Restoration of the Great Ming: A Tianqi Timeline
- Thread starter RexSueciae
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Thank you! As for Li Zicheng, I'm afraid I killed him off via footnote in 1630 -- alas, ITTL he is just one of the many bandit leaders of this time, while Zhang Xianzhong (better known ITTL as the Yellow Tiger) is going to be a lot more central to the narrative.
He still got sacked by the Ming government and rebelled Eh? IOTL, he rebelled because he got sacked from the post office when Chongzhen shut the whole post system down in an effort to ‘save money’.
Hmm good old days when Christianity was strict. Reminds me of the Daesh fatwa against smokers. It should be clarified that grave sins unless threatening the aqeedah( monotheism and prophet) doesn’t amount to takfir( islamic version of excommunication). Say if you smoke then You’re still Muslim but if you think smoking isn’t a sin then you are an infidel.Nevermind my babbling,hope it wasn’t too irrelevant.
Yeah, Zeelandia under siege! I wonder which side will the natives take though? OTL they killed a lotta Chinese before joining Koxinga.
Will Jesuits in China have more luck ITTL?
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We can assume that at some point he lost his money and ended up on the side of rebels -- the odds of a man such as him shrugging his shoulders and going "ehhh" in the face of misfortune and/or injustice are low, I feel, even if the exact nature of the inciting incident changes -- but ITTL he is but faintly remembered (except in "The Yellow Tiger's Fury," a fictional series popular ITTL that does to this era what "The Tudors" did for that era, where I imagine his fictionalized character is given some dramatic scene created by some imaginative writer).
To be fair to the pope, there was apparently a major fad of priests doing snuff in church, which he found extremely undignified (the tobacco ban was eventually repealed by a later pope).
We'll see! The earlier POD means that a lot of the colonization stuff hasn't happened quite yet, but since that's what the expedition is basically planning to do, we'll see whether or not things go similarly. As for the Jesuits, the current pope is sympathetic (as he was IOTL) which is a help but long-term, the ideal trajectory would be to have fewer controversies over whether good Catholics are allowed to do ancestor veneration stuff, so -- we'll get to that when we get to that, I guess.
1632
Depiction of soldier in the service of Zheng Zhilong from a Dutch illustration (likely inaccurate; full plate armor would have rapidly been modified or discarded in tropical environments)
A series of ships are finally allowed through the blockade that surrounds Fort Zeelandia. These ships, from Batavia, bring sizeable amounts of silver bullion, the East India Company’s ransom for the safety of its people. Once the silver is delivered, the ships are to evacuate the garrison, the company officials, and the civilians resident within Dutch Formosa.
It is an embarrassing loss, albeit not one existentially meaningful to the Dutch. To their credit, the garrison had managed to hold out for more than seven months before coming to terms.[1] Actual casualties are uncertain but were relatively low on both sides. At least, when only counting combat deaths. Both Zheng’s forces and the Dutch lose a tremendous number of people to tropical diseases, something which is entirely unsurprising.
Indeed, later historians will point out that the Dutch East India Company could have hardly hoped for a better resolution. The fort’s surrender had only been made after Zheng Zhilong, quite bored of continuing the siege, had ordered his gunners to batter away at the fort’s defenses with the full intention of forcing a breach in the walls, followed by a frontal assault.[2] At this, the fort’s defenders quickly parley. The deal that they make is the best they can get, under the circumstances. A little more waiting while frantic messages are exchanged with Batavia, until eventually a reasonable figure is reached and the ships are dispatched. Zheng Zhilong, quite courteously, has some of his own ships escort the Dutch ships as they approach Fort Zeelandia, in what is definitely not a calculated move of intimidation.
Needless to say, when the Dutch East India Company leadership learns of the situation, they are not happy. Hans Putmans and several members of the Board of Aldermen back in Batavia find their future careers rather unfortunately limited. Some of the higher-ups question whether paying a ransom was really worth it.[3] But that’s beside the point. Zheng Zhilong and his men find themselves in control of the entirety of Dutch Formosa.
This was, to be sure, not the entirety of the island. Dutch control over the island was largely limited to the hinterland of their coastal settlements, particularly in the vicinity of Fort Zeelandia. The Spanish, to the north, have been quietly putting down roots, with their little town called Santisima Trinidad and forts named San Salvador and Santo Domingo, and stomping on them will be counterproductive if Zheng wants access to that delicious Mexican silver.[4]
But there’s still plenty of places that hadn’t been dominated by the Dutch or the Spanish. The further inland you go, the less influence those colonial empires were able to exert, which makes sense, because jungles and mountains are great places for foreigners to catch fun diseases, or get bushwhacked by thoroughly unamused locals.
That is not to say that indigenous societies were confined to the rugged interior. Along the western coast, a sort of loose confederation of a few dozen towns has pulled itself together under the overlordship of one Kamachat Aslamie, whom the local Chinese call Quata Ong and whom the Dutch called Keizer van Middag. Among his people, he is the Lelian, or Sun King. He is...skeptical of the newcomers. When there were just a few fishermen and retired pirates coming from Fujian, that was acceptable, but now he’s starting to get suspicious of being overwhelmed by sheer numbers and eventually replaced. Also, he hates Christians.[5]
To this, Zheng Zhilong responds with characteristic guile. Christians? Why, he has nothing to do with them. See, the Dutch missionaries are all long gone, and whose command caused that to be? To hear him talk, you would not imagine that he had flirted with Catholicism in his youth, nor would you expect that the Jesuits who accompanied him on his expedition are now serving as important administrators and middlemen between Zheng, the Spanish colony on the northern end of the island, and Beijing. (The Jesuits probably also have their own schemes going, but for now Zheng more or less deals with it. As long as they’re not getting in his way, he’s happy to use their services.)[6]
Smooth words, of course, can only go so far. Zheng sends back to Beijing a sizeable portion of the silver bullion received from the Dutch -- an offering of tribute, with the promise of more to follow -- and explains that he will be quite busy subduing his new conquest, but that he will return to Beijing when things have calmed down so that he can properly pay his respects. In the meantime, he hopes that the emperor will continue taking good care of his wife and son (which he is, since the boy is getting on well with the princes and the Tianqi Emperor is fond of them).
So that’s good news coming out of Taiwan (although the name is not likely to stick; both “Taiwan” and “Formosa” are largely used in historical texts and are seen as somewhat dated). The news coming out of Shaanxi is...less good.
Hong Chengchou is sending increasingly frantic messages to Beijing. The Yellow Tiger, fresh off his latest fake surrender, has seen his forces swell in number, mostly by absorbing the armies of the late Li Zicheng and some other unlucky rebel leaders. They had made a great push north towards Xi’an but appeared to have abandoned that move, wandering back down to the south. (Despite the various fictional depictions of this historical period, this was not due to his execution of his navigators in a fit of pique; more likely, the rebel army was moving in the direction of food supplies with few long-term goals initially in mind). Hong Chengchou had attempted to intercept this army, but found to his dismay that the rebels actually outnumbered his own forces at this point. While attempting to force-march his army in the direction of the enemy, one of his columns was surprised and badly mauled by the Yellow Tiger, and only Hong Chengchou’s quick thinking was able to pull the bulk of his army out of the fire.
Qin Liangyu is trying not to say “I told you so” but she does not have men to spare. Her own retinues are needed to keep order on her own estates. Nor is Hong the only official putting down rebellions -- one Yuan Zongdi, a former lieutenant of Li Zicheng, is causing all sorts of trouble in the jade-producing regions of Henan, to the point that he will be humorously dubbed the “Jade Emperor” in much later commentary on the period. So Hong Chengchou asks Beijing for assistance, not really in the expectation that he’ll get much help, but more to cover his ass, just in case he gets actually defeated one of these days and needs to defend his reputation.[7]
As it turns out, he’ll get much more help than he ever expected he’d need.
Footnotes
[1] They lasted nine months IOTL.
[2] IOTL the gunnery of Koxinga’s forces was noted to be particularly lackluster during the siege of Fort Zeelandia. ITTL Zheng Zhilong has the advantage of the recent campaigns throwing off veterans, with the result that he is able to field a small but more skilled company of gunners.
[3] IOTL the siege of Fort Zeelandia ended with the Dutch defenders negotiating their own safe passage away from the fort with no ransom paid, although Koxinga reportedly took a missionary’s daughter for a concubine. ITTL Zheng Zhilong is less inclined towards that sort of thing and more inclined towards squeezing money out of people.
[4] ITTL the Dutch have not had the chance to throw the Spanish out of Taiwan, so the Spanish are still here. And yes, silver from Mexico circulated in China and in southeast Asia during this time -- the Spanish eventually made great efforts to restrict the outflow of silver, just as other colonial empires did owing to the influence of mercantilist thought.
[5] This is all OTL. ITTL the Dutch did not get the chance to subjugate him as they did IOTL, which means he's still nominally independent.
[6] IOTL the Jesuits served as advisors both to the new Qing regime and to a number of the Southern Ming claimants, not to mention being firsthand witnesses to an array of the peasant revolutionary states that sprung into existence during this time. They really got around.
[7] IOTL he actually managed to pull off some decisive wins against Li Zicheng and, as the 1640s approached, was transferred north to fight the Qing. He was...less successful in that regard.
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kholieken
Banned
Opening Manchuria for settlement ? There are multiple failures of harvest in Yellow River at this time, so sending farmer somewhere else looks necessary.
I am surprised confucian and Buddhist scholars in court not trying to curtail Jesuits. Is there any effort to surpass Christianity from them?
Yeah. I don't intend to elide over the occasional atrocity that may happen in any war -- and IOTL the Dutch didn't stay gone, they made at least one more attempt to take their stuff back -- so there may well be more fighting. Nor does it eliminate the possibility of underhanded dealings from either party, behind closed doors -- it's unwise to think of an army or faction as a monolith (we know that IOTL some mercenaries and so forth serving with the Dutch deserted to Koxinga's forces when they figured things weren't going so well).
And the way I figured it, an expedition officially blessed by the emperor in Beijing would be likelier to see success than what was essentially the last gasp of a rump state, a government-in-exile -- but of course it is important to remember that the Zheng family commanded a truly vast fleet, even in the later years.
A very good question. We'll see at least one factor coming into play very soon.
The majority of settlers on Taiwan will be from the Fujian area, for reasons of geographic proximity if nothing else (but also consider that given the makeup of the Zheng fleet and the people already in the area, networking effects will mean that new arrivals will largely be drawn from coastal southern China) -- the sorts of bandits and dispossessed peasants that make up the bulk of some of the insurrections inland are not particularly likely to join -- so something will have to be done about that, indeed.
That's not quite what I had in mind (yet!) -- but it's interesting you should say such a thing, because in the next update, I've got an idea or two coming out of the north...
Hmmm. HMMMMMM.
Well -- the Donglin movement is still around -- some of the top officials in the Ming court are on their side -- and the emperor's policies so far have been noncommittal, whether through tolerance or indifference, who can say? But then there are plenty of Jesuits in Beijing and elsewhere, and throughout this era you did see occasional members of the Chinese aristocracy converting to Christianity.
It's noteworthy that the Jesuit presence in China lasted for as long as it did IOTL. Indeed, their influence on the imperial court (throughout the Ming, Southern Ming, and Qing eras) was only really curtailed by events happening outside of China (namely, the Pope completely bungling the "Chinese rites" controversy, followed by active suppression of the Jesuits for some decades). They did a good job of presenting themselves in the mold of fairly typical scholar-bureaucrats, particularly in being really really good at predicting eclipses. True, the bulk of their literary knowledge was of a foreign sort, but they could point to things like the historical presence of Christianity in China (I refer to the Church of the East, which had a healthy presence during the Tang and later the Yuan eras -- of course, these Christians were a little different, but nobody's looking too closely in this context).
I have a thought or two about another narrative interlude, in the future, where we'll see a little bit about the interaction between different factions in the Tianqi court. Of course, the "sides" aren't necessarily sharply drawn; I point to Qian Qianyi as perhaps the most obvious example (very orthodox in his political philosophy, but was also affiliated with the Zheng family, which was heavily involved in trade with the Catholic powers -- Zheng Zhilong himself had actually been baptized ). But yes, I want to explore this topic.
Apropos of nothing, I genuinely think such a TL would be interesting. If nobody else takes this on when I finally get around to it (no doubt years from now)...
1633
The Grand Canal, c. 1800
A pretty convenient way to transport people through China (in addition to the many natural waterways)
The Ming garrisons in Liaodong have been at a state of high readiness ever since the territories were reconquered from the Later Jin. While the Jurchen civil war raged on, Beijing’s loyal armies kept careful watch from their fortresses, waiting for an opportune moment to intervene -- and staying alert for any more incursions from the north.
In the spring of 1633, scouts reported a massive Jurchen army descending on Liaodong. This was it, local commanders figured, and the Ming forces in the region quickly mustered to face this new threat. And then a pause. Something wasn’t quite right.
An emissary emerged from the Jurchen forces, asking for a meeting. The emissary identified himself as a representative of Daišan, eldest surviving son of the late Nurhaci.
“Flying from the north, a wounded eagle,” wrote the poet Wang Wei, although it is fairly certain that she was working from secondhand information in describing the events that followed. Nicolas Trigault, though likely also not an eyewitness, preserves one of the more complete descriptions that later chronicles used for a source.
Daišan, according to Trigault, looked older than his years, and when the slightly baffled Ming officials arrived and were ushered into his presence they were struck by the intense weariness that seemed to surround the man. The foreign prince explained what had been happening in the north. Hooge was dead; Daišan had championed Hong Taiji’s eldest son in the Jurchen civil war, but the lad had suddenly taken ill and was dead a few days later. Maybe subterfuge, maybe natural causes. But then Yebušu, Hong Taiji’s other son (still a child) had also turned up dead. The massive blunt force trauma to his head and chest was definitely not natural causes.[1]
Nurhaci had many sons, and fiercest among them all had been Ajige. He had inherited every bit of his father’s decisiveness and aggression, but while Hong Taiji had scruples, Ajige had none. Half a dozen princes now lay dead, likely at his hands, as he strove for power. And yet rather than consolidating leadership beneath his fist, every killing that he ordered set off another rebellion. Ajige, it seemed, was too clumsy and brutal to really gather support like his father had done. He had enough power, though, to keep anyone else from doing the same.
The dream of the “Later Jin” had more or less shattered. It was believed that Jirgalang was now the primary anti-Ajige figurehead, but that was just counting from among the Aisin Gioro. Old rivals, subjugated allies, formerly loyal generals, and opportunists of all kinds were rising up as well, joining the internecine bloodletting.
For Daišan, it’s all more than a little bit heartbreaking. He remembers his father, how the old man had gallantly led the Jurchens against the arbitrary and irresponsible rule of the Ming, how he’d forged the Jurchens into something greater. All that is gone now. At this point, he’d just like to survive. Preserve a little bit of his father’s legacy instead of staying and watching it all burn.
You have two choices, he bluntly tells the Ming officials. Fight us, and let more blood be spilled on this ground. Or take us into your service and find us a suitable place. For Daišan has not come alone: he has brought his family, his surviving supporters, and the entire Plain Red Banner.[2]
Once the Ming officials have stopped panicking and gotten a good idea of the situation, and once word is sent back to Beijing, there is a little bit of a discussion. A certain number of hardliners are willing to fight it out, to destroy Daišan’s army and drive the survivors back north, regardless of the cost. Yuan Chonghuan is tentatively in favor of this option. Another faction at court suggests lending Daišan logistical and possibly military support to return home, slay Ajige, and rule as a Ming tributary. Qian Qianyi suggests this relatively straightforward option. But it’s debated whether this is practical, or even possible. The Ming army would have to significantly commit itself to the operation and if anything else came up, the response would be badly hamstrung.
(Nobody suggests simply leaving Daišan and the Plain Red Banner sitting there at the gates, because that would be dumb.)
Eventually, someone suggests a third option. One of Hong Chengchou’s more frantic messages had just arrived in Beijing. If we don’t trust Daišan to go north, why not send him elsewhere? Somewhere that he and his retainers can go, far from Beijing where they could cause trouble. That is to say, send him and the Plain Red Banner off to Shaanxi, or Sichuan, or wherever the hell the Yellow Tiger was at this point. Let them fight and prove themselves. Practically a win-win.
It was risky. Moving an army across the interior of China...of course, a lot of it would be riverine transport, probably along the Grand Canal, so long as there wasn’t some foul-up in the system. But even then, commandeering a lot of boats would be cheaper than marching overland. Given enough planning -- and the administrative state was still capable of some things, even while peasants died. (Peasants died of many things. Some starved, although in times of famine the higher death rates generally spoke to a spike in infant and elder mortality. Some were slain by bandits or by Ming soldiers. And some died of sickness; the plague was starting up again, so they said.[3])
The fact that a lot of peasants had died would make provisioning such a maneuver a little difficult, but not inordinately so. Indeed, there was some optimism that the Plain Red Banner would help to make up for the depopulation of certain regions -- dead peasants can’t pay taxes, after all. Also, it wasn’t long before Hong Chengchou had caught wind of their arrival, and soon his letters were all but demanding that the Jurchens be sent to him as reinforcements. Hong even wrote directly to Daišan himself, promising his assistance with getting everybody acclimated and settled down in Shaanxi.[4] This little bit of queue-jumping has attracted criticism over the years, and his contemporaries regarded it as insubordinate and a little gauche -- but, in the end, “just send them to Shaanxi and let someone else deal with it” won out in Beijing.
While this was going on, Zheng Zhilong was returning triumphantly from his new conquest. He was enthusiastic in greeting his wife, whom he had not seen for some time -- he was also happy to see his little son -- but, of course, his primary duty was to report to the emperor.
To some extent, the meeting had already been carefully choreographed beforehand via messages exchanged back and forth. To make a long story short, Zheng Zhilong is granted the title “Admiral of the Coastal Seas,” conferring some prestige while being just vague enough to apply generally to the situation.[5] Essentially, Zheng is being made a sort of viceroy for the new territory.
As previously mentioned, the name Taiwan had gotten some currency, a local name referring to one of the more habitable coastal areas that has sometimes been applied more broadly.[6] The Portuguese, of course, called it Ilha Formosa, “Beautiful Isle,” another name which had become popular (in mostly European circles). Now it would be getting another name. By suggestion, reportedly, of the Tianqi Emperor himself, the Ming empire’s newest territory would henceforth be called Dongshan (東山, literally “East Mountain”), after the emperor heard Admiral Zheng’s fabulous descriptions of the island’s rugged and mountainous interior.[7]
The name was one sure to inspire speculation. After all, it implied that the Ming court was interested not only in the coastal regions, but also in...well, the mountains and jungles and everything in the middle bits, too.[8] A long-term project, to be sure. Well, as long as there's profit involved. Zheng’s sure he’ll figure out something. He always does.
When Zheng leaves to return to his new domain, he receives permission to take his wife and son with him. Some in the imperial court are suspicious enough to request the emperor keep them as hostages. Qian Qianyi, Minister of Rites, speaks up on Zheng’s behalf, and according to legend offers his own head as a guarantee. Regardless, it is made very clear that Zheng’s rule as a sort of viceroy is temporary, and that eventually a regular government will be set up on the island with bureaucrats sent from Beijing. I mean, someone’s gotta be the one to collect taxes.
So Zheng Zhilong and his little family head back to what will soon become his own miniature court -- located, for convenience, near-ish to the coastal settlement originally called Taiwan but which some of his Fujianese compatriots have started calling Luoyang, after a bridge back in Quanzhou.[9] The city of Luoyang will eventually grow to be a decently cosmopolitan port, where merchants from all over stop over for provisions and trade.
But that’s later. It’ll take a lot of hard work, and time...
Footnotes
[1] It’s already been noted, but IOTL Hooge took himself out of contention and Hong Taiji’s son Fulin was elevated to become the Shunzhi Emperor. ITTL Fulin does not exist and Yebušu was Hong Taiji’s only other surviving son -- we can assume that Šose does not exist either -- most of Hong Taiji’s sons IOTL were born in the 1630s and 1640s, which means he has relatively few male offspring ITTL. And now they’re dead.
[2] As you may be aware, Nurhaci organized his nation into the Eight Banners, named after the designs of their flags, and IOTL Daišan was affiliated with the Plain Red Banner. Right now, he may have between ten and twenty thousand men under his command, although probably closer to the low end of that range due to recent losses. You can also assume that he is accompanied by the families, dependents, etc. of his men, who are all noncombatants.
[3] Just as IOTL, 1633 marks the first stirrings of a major plague epidemic that’s about to devastate the region.
[4] IOTL after his capture by the Qing in 1642, Hong Chengchou threw his lot in with the new regime and applied his talents to encouraging their gradual Sinicization. For that matter, Daišan seems to have spent his time working behind the scenes to preserve the Aisin Gioro, an effort that was mostly overlooked during his lifetime. So honestly, if you could pick two people to lead the respective sides in a situation like this, you could do far worse!
[5] He got this title IOTL as well -- in fact, he was given the title around this time IOTL for...defeating the Dutch in battle.
[6] This is OTL. In fact, English emissaries addressed Koxinga as “King of Tywan.”
[7] There is at least one locality in modern Taiwan with this name -- and several places outside of Taiwan with the name, too. IOTL when Koxinga and his forces took the place, they renamed it Tungning (東寧), a name which was transliterated into English before consistent methods of transliterating Chinese phrases was developed but which in pinyin would be rendered Dōngníng, and which means something like “Eastern Pacification.”
[8] This is an interesting development because IOTL, Tungning never really expanded into the mountains -- the interior of the island was always under very tenuous control, if that, until the Qing started colonizing the place in earnest.
[9] IOTL the settlement originally called Taiwan (or Tayouan, or Tywan, or a host of other spellings) which the Dutch called Zeelandia was renamed by Koxinga’s men to Anping, named after...a bridge in Quanzhou. They’re both very nice bridges.
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Oh boy, hopefully Daisan and his men don't wreak a lot of havoc in the countryside during their march.
Oh no. Hope that the plague of Tianqi wouldn’t wreck the Ming too hard like IOTL.
kholieken
Banned
Might be. Or it might not. They now settled in frontier provinces instead of Beijing, so Jurchen military culture would have stronger hold.
Also Jin Dynasty (Sima clan) ended when they settled various tribes in frontier provinces that become dominant power in locality.
A Chinese timeline is quite rare so I'll follow it.
Otherwise surviving Ming empire, that offers quite a lot of possibilities, not in the least one where China keeps up with Europe.
Regarding Ming empire itself, otl it was quite capable to adapt to gunpowder reintroduced by Europeans and I believe they should be able to keep up technological pace but more importantly Qing Empire being restrictive towards its merchant class (restrictions on resource exploitation and foreign trade) was what allowed Europeans to overtake them so if Ming empire manages to do things differently (I believe they were facing similar opposition to the merchant class, but were all together more economical), I believe they should be able to keep up parity with Europe.
Otherwise regarding lack of farmlands , Qing Empire solved the problem by returning the land sold by poor farmers to the large land owners during Ming period, I don't think that ITTL Ming will have political will to do that, though state buying off, or indebting large landowners and then taking the land as collateral to distribute it to the farmers seems like good solution, especially if paired with resettlement into Taiwan and Manchuria.
All in all I expect great things from this TL and Ming .
Otherwise surviving Ming empire, that offers quite a lot of possibilities, not in the least one where China keeps up with Europe.
Regarding Ming empire itself, otl it was quite capable to adapt to gunpowder reintroduced by Europeans and I believe they should be able to keep up technological pace but more importantly Qing Empire being restrictive towards its merchant class (restrictions on resource exploitation and foreign trade) was what allowed Europeans to overtake them so if Ming empire manages to do things differently (I believe they were facing similar opposition to the merchant class, but were all together more economical), I believe they should be able to keep up parity with Europe.
Otherwise regarding lack of farmlands , Qing Empire solved the problem by returning the land sold by poor farmers to the large land owners during Ming period, I don't think that ITTL Ming will have political will to do that, though state buying off, or indebting large landowners and then taking the land as collateral to distribute it to the farmers seems like good solution, especially if paired with resettlement into Taiwan and Manchuria.
All in all I expect great things from this TL and Ming .
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Time for replies!
uh oh
That's an interesting observation re: contrasting attitudes towards the merchant class. The Qing seems to get a pass when they adopted a lot of anti-merchant sentiment themselves -- a conveniently orthodox position to take, a very "we're virtuous and enlightened, let us show how unconcerned we are with mercantile affairs" way to act -- while popular culture (insofar as it even mentions the Ming) leans hard into the idea of "they burned their ships! and then they didn't do big treasure fleets! isolationism!" when...actually, there were plenty of Ming merchants. Zheng Zhilong, who is heavily featured in this very timeline, is one such example. (Well, "merchant." He did pirate stuff too.) And he's not the only one -- I briefly mentioned his colleague Yan Shiqi, now dead, alas. And it's almost a stereotype, people in the alternate history community trying to pull off a Ming restoration lean hard on the treasure fleets of Zheng He (mostly, I think, because of Gavin Menzies and his execrable books). Hopefully we bury that trope once and for all.
Land redistribution. Ah, yes. If there's one semi-constant, it's -- give the peasants land! Happily, there's some new land available. Unhappily, in many cases there are people already living there.
(As a side note to my readers -- this weekend, I shall be quite busy, so my usual publishing schedule may be disrupted. But never fear! There will be many chapters to come. I have only begun to write.)
Oh, indeed.
Yeah, you can expect that they'll leave their mark, but the road there is long and winding. Well, less a road, more a series of rivers and canals that span the eastern part of China. (They were still maintained, more or less, at this time. An empire is in dire straits if it cannot keep its canals mostly navigable.)
Not any more than usual, hopefully! I mean, it's not like they'll be traveling through an area that's just starting to experience a plague outbrea-
uh oh
I'm trying to figure that out myself. Butterflies are one thing, but it's hard to get rid of a big epidemic all that easily -- it's not as hard as, say, an earthquake, which can't be butterflied at all, unless you can figure a way to inflict massive changes on the earth's lithosphere -- so hopefully for our cast of characters, we don't see that bad of an epidemic. But, unfortunately, it's the plague.
Thank you, and welcome to the party!
That's an interesting observation re: contrasting attitudes towards the merchant class. The Qing seems to get a pass when they adopted a lot of anti-merchant sentiment themselves -- a conveniently orthodox position to take, a very "we're virtuous and enlightened, let us show how unconcerned we are with mercantile affairs" way to act -- while popular culture (insofar as it even mentions the Ming) leans hard into the idea of "they burned their ships! and then they didn't do big treasure fleets! isolationism!" when...actually, there were plenty of Ming merchants. Zheng Zhilong, who is heavily featured in this very timeline, is one such example. (Well, "merchant." He did pirate stuff too.) And he's not the only one -- I briefly mentioned his colleague Yan Shiqi, now dead, alas. And it's almost a stereotype, people in the alternate history community trying to pull off a Ming restoration lean hard on the treasure fleets of Zheng He (mostly, I think, because of Gavin Menzies and his execrable books). Hopefully we bury that trope once and for all.
Land redistribution. Ah, yes. If there's one semi-constant, it's -- give the peasants land! Happily, there's some new land available. Unhappily, in many cases there are people already living there.
(As a side note to my readers -- this weekend, I shall be quite busy, so my usual publishing schedule may be disrupted. But never fear! There will be many chapters to come. I have only begun to write.)