What if the Shun dynasty succeeded the Ming dynasty instead of the Qing? What are the conditions for this to happen?
What will happen to China under the Shun?
What will happen to China under the Shun?
Zhang Xianzhong? Wasn't he the guy who was supposedly disappointed if a day passed without him killing someone?
I've heard about the Qing propaganda theory, but I've also read recent works that reject it and call Zhang Xianzhong unprecedentedly genocidal, so I'm not really sure how much the Qing embellished.
To be fair, the local Jesuits didn't like him very much and paint a very unpleasant picture, but it's hard to deny that the Qing went out of their way to paint him as incredibly bad, up to giving him an impossible death toll. So saying 'not as bad as popular painted" strikes me as a safe position, if it's taken with the caveat of "probably pretty bad".
Which again, wouldn't prevent him from being a political success in the right situation.
Yes, while Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong were vicious bastards without keen minds.Every great dynastic founder was a vicious bastard with a keen mind. Qin Shihuangdi, Wen of Sui, Tang Gaozu, Song Taizu, and Ming Taizu come to mind. That they all have a lot in common is far more than coincidence. Just as there are similarities between Jin Taizu, Kublai Khan and Nurhaci among the barbarian emperors.
Yes, while Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong were vicious bastards without keen minds.
Zhang almost certainly exterminated majority of Sichuan population.
Supposedly something or someone else killed them... and nobody noticed?
China was literate, bureaucratic society, and yet there is zero evidence of someone or something else killing all those people, and plenty of evidence that he or his subordinates did it.
Yeah, keen enough to run a band of brigands, but just not keen enough to start a new dynastyI think that's a bit too easily dismissive--you don't survive as an outlaw without a certain reserve of ability and cunning. All we can say for certain is that Li Zicheng ultimately didn't have the skill necessary to take the top spot, given that he had it virtually fall in his lap, and failed dismally.
No other province was so thoroughly depopulated. I am sure Qing soldiers, being soldiers who like to loot and rape, did plenty of killing everywhere, but Sichuan obviously did not benefit from avoiding Qing conquest for so long.You mean aside from the Qing soldiers who did similar actions elsewhere?