cash by looting the place blind.
I was rather envisioning the formation of Sinicized or Chinese-influenced states with a Chinese or semi-Chinese elite class but mainly native population. Basically a version of
Nanyue or, better yet,
There seems to be something cut off here.
Then consider that projecting power across the Pacific is going to require much more effort and expense than either of those did. They can try, and probably will try, but it's far from clear that they will succeed. And, of course, being so far away from home is liable to give the commanders on the scene ideas in any case.
You could say the same thing for the Chinese Cortez. After all, he's going to have to make himself a fleet and cross what is likely at least half the Pacific for that opportunity.
And again, it's not that hard for the Chinese to instigate a similar revolt against the Cortez. Hell, they could just get the neighboring states to attack him... with Chinese support, of course.
The point I am making, anyway, is that you're too quick to dismiss certain scenarios as impossible even though they resemble scenarios which actually happened in Chinese history or at least have certain similarities to them, and I think are overestimating how easy a time the Chinese would have projecting power and influencing whatever groups exist in America.
Fair enough. I accept that their ability to project direct power across the Pacific won't be all that impressive by itself. However, I think their network of vassals can be used to enact a Chinese agenda.
I still think most of the local culture groups will remain standing and, apart from the tribute issue, independent.
