Pax's Alternate History Snippet repository.

Poor bastards.They had good theory/Built coalition to beat anybody who could unite Europe/ but fucked it by keeping to old targets instead of those who could unite Europe now.
And,after 1871,it was Germany,not France.

P.S Fearing cossacks invading India was stupid,too.

 

Fear isn't always rational. and yes by 1871 the writing was on the wall, but in 1871 Britain was neither particularly interested in the contintental affairs (versus its colonial affairs) and Bismarck presented (in contrast to Wilhelms erratic 'weltpolitik') the opinion that he supported and would hold the consensus together the reason France continued to be perceived as the peer rival hostil power was because of the French decision to try and mess with British interests in Egypt and Africa more broadly, while also after 1871 cozying up with the Russians who again the Great Game. Now we know with hindsight Cossacks in India is a silly fear, but back then Britain didn't really want a repeat of the Crimean war (even though they won, and yes theBritish assumed they would win, but they didn't want to fight in the first place. It was not a case of winning so much a case of being put in a pyrrhic victory scenario of a cost (and this is in relation to India, which Britain would have fought very hard to keep as in like the Royal navy would have ended up sailing into the neva or bombarding petrograd (because those are things the Royal navy talked about doing in summer campaign plans)) but again the question remained does France come to Russia's aid against britain where as Bismarckian Germany was neutral if not potentially an ally in the 1880s in those war plans.

Ultimately speaking those never came to pass because France didn't have the resources to push England into a war over Egypt or Africa, but French belligerence and nationalism in the late 19th century was very much annoying both England and the US (again mostly in Africa but 19th century US not happy about that whole Mexico thing during the civil war) and the French got upset when the US comes to visit its oldest continuous ally (Morocco) over a legitimate US concern for its citizen's well being because the French assume the US is going to want a naval base (and presently France is angling up to muscle spain out and colonize morocco)

With hindsight yes we know that the alliance system all but assures that France and Russia fight Germany Austria at some point. The ANglo Russian agreements of the entente are only considered in 1908 and the ANglo-Japanese Alliance (well alliance trumps entente, regardless of what the French during this period seem to think) and even then it takes the French a lot of mediating within the entente to keep Russian chicanery from pivoting the whole thing on its head, and if there had been a change in government in Germany and the army had gotten into power pushed an army budget that cut the navy back in exchange for British neutrality or alliance even the British of 1911 would have actually ratified that kind of naval agreement and that would have scuttled the entente's original naval basis of north atlantic and western Mediterranean security framework. (Again, thats not what happened, the naval race peters out, but there isn't a subsequent reapproachment that occurs, so that when 1914 rolls around it still takes Ed Gray threatening to crash the British government (he threatens to resign) to force the cabinet into war on the continent, a war that the British army is not ready for in 1914, but then really no one else in the continent is either, because of the scale of what ww1 becomes in the first two months of the war)

People question where US isolationism comes from, it comes from the British and their own myth of splendid isolationism and of making bilateral agreements on the basis of make trade not war and that its a navy and a trade fleet that is important over a large standing army, but again Britain doesn't have any land neighbors and America has Canada and Mexico. Also this goes to England's response in this period of the late 19th century where the English response to Europe finally industiralizing, and the declining trade balance of competition with for example Germany in heavy industries (chemicals and what not) is not belligerence, its isolationism, the British turn towards turn back towards trading restrictions, tarriffs and policies that are not free trade but thats all we see really as British policy because the British want an internal market that is status quo

 

Pax how much does Allen pay his soldiers? And is it in silver dollars? Or in dollar paper? Or just Yuan? Cause maintaining an army is not cheap. Does he give pensions? And do the families of the dead soldiers receive them?

 

At present or at least in 1916 it'd probably be in the chinese silver dollars issued by the Customs and Import office these were very common in North China because they were issued by the British with guarantees on standard and were prefered to copper cash (since heavily devauled, taxes were to be paid in silver value) or provincial currencies, I don't think I ever mentioned it explicitly. Xian doesn't start issuing its own paper currency until 1920, there is probably some degree of scrip issuing going on because that was common in this period where the value of a paycheck could be redeemed in corporate stores for goods

EDIT: There are probably some troops who are probably being paid in US dollars, at least in 1913 as there is a reference in my white wolf notes (I don't see it mentioned here in a thread on a flip through) of troops being paid in greenbacks, and the new year bonuses going out in Mexican silver dollars (which I know that scene isn't in thread) but thats also a very common currency.

Pensions are not formally a thing yet. Those won't be put into place until 1920 with the formalizing of the Xian constitution which will have a pension specifically mentioning the army, because that is a major issue of government.

The family of a KIA receive a year's salary upfront during this period. That ranges anywhere from probably two hundred dollars for a buck private (A quick glance through Jowett, suggest this would two and a half times what 1917 pay in the Beiyang army would be) to versus if Colonel Shang was killed in action his widow would receive over four thousand dollars. They also can expect assistance beyond that from the benevolence society, meaning assistance with housing and employment within cadre institutions. [This is based off of a mix of the Japan, the USA, technically also Britain, and the British East India company as well in the 19th century]

Part of this income is that China [I don't have my notes on period GDP per capita but China is roughly half of Mexico's during this period, and Mexico shouldn't be very far behind Japan right now] isn't being hit by the wage increases effecting Europe (wartime manpower shortages), and of course related to that is that Xian provides housing and three square meals along with in the case of the army regular medical care the latter of which is not readily available to corporate employees in for example mill work because they're army doctors (Medical personnel). That's still a lot of money to spend on a single expenditure, which is going to mean in the future Xian start needing to actually implement an income tax once the cadre moves towards governing, and collecting taxes once its on that level of procurement. That expense is also why the Cadre was against going to three divisions earlier than this, but is moving towards that.

Xian will eventually go to paper currency, moving away from silver coinage in direct circulation but in the immediate time frame they're probably using accepted currencies based on local conditions which means they're probably paying out in some kind of silver dollar.

I am almost certain (again I don't have my notes handy) that the Cadre's current force costs them more than what Shaanxi or Shansi's Dujun spend on their troops certainly accounting for the value of domesticially built weapons at real value. The trade off is Yan Xishan does have more troops to his name in 1917, Zhu Zhibao certainly had more troops on paper but his budget is complicated and I don't have those numbers in front of me.

EDIT: note I use the word Dollar here generically if they're being paid in the exchange dollar or the mexican silver dollar its value its not a parity equivalent to the USD of the period

 

How much did Yan Xishan spent for his army? I can't seem to find it.

 

According to Van de ven in 1916 Yan Xishan's (as dujun of Shanxi province) total military expenditure was 300k yuan (which seems really odd) given two years earlier his budget was 3.2 million yuan and I don't honestly think its a case of Van de ven putting the decimal point in the wrong place, because the provincial military budget in 1912 is estimated at half a million.yuan.

So I don't know, and I'm going to need to double check some other sources and try and fine either 1917 estimate or 1922 to check what they are

EDIT: for comparison Shaanxi's budget was in 1916 3.6 million yuan, which makes sense to me. I don't know why Yan budget is that small

 

How did you find the information on the internet? Did you use the Google scholar cause I would be very interested. When I try to search for the information it's either a book to buy or going the a website to view it for a cost.

 

I have a JSTOR account (https://www.jstor.org/) I've used them as a my default research tool since I was in undergrad. If your school doesn't count (for regional reasons, I wouldn't assume they do that, but it does strike me as a possibility), you can make a free account I think its like a hundred articles a month

 

In 1878 we almost had WW1 over Russian war with Turkey.England defended turks,Germans were their allies - and,as result,both France and A-H would fight for Russia.
British was planning to provoke another polish uprising,too.And hungarian if they could.
Good for us,that it not happened.

And british supported free market only as long as it suited them - when germans started outproducing them,they changed their minds.
Another proof,why supporting Prussia in conqering germany was stupid idea.
But - british had many stupid ideas,fortunatelly for them others suffered from results of it.

 

Trying to get to med school here.

 

You wrote clique in this chapter, is the clique here the Cadre or is it the warlord clique they are under? And how will this affect the people's perspective. Keep in mind this looks a lot like the East India Company Reborn with American flavour. Will the normal Chinese people be loyal? Will America bring Freedom to China because there is oil there? And how will this affect the company.

 

1.Germans in USA - there were so many german settlers there,then i once read about proposition of making german,not english,official USA language.Dunno if it is true or not,but could you imagine how it would change world?

2.When british made soldiers from normal hindu,it was not always good idea.I read novel about WW1 when they sit in trench doing notching for few days,and later charged without orders without firing their rifles,take german trench/mostly dying and process/ and when asked why they did so,answered that after being schoot for few days they decide to fight,but spears they get were too short to be efficient.
They got rifles,of course.
Again,dunno if true or not.

3.9 battaliaons in dyvision,but still brigades? would you replaced regiments with brigades?

 

Should be cadre, though technically they could be considered synonyms, but it should be Cadre in that part.

As for the oil Standard Oil (and then Standard Oil of New Jersey) was very active in China up into, and even after Uncle Sam made them subdivide to the point that culturally the little red standard oil can Standard Oil used for everything from Kerosene to petrol are still the associated 'oil' item in popular culture. So no Freedomizing (though before the communists won the civil war) part of the Pacific basin equivalent of the Marshal plan in OTL was an oil development component [but then the communists won the civil war, the US demobilized the army, and the state department started playing games with Truman because he wasn't prepared to be president] but the oil thing here has been set up in the woodwork for a while its just now only coming online

Yes, the East India Company is entirely intentional, like when we get to Britain's perspective in the twenties, specifically MacKinder but also other parts of the FSO they pointedly try and go the long way around to make Prussia comparisons just to avoid admitting how much the Cadre looks like the east india company well:

Spoiler: Sometime in the following decade

The gathering of men with their cigars, and their brandies was comprised of men of Oxford and Cambridge, and they hobbed and they knobbed around as if these were still the grounds of Eton. "Here, here," There was a toast of agreement to the speakers call, and the foreign service's secretary stepped up, thanking his introduction and beginning his speech.

"Yes, yes" He started to sway, "we often talk about Asia in European terms. Xian is Prussia, after all the Qing were the answer of the occidental Holy Roman Empire. Looking back they weren't particularly chinese, and they weren't an empire given how autonomous the provinces got," There was a tittering, and polite applause. "Xian's madness isn't that their state is appended to the Army. Surely we think of that way, that they're an army in North China with a state around, its that their Junkers would very much like us to think that they're American businessmen still."

It had been night with flowing drinks, spirits aplenty, and the sort of speech talking about things that might have been done behind more securely barred doors to a crowd, especially with England in a depression since _.

"MacKinder tells me, and I think he's right, that the Junkers don't have a Kaiser. That their Bismarck doesn't have Kaiser Wilhelm talking about Weltpolitik."

The undersecretary must have been more drunk than he realized. There was a slight slurring to the statement, but it was clear the foreign service man hadn't seen him come in. The King's honors gathering was an absurdly packed event and it seemed entirely plausible that their ridiculous comparison to Bismarck meant they might well have thought him to be some much older man with gray or shock white hair.

Either way the undersecretary was clearly drunk. Allen turned to glance at one of the Japanese naval attaches coming to visit the Royal Navy's aircraft carrier thing...

 

Brigades are being retained as specific specialist units and then they'll go to combined armed later, I think I mentioned this, and basically this a historical holdover in some militaries, and the US largely discontinued the use of the Regiment after ww2 in favor of smaller brigades

 

What are the Chinese opinions of him? You said northern China looked to him like Charles Gordon, so a liberator? Or one of those Chinese cultivators of Qi in those crappy(no offense) Chinese novels.

 

Also what are his soldiers salaries?
And what is the dividends received by the shareholders?
Also did the Qing gave him the power to legally create a judiciary as well as a civi service? I can't just imagine it.
Will the Chinese people under him respect his rule or his government?
(My ramblings) I'm from a country where the railways are state owned and maintained(thanks to socialism and profits for government) but we pay less taxes and also things like private military contractors and gun ownership are not quite known. Gun ownership is strict. No one wants to join private military cause there is no culture of it. And the only private military type I know are gangs.

(Apologies I got so many questions )

 

Smart thing to do.I read,that they basically made regiments as flexible units,dependent on situation one particular battalion vould get to this or other brigade,and brigade could have from one to 5 -6 battalions.And,in next fight,it could change.

 

Not so much liberator, Gordon's period reflective attitude seems to be more force against chaos, which better describes Allen than liberator would. A lot of Gordon's positive propganda was that he represented good governance, tradition, learned excellence, values that could be construed in the light as being civilized (and again this is because especially by the end the Taiping were not nice people and were in their own civil war within a civil war). Allens fundamental basis of good relations with the general public (people not employed or by proxy) is that he represents law and order, he's against banditry. he's militarily successful (and thats important) the ability to get things done the association with beijing and nominally working in the system (if this were set earlier Allen or some of hte older senior members of the cadre who would have been in the late qing eligible for Mandrin status for the kind of recognition of public works and good as perceived by the dynasty this was a status that the late Qing conveyed on foreign officials involved in diplomacy, education it was their equivalent of sorts to a British knighthood to put it in a contemporary comparison)

[ALso, lol cultivation novel, thats funny that you say that I actually did a mostly spitballed idea of what if Autumn of Empires timeline was a cultivation novel instead of a mostly grounded Alternate History that will probably one day see the light of day in my scraps]

I will get to your PMs probably tomorrow, maybe the day after, the holidays are exhausting for me and don't have a lot of my notes. Which when we move into the next chronological period, in the twenties I'm probably going to have to start including excerpts from primary sources because the 1920s and after involves a bunch of people holding a lot of zany opinions there is this 'madness' after the first world war in terms of public opinions, that effects leadership in various countries to avoid future wars, which ulimately proves detrimental to that end goal, there are ... well everyone's reaction to the soviet union springing up, there are the soviets internal antics (and the Russian civil war in general), but it would behoove me to quote a bunch of people's actual speechs, their diary entries of the period to encapsulate that this was an odd duck time period

Privates probably make between 15-18 dollars a month (yearly salary comes about to 200 dollars), again assuming Jowett's data is correct, thats about two and half times what a beiyang soldier make during this period. [and that runs into the issue of conversion rates, and ot having my notes (Northern Federal troops made about 80 Yuan a year, and this was during a period where the Beiyang government was coherent enough that salaries were regular, which couldn't be said for down south)]

Technically speaking the way the qing judiciary worked is that your convening authority (whether this was a village headman, or an actual magistrate) were supposed to refer cases back to the capital, particularly for capital offenses, but this resulted in the 'retrial system' where appeals automatically were supposed to go to Beijing in practice they didn't normally do this it ussually went to the next rung up the ladder. So to answer your question regarding a judiciary, no the Qing didn't issue Allen a liscence to convene courts, what they expected was that he'd go grab the nearest police officer or even a magistrate and make it their problem (Historically, this was not a great solution to the Qing's issue of the day, because in practice this meant that the complaining authority i.e. the industrial, religious, other connected entity usually had a disproportionate amount of sway on proceedings). So officially it would have been the local magistrate is presiding over proceedings but with effectively a predetermined outcome [and I need to double check the late qing rate of magistrates to the populace at large because it is very large disparity, one magistrate per capita type disparity IIRC]

Shansi, Shensi, and the western provinces will, and prior to the second world war they're the ones Allen is concerned with and thus there is an effort to be publically receptive to those provincial need. In the long term, long term national unification of china the very far (post ww2) future of this timeline ultimately ties into the succession of leadership in the following generation, and the one after that. This goes to successes on and off the battlefield but also the limitting of territorial ambitions. In this period, in North china especially there is very heavy military culture (its not as prevalent in south eastern china during this period barring Yuunan, who have Indochina and the French right next door) and a lot of territorial militia traditions during this period.

There were two principle routes to success in the qing dynasty both of which could be construed as roughly equal you take the civil service exam (the nominally more prestigious for being traditionally confucian) becoming junfa, or you take the military degree exam and rise through the ranks (and this is what Yuan Shikai did, he failed the civil service exam several times (not unusual) and went into the army apprenticing for an uncle who had adopted him as his heir (IIRC) and worked his way up through the regional army under Li Hongzhang but I digress ). Its important to point out that the Beiyang Army was not originally a 'federal' or national level military unit, it was originally just a unit built on modern lines for Zhili province that then after demonstrating its modernity the Qing court decided to approve expansion (but even then its expansion was a national guard, the provinces responsible for the units) with funding coming from the provinces and the central government. Its not the same as for example, the State artillery unit of the boers, or the modern British Army. Shandong province for example had a historical 'martial character' in Chinese provincial such that was where you went if you wanted to recruit soldiers for the army

 

Thanks for the info. And apologies for my too many questions, it's not necessary to answer them right away so take your time.
Also the Cultivation part, in the Wikipedia page the Chinese people thought Gordon could harness Qi because he seemed invincible and impervious to bullets. Which I kid you not seems highly unlikely but then again it was Imperial China so that's why I mentioned that part.

 

I forgot about that story actually, I actually had to go double check.

And now that I think about it, originally this timeline was not cultivator (which in this case I mean Xianxia in genre) but had more fantasy / low magic / wuxia elements it was a more pulp fiction esque timeline, most of that has in this thread largely been dropped.

To go back to the army thing, to reiterate, China during this period had a lot of private militias this ranged from the yamen having private security to various villages (or individual villages) furnishing their own militias, to local gentry, and literati establishing provincial units, which varied widely in quality, training , discipline, and this is really one of things that made townsend ward and Gordon stand out is that emphasis on drill and unit discipline (which of course is also a trait shared with the Hui units that were brought in from out west)

 

Thanks for the info. I just can't imagine that the emperor would tolerate that. I mean soldiers not under the control of the central government means high chance of civil war. I mean did the government allowed that? Also militia under the command of the gentries isn't this a recipe for disaster? Its like anyone can raise an army. Also did the forward-thinking literati hire foreign instructors to train there troops or they could not?

Also just a global question: was the spread of military science and industry not as curtailed as it is now in the past? I mean I don't usually see countries asking Vickers-Armstrong for a new battleship or asking for new artilleries from Krupp. And I don't usually see Private owned Arsenals springing out here and there. And I don't usually see British or German officers getting hired by foreign powers. And I don't see any soldiers turned mercenaries fighting for foreign powers.

 

Frankly the Emperors basically after Qianlong (and frankly even before him) simply didn't have the centralized control to enforce that, there was significant corruption within both the banner armies particularly those in the south, where it was functionally impossible to maintain large standing cavalry forces in the napoleonic era. So as opposed to militantly rejecting this, the empreror would coopt these local militias with personal approval and sanction (ussually by siccing them on rebels the next province over) because the Qing were dealing with a significant number of small local rebellions. (Between 1905 and 1911, there are more than a hundred rebellions in different parts of china, and during the 1860s there are a significant number of other rebellions beyond just the really big one that is the Taipings).

So basically yes, the government allowed it, in no small part due to both lack of central power projection but also, we're used to strong central governments but that is a development from ww1 that is built off of a modern (transoceanic) communication capability where, you can telegram (or by 1914) make trans oceanic phone calls to someone thousands of miles away with instructions. And as to technology yes, the technological gulf of complexity is compounded by material science, other chemistry factors, and toolmaking. Also, in the 19th century, yes german offiicers, and British soldiers in foreign service were fairly common, it was fairly common european trend its nationalism of the latter century that really kills that off than anything, but even after ww1 its still happening German mercenaries were in China in 1920s the weimar did not want Vorbek (among a couple of other high ranking generals) to go to China and be soldiers of fortune because it was perceived as embarrasing to the weimar democracy (it didn't stop other germans going, and some of those men had the official of Weimar but then Germany in that period is in a messy place)

Krupp prior to ww1 (and then after the war through subsidaries) was a major arms dealer and subcontractors they had show rooms, sales agents and catalogs and if you had money. Vickers armstrong was the same way [Most of Japan's fleet was British built, predominantly by vickers, and yeah there was some bribery involved in that, but Japan didn't have the yard space prior to ww1 to build the IJN or the money the 88 plan was well beyond what Japanese finances could support and they knew this]. DWM, there is a major french distributor that did business everything from machine guns and artillery to bicycles and typewriters before the war that shipped into africa and did business in China as well. In this period, as the cliche nobel prize goes this was an era where your major industrial firms very sold modern technology whenever there was a profit to be made and while there were attempts in 19th century to restrain this it is not until ww1 that really serious attempt to restrict the flow of technology outward for 'national security'

the literati brought predominantly prussian advisors other germans, British or french, Americans, [The Japanese do the same thing during meiji and indeed still have British advisors in the navy in the early years of Taisho, but thats more a British-Japanese alliance facet] the qing brought in russians from time to time (the qing russian relationship is weird, over its entire history its weird). This is one of those things that in 19th century especially this was just the world as it was, and this continued to a diminished extent after the war (plenty of mercenaries were active in central and eastern europe in the immediate aftermath of the first ww1, there were wars of independence, there was the civil war in russia) there were the bananna wars the US was caught up in in Latin America (that will be touched on in this timeline), the French and belgians made use of mercenaries in africa in addition to official state troops. It is a very messy time after ww1, but the government changes, and the economic consequences mark a fundamental shift in how governments worked and effectiveness before the war versus after.

 

Krupp in China - i read,that they delivered ammo for chineese 2 battleships in war with Japan/1894/
Both ships were germans,survived battle thanks to good armour,but failed to sink anything becouse Krupp schells were mostly duds.

Mercaneries in Europe - i read memories of fin mercanery who fought for whites and later poles against soviets.
He meet gerans here,according to him,every time soviets mede german or finn mercs they run almost without fight.
He hear 2 germans serving as HMG crew - one said to another,that they arleady killed 200 soviets,and when they kill another 100 they would come back to Germany.
They did it as kind of serving cyvilization/and for money/ but decided to retire at some point.

 

THe problem with Krupps naval shells is that (and this is wht I've been told) is that filler they used basically is asphalt, so if improperly stored rather than burning then going boom it solidifies into a block of inert material (which is perfectly fine for non naval use because the shells aren't being exposed to sea water, and the changes in temperature) I'll have to double check that, and of course this is also a period where quality control on shells is b ad, so your high explosive shells in naval guns you might have litterally a couple hundred rounds out of a thousand fail to detonate for any number of reasons

your filler might not detonate, nevermind the fuse or cap, or any of the other moving parts in a naval shell being exposed to the conditions on a ship This is the reason the USN navy develops during this period IMR as a powder is to increase reliability in naval gunfire, where as Germany did not during this period have a large naval tradition, Krupp was very probably going 'we've built artillery for years how hard can this be?' and as it happens conditions at sea (never mind shipping the guns and the shells all the way to the pacific) are very different than build a batch of shells for the army or even coastal artillery

 

Those battleships had 280mm main battery - the same like heavy coastal batteries.Which probably woud fail,too - if chineese in Porth Arhur do not surrender after short fight.

 

Yes, this is true, however even by september of 1915 the British were still suffering a failure shell rate (that is duds) of between 20 and 25 percent of all shells fired

and that fact, and comparable failures by French and German crews in the war is why I I'm loath to either overly criticize Krupp's failure as unique, yes shells failed but Vickers-Armstrong was known to produce duds, and its also why I tend to take claims that corruption within the chinese government / chinese artillery bureau was to blame at least not exclusively. I don't have data on the Japanese side of things in 1895, but I wouldn't be surprised if Japanese shell fire (given their problems ten years later in the Russo-Japanese war) didn't suffer similar rates, but the Chinese problem with their 28s was that this was the primary arm of any Beiyang (Navy, not army) action and thus their failure creates this notable embarrassing issue

 

That,and fact that other China Navy ships were old and need relatively few hits to get down.Their torpedo boats were slower then Japaneese cruisers!
When those two battleships soaked everything what Japan throw at them as if it was nothing.

 

This is what I would argue is more important than shell failure rate, that and doctrine. The Japanese had by this point had already adopted their version of Mahan and knew they they were going into a close range knife fight. The Beiyang fleet did not, they did not have that doctrine the Japanese were fully prepared to take serious losses by closing but were aiming for a knock out fight (this is descisive battle theory)

This goes to Japan is an island nation with the Navy as the primary military service the Royal Navy is providing advice, there are adivsors there are observerers aboard Japanese ships (just as there will be in the Russo Japanese war) and these are ships either constructed at British yards or with British engineers assisting while it is not perfect it allows a much more effective integration of modern doctrine as well as what the Japanese fleet of the day had in terms of real resources.