WI: Reverse China and India (colonialism)

Is there a way to have China colonized/divided by European powers the way India was during the Age of Exploration?

Is there a way to unite most of India and have the resultant state be stable enough to serve as a loose "Qing" analogue in South Asia?
 

B-29_Bomber

Banned
Is there a way to have China colonized/divided by European powers the way India was during the Age of Exploration?

Is there a way to unite most of India and have the resultant state be stable enough to serve as a loose "Qing" analogue in South Asia?

The problem is, India was a politically fractured place and thus was MUCH easier to use divide and conquer technics there and was before china on the road east.


Path of least resistance and all that.
 

Don Quijote

Banned
Possibly, but as Europeans heading east had to go past or through India on their way to China, I think India, at least in the early days, is the obvious target for colonisation. The Indians were also less suspicious about foreign traders.
 
Is there a way to have China colonized/divided by European powers the way India was during the Age of Exploration?

Is there a way to unite most of India and have the resultant state be stable enough to serve as a loose "Qing" analogue in South Asia?

Well, a surviving Mughal Empire would probably be enough to prevent European takeover, at least outside a few coastal trading stations. Add in an 18th-century Qing collapse, and suddenly China is a much more tempting prospect for colonisation than India is.
 
Which is difficult...

What about a "Second Yuan" formed by Mandukhai Khatun or someone, as opposed to the Manchu? I could definitely see the Mongols using Europeans and/or Jesuits the way they used Persians and other ethnics IOTL...

Before collapsing, allowing for these existing european networks to be used to keep China divided and supine before the might of Company mercenaries.
 
Last edited:
What about a "Second Yuan" formed by Mandukhai Khatun or someone, as opposed to the Manchu? I could definitely see the Mongols using Europeans and/or Jesuits the way they used Persians and other ethnics IOTL...

Before collapsing, allowing for these existing european networks to be used to keep China divided and supine before the might of Company mercenaries.

The Mongols can rebel all they want, the Ming aren't letting them through the Great Wall. Even further, the Ming gunpowder makes it very difficult for the nomads to take over China.

When the Ming had gunpowder, the Qing lost. I'd think the same thing would apply with the Mongols. Besides, Ming China was at its prosperous height at the time of Mandukhai Khatun. (BTW, Mandukhai was during the Ming, not Qing)
 
One needs to fracture China in order or the possibility of colonization. Perhaps only a partial Qing conquest and various Ming claimants? Need some sort of Waring States type period
 
One needs to fracture China in order or the possibility of colonization. Perhaps only a partial Qing conquest and various Ming claimants? Need some sort of Waring States type period

This.
A prolonged warlord era after the fall of the Ming could do the trick (still difficult, actually; Europeans had no orgazational or technological lead over China until fairly late in the game - but they had little of that in India too).
 
19c China was politically fracturing, with enormous rebellions. Taiping not only killed tens of millions, but also managed to permanently sideline Suzhou, at the time China's richest city and the biggest non-capital, and reduce it to a secondary city to Shanghai. China was constantly losing wars to the Western powers (and later to Japan, too) and forced to sign unequal treaties. In the Scramble for China, there was talk of carving China into spheres of influence, i.e. colonies; this didn't quite happen in part because the US was against the idea, and preferred to keep China as common grounds for the great powers to pillage rather than divide it.

Uniting China under one colonial power, the way nearly all of OTL's India was British, is harder. The reason is geographic. In India, the European powers each had its own ports, and Britain could colonize the entire subcontinent from several directions while Portugal and France stayed in their little enclaves. In contrast, maritime colonization in China has to proceed from east to west, and on top of that, most treaty ports were in the south, where the mountains make overland colonization hard; Shanghai and Qingdao were the only two that open to the North China Plain, so if Britain had Shanghai and Germany had Qingdao, it would be hard for Britain to end up controlling all of China from Shanghai - the a big slice of Shandong and such would remain German.
 
Alon said:
Uniting China under one colonial power, the way nearly all of OTL's India was British, is harder. The reason is geographic. In India, the European powers each had its own ports, and Britain could colonize the entire subcontinent from several directions while Portugal and France stayed in their little enclaves. In contrast, maritime colonization in China has to proceed from east to west, and on top of that, most treaty ports were in the south, where the mountains make overland colonization hard; Shanghai and Qingdao were the only two that open to the North China Plain, so if Britain had Shanghai and Germany had Qingdao, it would be hard for Britain to end up controlling all of China from Shanghai - the a big slice of Shandong and such would remain German.

I don't entirely agree with you, or rather I want to add some aspects. Mid-19th century, the East of China was rebelling against central authority and was vaguely propped up by Russia and England (or at least they thought about it, my source book is at home). If there is a strong support given to this kingdom, colonisation can start from the East as well.

The French had influence over Vietnam since early 19th century and could actually have done like in India around the same time if Louis XVI had followed up on Pigneau de Béhaine demands for support against the Tai Son rebellion, thus opening colonisation of China from the South and South West. Even for a long time, at the end of the XIXth century, the Yunnan was basically a French protectorate with a railway being built and a lot of exchange being done with the Tonkin colony. A bigger push there could have resulted in an actual protectorate done over the Yunnan which would probably be akin to opening the floodgates of the Scramble for China.
 
If you can make the Spanish stronger and less tied to the continent, and weaken the Ming faster, dividing the land between warlords... perhaps you can have a Spanish Tenja [Tianchao]. A limited one, likely based mostly in the south with the north ruled by Manchus, and insanely long odds, but still.
 
If you can make the Spanish stronger and less tied to the continent, and weaken the Ming faster, dividing the land between warlords... perhaps you can have a Spanish Tenja [Tianchao]. A limited one, likely based mostly in the south with the north ruled by Manchus, and insanely long odds, but still.
I find this highly implausible.What is the largest force the Spanish can deploy that far across the globe?Ten thousand or so?Even trying to support this force would be extremely difficult.Most probably wouldn't have survived the trip due to problems like scurvy.It would be a logistical nightmare.
 
Last edited:
I find this highly implausible.What is the largest force the Spanish can deploy that far across the globe?Ten thousand or so?Even trying to support this force would be extremely difficult.It would be a logistical nightmare.

As I said, insanely long odds. A civil war coinciding with a Manchu invasion, support from the Papacy to start the Far Eastern Rite, a few lucky conversions, and you have Catholic South China and Manchu North China. The former may or may not be under Spanish rule.
 
I reckon any serious colonisation of China would have to wait until at least the 18th century, or possibly the 19th, simply because early than that nowhere had the logistical capacity to support large enough armies that far away from home.
 
As I said, insanely long odds. A civil war coinciding with a Manchu invasion, support from the Papacy to start the Far Eastern Rite, a few lucky conversions, and you have Catholic South China and Manchu North China. The former may or may not be under Spanish rule.
You mean like having the Spanish fleet blockade the Yangtze and prop up a Ming Catholic prince as emperor in the south?
 

GdwnsnHo

Banned
The issue with a fractured China is that "colonialism" is most likely going to be done by the Europeans, but by their neighbours, via outright conquest.

Japan, Oirat, Mongols, Manchus, hell, even Ayuttaya has a chance here, the Vietnamese may have a chance to retake the Pearl River basin in such a scenario. (To be honest, that sounds like an interesting timeline.)

India in contrast, had must more secure natural borders - Burma sat between India and Indochina, the Himalyas meant no major steppe tribes, and the Hindu Kush protected from the West.

India is harder to conquer, making it easy to prevent their neighbours just coming along and invading before any Europeans.
 
India in contrast, had must more secure natural borders - Burma sat between India and Indochina, the Himalyas meant no major steppe tribes, and the Hindu Kush protected from the West.

India is harder to conquer, making it easy to prevent their neighbours just coming along and invading before any Europeans.

This isn't true at all. India was invaded repeatedly throughout history, and major empires (the Delhi sultanates, the Mughals) originated from relatively recent conquerors.
 
How does a Spanish fleet exactly win against the full might of the Qing fleet?

Which is why I said in a time of bloody civil war between the Ming and Qing periods. The Qing came into power in the mid-1600s. If the Spanish come in an insanely opportune time, and a Pope sides with the Jesuits, China could be split in half. Maybe.
 
Top