Alternate Historiography: Was the An Lushan Rebellion the original "World War"?

[Tom Colton]

Hi guys, here's my first foray into this side of the forums in a while. I'm doing teaching assistant work for an undergraduate university course which has been covering the Tang Dynasty as one of its topics, and I took a bit of a deep dive into the era-defining An Lushan Rebellion of 755-763CE, probably the single bloodiest short-term conflict this side of the Taiping Rebellion (lowballing it still gets you around 10 million dead), both of which generally get massively undersold as conflicts in global history.



Red: Tang Dynasty and areas of conflict (west to east: Western Regions, Chang'an, Guangzhou, Yangzhou)
Orange: Other powers directly involved with the conflict (west to east: Abbasid Caliphate [apologies for outdated map], Tibetan Empire, Uyghur Khaganate [apologies again])
Purple: Adjacent conflict (Secession of Nanzhao [modern Yunnan] from Tang rule, as abetted by the Tibetans)
Blue: Parallel power shifts (west to east: Transition from Lam Ap to Hoan Vong in the Champa kingdom [modern Vietnam], Declaration of equal status by Balhae [Korea] and shift of capital into modern Northeastern China)
Not coloured: Extremely probable accessory to maritime operations (Srivijaya)

In terms of who was on whose side:

• Tang Dynasty (Chang'an, later Chengdu)
  • Allies: Abbasid Caliphate, Uyghur Khaganate
• Yan Dynasty (An Lushan)
  • Co-belligerent: Tibetan Empire
• Tibetan Empire
  • Ally: Nanzhao tribes (Yunnan)
• Parallel power shifts
  • Champa (Vietnam) and Balhae (Korea)
• Independent non-state powers
  • "Arab/Persian" pirates who raided Guangzhou, who almost definitely went through Srivijaya

Given the enormous geographic spread of this conflict (as the crow flies, Xinjiang is one-and-a-half-times further from Guangzhou than Verdun is from St. Petersburg) and its fractious, multi-polar, multi-front nature, ought we to consider this to be one of the earliest global conflicts as we understand the term as implied by at least World War I?

 

[Alex Richards]

I think it's close but not quite there- much of the vastness of distance is made up of China's sheer scale which if we count that means that most Chinese conflicts become World Wars. We're missing some sort of parallel action against the Abbasids in Arabia, Africa or the Med I think.

 

[Hendryk]

I think it's close but not quite there- much of the vastness of distance is made up of China's sheer scale which if we count that means that most Chinese conflicts become World Wars.

Well, arguably they might be considered so, given the proportion of world population that was involved in them.

In general, it's true that Western historiography undersells the massive scale of Asian wars. As a result their potential as settings for fiction is largely ignored in the Western world. One of the few exceptions is Guy Gavriel Kay, whose novel Under Heaven is about a low fantasy version of the An Lushan rebellion.

 

[Thande]

I think the question is whether one considers the Mongol conquests to be a world war. If so, then this is at least worthy of consideration.

 

[Magniac]

It seems a better candidate that the Thirty Years War.

 

[heraclius]

The 'second generation' of Mongol expansion could count as a World War, as it was directed (albeit with a lot of leeway for local commanders from the Great Khans' royal house) by a 'central command' based at Karakorum and had wars in different continents. As of the late 1250s you have Hulagu's Iranian command moving into Iraq to take Baghdad and destroy the Caliphate in 1258, then heading on to Syria and into Palestine in 1259 - aiming at the Mameluke Sultanate in Egypt, ie Africa, and in a potential alliance with the latter's foes the Crusader kingdom of Jerusalem and princes of Tripoli and Antioch. (Fighting in the Orontes valley around Idlib and Aleppo and down to Damascus - times don't change.) This is then halted at Ain Jalut in Galilee by Baibars' army sent from Cairo - but the war could have gone on into Egypt if he had lost. Meanwhile the 'Golden Horde' in what is now the Don/ lower Volga valleys in SE Russia is enforcing vassalage on the surviving Russian states to the NW, and in East Asia the Great Khans' armies are still fighting the Song dynasty in central China ahead of the advance to the Yangtze in 1279. Arguably, until the accession of Kubilai in 1259/60 and the Mongol civil war on the steppes after that, there is still one central Mongol overlord directing the local armies of his juniors in general strategic terms - so it counts as one strategy and one world war?

Some thoughts on the interlinked nature of events as far apart as England and China -
1. in the later 1240s the future leader of the 'constitutional' baronial opposition to Henry III in England, his sister's husband Simon de Montfort (French by origin but earl of Leicester in England by descent from his Anglo-Norman grandmother), seriously considered giving up his career in England when he was out of favour with Henry. As a devout and innovative Catholic Christian zealot - son of the first Simon de M, who had commanded the Papal troops in the Albigensian Crusade in S France to 1218 and massacred hundreds of 'heretics' - he held talks with his elderly religious mentor Bishop Robert Grosseteste of Lincoln about them both resigning office and heading off as Papal missionary pilgrims to Karakorum to convert local pagans and Nestorian Christians to Catholicism and persuade the Great Khan to attack the Moslems in Syria and hand Jerusalem over to the Crusaders. Had he done so, English politics in 1258-65 would have been a lot different without Simon leading the revolt.
2. In 1287 a Nestorian Christian mission from Kubilai Khan in what is now Beijing, led by the NC Chinese bishop Rabban Sauma, arrived in Rome to see the Pope about a Western European-Mongol alliance against the Moslem powers and a joint attack on the Mamelukes in Syria/ Palestine (which would have saved the final bastion of the Crusaders, Acre, from falling in 1291). The Italian states were too busy with a local war over control of Naples between the French and Aragon to be interested. He then went on to Bordeaux (then part of English-ruled Gascony) to out his proposal to Edward I of England - the first 'Chinese embassy to England'. Edward was too busy as well, despite having been on Crusade in 1270-2- but if he, the French and the Pope had been willing to act to save Acre and linked up to the Mongols in Iraq the military destruction of the Mamelukes and fragmentation of Syria/ Egypt could have kept the Crusader city-state of Acre going for at least another few decades.

 

[Alex Richards]

You know, I like the concept of combining the three of those and it's basically just 'Simon de Montfort returning in 1260 to be ordained by the Pope as the first Bishop of the Mongols (probably wouldn't go straight to Archbishop?), manages to persuade Edward I to launch a joint crusade on the Holy Land and Egypt.'

 

[Geordie]

One of the few exceptions is Guy Gavriel Kay, whose novel Under Heaven is about a low fantasy version of the An Lushan rebellion.

Is it worth a read?

 

[Hendryk]

Is it worth a read?

I found it pretty enjoyable. I gave a copy to @Bruno and I believe he liked it too.

 

[Bruno]

I found it pretty enjoyable. I gave a copy to @Bruno and I believe he liked it too.

I didn't like it.

I adored it. So much I'm tracking down all of his other stuff now.