I've always been of the opinion that a Tang victory at Talas changes little unless the Tang avoid the worst of the An Lushan rebellion. It was the An Lushan rebellion, which shattered Chinese unity and nearly overthrew the Tang, that weakened China to the point that it was no longer capable of...
The Sinicized Xianbei had great power, but they didn't monopolize it during the Tang (the only relevant dynasty because none of the other dynasties you mention had a long period of strength even comparable to the Tang). If you look at the early leadership of the Tang, there are officials with...
Upon closer inspection, I interpreted your post incorrectly. But I think my point still stands. The Tang were already essentially Chinese even before they became rulers of China. On the other hand, the Mongols will need to start assimilating as soon as they start conquering. We already saw...
I'm skeptical that a regional military commander like Mao Wenlong could take power when sandwiched between the Shun and the Qing, but I'll give this timeline a few more posts first. The same applies to how such a state develops in Manchuria, and how it would interact with what's left of China...
I would disagree about the Tang and Yuan. The Tang ruling house was almost certainly of foreign origin at one point, but by the time the Tang was founded, the House of Li had mostly adopted Chinese customs, the Chinese language and claimed Chinese descent. It was a source of resentment for the...
By 1279, Japan had spent five years building up its defenses for a possible Mongol invasion. If the Song Dynasty hopes to invade Japan in an effort to escape the Mongols, they run the very high risk of being defeated. Historically, in 1281, the Japanese defeated a Mongol invasion that was much...
Vixagoras stated earlier "This does mean however that the romanized orthography of Chinese names in my timeline is going to look... weird"
If that's not a statement that OP intends to use reconstructions of Old/Middle Chinese for Chinese names in lieu of pinyin, then what is it saying, exactly...
My post might have been misinterpreted. I was writing in response to the idea of using Baxter-Sagart for romanization instead of pinyin. I did not mean to say that historical reconstruction of Chinese languages was unnecessary. Language is of course instrumental to human existence, and the study...
Here's the Baxter-Sagart reconstruction, which I remember using at one point. I have no idea if their approach is any better than other approach, so I don't vouch for their accuracy or method: link
I'm not sure why you would need the original pronunciations. Many more people understand Pinyin...
Actually, for about a month in 1129, two military officers, Miao Fu (苗傅) and Liu Zhengyan (劉正彥) did in fact depose the Song Emperor Gaozong, who temporarily abdicated. None of the Song Dynasty generals were particularly supportive of the coup, probably because the coup attempt came at the worst...
The Mandate of Heaven concept is so old, dating back to around 1000 BCE, that the butterfly effect would remove the Mongols and Huns from history (and the only time the Huns invaded China was in the movie Mulan, as the connection between the European Huns and the Chinese nomadic invaders is...
I'm not sure that the Hideyoshi's issues were just the ships. It wasn't just that the Japanese ships were smaller and less sturdy (which they were), it's also that Korea had more powerful and longer-ranged cannons as well. During the Imjin War, the dominant Japanese tactic was focused on...
I believe those are the circuits (dao 道) established during the Zhenguan era which were either purely civil administrations or only geographical designations. The term military governors (jiedushi 節度使) refers to the governors who combined civil and military functions within those circuits...
At the time of the An Lushan rebellion, the ten jiedushi districts and their commanders were:
Longyou and Hexi: Geshu Han
Pinglu, Fanyang, and Hedong: An Lushan
Shuofang (Beiting? Anxi?): An Sishun
Jiannan: Yang Guozhong (through a local deputy)
Lingnan: technically not headed by a...