The Chinese Civil War to End all Chinese Civil Wars:
From the Ming to the Qing to the Ming to the RoC and back again to the Ming...
Toponyms of Magin are based on the 1905 pragmatic romanization of the Ming postal service, due to the failure of reaching consensus in the Fourth R.O.C. Conference for the Unification of Pronunciation, held in Nanjing in 1965.From the Ming to the Qing to the Ming to the RoC and back again to the Ming...
The premise here is that the Ming Dynasty manages to survive on the margins of Tayen (OTL Island of Taiwan/Formosa), that the famed Koxingga’s political line evolves into something analogous to the shoguns of Japan, that the Ming are able to benefit both from alliances with the Japanese and leverage Dutch Learning, and then able to capitalize on their coastal gains off the mainland (which happened sporadically in OTL history, even up to areas of the Lower Yangtze) in a period of history that kind of replaces the wokou ravaging of the early Qing Dynasty.
The Ming survive long enough, and are able to gain enough clout, that their legitimacy is used as a political football by the next generation of Han political elites in Magin (OTL southern China), leading to a more successful uprising analogous to the OTL Revolt of the Three Feudatories. From then on, the Ming are able to embed themselves in a complex political web of autonomous Maginese feudatories, Japanese intrigues and minor political ambitions, European imperialism, allowing them to challenge but also compel truce numerous times to ensure co-existence until the turn of the 20th century.
The Qing, for their part, are still able to make major gains in the rest of the continent, excelling in territories where their calvary could dominate (so same as OTL gains in Tibet, Sinkana/OTL Xinjiang and the Dzungar Empire, Mongola etc.). Only, when they start to deteriorate after their first line of astute emperors, they start to lose a lot more than compared to OTL, so that from the 19th to early 20th century, they start losing the Chinese Central Plain to the Ming (this period of heightened hostilities and warfare replaces the OTL Taiping Rebellion).
World War 1 sees a delusional Qing imperial court enter on the side of the Central Powers, leading to the downfall of the Qing and a quick but tumultuous foundation of the state of Manjur analogous to the War of Independence to OTL Turkey’s, complete with population transfers, some mass violence (minus full-blown genocide).
The Ming, for their part, are unable to capitalize on reunification, and start crumbling just like their former foes almost as soon as they reclaim the heartland. Their legitimacy, it seems, has finally run its course, and they rapidly become passe… This leads to republican insurgency, which fragments into a constellation of ethnic nationalists, communists, and nationalists. For a decade or more, the Ming try to stamp out opposition, but are never able to gain decisive victories against their foes.
Fast forward to World War Two, when the Ming are compelled to honour their Japanese allies to join the war and launch a campaign into southern Serica, but similar to Germany’s less competent allies, the Ming’s experiment with empire proves to be a blunder that finally upends the entire empire, giving enough fodder for the marginal insurgencies to blaze into full scale civil war. The Imperial Japanese Army is compelled to help their ally, which ultimately aids in undermining their own ambitions in the war (this time, the IJA enters the continent with a different narrative and moral orientation than OTL, but I’m not sure I can convince you the effects will be drastically too different…but I digress).
Boom! World War Two ends similar in most ways to OTL (more on that in future posts), with the Society of Nations (led mainly by the United States), occupying Okinawa and Fusan, as well as Magin. . Both the Ming and Japan are allowed to keep their core territories, however, and their monarchies allowed to continue to secure peace. For the Ming, this means they retain China proper. The Civil War, which predated the world war, does not conclude, however, as the republicans and communists are unable to form a government with the capacity to claim total victory in the new Ming heartland, China.
The Son establishes a DMZ on the banks of the Yangtze to separate Ming China and the loosely confederated states of Magin, which form around the nationalists, who proclaim a new Republic of China. But … you guessed it. As soon as peace is officially announced, factional alliances of the anti-Ming coalition break down, and now it is the Ming’s turn to start fueling insurgents that might benefit the Ming cause of post-empire hegemony in Magin, even if it is no longer able to full on pursue reunification or reclaim those territories in the presence of the SoN. The decades that follow are thus analogous to the OTL Vietnam War, and American and SoN troops eventually get involved, never directly confronting Ming forces from China, but fighting Maginese insurgents sympathetic to the Ming cause (i.e. OTL Viet Cong). Meanwhile, the nationalists’ uneasy alliance with the three remaining autonomous feudatories (dating back all the way to the early Qing-Ming wars) is strained when the nationalists ramp up on centralization, pushing the feudatories to backchannel dialogue with the Ming.
By the time of the Det or Serican New Year of 1968, a major offensive towards a new hegemonic order is launched, one that will swing power back into balance, eventually leading to the SoN and United States pulling out of Magin (but remaining in Okinawa, Fusan, and ironically, Taiwan, where the Ming first found refuge). Learning to be politically pragmatic just as the past Ming were in their most humbled moments in history, the new Ming China does not pursue total reunification, but rather, a commonwealth of Ming-aligned dominions, supporting convenient local factions and preventing large states from ever coalescing in the south…less these small underdogs learn from the Ming playbook.
And after these periods of tumult interspersed with textual gaps of peace (and presumedly prosperity, rapid development and alter-modernization with less Westernization), is how we get the ethnolinguistically more diverse Serica in contemporary times in Altera.
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