raharris1973
Well-known member
What if Qing Dynasty China took a more aggressive posture toward Russia than in real life?
In real life for a long time China *did* hold its own against Russia, or sometimes a little more. The pushback of the Russian Cossacks from Albazin fort and the Amur River in the later 1600s to the Stanovoy mountains to reclaim Outer Manchuria comes to mind. Sino-Russian border conflicts - Wikipedia
It was only in the last fifty years of the Qing dynasty that Russia held China at a routine disadvantage, and even that not uninterrupted, with Qing military posturing and threats (by none other than Col Sanders' *higher-ranking* predecessor in combined militarism and poultry preparation, General Zuo Zongtang, aka, "General Tso") securing Russian withdrawal from Xinjiang after the 1870s Ili Rebellion Treaty of Saint Petersburg (1881) - Wikipedia
China also took Russia more seriously, earlier, than other European states, exchanging embassies with it as more of an equal in the 1600s and 1700s, possibly because it recognized its sheer vast size, and ability to combat nomadic hordes that had confounded China in the past...something that the merchant colonies and ships of western Europeans in Macau and the China seas never demonstrated to them, and perhaps made them easy to underestimate until it was far too late during the Opium War.
Having established all this, I think it is quite plausible to have moved the needle, and 1600s and 1700s China, all before the Opium War and Century of Humiliation, with strong, self-confident leaders, had more freedom to "get crap started" with Russia than Russia would in reverse against China, given Russia was at war one or more European or Caucasian frontier nearly all the time, with no more than the occasional decade or half decade respite of peace, and only clearly winning its war a bit over half the time.
Siberia and the Far East of Asia were just very, very *far* from the Russian demographic, economic, and military center of gravity, even though the Russians were impressive for having conquered over that distance in harsh conditions at all.
Here are a list of "opportunities" for the Qing to be more aggressive:
1. During the reign of Kangxi: (1669[end of regency]-1722):
a. If the Qing keep pressing there advantage after beating the Cossacks in the late 1680s, [1685-1686 to be exact, with OTL Treaty of Nerchinsk signed in 1689] when securing Outer Manchuria, and keep pressing further north up the eastern coast of Asia to increase the buffer space for the Manchu-Tungusic region and oust Russian settlements, posts, forts, towns from the temperate to sub-Arctic latitudes there, it will spoil the mood of young Peter the Great but he won't be able to counter-act it very effectively with Russian forces alone. Russian ability to feed eastern Siberia and its far east settlement project is impaired as its exploration and claiming of Kamchatka, Chukchi and even Alaska without the temperate lands just north of the Stanovoys. [It is *possible* Russia could still support its Chukchi-Kommandorski-Aleutians-Alyeska expansion by Arctic/sub-Artic routes alone, but less likely, IMHO]. Tsar Peter's Russia for much of the 1680s and 1690s was often involved in "the Great Turkish War", with three campaigns to take Azov, the first two failing, the third time the charm.
A con for Kangxi however, investing in exploration, fort-building, logistics, and pacification of the further northeastern Asian coast north of the Stanovoys up toward the direction of Kamchatka is that while it can bring in even more fur tribute, it will cost money and could compete in the budget against Kangxi's 1690-1697 war to take over Outer Mongolia and take the local Khalkha's invitation to protect them from the Dzhunghars who had just done a hostile takeover.
b. Kangxi could sign Nerchinsk in 1689 and let sleeping dogs lie on the Russian frontier for the next decade, while he handles Mongol and Dzhunghar business in the 1690s like OTL. After Kangxi defeats the Dzhunghars at Jao Modo in 1697 I believe his claims to Outer Mongolia and Khalka and eastern Oirat Mongol lands were solid. He then has a more secure base to start a more aggressive buffer policy towards the north in the final decades of his reign, takeover of the temperate lands east of Lake Baikal that the Yuan Dynasty once ruled, basically Buriat Mongolia, everything up to Yakutsk/Sakhaland, can go to the Qing. Continued Qing rolling back and contesting/destruction of Russian establishments at places like Irkutsk and Yakutsk, continuing into the 1700-1720 timeframe would ironically make China an anti-Russian, tangential co-belligerent with Sweden and Charles during the Great Northern War, which was even more challenging and engrossing for the Russians than the Great Turkish War had been. Compared with 1a.,in 1b., Kangxi has less "opportunity cost" in military terms because he was overall much less militarily active in the final 25 years of his reign from 1697 to 1722. He dealt I believe with a couple brief revolts and did a brief intervention in Tibet, and not much more. Obviously continued warring, against established Russian forts, and dealing with Russian counterattacks will cost *something*, and will pose logistical challenges, and forces decisions on what else to tax or what else not to fund. But chances of winning the field in this part of Asia, east of Lake Baikal, should still be pretty good.
It would be interesting to see how the Russians rank preservation of their position in northeast Asia alongside with their expansionist and defensive goals in the west and southwest and the resources and tactics they will employ to counter Qing Manchu-Han-Mongol aggression and the difficulties the Russians will create for the latter. And, if there is at all a possibility that any European enemies of Russia, frontline (like Sweden), or less direct, like Sweden's allies, would come up with the idea of trying to sell any weapons or proposing any tactics to the Qing Emperor and forces that the latter would think could be of any value.
Of course, of course, either of these upset the *mostly* peaceful Chinese Russian imperial relationship where both benefitted by the enclosure of the steppe and the grinding down of nomad-based empires originating there. A Qing heavily forward policy in northeast Asia would almost certainly incentivize Russia to align with the Dzhunghars against the Qing to weaken the latter, and make the final elimination of Dzhunghar power more difficult. That would end up being more of a problem for Kangxi's successors.
2. During the reign of Yongzheng: (1722-1735): In OTL, Yongzheng's reign was much shorter than Kangxi's and his own successors, and less militarily accomplished. However, he did complete the conquest of Qinghai province (called Kokonor in Mongolian and Amdo in Tibetan, it is the northeast portion of Greater Tibet), and did an intervention, without conquest, in the core Tibet/Lhasa area. He might have pushed on the margins of the Mongolian and Russian borders in his time, to keep Russian power at "safe" distances from the Manchu homeland, Mongol subject peoples, Beijing, and might have been tempted to misjudge the Russians as they had started their period of alternating between lengthy reigns of female monarchs/Tsarinas, and and brief reigns of young boys, which could lead him or his ambassadors or court advisors to chauvinistic conclusions and underestimation.
3. During the reign of Qianglong (1735-1796):
After completing the Dzhunghar conquest/genocide and the conquest of greater Xinjiang, completed by roughly 1757, pounded further into the ground by 1763, the regime has more foreign policy freedom of action, having succeeded in dealing with its main security threat….though it has spent quite a bit.
Qianlong could unilaterally decide to – revise its Russian border for more buffer space. This would be more challenge than a confrontation decades earlier however, because Russians are now present in Siberia and the Far East in larger numbers than in the prior century, growing more food, in probably somewhat warmer weather, with more advanced weapons and tactics.
On the western frontier, with Central Asia rather than Russia proper, Qianlong could decide to buffer the new province, Xinjiang, by pulling the eastern and/or middle Kazak horde out of the Russian tribute system and into the Qing tribute system.
Two specific occasions could be used as provocations or excuses where the Chinese side could deliberately escalate existing incidents of tension:
a. Qianlong determines on a campaign to reduce Russian power and chastise the Russians, in the tensions brought on by China's demands for the return of the body of Dzhungar chieftain Amursana (the campaign against Amursana was what in OTL resulted in the Qing Dynasty's conquest of Xinjiang and Tibet), and Russia's refusal to return the body.
Tensions were fairly high starting from 1758 for the next few years. In OTL, the Qing threatened to cut off trade and besieged the Russian Orthodox monks authorized to reside in Beijing.
The Qing had finished several victorious campaigns and extended their territories and crushed vestigial Mongol (Dzhunghar_ resistance. They had built up a skill set for war on the steppes that allowed them to win.
If they are sufficiently angry at the Russians (or feign anger, for instrumental purposes) they should be able to mount an offensive gravely threatening Russian territories in eastern and southern Siberia.
Qing territorial objectives, if Qianlong gets greedy, could include seizure of the Buriat Mongols' lands, the silver-mining ditrict around Nerchinsk, and a band of the fur-rich forest country north of Manchuria.
At this time, the Russians are busy with the 7 Years War. Qianlong could conduct his war on an entirely independent basis, but the British could conceivably take an interest in the campaign.
Fighting the Russians would probably at least reveal they were stronger than in the 1680s.
Here is a potential knock-on. It may or may not be sufficiently disturbing for the Chinese to become interesting in cooperating with the British in terms of purchasing certain types of arms and renting naval assistance.
Here is a potential wilder knock-on: Frederick in Prussia would be incapable of reacting to the situation except simply to pray that Chinese attacks divert Russian forces from Europe. The seed could be planted over the long run in Prussian thinking of the potential of China as an ally.
Of course, the Chinese might only be starting the stride of their anti-Russian attack in '62 or 63 by which point the Russians have all but exited the war in Europe.
b. Another tense occasion or provocation that could escalate could be the Qianlong's solicitation of Catherine's vassals, the Torghut Mongols, to migrate from the Volga back to Mongolia/Dzungaria in 1771. Something like half of them did an unauthorized migration back to Qing controlled Mongolia over 1771-72 pursued halfheartedly and inneffectively by Russian cavalry, since they were evading commitments to the Russian draft and taxes. That could easily get more tense, and Qianlong could use that as an occasion to attack the Russians in East Asia if he wishes, perhaps citing and amplifying as an excuse, Russian attempts to stop the migration of his would-be subjects by force. [Catherine the Great of Russia could also use it as an excuse to attack China, *if* she were to truly want to do so, but I was not thinking she would at the moment.] At this time, I thing China may have had some internal unrest, but not any foreign wars. Meanwhile, the Russians were still completing a Turkish war.
Of course fighting the Russians does not guaranteeing beating them, not in the first instance or second instance - though I think it likely at the eastern periphery of Russian holdings. And it is *certainly* no guarantee against a Russian comeback and a cycle of wars of revenge later. Those could be interesting to see. Russia could find the development of its Asian interior defensively stimulated. China will inevitably face setbacks of some kind. It could possibly, by the early, middle, or late 19th century find itself *worse* off than OTL. Especially if all it does is extra expansion while strong without any internal reform.
On the other hand, it is possible that although it may pay a heavy price for more aggressive warring, stimulate foreign opposition and get contained, by "staying in practice" continually competing militarily with formidable military powers, Qing institutions in the military sphere will be forces to innovate, and this will backwash into the governmental and societal spheres to the net benefit of China compared with OTL. It may have a better "gauge" of its own strengths and weaknesses in every decade in this alternate timeline and make adequate adjustments on time, to avoid such abrupt and steep falls in power and prestige as it suffered in the opium wars and treaty ports and Japanese wars era
In real life for a long time China *did* hold its own against Russia, or sometimes a little more. The pushback of the Russian Cossacks from Albazin fort and the Amur River in the later 1600s to the Stanovoy mountains to reclaim Outer Manchuria comes to mind. Sino-Russian border conflicts - Wikipedia
It was only in the last fifty years of the Qing dynasty that Russia held China at a routine disadvantage, and even that not uninterrupted, with Qing military posturing and threats (by none other than Col Sanders' *higher-ranking* predecessor in combined militarism and poultry preparation, General Zuo Zongtang, aka, "General Tso") securing Russian withdrawal from Xinjiang after the 1870s Ili Rebellion Treaty of Saint Petersburg (1881) - Wikipedia
China also took Russia more seriously, earlier, than other European states, exchanging embassies with it as more of an equal in the 1600s and 1700s, possibly because it recognized its sheer vast size, and ability to combat nomadic hordes that had confounded China in the past...something that the merchant colonies and ships of western Europeans in Macau and the China seas never demonstrated to them, and perhaps made them easy to underestimate until it was far too late during the Opium War.
Having established all this, I think it is quite plausible to have moved the needle, and 1600s and 1700s China, all before the Opium War and Century of Humiliation, with strong, self-confident leaders, had more freedom to "get crap started" with Russia than Russia would in reverse against China, given Russia was at war one or more European or Caucasian frontier nearly all the time, with no more than the occasional decade or half decade respite of peace, and only clearly winning its war a bit over half the time.
Siberia and the Far East of Asia were just very, very *far* from the Russian demographic, economic, and military center of gravity, even though the Russians were impressive for having conquered over that distance in harsh conditions at all.
Here are a list of "opportunities" for the Qing to be more aggressive:
1. During the reign of Kangxi: (1669[end of regency]-1722):
a. If the Qing keep pressing there advantage after beating the Cossacks in the late 1680s, [1685-1686 to be exact, with OTL Treaty of Nerchinsk signed in 1689] when securing Outer Manchuria, and keep pressing further north up the eastern coast of Asia to increase the buffer space for the Manchu-Tungusic region and oust Russian settlements, posts, forts, towns from the temperate to sub-Arctic latitudes there, it will spoil the mood of young Peter the Great but he won't be able to counter-act it very effectively with Russian forces alone. Russian ability to feed eastern Siberia and its far east settlement project is impaired as its exploration and claiming of Kamchatka, Chukchi and even Alaska without the temperate lands just north of the Stanovoys. [It is *possible* Russia could still support its Chukchi-Kommandorski-Aleutians-Alyeska expansion by Arctic/sub-Artic routes alone, but less likely, IMHO]. Tsar Peter's Russia for much of the 1680s and 1690s was often involved in "the Great Turkish War", with three campaigns to take Azov, the first two failing, the third time the charm.
A con for Kangxi however, investing in exploration, fort-building, logistics, and pacification of the further northeastern Asian coast north of the Stanovoys up toward the direction of Kamchatka is that while it can bring in even more fur tribute, it will cost money and could compete in the budget against Kangxi's 1690-1697 war to take over Outer Mongolia and take the local Khalkha's invitation to protect them from the Dzhunghars who had just done a hostile takeover.
b. Kangxi could sign Nerchinsk in 1689 and let sleeping dogs lie on the Russian frontier for the next decade, while he handles Mongol and Dzhunghar business in the 1690s like OTL. After Kangxi defeats the Dzhunghars at Jao Modo in 1697 I believe his claims to Outer Mongolia and Khalka and eastern Oirat Mongol lands were solid. He then has a more secure base to start a more aggressive buffer policy towards the north in the final decades of his reign, takeover of the temperate lands east of Lake Baikal that the Yuan Dynasty once ruled, basically Buriat Mongolia, everything up to Yakutsk/Sakhaland, can go to the Qing. Continued Qing rolling back and contesting/destruction of Russian establishments at places like Irkutsk and Yakutsk, continuing into the 1700-1720 timeframe would ironically make China an anti-Russian, tangential co-belligerent with Sweden and Charles during the Great Northern War, which was even more challenging and engrossing for the Russians than the Great Turkish War had been. Compared with 1a.,in 1b., Kangxi has less "opportunity cost" in military terms because he was overall much less militarily active in the final 25 years of his reign from 1697 to 1722. He dealt I believe with a couple brief revolts and did a brief intervention in Tibet, and not much more. Obviously continued warring, against established Russian forts, and dealing with Russian counterattacks will cost *something*, and will pose logistical challenges, and forces decisions on what else to tax or what else not to fund. But chances of winning the field in this part of Asia, east of Lake Baikal, should still be pretty good.
It would be interesting to see how the Russians rank preservation of their position in northeast Asia alongside with their expansionist and defensive goals in the west and southwest and the resources and tactics they will employ to counter Qing Manchu-Han-Mongol aggression and the difficulties the Russians will create for the latter. And, if there is at all a possibility that any European enemies of Russia, frontline (like Sweden), or less direct, like Sweden's allies, would come up with the idea of trying to sell any weapons or proposing any tactics to the Qing Emperor and forces that the latter would think could be of any value.
Of course, of course, either of these upset the *mostly* peaceful Chinese Russian imperial relationship where both benefitted by the enclosure of the steppe and the grinding down of nomad-based empires originating there. A Qing heavily forward policy in northeast Asia would almost certainly incentivize Russia to align with the Dzhunghars against the Qing to weaken the latter, and make the final elimination of Dzhunghar power more difficult. That would end up being more of a problem for Kangxi's successors.
2. During the reign of Yongzheng: (1722-1735): In OTL, Yongzheng's reign was much shorter than Kangxi's and his own successors, and less militarily accomplished. However, he did complete the conquest of Qinghai province (called Kokonor in Mongolian and Amdo in Tibetan, it is the northeast portion of Greater Tibet), and did an intervention, without conquest, in the core Tibet/Lhasa area. He might have pushed on the margins of the Mongolian and Russian borders in his time, to keep Russian power at "safe" distances from the Manchu homeland, Mongol subject peoples, Beijing, and might have been tempted to misjudge the Russians as they had started their period of alternating between lengthy reigns of female monarchs/Tsarinas, and and brief reigns of young boys, which could lead him or his ambassadors or court advisors to chauvinistic conclusions and underestimation.
3. During the reign of Qianglong (1735-1796):
After completing the Dzhunghar conquest/genocide and the conquest of greater Xinjiang, completed by roughly 1757, pounded further into the ground by 1763, the regime has more foreign policy freedom of action, having succeeded in dealing with its main security threat….though it has spent quite a bit.
Qianlong could unilaterally decide to – revise its Russian border for more buffer space. This would be more challenge than a confrontation decades earlier however, because Russians are now present in Siberia and the Far East in larger numbers than in the prior century, growing more food, in probably somewhat warmer weather, with more advanced weapons and tactics.
On the western frontier, with Central Asia rather than Russia proper, Qianlong could decide to buffer the new province, Xinjiang, by pulling the eastern and/or middle Kazak horde out of the Russian tribute system and into the Qing tribute system.
Two specific occasions could be used as provocations or excuses where the Chinese side could deliberately escalate existing incidents of tension:
a. Qianlong determines on a campaign to reduce Russian power and chastise the Russians, in the tensions brought on by China's demands for the return of the body of Dzhungar chieftain Amursana (the campaign against Amursana was what in OTL resulted in the Qing Dynasty's conquest of Xinjiang and Tibet), and Russia's refusal to return the body.
Tensions were fairly high starting from 1758 for the next few years. In OTL, the Qing threatened to cut off trade and besieged the Russian Orthodox monks authorized to reside in Beijing.
The Qing had finished several victorious campaigns and extended their territories and crushed vestigial Mongol (Dzhunghar_ resistance. They had built up a skill set for war on the steppes that allowed them to win.
If they are sufficiently angry at the Russians (or feign anger, for instrumental purposes) they should be able to mount an offensive gravely threatening Russian territories in eastern and southern Siberia.
Qing territorial objectives, if Qianlong gets greedy, could include seizure of the Buriat Mongols' lands, the silver-mining ditrict around Nerchinsk, and a band of the fur-rich forest country north of Manchuria.
At this time, the Russians are busy with the 7 Years War. Qianlong could conduct his war on an entirely independent basis, but the British could conceivably take an interest in the campaign.
Fighting the Russians would probably at least reveal they were stronger than in the 1680s.
Here is a potential knock-on. It may or may not be sufficiently disturbing for the Chinese to become interesting in cooperating with the British in terms of purchasing certain types of arms and renting naval assistance.
Here is a potential wilder knock-on: Frederick in Prussia would be incapable of reacting to the situation except simply to pray that Chinese attacks divert Russian forces from Europe. The seed could be planted over the long run in Prussian thinking of the potential of China as an ally.
Of course, the Chinese might only be starting the stride of their anti-Russian attack in '62 or 63 by which point the Russians have all but exited the war in Europe.
b. Another tense occasion or provocation that could escalate could be the Qianlong's solicitation of Catherine's vassals, the Torghut Mongols, to migrate from the Volga back to Mongolia/Dzungaria in 1771. Something like half of them did an unauthorized migration back to Qing controlled Mongolia over 1771-72 pursued halfheartedly and inneffectively by Russian cavalry, since they were evading commitments to the Russian draft and taxes. That could easily get more tense, and Qianlong could use that as an occasion to attack the Russians in East Asia if he wishes, perhaps citing and amplifying as an excuse, Russian attempts to stop the migration of his would-be subjects by force. [Catherine the Great of Russia could also use it as an excuse to attack China, *if* she were to truly want to do so, but I was not thinking she would at the moment.] At this time, I thing China may have had some internal unrest, but not any foreign wars. Meanwhile, the Russians were still completing a Turkish war.
Of course fighting the Russians does not guaranteeing beating them, not in the first instance or second instance - though I think it likely at the eastern periphery of Russian holdings. And it is *certainly* no guarantee against a Russian comeback and a cycle of wars of revenge later. Those could be interesting to see. Russia could find the development of its Asian interior defensively stimulated. China will inevitably face setbacks of some kind. It could possibly, by the early, middle, or late 19th century find itself *worse* off than OTL. Especially if all it does is extra expansion while strong without any internal reform.
On the other hand, it is possible that although it may pay a heavy price for more aggressive warring, stimulate foreign opposition and get contained, by "staying in practice" continually competing militarily with formidable military powers, Qing institutions in the military sphere will be forces to innovate, and this will backwash into the governmental and societal spheres to the net benefit of China compared with OTL. It may have a better "gauge" of its own strengths and weaknesses in every decade in this alternate timeline and make adequate adjustments on time, to avoid such abrupt and steep falls in power and prestige as it suffered in the opium wars and treaty ports and Japanese wars era