WI: No Taiping

[Roger II]

I don't know if I've seen a proper WI on this, but it seems ripe for AH in terms of changes stemming from a single person.

So, suppose that Hong Xiuquan never rebels-he gets killed in a carriage accident, passes his exams and becomes a little-known if somewhat unusual eccentric local official, never meets any missionaries(admittedly leaving an opening for him to start a more buddhist/daoist tinged uprising if he does so). What might happen? Obviously the Qing dynasty is far from out of the woods yet what with the sheer number of rebellions that happened in the early and mid 19th century, but the sheer scale of the Taiping revolt suggests that it not happening would have fairly massive consequences, or even it not happening as it did.

 

[von mises]

I'm not familiar with the rebellion at all, but when ~20 million people die, many around the Yangtze river, then that's going to have a nasty impact on your economy. Combined with the rise of local warlords, I have to wonder if there would be anywhere near as many rebellions against a stronger regime?

 

[Md139115]

I for one argue that when something so completely out of left field like this happens, it was almost fated/destined to occur.

 

[Indicus]

I think you are still going to see a rebellion arise due to the conditions of this period, but any rebellion is likely to be saner and thus likelier to succeed.

 

[Japhy]

In short for right now there were factors of the revolt that don't go away, and there were other revolts at the time, but of course the other revolts didn't trigger as dramatic a series of changes. I'll give a longer write up on this later today.

 

[Roger II]

I for one argue that when something so completely out of left field like this happens, it was almost fated/destined to occur.

I think you are still going to see a rebellion arise due to the conditions of this period, but any rebellion is likely to be saner and thus likelier to succeed.

I assumed that rebellion was still likely and OTL there was another substantial revolt at the same time, but no Taiping would still affect what happened and when no?

 

[Japhy]

Rebellion is definitely likely, while the Taiping are exciting because of just how crazy their cult was, there were other rebellions across the country and south China. Once the religious angle is put aside a major component of it was that the Qing were failing and that the Qing were considered by many Chinese to be foreigners occupying the country, which was in fact something the Qing sought to maintain because they were trying to not suffer the fate of previous dynasties form minority groups and get assimilated.

There was also a growing discontent in the merchant communities in the coastal ports and in sections of the Chinese Armies and in certain regions like Szechuan.

So the opportunity is definitely there to make something THE big revolt or to just keep the rolling tiny revolts going on.