raharris1973
Well-known member
What if the Shun Dynasty of Li Zicheng and his warrior wife, also a general in his service, won control over post-Ming China instead of the Qing?
As a divergence, let's say that Li smartly bids for the support of Wu Sangui who was leading the Ming forces at the Shanhai pass, and the newly crowned Shun Emperor puts himself beyond Wu's suspicion by facilitating the transfer of Wu's family and concubines close to his area of operations so the latter does not suspect he is harming or boinking them respectively.
Wu decides to side with the new upstart peasant born Chinese Emperor instead of the forest barbarian foreign would-be Emperor, and repels the Jurchen/Manchu and the Shanhai pass and Great Wall with his own forces and Shun Dynasty reinforcements.
He is given honored commands by the Shun Emperor, and follows up the defensive victory with a counter-offensive to liberate Liaoning in southern Manchuria for the new Chinese Dynasty. The Jurchen, with depleted forces but a bloated civilian population exceeding their local food supply, are entering a period of crisis as the Chinese Shun Dynasty forces attack them from the southwest. This is compounded as soon the Koreans of Joseon begin assaulting the Jurchen from the southeast, seizing southeastern Manchurian areas just across from the Yalu and Tumen rivers and getting revenger from earlier Jurchen invasions and plundering. And not long after that the Russian Cossacks, who have been terrorizing and plundering local tribes, extracting tribute in furs and building strings of forts and settlements north the Amur, begin to encroach on Manchurian lands and hit the weakened Jurchen in the north between the Amur and Sungari river, and along some of the Pacific coast south of the Amur delta.
These assaults break up the cohesion of the Jurchen state and neuter it as a threat while permitting the Inner Mongolians to throw off Jurchen rule. From there, Shun Dynasty forces, those who'd been with Li Zicheng and his wife from the beginning, those who rallied to him more recently, and Wu Sangui's army, pivot focus mainly to deal with the southern Ming pretenders.These campaigns occupy the early years of the 1650s, but are pretty successful in securing first southeast China then southwest. Like the Manchu/Qing, pretenders continue to pop up every couple years, in remote mountainous provinces, and seek refuge across borders in countries like Vietnam and Burma. The Admiral Zheng proclaims himself a Ming loyalist and menaces Sun control of the coast from his bases in Fujian and offshore islands. But he fails to gain ground and retreats to Taiwan, taking it from the Dutch.
The Shun Dynasty is likely faced with its own version of the revolt of the Three Feudatories after this, a final test of strength between the new dynasty and former Ming turncoats like Wu Sangui and others, with the northern based Shun likely to win. After securing this win by the early 1680s, the Shun Dynasty probably moves to finish off the Zheng's in Taiwan.
Going forward this Shun Dynasty would have consolidated control over "China proper" south of the Great Wall, Liaoning and possibly a little more of southern Manchuria for good measure, and Taiwan. But that may be about the extent of its territorial ambition. It may be content to deal with Mongols and Tibetans on the outside through bribery, punitive raids, and divide and manipulate dipolmacy rather than conquest, and unlike the Manchu whose homeland was menaced by the Russians in the Amur country, they may tend to see the Russians as useful allies in holding down nomadic peoples in frontier lands they do not plan to bring into cultivation.
This could mean the avoidance of Sino-Russian warfare in the late 1600s, and an earlier establishment of a stable Russian Far East in more latitudes around Khabarovsk, Harbin, Vladivostok early than in real, which could be beneficial for population growth and trade for Russian Asia and the Pacific, the Russian America company, and encourage more persistent Russian efforts to not only trade with China, but also with Korea and Japan.
The Dzunghar confederation of Oirat Mongols may rise to substantial power over Mongolia, Xinjiang, even Tibet, and possibly some of the Kazak steppes. It is unclear how much they would attempt to menace China and how easily China could fend them off. But Russia may do more of the work than China in subduing them. If Russia's solutions are less genocidal than China's, some parts of Xinjiang might to this day be a bit more Buddhist and Mongol than Turkic and Muslim.
Within China, it is uncertain how fundamental governance and economic matters would be handled differently. The dynasty and main population would be Han, so there would not be the Han Manchu split, however, it is important to note that for long stretches of Qing times, much of Kangxi's time, all of Hongzheng, all of Qianlong's and much of Jiaqing's, the Manchu-Han split was of limited relevance. It tended to be amplified mainly when other things were already going sour for the empire. However, certain stylistic and superficial things would certainly be different - we should expect the flowing robe Hanf clothing style instead of the tight Qipao jackets and cheongsam dresses, and long-flowing men's hair instead of the queue ponytail, and for the imperial women's feet to be bound.
Your thoughts?
As a divergence, let's say that Li smartly bids for the support of Wu Sangui who was leading the Ming forces at the Shanhai pass, and the newly crowned Shun Emperor puts himself beyond Wu's suspicion by facilitating the transfer of Wu's family and concubines close to his area of operations so the latter does not suspect he is harming or boinking them respectively.
Wu decides to side with the new upstart peasant born Chinese Emperor instead of the forest barbarian foreign would-be Emperor, and repels the Jurchen/Manchu and the Shanhai pass and Great Wall with his own forces and Shun Dynasty reinforcements.
He is given honored commands by the Shun Emperor, and follows up the defensive victory with a counter-offensive to liberate Liaoning in southern Manchuria for the new Chinese Dynasty. The Jurchen, with depleted forces but a bloated civilian population exceeding their local food supply, are entering a period of crisis as the Chinese Shun Dynasty forces attack them from the southwest. This is compounded as soon the Koreans of Joseon begin assaulting the Jurchen from the southeast, seizing southeastern Manchurian areas just across from the Yalu and Tumen rivers and getting revenger from earlier Jurchen invasions and plundering. And not long after that the Russian Cossacks, who have been terrorizing and plundering local tribes, extracting tribute in furs and building strings of forts and settlements north the Amur, begin to encroach on Manchurian lands and hit the weakened Jurchen in the north between the Amur and Sungari river, and along some of the Pacific coast south of the Amur delta.
These assaults break up the cohesion of the Jurchen state and neuter it as a threat while permitting the Inner Mongolians to throw off Jurchen rule. From there, Shun Dynasty forces, those who'd been with Li Zicheng and his wife from the beginning, those who rallied to him more recently, and Wu Sangui's army, pivot focus mainly to deal with the southern Ming pretenders.These campaigns occupy the early years of the 1650s, but are pretty successful in securing first southeast China then southwest. Like the Manchu/Qing, pretenders continue to pop up every couple years, in remote mountainous provinces, and seek refuge across borders in countries like Vietnam and Burma. The Admiral Zheng proclaims himself a Ming loyalist and menaces Sun control of the coast from his bases in Fujian and offshore islands. But he fails to gain ground and retreats to Taiwan, taking it from the Dutch.
The Shun Dynasty is likely faced with its own version of the revolt of the Three Feudatories after this, a final test of strength between the new dynasty and former Ming turncoats like Wu Sangui and others, with the northern based Shun likely to win. After securing this win by the early 1680s, the Shun Dynasty probably moves to finish off the Zheng's in Taiwan.
Going forward this Shun Dynasty would have consolidated control over "China proper" south of the Great Wall, Liaoning and possibly a little more of southern Manchuria for good measure, and Taiwan. But that may be about the extent of its territorial ambition. It may be content to deal with Mongols and Tibetans on the outside through bribery, punitive raids, and divide and manipulate dipolmacy rather than conquest, and unlike the Manchu whose homeland was menaced by the Russians in the Amur country, they may tend to see the Russians as useful allies in holding down nomadic peoples in frontier lands they do not plan to bring into cultivation.
This could mean the avoidance of Sino-Russian warfare in the late 1600s, and an earlier establishment of a stable Russian Far East in more latitudes around Khabarovsk, Harbin, Vladivostok early than in real, which could be beneficial for population growth and trade for Russian Asia and the Pacific, the Russian America company, and encourage more persistent Russian efforts to not only trade with China, but also with Korea and Japan.
The Dzunghar confederation of Oirat Mongols may rise to substantial power over Mongolia, Xinjiang, even Tibet, and possibly some of the Kazak steppes. It is unclear how much they would attempt to menace China and how easily China could fend them off. But Russia may do more of the work than China in subduing them. If Russia's solutions are less genocidal than China's, some parts of Xinjiang might to this day be a bit more Buddhist and Mongol than Turkic and Muslim.
Within China, it is uncertain how fundamental governance and economic matters would be handled differently. The dynasty and main population would be Han, so there would not be the Han Manchu split, however, it is important to note that for long stretches of Qing times, much of Kangxi's time, all of Hongzheng, all of Qianlong's and much of Jiaqing's, the Manchu-Han split was of limited relevance. It tended to be amplified mainly when other things were already going sour for the empire. However, certain stylistic and superficial things would certainly be different - we should expect the flowing robe Hanf clothing style instead of the tight Qipao jackets and cheongsam dresses, and long-flowing men's hair instead of the queue ponytail, and for the imperial women's feet to be bound.
Your thoughts?