Success is always helpful in ensuring the survival of an institution. A Chinese monarchy (not necessarily Qing I suppose) that can fulfill the expectations of its core literati constituency in the face of Western pressure - maintaining China's prestige, territorial integrity, traditional values...
For the Qing and even the reformist faction of Li Hongzhang, Korea was of paramount strategic importance as a buffer state to the core Manchu & Chinese territories, and it would have absolutely intervened in the event of a Japanese invasion, even if it meant sacrificing more peripheral interests...
Thanks for your kind words.
I think for an authoritative illegitimate declaration (which don't get me wrong, a first step rather than the be-all and end-all of controlling France), it would probably have been enough for Isabeau of Bavaria to make said declaration before a bishop etc.
I'm not...
IMHO the problem with a post-Henry V 'divided France' scenario is that the Plantagenet/Burgundy position was simply not as powerful as the Armagnac one, so there was no real reason for A to accept a permanent division. As you said, P/B didn't have the resources to project power south of Loire...
Would you consider Malthusianism a sort of proto-environmentalism? While it's primarily an economic theory (too much population growth eventually consumes economic surplus), it does implicitly acknowledge that environmental resources (esp. agriculturally-productive land) are not infinite, and...
Joint European gunboat diplomacy vs CSA would have been a real danger, given the South's history of going to Europe for development loans, and then not honoring those debts (using Article 1, Section 10 of the Constitution to strike down said debt as unconstitutional).
I'd imagine at some point...
For PODs involving a post-unification collapse...
Technically Spain wasn't under unified administration until the Borbon Nueva Planta decrees 1707-16, with Castile, Aragon, Catalonia, Portugal etc all having separate administrations under the Habsburgs.
So technically any of them could have...
It depends where and when your anti-Qing rebellion occurs. As always, nobody sponsors rebellion just for 'anti-Qing' purposes; trade, colonial and legitimacy issues are of course involved. 'Anti-Qing' rebellion can also be a catch-all term for any sort of non-state-sanctioned behavior...
An (IMHO irrational) European guarantee of Mexico's integrity would go a long, long way in preserving the northern frontier (at least much less clamor in US to annex them), but it still wouldn't solve the problem of Mexico's internal political chaos. Without any consistent direction from the...
Well just because they don’t have anywhere to imperialize doesn’t mean they can’t have imperialist attitudes. ITL Japan could pursue a policy of extreme opportunism like OTL Italy, picking off easy scraps of territory here and there simply for the prestige, regardless of political-economic...
You might consider reading Philip Lawson's "Quebec and Britain in the Age of the American Revolution", which is a general overview of the evolution of post-7YW colonial British policy (which was of course spurred by the inclusion of a very non-British Quebec) and the impact that evolution had on...
Under the pressure of war, the Chinese states will even more resemble the fiscal-military states of early modern Europe: highly centralized entities (tho doubtless a lot of exemptions for the aristocratic ruling class), internal reform in the direction of greater state efficiency in...
It's possible that a defeat in the Sino-Japanese War would make Japan a victim of (primarily Russian) imperialism, though Britain is unlikely to allow large-scale annexations. Loss of confidence in Westernization after the defeat could also trigger chaos within the Japanese ruling elite, making...
Then the UK declares war on Russia and begins Crimean War 2 (as in global naval operations vs Russia).
As for the invasion of Afghanistan itself, the Russian military command during the 1880s planned a strike into Herat and then onto India, but as with most invasions of Afghanistan that would...
One of the more immediate actions the French National Assembly did was vote the taxes they refused to vote for when Louis 16 was still in power. Then there was was the nationalization/sale of church land and in 1793, the consolidation of all previous royal debt into a single bond payable in...