22 replies to this topic

[Non-Han Nan Ban]

If the Ming Dynasty came after the Qing, would the Manchu's ban on footbinding have been more effective? Or would it reappear again when the Ming took over?

Footbinding became a strong trend amongst the elite during the Southern Song (1127-1279), so if a hypothetical Jurchen Dynasty conquered the Mongol Yuan in 1368 and abolished it, the abolishment would perhaps have a better chance since footbinding had only become entrenched in the past century. In stark contrast, the Manchus of tried to impose anti-footbinding measures in the 17th century, long after it had become an established and accepted tradition.

This thread really won't really allow us to explore actual history, since it is all hypothetical, but I suppose it is a bit fun to speculate and use one's imagination with this sort of thing. Kind of like What if the 16th century Spanish Armada had conquered England and forced it to convert to Catholicism?

One should ask how fundamentally different China would have been from the 14th to 17th centuries under a Jurchen Dynasty instead. The Jin Dynasty allowed for Imperial Examinations but maintained many non-Han traditions at court. The Jurchens also were more prone to fall into cultural Sinicization, unlike their Khitan predecessors who substituted palaces with encamped fields in their imperial city and kept themselves ethnically segregated from the urban Han populace they ruled. Who knows how a ruling Jurchen dynasty would have handled Japanese Wokou raiders, fractious fighting Tibetans, the Portuguese embassy of 1517, the Jesuit missions, Mongol incursions of Altan Khan, etc. etc. It's all just speculation that's best left to a fantasy novel author.

Eric (En Rui)

[labi_tail]

in history, there s no "wat if"...

we will nvr know for sure...

u mite 1 2 consider even further like instead of Ming, y not Tang, Song etc etc...
or mayb Qin n Han????

[ctrlsave]

Well if tang was in place of qing during that time, it would probably have kept up with the western world and kept china's position as a powerful country. The Tang dynasty was known to be liberal in its foreign relations and adoption of cultures coming from foreign countries. I think a better question to ask was what if the Empress Dowager Cixi was never in power because Qing did have its own modern navy, the " 北洋水师“ but towards the Sino-japanese war most of its funds were taken away by Cixi for her silly little garden and luxury.

[hellfire190]

i wonder where will the "反清复明" elements leading to the 1911 revolution be in this case? will China remain a monarchy? would the Qing dynasty fall even sooner due to the continuation of "barbaric" rule in China?

[hellfire190]

and also not forgetting the disappearance of the Chinese triads (with origins associated to 反清复明)... besides this, with all emperors maintaining status quo, China could possibly be in a far worse downward spiral with emperors like Wanli reigning when trade has started to open up more...

[Tea]

well ,let me say ,Qing emperor is better then Ming emperor alots , every Qing emperor is hard work , only Daoguang a little lazy , but most Ming emperor is not hard work , some like money ,some like make wood furniture, some only interesting on religion etc ,Ming has 200+ years history ,there at least 100 years emperor didn't care national affair if Ming and Qing replaced ,China probably like India has been full taken over by Europe and became a colony

[shibo77]

I agree that there are no "what-ifs" to history, but my guess would be that we would have been worse off if Ming came after the Qing. The queue, footbinding, the triad are just minor details, "反清复明", "驱逐鞑虏" are just revoluntionary slogans. The main state policies of isolationism would still be in place. The Ming and Qing are very similar, however, of the two the Qing was far superior. The Qing was expansionist and maintained effective rule over today's frontier regions of Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, Inner Tibet, and Inner Manchuria, and had some sort of central government presence in Outer Tibet and Outer Mongolia. Although the Manchus and bannermen (which included Mongolian, Han, and other ethnicities) were at the top end of the social hierarchy, the Qing Empire during and after Qianlong's reign was effectively a true multiethnic empire. Many Qing-era monuments in Beijing have the five languages of the empire inscribed in parallel (Manchu, Chinese, Mongolian, Tibetan, and Uyghur), there's also the pentaglot dictionary, support for Tibetan Lamaist Buddhism, and the likes. Without the Qing, I think not only would the modern area of China be much smaller (composing of only core Han Chinese areas "China proper"), the state agenda of multiethnic harmony that's so prevalent in today's People's Republic would give way to a more narrow Han Chinese nationalistic agenda. The frontier regions could have been much more daunting, with Manchuria, Mongolia, Turkestan, Tibet, and other new nation-states, prone to foreign dominance and annexation, bordering so closely to the Han Chinese heartland (with little natural boundaries to help containment). China could haven been easily carved up and colonized in the vein of India or perhaps opened up similar to Japan or the late Qing, with concessions and port cities made into colonies.

Overall, although corruption was a big problem during the late Qing, I think this was always the natural order for the dynasties of China. There would be one or two highly respectable emperors reigning early or in the middle of the dynasty. Wars would be raged and territories would be expanded, causing a temporary suppression of popular discontent through iron-fisted rule, and a depletion of funds from the imperial treasury (eg, Han's Wudi, Tang's Wu Zetian, Qing's Qianlong). After the emperor's death, popular discontent that was suppressed would ignite once more, and the problems that will eventually cause the fall of the empire would take shape. The Qing fared quite well, lasting more than a hundred years after Qianlong, having to put down waves after waves of internal rebellions and fighting with the foreigners, and even the beginnings of a modern society (military and education) and constitutional parliamentary monarchy. Things would have been better if the young reformist Guangxu had more power rather than the conservative Cixi. From the viewpoint of the entirety of Imperial China's history, the Qing was an empire that was the most centralized and effectively governed the greatest amount of territory (a full 13 million km^2, the largest in China's history), and the first after the Northern Song dynasty to have finally surpassed its GDP. Speaking of which, before rampant industrialization, GDP was mostly a measure of 1) the lack of war and 2) the population, of which both China and India had the most since almost the beginnings of recorded history. But alas, human flesh is no match for the productivity of machines. I think neither the Qing nor the Ming would have "stayed ahead of the curve" in the field of industrialization. Tang's cosmopolitanism is a double-edged sword, I think in the end, their empire became too big to effectively govern (with the methods of the day), and collapsed. Tolerating and accepting foreigners settling in the land is fine and dandy when the empire is strong, but when it is weak, the widely diverging agendas of the regions' rebellion leaders can wreak havoc. The Han dynasty was too early an empire for me to consider placing into so modern a situation (it'd be akin to considering how the Roman Empire's state policies and structures would have fared against Napoleon or Bismarck). The Song, (of which I am a fan), I believe would have been the best to deal with Western imperialism, and would have had the best economy (indeed, their GDP wasn't surpassed until the Qing). Song's bureaucracy was the most decentralized allowing for effective governance in the regions. The market was relatively free, (it was the beginning of mercantilism in China), and many went on (private and commercial) trades in the South China Sea (whereas with early Ming's Zheng He, while indeed grand, was only a one-time stint to "扬威", at most, getting some subsequent tributes from minor nations, nothing substantive as continued trade or true colonies). Of course, the Song would also have had lesser territories, probably more akin to Southern Song than Northern, not even the entire Han Chinese heartland. It seems my conclusion would be that Qing was indeed the best out of the choices available (provided Guangxu had real power in court rather than Cixi).

Edited by shibo77, 22 December 2010 - 09:42 PM.

[ctrlsave]

yes, to be fair to the qing dynasty. It was for most part a better governed dynasty with a line of emperors
that are ok at least. If we want to use the what if, with the same emperors ( a long line of useless, corrupted emperors ), same
corrupted officials ( with their bad a** gangs ) and not to miss out the eunuchs. Then probably, it would have been worse ( except
the pigtail of course ).

In fact, i think Ming was one of the worst dynasties ever. A big mistake. Although if Zhang juzhen lived in the 19 century, things
could have been different.

I agree that a better what if was that if someone could have stopped cixi from taking all the money and making stupid decisions.
Why didnt someone just kill her? beiyang navy was a respectable force and had it been maintained, china wouldn't have been in
the state it was and will definitely catch up soon enough.

If tang was in place of qing, then woohoo. Today china will probably be a constitutional monarchy and china will probably be one
of the leading powers for most parts of the 20,21st century. But enough of what ifs, but i would definitely be interested if someone
makes this into a manga.