Warring States: a 19th Century China Oneshot

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Here’s a silly, rather implausible oneshot scenario I’ve written.

The Qing court tries to purge Zeng Guofan in the early 1860s after the death of the Xianfeng Emperor, and fails, causing him, his relations, and his personally loyal Hunan Army to split off from the Qing empire, and declare that the regents for the infant Tongzhi Emperor are illegitimate, and rebel to "suppress the evil clique surrounding the Emperor." The Taipings surge, but Hong Xiuquan dies before true victory or international recognition is attained, and the Heavenly Kingdom is torn asunder by a conflict between the familial authority of Hong Rengan, and the military faction supporting Li Xiucheng, both of which interpret and pervert the religion's teachings to their own ends (lazy parallelism to the Shia-Sunni split). Henry Burgevine, commander of the barbarian mercenary "Ever-Victorious Army" (who in OTL later rebelled against the Qing), convinces his subordinate Charles"Chinese" Gordon to revolt after one of the many instances of Chinesebureaucratic intransigence and Qingdisrespect, and then is promptly killed, leaving Gordon to command a giant, well-armed, rampaging mercenary army. This army then proceeds to kick out the Qing around Shanghai, before heading north, where they grind down into bloody stalemate. This intervention, of course, has completely ruined any faith the Chinese had in the fair dealings of the international settlement at Shanghai, so the Qing refuse to resume governance there without "reparations" being paid, and other humiliations. Sensing an impasse, the French and British, now that no imperial or Taiping (either faction) troops are within 40 miles of the city, simply declare a condominium over Shanghai and its surrounds, deciding that, for China to trade, some territorial control is necessary under the present circumstances. They of course never leave, at least not within the timeframe we're concerned with. The Nian rebels and Yunanese Muslims of course take this opportunity to seize Qing territory.

For a while all seems lost for the Qing, yet a few military victories and Russian support allows the Qing to hold on to northern and Northeastern China, albeit at the cost of triaging away almost everywhere else. Making do with what they have, and with a feeling of decadence now inescapable, they reemphasize their Manchu identity, which solidifies their hold on their remaining territories but creates a major political-cultural obstacle to ever expanding again much farther southwards. The Tributary states (Tibet, the various central Asian potentates) declare autonomy, or simply acquire it. Korea remains, but in a much looser and more equal relationship, complete with imperial marriage to the Korean royal line. 12-15 years on from out initial 1861 POD, we have a roughly stable multipolar China; an increasingly farcial “regency” of the Zeng family clique ruling over Hunan and adjacent areas, two warring Taiping factions, now with significant theological differences from each other, a European-led mercenary army-state, under the formidable leadership of Gordon, ruling from northern Jiangsu up to the Shandong Peninsula, various Nian-derived polities and armies, autonomous Yunanese Muslims and miscellaneous hill people in the far south, the Franco-British colony of Shanghai now gradually undergoing expansion via mission creep, and, finally, a shrunken and dependent, but still very much alive, Qing dynasty, now ideologically altered to exist “autochthonously” in its reducedterritory.

Thoughts?

 

[frustrated progressive]

If I decide to turn my Chinese Civil War scenario above into an actual TL, would people read it?

 

[Japhy]

It's not a very realistic breakdown and I'm not just saying that because I've tried to prep a Zeng founded replacement dynasty before. There are bones here to make something but it's pretty off as is. @Hendryk I'm sure, as well as myself would be interested in offering help though.

 

[Hendryk]

It's not a very realistic breakdown and I'm not just saying that because I've tried to prep a Zeng founded replacement dynasty before.

And it was a good one.

There are indeed a few problems with this TL, which I think boil down to an overemphasis on the fragility of 19th century Qing China. One could say it's a glass half full/half empty thing: on the one hand there were all those uprisings and rebellions, which lead one to the conclusion that the country was on the verge of disintegration; but on the other hand, as sclerotic as the regime was becoming, it still managed to suppress them all.

I'm not seeing a mercenary army-state under foreign leadership being very durable, if only because, by definition, mercenaries fight for loot, and at some point you run out of stuff to steal. In OTL the only warlord states that managed to last more than a few years were those with a secure base of power (Shanxi or Manchuria) and people who actually tried to run them competently. I also have some doubts about a Qing remnant under Russian protection: should it come to that, Russia would be too tempted to sweep in and claim those territories for itself.

 

[frustrated progressive]

And it was a good one.

There are indeed a few problems with this TL, which I think boil down to an overemphasis on the fragility of 19th century Qing China. One could say it's a glass half full/half empty thing: on the one hand there were all those uprisings and rebellions, which lead one to the conclusion that the country was on the verge of disintegration; but on the other hand, as sclerotic as the regime was becoming, it still managed to suppress them all.

I'm not seeing a mercenary army-state under foreign leadership being very durable, if only because, by definition, mercenaries fight for loot, and at some point you run out of stuff to steal. In OTL the only warlord states that managed to last more than a few years were those with a secure base of power (Shanxi or Manchuria) and people who actually tried to run them competently. I also have some doubts about a Qing remnant under Russian protection: should it come to that, Russia would be too tempted to sweep in and claim those territories for itself.

Let me work thorough this line by line.

The way I see it, in the in the couple of years after the torching of the summer palace, there were two main buttresses for Qing survival: Zeng Guofan, and first the tacit, and then the active support of Britain and France. With both of these factors to varying degrees actively turned against them, and despite generally getting the worst luck since Sedgwick's after he said "they couldn't hit an elephant at this distance", they survive, but definitively in a weakened state. Given these frankly unfair premises, I don't think that the Qing have had unrealistic levels of responsive success/failure.

Secondly, the mercenary realm of the Ever-Victorious Army isn't a state, really, much less the bureaucratic state of Chinese aspirations. It's a group of roving bandits forced by circumstances to slowly transform into stationary bandits. The "pull" of Gordon's authority and his various subordinates and administrators decreases massively with distance from his physical person (there not even really being a single capital); the boundaries of his realm are fuzzy, but many places considered to be within his zone of influence barely pay him homage. Moreover, there's no really organized apparatus; Gordon's a foreigner and not an administrator in any case. There's simply his personal military clique of white officers and certain trusted Chinese, increasingly dying off from age and combat, various bandits and local honchos in differing degrees of vassalage to him, their hired bureaucrats cutting across various "levels" of organization, and municipal, village, and mercantile authorities who've been forced, more or less willingly, to glom onto the only semi-stable authority available. Meanwhile, many "foreign" actors intervene at the shadowy edges of both the geographic and institutional bounds of Gordon's authority, and the de facto peace has everyone, in what is truly an army with a country, discomfited.The most telling indication of the vagueness of his sham of a polity is that I can't think of a half-decent name for it.

As for Russia, given their attempts IOTL to subcontract their army to the Qinq in exchange for loot and a free hand, I would say that, given a China (from their perspective) where the British and French have tried, and nearly succeeded, in toppling the dynasty for their own purposes, the Russians may very well find an utterly pliant but relatively secure reduced Qing to be more in their interests than swooping in to finish off the remains. This gets them all the Chinese trade goods and influence without directly paying for its administration. They will act to ensure Qing survival, but vampirically drain its strength if a real revival seems to be in the offing; it was they who orchestrated the peace with Gordon by supplying and withdrawing troops from the Qing at crucial points. They desire dependence, nothing more, and nothing less.

I hope this answers some of your questions.

 

[Hendryk]

The "pull" of Gordon's authority and his various subordinates and administrators decreases massively with distance from his physical person (there not even really being a single capital); the boundaries of his realm are fuzzy, but many places considered to be within his zone of influence barely pay him homage. Moreover, there's no really organized apparatus; Gordon's a foreigner and not an administrator in any case. There's simply his personal military clique of white officers and certain trusted Chinese, increasingly dying off from age and combat, various bandits and local honchos in differing degrees of vassalage to him, their hired bureaucrats cutting across various "levels" of organization, and municipal, village, and mercantile authorities who've been forced, more or less willingly, to glom onto the only semi-stable authority available.

Except for the foreigner part, that does pretty much fit the description of OTL's warlord states to a t. Which is why most of them were highly unstable: frustrated underlings were always ready to change sides if a rival offered a better deal, or if they sensed an opportunity to strike out on their own. Meanwhile what little was done by way of actual management was the work of half-coopted, half-bullied local bureaucrats.

 

[frustrated progressive]

Except for the foreigner part, that does pretty much fit the description of OTL's warlord states to a t. Which is why most of them were highly unstable: frustrated underlings were always ready to change sides if a rival offered a better deal, or if they sensed an opportunity to strike out on their own. Meanwhile what little was done by way of actual management was the work of half-coopted, half-bullied local bureaucrats.

That's kinda what I was going for.

Do you think, given my more complete explanation, that the centripetal force would be enough to sustain this "state", albeit in an inchoate form?