Ya'qub Beg "wins" against the Qing?

This is just floating ideas for the possible Central Asian consequences of my Chosŏn timeline I talk about here.

If you're not aware of who Muhammad Ya'qub Beg is, Wikipedia is your friend. For more academic purposes Holy War in China: The Muslim Rebellion and State in Chinese Central Asia, 1864-1877 is the definitive work on the topic. Anyways there are many possibilities of varying plausibility for a Ya'qub Beg "victory," such as:

  • Perhaps the Qing government is finally convinced by the British allies of the Beg that a reconquest of Xinjiang is futile - in real life the British tried to do this, as an independent Kashgaria served their interests in the Great Game of Central Asia, but in the end failed to persuade Beijing that an invasion was unwise.
  • Perhaps Ya'qub Beg is a more realistic strategist and does not give passive and demoralizing orders such as telling his soldiers to not fire on the Chinese (in real life he perhaps foolishly believed in a diplomatic solution to the Chinese invasion). The Qing quite literally walked into Ürümchi. Contemporaneous European observers at the beginning of the reconquest believed that the Muslims would have been able to defeat the Chinese.
  • If Ya'qub Beg does not die of that stroke, the most realistic POD, he might be able to offer a concentrated resistance against the Chinese. In real life his rump state in the west broke apart in a three-party civil war. But then due to his poor strategy as mentioned above he might not win anyways.

But how long can this state last? It's almost inherently unstable. The regional economy plummeted, and Ya'qub's regime itself didn't represent an indigenous government. To not see Xinjiang fall back under Chinese domination Ya'qub Beg had to raise an army of 40,000 soldiers, and that's equivalent to the manpower of the Qing army in Xinjiang who had the wealth of China to feed them. How long will the population bear the required higher taxation? It was unpopular enough even in real life, and that was just seven to twelve years of Ya'qub's rule varying on the region.
 
What if the Taiping didn't fall apart, and continued to be a distraction and a drain on the Qing, allowing multiple rogue states such as Kashgaria to flourish?
 
What if the Taiping didn't fall apart, and continued to be a distraction and a drain on the Qing, allowing multiple rogue states such as Kashgaria to flourish?

Most likely option to prevent invasion from outside. Have the Qing be unwilling or unable to divert resources to Kashgaria.

However, to prevent collapse from within, the Uyghurs need to feel some kind of loyalty to the regime... and that seems hard to achieve.

From what the Wikipedia article says, it seems like Yaqub Beg and his crew were hated for a whole bunch of reasons: high taxes, inability to protect trade, overly harsh interpretation of Sharia...
And, the Hui/Dungans are going to give Yaqub trouble, since he's been massacring them every time he bumps into them.

To change that many policies with a single POD.. you'd probably just need a different ruler.
Maybe Yaqub Beg founds Kashgaria but then is sidelined by a more pragmatic replacement who is more willing to grant concessions to both the Uyghurs and the Chinese Muslims. Yaqub himself doesn't win, but a Turkic state is able to endure-- so he won in some way, I guess.
 
From what the Wikipedia article says, it seems like Yaqub Beg and his crew were hated for a whole bunch of reasons: high taxes, inability to protect trade, overly harsh interpretation of Sharia...
And, the Hui/Dungans are going to give Yaqub trouble, since he's been massacring them every time he bumps into them.

Well, besides the issue of shari'ah which was more a zeitgeist of the times (almost every rebel group adopted harsher shari'ah, opposing themselves to the "moral decay" that were perceived to have prevailed under Chinese rule), the high taxation and economic collapse are almost inevitable no matter who the ruler is. You need high taxes to support a large army, and you need a large army to not see Chinese soldiers trot into Turfan or Kashgar meeting little resistance. Trade is going to collapse almost no matter what because China is sanctioning Kashgaria.
 
... oh
Yeah, I don't think it's possible unless the Qing government undergoes some 1920-style collapse.

1. The Qing can't attack Kashgaria if they're struggling to control anything outside of Beijing.
2. If China collapses into warlordism, they can't impose effective sanctions. Yaqub Beg may be able to trade with friendly warlords in Qinghai or Gansu even as he is being "sanctioned".

Thus, Ya'qub can afford to maintain a smaller army, and has trade opportunities, making negative economic effects of his regime easier to deal with. He can then turn his attention to getting the Uyghurs to accept his rule.
 
Top