EnclavedMicrostate在2022-03-28~2022-04-03的言论

2022-04-03 作者: EnclavedMicrostate 原文 #Reddit 的其它文章

276: Was Hong Xiuquan, leader of the Taiping rebellion a bad father?, submitted on 2022-03-28 07:21:12+08:00.

—– 276.1 —–2022-03-30 03:44:30+08:00:

Hong Xiuquan’s issue is an interesting, er, issue, as it’s not something discussed much in the historiography. But to answer this question we can’t just talk about Hong Xiuquan’s relationships with his children in a vacuum. We must first establish what the Taiping ideal of fatherhood was.

What made a good Taiping father?

While references to domestic life are, unfortunately, few and far between in the surviving published Taiping material, they are not so absent that we cannot at least in some sense get an idea of what role parents, and specifically fathers, were supposed to play in the Taiping worldview.

Filial piety was of course doubly important to the Taiping, being both a critical dimension of Chinese belief systems as well as enshrined as the fifth of the Ten Commandments. Filial piety, framed through both ‘native’ Chinese and Christian lenses, was a recurring motif in Taiping texts, and every once in a while there would be some discussion of what parents, for their part, were supposed to do in return. The Taiping Songs on World Salvation, composed by the East King Yang Xiuqing and published in 1853, is the one that does so most substantially, with a portion of the second ode devoted to the matter. Here, Yang uses parents as an analogy for God, whom the Taiping consistently termed the Heavenly Father. As translated by Walter Medhurst, the section reads:

Parents in the treatment of their children,
Are they ever free from anxiety?
They suckle them, nourish them with meat and drink;
In everything their minds are attentive.
By the time the children are somewhat older,
They are apprehensive of their committing faults;
Hence they teach them propriety and righteousness,
And all the day long they watch them.
There are no lengths to which they do not go,
Their love for their children is steadfast;
Such an inexhaustible amount of kindness,
When can it ever be repaid?

On the matter of fatherhood more specifically, though, we can turn to the Youxueshi, or Ode for Youth, and its sections on family:

On the Households’ Way

The family members related by bone and flesh
Should in joy and harmony unite.
When the feeling of concord unites the whole,
Blessings will descend upon them from Heaven.

On the Fathers’ Way

When the ridgepole is straight, nothing will be irregular below;
When the father is strict, the Way will be formed.
Let him not provoke his children to wrath,
And the whole dwelling will be filled with harmony.

It should be quite obvious now that the most important role of the father in the Taiping worldview was moral instruction. Taiping fathers were expected to correct misbehaviour and to instruct their children in proper behaviour, but not in such a way that they caused resentment. So, did Hong Xiuquan do that?

Was Hong Xiuquan a good Taiping father?

While we don’t know a huge amount about Hong Xiuquan’s relationships with his children, we do know a decent amount about that with his heir apparent, Hong Tianguifu. Born Hong Tiangui in 1849, he briefly became Heavenly King upon his father’s death in 1864, before being executed by the Qing after he was captured during an attempt to escape to Guangdong. Before his execution, however, he was required to write a confession, which, although brief, does give us a rare glimpse into the inner workings of the Taiping palace and of Hong Xiuquan’s family life. Excerpting the relevant section, translated for publication in the North China Herald in 1865 (with some amendments):

At the age of nine I had four wives given to me, and I was forbidden access to my mother or sisters. The old Heavenly King composed ‘The Ten Poems on Salvation’ for me to read. They are all n the reasons for keeping men aloof from women and forbidding intercourse between them. Some of the poems I still remember. I had a yearning for my mother and sisters after I reached my ninth year, and used to take advantage of when the old Heavenly King had business at court to steal a visit with them. The old Heavenly King told me to study religious books and would not allow me to study ancient books [i.e. the classics], which he said were all demonic. I managed, however, to read secretly thirty or more volumes, and still retain some recollection of their subjects and contents. I had never been outside the city gates.

While we do have surviving copies of Ten Poems on Salvation, their contents are not much more elaborate than what Hong Tianguifu describes above, and are frankly rather tedious. What is pretty clear from all this is that for his part, Hong Xiuquan did fulfil what the Taiping saw as the father’s key responsibility: the moral instruction of the child. Practicing as he preached, he did indeed instruct his son in the reading of religious texts and in his particular vision of morals and ethics. However, he arguably failed to ‘not provoke his children to wrath’, given the very overt acts of rebellion that Tianguifu describes himself as having undertaken. Whether he was a good father or not to Tianguifu is thus perhaps a matter of perspective: in Xiuquan’s own mind he was doing his duties as he had prescribed, but from Tianguifu’s standpoint, Hong was overbearing at best and draconian at worst, failing in terms of the specifics of how that instruction was supposed to manifest.

Unfortunately, we know little else about Hong’s relationships with his other children, particularly his two oldest daughters Tiangui, but this little slice does suggest that, at least with regards to his designated successor, he did take his perceived fatherly responsibilities seriously. Whether this was successful in execution is another matter, although it is perhaps worth noting that Tiangui’s rebellion was as much against the beliefs (separation of the sexes and condemnation of the Confucian classics) themselves as it was their proponent.

277: Gunfire Genesis: Gargant - Weekly Discussion Thread, March 28th, 2022, submitted on 2022-03-28 23:34:13+08:00.

—– 277.1 —–2022-03-29 17:49:26+08:00:

I mean, we don’t know what those announcements will be nor how long-term they are. Presumably it’s not graduation of course, as that’d be basically one announcement to which everything else would be subordinate.

—– 277.2 —–2022-03-29 18:20:35+08:00:

Oh right, well I was there for many of the announcements of announcements too (I watch Calli pretty religiously) so I think we just ended up talking past each other a bit.

—– 277.3 —–2022-04-02 19:54:34+08:00:

I feel like I know exactly what you mean. I get Chloe’s appeal but I feel I’m not the one being appealed to, but I’m really enjoying Zeta.

—– 277.4 —–2022-04-04 11:27:35+08:00:

There’s a somewhat controversial, but in my view still pretty good mini video essay by Alfo Media on the idea of a difference between ‘white rappers’ and ‘white people who rap’, with the distinction being their level of immersion in the (sub)culture of rap. Alfo Media suggests that ‘white people who rap’ are people who, in effect, approach rap from within, typically having worked their way into the established community and understand the substance as well as the form of the genre; by contrast, ‘white rappers’ are those who appropriate the forms of rap but with a markedly different substance reflective of a relatively privileged position, while staying outside actual rap culture. Whether this division is accurate in a detached, factual sense is one thing, but as a framing I think it does a bit to explain the hate here: Calli isn’t someone who’s ‘part of’ US rap culture the way Eminem or El-P are, and for a predominantly US-based Internet, that seems like a telltale sign of someone basically appropriating an art form without engaging with its core substance.

Now, what you and I know that most people coming across this drama don’t is that, of course, she’s not immersed in US rap culture because her aim was always the Japanese scene, which she definitely has been part of for some years now at this point. So in a sense the criticism isn’t pure irrational hate; it does come from a place of not unreasonable hostility to white people simply barging into black spaces (arch-example being Vanilla Ice). But it is decidedly misplaced, based on incomplete information and simply being exposed to the definitely bad parts of her early career, and at most to her artistic output in a vacuum without appreciation of its context.

—– 277.5 —–2022-04-04 13:09:45+08:00:

I’d say there’s a difference between not allowing someone into a community, and being irked at that how said community’s art form is being appropriated. If you’re not familiar with the existence of a Japanese hip hop scene, which serves as Calli’s primary influence, then it does pretty much come across as someone taking a culturally-specific art form out of that culture for their own benefit.

—– 277.6 —–2022-04-04 21:07:36+08:00:

Calli thought it was stiff liquor, it’s actually cough syrup mixed with soda.

—– 277.7 —–2022-04-04 21:20:13+08:00:

You took the words right out of my mouth… fingers? Keyboard? Whatever.

Discussions around reception of especially Asian-themed media are complicated by differing perspectives between diaspora communities, who have an understandable tendency to a) ‘blend in’ by avoiding an excessive consumption of said media, while also b) preferring idealised and/or ‘pure’ expressions of the cultures they root themselves in; versus non-diaspora communities who will broadly be much more tolerant of imported media deriving and taking inspiration from their culture from a perspective outside it. Take Crazy Rich Asians for instance. While relatively well-liked by Asian diaspora communities, its appeal to Asians resident in Asia was, er, a bit more questionable. I can say as a Hongkonger that I had basically no investment in a film set in Singapore.

To take a different example, Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado is, in my view, a fascinating example of this kind of differing reception. There is a very understandable objection to performing the show as-is by some critics in the UK and US because yeah, it is kind of iffy to have mostly white performers portraying faux-Japanese characters. But on the flipside, The Mikado has a history of relatively positive reception in Japan, especially in the postwar years, and it even got a new Japanese translation that toured the UK in the late 2000s/early 2010s. Which is just one example of a whole complicated mess where media that is problematic to diaspora communities is seen by non-diasporas as fine, either because what diaspora communities see as misrepresentation is seen as a variation within acceptable norms (in Asia) or because people don’t know any better and miss the misrepresentation outright (in the West).

278: Tuesday Trivia: Islam! This thread has relaxed standards—we invite everyone to participate!, submitted on 2022-03-29 20:56:46+08:00.

—– 278.1 —–2022-03-29 22:19:00+08:00:

Nearly a year ago, I wrote an answer to a question on Taiping views on Judaism and Islam, which I had a good amount of fun with and so will repost here.

“There is no god but God, and Tai-ping-wang is the brother of Jesus.”

This quotation adorns the title page of John Milton Mackie’s Life of Tai-Ping-Wang, Chief of the Chinese Insurrection (1857), and for anyone familiar with English renditions of the Shahada (Muslim declaration of faith), it bears a striking resemblance, perhaps even intentionally on Mackie’s part:

I bear witness that there is no deity but God, and I bear witness that Muhammad is the messenger of God.

The origin of the quote, however, is hard to pin down as Mackie does not cite any particular text, and I don’t know anywhere near enough about Anglophone writing on Islam at this time to say whether there was any conscious attempt at allusion. But, there is little need to speculate on the motives of an American commentator who never went to China, and whose interest in the Taiping seems to have been a temporary affectation in a career otherwise focussed on German literature. If nothing else it’s a neat detail, and does get those mental gears turning as to how the Taiping related to the other major Abrahamic faiths.

Now, the question as phrased is Judaism and then Islam, but given my lead-in I suppose I’ll have to do it the other way around. The Taiping relationship with Islam is generally poorly attested. In the surviving corpus of texts by Taiping authors, Islam or Muslims appear a grand total of three times, and there is a single throwaway reference in a British report from 1859. However, few as these references are, we can mine quite a bit of information out of them.

Reverend Alexander Wylie, a British Protestant missionary and translator, visited Taiping territory as part of an informal British delegation in 1858, and reported on scenes of desolation and devastation owing to the ongoing war between the Taiping and Qing. Wylie was apparently interested to see what had become of the Catholic churches in the Yangtze valley, which French missionaries had reported the effective dissolution of back in 1853. He reported as follows in a letter published in July 1859 and probably written around January:

There was no appearance of the existence of Roman Catholicism, but I found Mohammedan mosques still standing among the ruins at Chin-keang [Zhenjiang] and Nanking [Nanjing], and one demolished at Teih-keang [?Dijiang?].

With no further elaboration, all we have to go on is that the Taiping generally, but evidently not consistently, left Muslim places of worship as is, and generally, but not consistently, avoided persecuting Muslims in their territory. But this raises some interesting questions, the most important of which is, of course: Why were the Taiping not as concerned about Islam (at least up to 1858), when they were opposed to just about every other religious tradition, and did, even if by mistake, persecute Catholics?

A likely explanation, though a necessarily speculative one thanks to the paucity of primary evidence, is that Islam was not practiced by Han Chinese. Islam was the only major religion in the Qing Empire with a very specifically ethnic tie, with the Islam-practicing Hui being considered a distinct ethnicity from the majority Han. The definition of ‘Hui’ certainly changed over time, shifting from being mainly used for Muslims in Qing Turkestan, to any Muslims in the empire, to specific groups of Muslims (some Turcophone, some Sinophone) outside of Qing Turkestan, but it was nevertheless a marker of ethnic identity emerging largely out of religious background. Conversion to and from Islam was neither common nor expected, and so the two groups would remain distinct. As such, Islam may not have been considered a ‘corruptive’ force towards Han Chinese in the same way as Buddhism or Confucianism, or indeed for a brief while Catholicism (before the Taiping came to recognise their common origin).

Later in 1859, Hong Rengan, a cousin of the Taiping monarch Hong Xiuquan, arrived in Nanjing after a stint in Hong Kong as an apprentice translator for Protestant missionaries, and wrote a reform manifesto titled the New Treatise on Aids in Administration (資政新篇 zizheng xinpian). One of its sections, ‘On the Rule of Law’, advocates at one point for a move towards regularising foreign relations on equitable lines, as part of which Hong Rengan seems to have begun writing about the customs of foreign countries in order to explain the proper etiquette for each of them, but after the first entry he largely opts to describe their admirable and/or condemnable features to serve as either positive or negative exemplars for the Taiping kingdom. As part of this, he comes to describe three majority-Muslim regions, those being the Ottoman Empire, Iran (then ruled by the Qajars), and the Eyalet of Egypt:

Turkey, in the southwestern part of which lies the ancient state of Israel, borders Russia on its northwest. As the people of this country do not believe that Jesus Christ is the Saviour, they still cling to the Mosaic Law, without change or modification. Hence, the country is not strong. [In the year 1856], it was invaded by the Russians and was rescued from catastrophe through the assistance rendered by England and France. This country, being the sacred place where the Heavenly Elder Brother was born, must eventually be converted to Christianity, for it is said in the New Testament that when the ten thousand nations of the world have been converted to the faith, Israel will be ashamed.

[two other sections]

Persia lies to the southeast of Israel. The Persians worship one of God’s creations, namely, the sun. They do not eat dogs or pigs and they believe in the demon Buddha. At present, though they are called Persians, their land is in reality under foreign domination, of which they are not ashamed. They seek only after wealth and power, never fighting for honour; hence they wander about, moving around with outers, without the slightest sense of loyalty or discipline. They resemble the Chinese of today who have no sense of shame under the domination of the Manchus. This is so because each is concerned only with his own welfare and has no means of achieving unity.

Egypt, also known as Masri, is situated to the southwest of Israel, with the Red Sea as its boundary. In this place there is no cold in the entire year, and it is extremely hot in the summers. There is a mountain called Ya-la-pe, which is the highest in the world. It was on this mountain that Noah’s Ark was anchored. It is covered with clouds during all four seasons, and its summit is rarely seen. The Egyptians have never seen rain or snow, nor have they ever heard the sound of thunder. In this land there are few springs, but there is much desert. During the time between spring and summer, clouds gather atop the mountain, and waterfalls race down in all directions. Just before the water recedes, the farmers sow their seeds in the fields; by the time the water subsides, the sprouts are growing luxuriantly. This is so because the mountain is high and reaches the clouds, and the ascending hot air freezes on the mountain peak without ever evaporating. Consequently, rain does not fall upon the wilderness, thunder does not clap on the earth, ice forms constantly on the high summit, and snow never flutters over the warm ground. At present, the people there worship Joseph and Moses as their sages, and their religion is called Islam [Huihui jiao], for our Heavenly Father, God, once displayed his power to these two men, and their virtues have remained known to this day.

As can be seen, Hong Rengan only explicitly identifies the Egyptians as Muslims, although it’s possible to backtrack a bit and say that he implies the Turks were, too, if the criterion was the importance of Joseph and Moses. Muhammad is of course absent from his description of Islam. It is interesting that the assessment of Islam is not wholly negative. On the one hand, he is critical of the Turks for following the Mosaic Law but not also the New Testament, and clearly advocates for Christian proselytisation in the region. On the other hand, at least in terms of tone, his view of the Egyptians’ reverence of Joseph and Moses seems reasonably favourable. The section on Persia seems completely off religion-wise, but could well be based on first- or second-hand encounters with Zoroastrian Parsis in Hong Kong – see this discussion which I had with /u/Xuande88.

Obviously we cannot extrapolate Hong Rengan’s writings too far: he was, after all, just one person, and moreover he was one person who had rejoined the fold relatively recently and had not been present for developments in Taiping ideology in his absence. However, Hong’s more global view of Christianity does seem to have filtered into the wider Taiping leadership, so we could surmise that there was some heightened awareness of Islam as a global religion, but without much actual understanding of the religion itself.

—– 278.2 —–2022-03-29 22:19:22+08:00:

The last reference we have to the Taiping and Islam – in a Taiping or Western source, anyway – is in fact right near the end of the last Taiping document, the confession of Lai Wenguang, a general who escaped the fall of the kingdom in 1864 and led a mixed force of Taiping veterans and Nian rebels in northern China, nearly capturing Beijing in 1866. His fortunes faded rapidly, and he was captured in January 1868, writing a brief confession before his execution in which he stated:

…in the autumn of bingyin, the sixteenth year [i.e., 1866 – the sixteenth year since the founding of the Heavenly Kingdom in 1851], I specially ordered the Liang Wang, Zhang Zongyu, the Young Wu Wang, Zhang Yuque, and the Huai Wang, Qiu Yuancai, to advance to Gansu and Shaanxi and make an alliance with the Muslims for the purpose of mutual assistance. But Heaven did not protect me, and I arrived at my present state. What more can I say?

As with Hong Rengan, Lai was only one person, but it does seem, from the way he frames his confession, that he did see himself as continuing the Taiping war effort, retaining the use of the Taiping year number and of Taiping titles for his subordinates (although it seems that at least Zhang Zongyu’s was in fact self-assigned). Whether he believed an alliance was viable for religious or purely pragmatic reasons is of course not stated, but it is perhaps worth noting that the Taiping did actually help kick off the Muslim rebellions in the northwest. When detachments of Shi Dakai’s expeditionary force arrived in the Gansu borderlands in 1862, communities across the religious divide armed themselves in anticipation, and the Muslim militias may have sought to ally with the Taiping against their local non-Muslim rivals. It would have been reasonable, therefore, for Lai to expect at least some Muslim groups to be amenable to allying with the Taiping survivors.

Moreover, other accounts, though not from Taiping writers, show that there was active cooperation between Muslim and Taiping forces well before 1866, and this cooperation involved Lai himself. Lai had ended up in the north as part of a failed Taiping-Nian expedition towards Beijing that was supposed to be led by Chen Yucheng in early 1862, but which had more or less failed before it started when Chen and his retinue were besieged at Luzhou. The other Taiping generals pressed on regardless, and were supported by several points by Muslim forces from Yunnan under Lan Dashun and Lan Ershun, which had originally attempted to link with the Taiping renegade Shi Dakai under orders from the Yunnanese rebel ruler Du Wenxiu.

Our understanding of Taiping-Muslim cooperation during the lifetime of the kingdom itself, however, is complicated somewhat by an earlier confession by Li Xiucheng, the old Taiping commander-in-chief, who, at the time of his execution in July 1864, denied that there was any contact between the Taiping and the Muslim rebels of Yunnan, Gansu and Shaanxi. The information need not contradict the above: the Yunnanese were mainly interested in Shi Dakai, who had gone rogue in 1858, while Lai Wenguang’s survivors were seeking out the Gansu and Shaanxi rebels some two years after Li Xiucheng’s death. But the fact that the Yunnanese sought out the Taiping, and that Lai only sought refuge in Shaanxi in desperation, suggests that the Taiping were, by and large, not approaching the Muslim rebels as natural allies.

The material for Judaism is simultaneously more extensive and more scant than for Islam, depending on how you want to approach it. We could talk endlessly about Biblical Hebrews and Jews, as the Taiping obviously held the Old Testament as one of their three principal canons (the others being the New Testament and the Taiping’s own textual corpus), and like most conventional Protestants they were perfectly willing to accept the conceit that Jews pre-Christ were theologically valid and God’s chosen people. Indeed, one of the earliest Taiping texts to adapt Biblical scripture, the Three-Character Classic (1853), includes a lengthy section on the Plagues of Egypt and the Exodus, which if read in a metaphorical sense can be understood as analogous to the Taiping: God sent Moses to inflict the plagues upon the Egyptians and liberate his chosen people, the Hebrews; God has sent Hong Xiuquan to inflict punishment upon the Manchus and liberate his chosen people, the Han.

But when it comes to contemporary Jews, the Taiping really say very little, which is perhaps unsurprising: the only significant Jewish population in China was an enclave a couple of hundred strong in Kaifeng (which still exists today), the surviving sources for which have always been patchy. We know that the Taiping captured Kaifeng for a time in 1857, which (as was often the case in the Taiping War) led to severe damage by the time the Qing retook it, and we know that the synagogue, which was in disrepair by 1850, had clearly been demolished by 1866. It is unclear if this was due to Taiping action, but the reports from the Kaifeng Jews themselves, limited and often vague as they were, suggest that it was likely a natural result of the state of disrepair not only of the structure but indeed of the community writ large, rather than any intentional act of destruction by an outside party.

No Taiping sources survive for the occupation of Kaifeng which detail their position with regards to the Jewish population, but there is one(!) source that does, if briefly, mention the Kaifeng enclave, and it is, surprise, surprise, Hong Rengan in the New Treatise on Aids in Administration. Immediately following on from the section on the Ottoman Empire, he writes:

The Jews, forty years after Jesus Christ’s ascent to heaven, were angrily punished by God and driven out of Israel; those who believed in Jesus Christ also escaped to other countries. That there are now Jews in every country is proof and evidence of this, and it is also the will of our Heavenly Father. In China for example, there are many Jewish people in Xiangfu xian of Kaifeng prefecture, Henan, with their sheepskin books on which Hebrew words are written. But these people, from Song to the present day, in the space of many years, have merely observed the rituals without knowing the words or the real meaning. When asked why they follow their religion, their answer is that they are hoping for the birth of Christ the Saviour. Jews of other countries are also like this; they do not believe that the Saviour was born 1,859 years ago.

This is pretty conventional stuff for someone instructed by Protestant missionaries, especially the notion of Jews being ignorant of the arrival of the Saviour. Its rather critical view of the Kaifeng Jewish community is in accord with other contemporary sources: letters by the Jews themselves and by Christian visitors to the city show that the community was very much in decline, with virtually nobody still literate in Hebrew since the death of the last rabbi some fifty years earlier. It is still unfortunate and inconvenient for our purposes that Hong Rengan says nothing of what might be done, nor does he make any reference to the earlier Taiping attack and its implications.

So that’s a lot about individual texts and their implications, now let’s pull it all together. The Taiping, or at least some among them, were clearly cognisant of the status of Judaism and Islam as fellow Abrahamic monotheistic faiths. Insofar as we have any assessment of what they thought of the religions as practiced (which comes entirely from Hong Rengan), they seem to have been relatively ambivalent, appreciating that they did have a common recognition of the Old Testament, but seeing their own religion as more advanced and closer to God’s intentions. Possibly for reasons of ethnic nationalism, the Taiping generally made no effort to deliberately destroy places of worship, at least for Islam – the destruction of the Dijiang mosque may have been an outlier or the result of collateral damage, while there is no explicit causal link between the Taiping capture of Kaifeng and the destruction of its synagogue, which could have been at any point between 1852 and 1866. And, the Taiping were very much willing to work with Muslim military allies, but this was largely for pragmatic reasons. So, not a wholehearted embrace as coreligionists, but also not a zealous objection to all deviations from the Taiping faith.

Sources and Further Reading:

Primary

  • Franz Michael and Chung-li Chang, The Taiping Rebellion, Vol. III: Documents and Comments (1971)
  • Li Xiucheng trans. C. A. Curwen (ed.), Taiping Rebel: The Deposition of Li Hsiu-ch’eng (1976)
  • Prescott Clarke and J.S. Gregory (eds.), Western Reports on the Taiping (1982)

Secondary

  • William White, Chinese Jews: a compilation of matters relating to the Jews of K’aifeng Fu (1942)
  • Jen Yu-Wen, The Taiping Revolutionary Movement (1974)
  • Jonathan Lipman, Familiar Strangers: A History of Muslims in Northwest China (1997)
  • David Atwill, The Chinese Sultanate: Islam, Ethnicity, and the Panthay Rebellion in Southwest China, 1856-1873 (2005)

—– 278.3 —–2022-03-30 01:21:24+08:00:

So I’m not really up to speed on the Qing awareness of the Ottomans, but I do discuss connections between the Ottomans and Yaqub Beg’s regime in this answer.

279: What constitutes “India”?, submitted on 2022-03-29 23:31:57+08:00.

—– 279.1 —–2022-03-30 01:19:13+08:00:

This question has been removed because it is soapboxing or otherwise a loaded question: it has the effect of promoting an existing interpretation or opinion at the expense of open-ended enquiry. Although we understand if you may have an existing interest in the topic, expressing a detailed opinion on the matter in your question is usually a sign that it is a loaded one, and we will remove questions that appear to put a deliberate slant on their subject or solicit answers that align with a specific pre-existing view.

280: Would the Nazis have won WW2 if the US didn’t intervene? I’m more so talking about sending troops over than the aid the US provided., submitted on 2022-03-30 01:21:15+08:00.

—– 280.1 —–2022-03-30 01:22:30+08:00:

Sorry, but your submission has been removed because we don’t allow hypothetical questions. If possible, please rephrase the question so that it does not call for such speculation, and resubmit. Otherwise, this sort of thing is better suited for /r/HistoryWhatIf or /r/HistoricalWhatIf. You can find a more in-depth discussion of this rule here.

281: Who was that Ming prince?, submitted on 2022-03-30 07:13:43+08:00.

—– 281.1 —–2022-03-30 11:42:59+08:00:

Please repost this question to the weekly “Short Answers” thread stickied to the top of the subreddit, which will be the best place to get an answer to this question; for that reason, we have removed your post here. Standalone questions are intended to be seeking detailed, comprehensive answers, and we ask that questions looking for a name, a number, a date or time, a location, the origin of a word, the first/last instance of a specific phenomenon, or a simple list of examples or facts be contained to that thread as they are more likely to receive an answer there. For more information on this rule, please see this Rules Roundtable.

Alternatively, if you didn’t mean to ask a question seeking a short answer or a list of examples, but have a more complex question in mind, feel free to repost a reworded question. Examples of questions appropriate for the ‘Short Answers’ thread would be “Who won the 1932 election?” or “What are some famous natural disasters from the past?”. Versions more appropriate as standalone questions would be “How did FDR win the 1932 election?”, or “In your area of expertise, how did people deal with natural disasters?” If you need some pointers, be sure to check out this Rules Roundtable on asking better questions.

Finally, don’t forget that there are many subreddits on Reddit aimed at answering your questions. Consider /r/AskHistory (which has lighter moderation but similar topic matter to /r/AskHistorians), /r/explainlikeimfive (which is specifically aimed at simple and easily digested answers), or /r/etymology (which focuses on the origins of words and phrases).

282: I know I’m a little late, but what is ID Gen 3’s gimmick?, submitted on 2022-03-30 10:25:10+08:00.

—– 282.1 —–2022-03-30 11:53:18+08:00:

To be honest, only Gen 3 and EN have been explicitly themed (and even then, pirates aren’t ‘fantasy’ as such). HoloX does have the secret society schtick but arguably that only serves as a lore backstory for 5 members who would, without it, be pretty different (Iroha especially stands out a bit lore-wise). So it’s not that ID is the exception, but that EN is.

283: [Calli] UnAlive has hit the Billboard JP Download Charts at #4!, submitted on 2022-03-30 14:57:51+08:00.

—– 283.1 —–2022-03-31 11:07:46+08:00:

The 4-death thing also exists in a lot of Chinese languages; here in HK for instance this has also combined with 13 such that there are some buildings that will skip from the 12th to the 15th floor!

—– 283.2 —–2022-03-31 12:38:43+08:00:

My general impression is that it tends only to be a feature of old-ish buildings and that newer ones won’t skip 4s at all, and that anything with more than 40 storeys will be newer, but… I have nothing to back that up. According to a government website on the matter, 44 might be skipped, but not the entire run of 40s.

284: This face radiates like 5 different emotions and I love it, submitted on 2022-03-30 16:56:17+08:00.

—– 284.1 —–2022-03-31 11:07:01+08:00:

My theory is both she and the photographer are standing on an incline.

285: 🎉Ceres Fauna🌿 celebrates 500,000 subscribers!🎉, submitted on 2022-03-30 18:01:52+08:00.

—– 285.1 —–2022-03-30 23:00:04+08:00:

ウウウウウウウウウウウウウウウウ

If I had anything more intelligent I’d say it, but I’d o-pine that yew’d be hard pressed to come up with much better.

286: What did in fact happen in the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945)?, submitted on 2022-03-30 20:35:35+08:00.

—– 286.1 —–2022-03-30 21:09:52+08:00:

Hi there - unfortunately we have had to remove your question, because /r/AskHistorians isn’t here to do your homework for you. However, our rules DO permit people to ask for help with their homework, so long as they are seeking clarification or resources, rather than the answer itself.

If you have indeed asked a homework question, you should consider resubmitting a question more focused on finding resources and seeking clarification on confusing issues: tell us what you’ve researched so far, what resources you’ve consulted, and what you’ve learned, and we are more likely to approve your question. Please see this Rules Roundtable thread for more information on what makes for the kind of homework question we’d approve. Additionally, if you’re not sure where to start in terms of finding and understanding sources in general, we have a six-part series, “Finding and Understanding Sources”, which has a wealth of information that may be useful for finding and understanding information for your essay. Finally, other subreddits are likely to be more suitable for help with homework - try looking for help at /r/HomeworkHelp.

Alternatively, if you are not a student and are not doing homework, we have removed your question because it resembled a homework question. It may resemble a common essay question from a prominent history syllabus or may be worded in a broad, open-ended way that feels like the kind of essay question that a professor would set. Professors often word essay questions in order to provide the student with a platform to show how much they understand a topic, and these questions are typically broader and more interested in interpretations and delineating between historical theories than the average /r/AskHistorians question. If your non-homework question was incorrectly removed for this reason, we will be happy to approve your question if you wait for 7 days and then ask a less open-ended question on the same topic.

287: What is the difference between a treaty and tributary in the context of China and Britain during/after the Opium Wars?, submitted on 2022-03-30 22:22:02+08:00.

—– 287.1 —–2022-03-30 22:46:45+08:00:

Hi there - unfortunately we have had to remove your question, because /r/AskHistorians isn’t here to do your homework for you. However, our rules DO permit people to ask for help with their homework, so long as they are seeking clarification or resources, rather than the answer itself.

If you have indeed asked a homework question, you should consider resubmitting a question more focused on finding resources and seeking clarification on confusing issues: tell us what you’ve researched so far, what resources you’ve consulted, and what you’ve learned, and we are more likely to approve your question. Please see this Rules Roundtable thread for more information on what makes for the kind of homework question we’d approve. Additionally, if you’re not sure where to start in terms of finding and understanding sources in general, we have a six-part series, “Finding and Understanding Sources”, which has a wealth of information that may be useful for finding and understanding information for your essay. Finally, other subreddits are likely to be more suitable for help with homework - try looking for help at /r/HomeworkHelp.

Alternatively, if you are not a student and are not doing homework, we have removed your question because it resembled a homework question. It may resemble a common essay question from a prominent history syllabus or may be worded in a broad, open-ended way that feels like the kind of essay question that a professor would set. Professors often word essay questions in order to provide the student with a platform to show how much they understand a topic, and these questions are typically broader and more interested in interpretations and delineating between historical theories than the average /r/AskHistorians question. If your non-homework question was incorrectly removed for this reason, we will be happy to approve your question if you wait for 7 days and then ask a less open-ended question on the same topic.

288: Miko just beat the Tree Sentinel taking no damage, submitted on 2022-03-31 00:11:09+08:00.

—– 288.1 —–2022-03-31 10:56:56+08:00:

Nope, just doesn’t exist. Miko originally debuted under Cover but outside Hololive in August 2018, and then got moved into Hololive at the end of the year. I’m not 100% on why Miko debuted as 3D although given timescales etc. (Mel debuted in May and Gen 1 in June 2018) I would imagine she was being worked on before Hololive pivoted to Live2D.

289: Which religion is responsible for the most deaths?, submitted on 2022-03-31 01:37:12+08:00.

—– 289.1 —–2022-03-31 02:29:25+08:00:

This question has been removed because it is soapboxing or otherwise a loaded question: it has the effect of promoting an existing interpretation or opinion at the expense of open-ended enquiry. Although we understand if you may have an existing interest in the topic, expressing a detailed opinion on the matter in your question is usually a sign that it is a loaded one, and we will remove questions that appear to put a deliberate slant on their subject or solicit answers that align with a specific pre-existing view.

290: What would you say is the best Roman Emperor?, submitted on 2022-03-31 02:25:28+08:00.

—– 290.1 —–2022-03-31 02:29:06+08:00:

This submission has been removed because it violates the rule on poll-type questions. These questions do not lend themselves to answers with a firm foundation in sources and research, and the resulting threads usually turn into monsters with enormous speculation and little focused discussion. Questions about the “most”, the “worst”, “unknown”, or other value judgments usually lead to vague, subjective, and speculative answers. For further information, please consult this Roundtable discussion.

For questions of this type, we ask that you redirect them to more appropriate subreddits, such as /r/history or /r/askhistory.

291: How did the Romans stop water from the aqueducts from overflowing?, submitted on 2022-03-31 10:23:25+08:00.

—– 291.1 —–2022-03-31 13:23:33+08:00:

They didn’t. Or, well, it’s a little more complicated than that.

Here I’ll exclusively be discussing the city of Rome, as that’s the bit of the aqueducts I’m familiar with, albeit primarily from Frontinus’ de Aquaeductu rather than from the archaeological evidence which I fully admit that others understand better. Frontinus, who was appointed supervisor of the aqueducts by Nerva in 97 CE and retained this posting for at least part of the reign of Trajan, notes that there were in fact regulations to deal with the result of overflow, rather than prevent it:

94: We have further to indicate what is the law with regard to conducting and safeguarding the waters, the first of which treats of the limitation of private parties to the measure of their grants, and the second has reference to the upkeep of the conduits themselves. In this connection, in going back to ancient laws enacted with regard to individual aqueducts, I found certain points wherein the practice of our forefathers differed from ours. With them all water was delivered for the public use, and the law was as follows: “No private person shall conduct other water than that which flows from the basins to the ground” (for these are the words of the law); that is, water which overflows from the troughs; we call it “lapsed” water;​ and even this was not granted for any other use than for baths or fulling establishments; and it was subject to a tax, for a fee was fixed, to be paid into the public treasury. Some water also was conceded to the houses of the principal citizens, with the consent of the others.

110: Those waters also that are called “lapsed,” namely, those that come from the overflow of the reservoirs or from leakage of the pipes, are subject to grants; which are wont to be given very sparingly, however, by the sovereign. But this offers opportunity for thefts by the water-men; and how much care should be devoted to preventing these, may be seen from a paragraph of an ordinance, which I append:

111” “I desire that no one shall draw ‘lapsed’ water except those who have permission to do so by grants from me or preceding sovereigns; for there must necessarily be some overflow from the reservoirs, this being proper not only for the health of our City, but also for use in the flushing of the sewers.”

In effect, the Romans were happy to have more water than they needed, and traditionally, any excess water could essentially be bought and resold by private parties that collected it, a legal principle that helped contribute to the corruption issues in the water administration that would lead to Frontinus’ appointment. Presumably, if his proposals were ratified by Trajan, then this would have been amended somewhat by the 2nd century by requiring a specific grant to allow such private parties to collect excess water, and earmarking a portion for flushing the sewage system.

That is not to say that the situation in Rome was universal across the empire, of course. Vitruvius, in his section on aqueducts, describes what is essentially an ideal aqueduct system, and for his part suggests that cities should aim to supply enough water for public needs, with any excess going to private parties that had paid for a connection to the water supply:

  1. […] When they are brought home to the walls of the city a reservoir (castellum) is built, with a triple cistern attached to it to receive the water. In the reservoir are three pipes of equal sizes, and so connected that when the water overflows at the extremities, it is discharged into the middle one,
  1. in which are placed pipes for the supply of the fountains, in the second those for the supply of the baths, thus affording a yearly revenue to the people; in the third, those for the supply of private houses. This is to be so managed that the water for public use may never be deficient, for that cannot be diverted if the mains from the heads are rightly constructed. I have made this division in order that the rent which is collected from private individuals who are supplied with water, may be applied by collectors to the maintenance of the aqueduct.

In effect, by placing the distribution pipes for the public services lower down, they would get water first, and any excess would then go to private parties. That said, Vitruvius does not discuss the matter of ‘lapsed’ water, i.e. leaks and overflow, principally as he is more interested in the infrastructure than the administration.

As for whether there were limits on flow at baths and fountains, this does not seem to have been the case at all. Baths largely took poorer-quality water, wastage of which was not particularly serious as it was not for drinking; fountains were supposed to flow constantly, so a bit of wastage would be unfortunate but not by any means fatal. But more importantly, the output of the fountains was probably monitored in some way, and in Rome at least, the Senate did hold power over the quantity of public fountains and could mandate increases or decreases, such that in the longer term, fountain output was generally kept stable.

292: Who designed the Newfoundland coat of arms?, submitted on 2022-03-31 10:54:21+08:00.

—– 292.1 —–2022-03-31 10:58:18+08:00:

Please repost this question to the weekly “Short Answers” thread stickied to the top of the subreddit, which will be the best place to get an answer to this question; for that reason, we have removed your post here. Standalone questions are intended to be seeking detailed, comprehensive answers, and we ask that questions looking for a name, a number, a date or time, a location, the origin of a word, the first/last instance of a specific phenomenon, or a simple list of examples or facts be contained to that thread as they are more likely to receive an answer there. For more information on this rule, please see this Rules Roundtable.

Alternatively, if you didn’t mean to ask a question seeking a short answer or a list of examples, but have a more complex question in mind, feel free to repost a reworded question. Examples of questions appropriate for the ‘Short Answers’ thread would be “Who won the 1932 election?” or “What are some famous natural disasters from the past?”. Versions more appropriate as standalone questions would be “How did FDR win the 1932 election?”, or “In your area of expertise, how did people deal with natural disasters?” If you need some pointers, be sure to check out this Rules Roundtable on asking better questions.

Finally, don’t forget that there are many subreddits on Reddit aimed at answering your questions. Consider /r/AskHistory (which has lighter moderation but similar topic matter to /r/AskHistorians), /r/explainlikeimfive (which is specifically aimed at simple and easily digested answers), or /r/etymology (which focuses on the origins of words and phrases).

293: It’s just monopoly man, calm down., submitted on 2022-04-01 08:34:40+08:00.

—– 293.1 —–2022-04-01 10:57:17+08:00:

If you’re watching your friends play Monopoly… well let’s hope they have your consent first.

294: What if the Taiping rebellion succeeded?, submitted on 2022-04-01 13:27:31+08:00.

—– 294.1 —–2022-04-01 13:41:07+08:00:

Sorry, but your submission has been removed because we don’t allow hypothetical questions. If possible, please rephrase the question so that it does not call for such speculation, and resubmit. Otherwise, this sort of thing is better suited for /r/HistoryWhatIf or /r/HistoricalWhatIf. You can find a more in-depth discussion of this rule here.

295: The rap on Suisei and Calli’s “Wicked” is beautifully, unapologetically THEM, submitted on 2022-04-01 15:48:11+08:00.

—– 295.1 —–2022-04-02 11:44:54+08:00:

Pretty sure Suisei is her own lyricist too.

296: AskHistorians Podcast April Fools Special 2022 – Tartaria with /u/EnclavedMicrostate, submitted on 2022-04-01 17:51:40+08:00.

—– 296.1 —–2022-04-01 20:34:37+08:00:

I don’t know that they have, but I would not be particularly shocked to find out.

As for hoax-related things, we were actually inspired to do this because we timed the Hitler Diaries episode for April Fools 2021, so we will almost certainly be doing more hoaxes, conspiracy theories or similar next year!

—– 296.2 —–2022-04-02 02:26:56+08:00:

I don’t know that you can, which does create an interesting situation if an unfortunate one, where as you say participating is essentially legitimating the exercise.

297: I am Sokrates, son of Sophroniskos, of the deme Alopeke. I am fond of saying that the unexamined life is not worth living; and in that spirit, I invite you, fellow citizens, to Ask Me Anything., submitted on 2022-04-01 20:34:58+08:00.

—– 297.1 —–2022-04-01 20:48:43+08:00:

Who would you consider your best student, and why is it Xenophon?

—– 297.2 —–2022-04-01 21:24:34+08:00:

I’m surprised you didn’t start with asking what a student is! One’s goodness as a student cannot be established without an understanding of that, so now I must ask you, Socrates: what is a student?

298: Why did the the Qing enlisted Europeans, particularly Charles “Chinese” Gordon, to lead their armies against the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom?, submitted on 2022-04-02 09:39:55+08:00.

—– 298.1 —–2022-04-07 13:03:03+08:00:

In some respects, it is incorrect to portray this as the Qing ‘enlisting’ Europeans, as this would imply their seeking out Europeans to fight for them. In practical terms, it was mostly Europeans insisting on employment with the Qing, and the Qing generally not refusing them. Rarely were the Qing taking the initial initiative in creating such European-led forces, but by and large they would then work with these forces after they were established.

Over the course of the later years of the Taiping War, several European-led forces offered their services to the Qing, and we ought to distinguish between a few types of foreign military support: elements of regular military forces engaged against the Taiping, fully-foreign volunteer units, and so-called ‘Disciplined Chinese’ forces with foreign officers and Chinese troops. The dividing lines between these could, of course, be rather fuzzy: for instance, a foreign volunteer unit might reorganise into a ‘Disciplined Chinese’ force, and many of these forces were officered by members of the patron powers’ regular armed forces without resigning their commissions. But as a general schema, this division should serve us well enough. For my part I will focus primarily on ‘Disciplined Chinese’ forces as well as their antecedents in the foreign volunteer contingents.

We also ought to be careful of treating the Qing as a monolithic entity. At the very least, we ought to consider three different layers of authority: the local level, where officials held immediate oversight; the provincial level, where governors, viceroys and their staff were responsible for the broader operational conduct of the war; and the imperial level, where the court held control, however nominal, over the overall conduct of foreign relations. A small volunteer contingent might, if it came on the radar at all, operate at the discretion of a middling functionary like a city mayor, whereas ‘Disciplined Chinese’ forces would generally be directly subordinated to provincial-level authorities; the imperial court rarely intervened meaningfully, but might still be drawn into situations where there may have been a particularly acrimonious dispute over some issue relating to a foreign force. There is a world of difference between the Shanghai mayor turning a blind eye to the European merchants organising small uniformed militias, and the Viceroy of Liangjiang or of Min-Zhe co-opting a brigade of European-led Chinese troops to support their provincial armies.

Some aspects of the foreign intervention in the Taiping War have been well studied, the Ever-Victorious Army especially; others less so. Rather than give a comprehensive overview, I will instead focus on a few of the better-studied cases, and specifically on the side of the ‘disciplined Chinese’ contingents, as also covering direct foreign intervention would make this post monstrously long.

The Ever-Victorious Army

The Ever-Victorious Army, or EVA for short, is a particularly interesting case in that it essentially went through three distinct organisational phases, each with a somewhat different relationship to Qing authority.

In June 1860, two Americans, Frederick Townsend Ward and Henry Burgevine, petitioned Shanghai officials and elites, including the banker and city treasurer Yang Fang, to permit and fund the creation of a force called the Shanghai Foreign Arms Corps, initially consisting of around 100 American, British, and other European volunteers equipped with modern rifles, later reorganising into a mostly Filipino force with European officers numbering around 250. While it saw limited success in capturing the town of Songjiang in mid-July, it was essentially disbanded after suffering a serious defeat at Qingpu near the end of the month, and Ward, severely wounded in the engagement, would end up convalescing overseas – his exact whereabouts are unknown – for the better part of a year. In September, the force was dissolved by the Shanghai circuit intendant.

The statement that Ward and Burgevine petitioned for the EVA’s establishment does not necessarily communicate the full story as such. While it is true that the proposal came from them, Shanghai’s circuit intendant (essentially equivalent to the city mayor) Wu Xu had a particular interest in getting as much military force in the area as possible, as the British and French had, so far, not made any kind of unequivocal declaration that they would defend the Chinese part of Shanghai against a Taiping attack. In the desperate middle months of 1860, when no major Qing armies stood between Nanjing and Shanghai and a Taiping capture of the latter seemed imminent, any help, from whatever origin, was eagerly accepted. Critically, it was eagerly accepted by Wu Xu, but not by his superior the prefect of Suzhou, who refused to forward his petitions to the court. The Foreign-Arms Corps would be established at Wu Xu’s discretion, and maintained thanks to Yang Fang’s personal networks in the Shanghai banking world, rather than the official sanction of the Qing court.

After Ward returned to Shanghai in March 1861, he attempted to assemble a new force on similar lines as the first, now named the Shanghai Foreign Legion, which suffered yet another defeat at Qingpu. British and American authorities in the International Settlement, concerned that the activities of the adventurers constituted a breach of foreign guarantees of neutrality in the conflict, arrested Ward and disbanded the Legion, and he and Burgevine went into hiding until late in the year. When they re-emerged, they proposed a new organisational structure for the third attempt, wherein they and the other foreign adventurers would instead serve as officers for a force otherwise composed of Chinese troops (save for a company of Filipinos as Ward’s personal guard). This force, initially named the ‘Foreign Arms Corps’ again, achieved its first success at Songjiang in February 1862, and soon after it would be rechristened the ‘Ever-Victorious Army’ by Ward’s Shanghai financiers.

At this stage in the proceedings, the Qing government as a whole was more receptive to foreign help than it had been. Peace had been reached with Britain and France (whereas the two countries were still at war with the Qing back in 1860), and the military defeats leading to that peace deal had been a potent demonstration of the power of modern weapons in trained hands. There were also lucky breaks in that there were significant political changes at the provincial and imperial levels. Li Hongzhang, a protege of the Qing’s main field commander Zeng Guofan, was appointed governor of Jiangsu in early 1862, and took over control of the war in the eastern theatre thereafter; Li, like Zeng, appreciated the benefits to be gained from adopting foreign weapons, and had a knack for diplomacy as well. More importantly, the fiercely anti-foreign Xianfeng Emperor had died in August 1861, and the similarly anti-foreign council of regents for his son was overthrown 3 months later by a considerably more pro-foreign group consisting of reformist elements in the imperial house, principally the late emperor’s brother, Prince Gong. So both international and domestic politics had shifted to where foreign mercenary assistance was broadly desirable.

But this was helped along in no small part by the reworked structure of the EVA. The Qing were wary of permitting too much in the way of direct foreign intervention for fear of having to grant further concessions in supplementary arrangements, and were also unwilling to allow recaptured cities to be garrisoned by foreign troops, an issue which had previously complicated the working relationship between Ward and the Qing during the Foreign Arms Corps days. The EVA’s officers being private citizens volunteering on their own initiative mitigated the former issue because they did not act officially on behalf of a government, while their troops being Chinese dealt with the latter because even an EVA garrison would be majority-Chinese, assuming they would supply a garrison at all as opposed to various second-line contingents like the Green Standards or local militias. It also helped to some extent that Ward and Burgevine had evaded arrest by renouncing their US citizenship and petitioning to be recognised as Qing subjects, which gave Qing authorities somewhat more power over the force than it might have done otherwise.

An added, and not entirely unintended benefit was that Ward had achieved somewhat of a rapprochement with the foreign authorities in Shanghai, thanks to the general opinion of the international community decidedly souring on the Taiping. While the British and French were wary of supporting the Qing directly, they were willing to lend their services in theoretical support of the EVA, and so EVA and foreign regular troops operated in tandem in what was sometimes termed the ‘thirty-mile radius’ campaigns, so named because officially, British support for Ward would not extend more than 30 miles from Shanghai. Having Ward around thus gave Qing authorities a somewhat roundabout way of gaining additional military support from European regular forces.

—– 298.2 —–2022-04-07 13:03:11+08:00:

Ward’s death in battle in September 1862 led to the EVA being put essentially out of action for the next six months while its senior command was reorganised. While briefly under the command of Henry Burgevine, British authorities successfully petitioned for the force to be placed under the command of a British officer, in the event Charles Gordon of the Royal Engineers, who took up command in March 1863. I discuss the specifics of that period, and Gordon’s eventual appointment, in more detail here. Under Gordon, the Qing’s reasons for maintaining the EVA were in many ways much the same. An added benefit, though, was the direct British stake in the EVA through having appointed British officers. However, the EVA still remained part of the Qing’s armed forces, such that its involvement in the war provided little leverage for foreign interests.

Yet the EVA was ultimately also somewhat of a liability. Rather than an elite reserve, under Gordon it was typically employed as a vanguard, and suffered continual attrition that was often made up for by recruiting Taiping POWs of questionable quality and loyalty. This attrition was worsened by the fact that, although Gordon was generally favoured by Qing government officials, he lacked the influence over the Shanghai bankers that Ward had, and was unwilling to press either them or the Qing government for funding to pay his troops. Arguably, more men deserted for lack of pay than were lost in combat. Amid all this, Gordon himself was becoming somewhat of a political problem spot. Li Hongzhang very much did not approve of Gordon’s piecemeal recruitment of Taiping POWs to reinforce his losses, while Gordon abruptly resigned after Li ordered the execution of a group of Taiping officers in Suzhou who had surrendered the city after Gordon had promised amnesty for them. The tensions between various interests relating to the EVA had reached an insoluble point, and although it continued to exist for some months afterward after Gordon was placated, it was dissolved in April 1864.

The Franco-Chinese Corps

Rather confusingly, the Taiping War saw at least two separate contingents dubbed the Corps Franco-Chinois, which coexisted and occasionally saw officers transfer from one to the other. The earlier, smaller force was the Franco-Chinese Corps of Jiangsu, formed in June 1861 by Captain Adrian Tardif de Moidrey of the French Army at the suggestion of Vice-Admiral Auguste Prôtet of the French Navy. You will note that this in fact predated the Ever-Victorious Army ‘proper’ by some months, although its function was somewhat different: whereas Ward’s EVA was a largely infantry force subordinated to Qing authorities, the Franco-Chinese Corps of Jiangsu was instead a small mixed unit under direct French command.

The more notable of these forces was, however, the Franco-Chinese Corps of Zhejiang, formed by Lieutenant Prosper Giquel of the French Navy in Ningbo in June 1862. Giquel’s force (which I also discuss in more detail in the linked answer) was of similar organisation to the EVA, and of similar size. Rather than a support unit within the French command structure, the Zhejiang corps would be a self-contained fighting force that was de facto part of the Qing armed forces. Dubbed the ‘Ever-Triumphant Army’ (ETA for short), Giquel’s force would face significant challenges from the Qing authorities in the province, in contrast to Ward’s relatively rapid entry into the good graces of the authorities in Jiangsu. It wasn’t simply that Qing officials were sceptical of the value of European forces (especially Zuo Zongtang, governor of Zhejiang and promoted to Viceroy of Zhejiang and Fujian in March 1863), but also that Giquel was decidedly late to the party, as while he was putting together his own force, a Major Morton of the British Army who had been serving with Ward was tasked with establishing a British-run division of the EVA out of Ningbo. This force, later dubbed the ‘Ever-Secure Army’, was deemed the senior force by the Qing, and both local and provincial officials would attempt several times to pressure the ETA into merging with the ESA.

That the ETA survived as an independent entity was in many ways a stroke of luck – or indeed, the cumulative effect of several such strokes. Initially, the force’s existence was justified on the basis that, as its troops had been instructed to recognise French commands, they could not be effectively integrated into the English-based ESA without effectively needing to be completely retrained. But it was arguably only through victory at the battle of Yuyao in July 1862 – one shared with the ESA – that the ETA started gaining allies in the Qing government that could keep it separate. Zhang Jingju, the circuit intendant of Ningbo, pledged his support for Giquel and the corps’ commander, Brethon, after Yuyao, but even then, Giquel found that Qing officials would not provide more than token funding unless he brought his force under the ESA’s purview. Matters were not helped by a scuffle in late August between Jules-August Marolles of the French Navy and a Cantonese pirate squadron in the pay of Zhang Jingju which escalated to an armed clash, and led to a portion of the pirates defecting to the Taiping. In September, the EVA was relocated temporarily to northern Zhejiang in response to a sudden Taiping offensive, further throwing the ETA’s independence into question.

Perhaps paradoxically, this move would ultimately ensure the ETA’s separate existence, because it was in Zhejiang that Ward was fatally shot in a battle with Taiping forces, throwing its organisation into disarray. With the principal ‘disciplined Chinese’ force essentially out of action for the foreseeable future, keeping the ETA in the field in Zhejiang was now a major priority, and the loss of Ward and later Burgevine meant that the EVA was no longer headed by a Qing subject, but instead a British officer. While the ETA did prove itself in combat to Zuo Zongtang over the course of late 1862 and 1863, it was also helped by circumstance in that the Qing realised they had much to gain by playing the British and French off against each other. While the Qing might theoretically dangle the prospect of further concessions to entice one side or the other when both were still neutral, now that both were involved, it could instead implicitly threaten to give one side more concessions if the other pulled out – something it also used to wrangle British support for the EVA. In this way, the Qing could essentially solicit support without actually offering anything in return besides, of course, pay for troops and officers.

The Anglo-Chinese Fleet

The Lay-Osborn Flotilla is one of those oddities that is nevertheless quite illuminating. In December 1862, Horatio Nelson Lay (no relation to the actual Nelson), the British-born head of the Qing’s Imperial Maritime Customs Service, was back in the UK on sick leave, where he received a message from his deputy, Robert Hart. Hart had been contacted by Prince Gong asking if he could secure the purchase of several light steamers suitable for riverine operations. Lay, for his part, set about organising a squadron to be placed under the command of Sherard Osborn, who had captained a Royal Navy ship during the Second Opium War, and hence gave rise to the fleet’s more commonly-used name, the ‘Lay-Osborn Flotilla’. The fleet would be built with the sanction of the British government, with its funding coming in large part from contributions by British merchants in Shanghai. Aside from five existing ships purchased from the Navy, three more ships, including the force’s flagship the Keangsoo, would be completed and launched by May 1863.

On arrival in China, however, the fleet ran into immediate difficulties as regarded its relationship to Qing authority. While the Qing had introduced a standardised naval ensign, consisting of triangular flag with a blue dragon on a yellow field, Lay and Osborn instead fielded their own design, a portent of things to come. Lay insisted that he would not take commands from anyone other than the emperor himself, implicitly not even Prince Gong, which effectively implied that he was to have total control over the fleet as the emperor was, at the time, an eight year-old boy. This naturally contrasted heavily with the EVA and ETA, which were formally subordinated to provincial-level authorities even if the British and French governments still exercised a degree of de facto influence over aspects of their organisation. Prince Gong, rather sensibly, did not agree to Lay’s terms.

However, the regent did offer an alternate approach: instead of maintaining the fleet as-is, he would arrange for the ships themselves to be purchased by the Qing state, and would retain enough of its original British crew as was needed to train and command Chinese crews for the squadron. It would, in effect, be a ‘Disciplined Chinese’ fleet. The benefits of such an arrangement for the Qing were obvious: the fleet would be under some degree of direct oversight rather than essentially going rogue; the ships themselves would remain in Qing hands postwar; and it would help build up a body within China of experts in the operation of modern warships. Unfortunately for Prince Gong, Lay would not accept his terms either, and the fleet sat unused in Shanghai, earning from the merchants the nickname of the ‘Vampire Fleet’, for having sucked up so much of their money for no return whatever.

The later history of the Lay-Osborn Flotilla mostly lies beyond the interests of the Qing government and by extension the scope of this answer, but it is a fascinating story involving Confederate privateers, Anglo-American diplomatic intrigues, and the Meiji Restoration. But all for another time.

—– 298.3 —–2022-04-07 13:06:53+08:00:

Conclusions

What the above case studies should illuminate is that while the Qing were interested in foreign help, they were wary of the strings that might come attached to that help. If it was purely military expertise they were after, then the Qing could have tried to make some deal to just get European regular forces involved. Instead, having small handfuls of European officers in charge of Chinese contingents under direct Qing command, whose weapons were supplied by either private networks or foreign governments, allowed the Qing to maximise the number of elite forces under their control while minimising the leverage that the European powers might hope to gain from it.

But these forces also served a diplomatic function as well, as they demonstrated the viability of Euro-Qing cooperation in the wake of the Second Opium War. Some degree of such cooperation had already been ongoing since the foundation of the Imperial Maritime Customs Service by Lay and Hart in 1854, but it was arguably the ‘disciplined Chinese’ forces that cemented this approach. Arguably, the scale of the Anglo-French intervention was in large part a result of Frederick Ward emerging as a viable intermediary between the Qing and British governments. Moreover, the presence of British and French officers under Qing command cemented those countries’ stake in Qing survival. While many of these forces would be dissolved as the war concluded, many of the officers who were part of them did end up building ties to Qing China that would continue into the post-Taiping period.

Sources and Further Reading

  • Danny Orbach, ‘Foreign Military Adventurers in the Taiping Rebellion, 1860–1864’, Journal of Chinese Military History 10 (2021), pp. 41-72

  • Richard J Smith, Mercenaries and Mandarins: The Ever-Victorious Army in Nineteenth Century China (1978)

  • Stephen Platt, Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom: China, the West, and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War (2012)

  • Stephen A. Leibo, Transferring Technology to China: Prosper Giquel and the Self-Strengthening Movement (1985)

  • Stephen A. Leibo, Prosper Giquel, A Journal of the Chinese Civil War, 1864 (1985)

  • Jonathan Chappell, ‘The Limits of the Shanghai Bridgehead: Understanding British Intervention in the Taiping Rebellion, 1860–62’, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 44:4 (2016), pp. 533-550

—– 298.4 —–2022-04-09 23:48:39+08:00:

As regards the names: the Ever-Victorious Army was the chang sheng jun 常勝軍, the Ever-Triumphant Army was the chang jie jun 常捷軍, and the Ever-Secure Army was the chang an jun 常安軍. The Ever-Victorious Army was the first to receive such an appellation, doing so after its victory at Songjiang in February 1862. When exactly the Ever-Triumphant and Ever-Secure Armies received their titles is unclear to me, though they were definitely in use when these forces were active. The repetition of 常 was almost certainly an intentional product of their apparent derivation from the EVA. The naming of specialist military units was not unprecedented, as for instance the Banners had named elite elements like the Jianruiying 尖銳營 and Huoqiying 火器營, although I don’t believe there was much precedent for unique names for ordinary battalions in the Banners, Green Standards, or ‘brave’ forces, as these were generally assembled ad hoc.

Ward and Burgevine renounced their US citizenship in order to avoid arrest by US authorities; the Qing did accept their petition although it did create some headaches over issues like the queue edict. Ward, as noted, died in combat in 1862, while Burgevine died in 1865, amid circumstances that had raised some questions over whether the US government was actually prepared to recognise his renunciation of citizenship. What I didn’t note in the answer above, but which was mentioned in the linked one, is that Burgevine defected to the Taiping after the appointment of Gordon, and was captured after surrendering to the Qing army at Suzhou; he was then deported to Japan in December 1863 by US authorities but ended up inadvertently returning to Shanghai on a ship he thought was bound for Hong Kong, and arrested by the Qing in a sting operation in May 1865. According to Qing authorities, he died when the boat carrying him to Shanghai for trial capsized, although US authorities suspected but could not prove foul play in the affair. As a nominal Qing subject, Burgevine would no longer have been entitled to an extraterritorial trial by US consular authorities, though there was still some attempt by American diplomatic staff to take over his custody that, in the event, never transpired.

299: Help with Questions about the surname Tang 湯 versus 唐?, submitted on 2022-04-03 03:39:41+08:00.

—– 299.1 —–2022-04-03 12:57:23+08:00:

Chinese dynasties are named after names of states, not after the ruling families. The only exception to that is Chen dynasty (陳朝), otherwise the states were named after the fiefs the founding Emperor was ruling.

Except from the Jurchen Jin onward, where imperial states took symbolic names – Jin 金, Yuan 元, Ming 明, (Shun 順,) and Qing 清.

300: [Hobby Scuffles] Week of April 4, 2022, submitted on 2022-04-03 23:00:15+08:00.

—– 300.1 —–2022-04-04 04:15:14+08:00:

Well also, in 2014 she would have been, what, 17? Edgy teen phases aren’t exactly uncommon.

—– 300.2 —–2022-04-04 04:23:14+08:00:

Weirdly, this isn’t the first time Demondice’s past use of racial slurs has come up, as there was apparently some discussion of whether that might be a bit of a ticking time bomb for her during Mori Calliope’s debut. What’s interesting is there is, effectively, more than one issue on the line here. Quite apart from the question of whether people will be willing to allow her to move on, there’s also the matter of how to deal with the notion that Calli and DDK are separate identities even if they are adopted by the same person, given that it’s been DDK coming under fire for something that was kicked off by something featured on the Calli side of things.

But as with many things, there is a question of whether it will all blow over as a bit of a nothingburger in a matter of days or weeks, like the Nene tracing incident.

—– 300.3 —–2022-04-04 04:30:34+08:00:

On that latter aspect, I agree it’s interesting though not necessarily on the majority white Anglospheric audience side, at least not entirely. From the numbers that have gone around lately, her Japanese audience seems decently substantial as well, given her album charted at #4 on Billboard Japan’s top downloaded albums in its first week. While a numerical minority it’s definitely not just a niche of her audience, and it seems like concern about the ‘watering down’ on the Japanese side of things comes about kind of externally, from people with an investment in ‘authentic’ or ‘accurate’ representations of Japan and its culture internationally, which is a bit of a separate matter from reception of that work within Japan. What might seem like ‘watering down’ to a particularly conscious outside viewer may, within Japan, be received as entirely innocuous.

—– 300.4 —–2022-04-04 14:08:58+08:00:

I wonder if it’ll go the other way – if they sort of recognise that the whole separation of identities thing is a bit of a relic of the days of Activ8, and that enough of the small players don’t bother with it that the big dogs like Holo and Niji can drop the act too.

—– 300.5 —–2022-04-04 21:06:56+08:00:

Sure, you actually can’t, but you can think you can’t. What’s changed isn’t that the word has become damaging, it’s that those who hadn’t previously recognised it as damaging now have.

—– 300.6 —–2022-04-04 22:21:37+08:00:

Thanks for the shoutout! (I guess? Not sure how to feel about drawing attention to Tartaria being my enduring legacy!)

—– 300.7 —–2022-04-04 22:22:24+08:00:

I think the thing is, Tartaria was already so tied into the whole CulturalLayer architecture nonsense that arguably the ‘ancient empire’ side was a temporary fixation within an otherwise architecture-dominated conspiracy.

—– 300.8 —–2022-04-04 22:24:02+08:00:

If you have a look at the r/badhistory post you’ll see – they’ll pull stuff out like Russian medals commemorating the 100th anniversary of Napoleon’s defeat as being proof of a Russo-French alliance because they have Napoleon’s head on them; art showing Napoleon being buddy-buddy with Tsar Alexander in the post-Tilsit ‘honeymoon period’; the existence of ‘Russian militia’ who, because they’re dressed differently from French and Russian regulars (hint: the only difference is they wear greatcoats), must actually be the Tartarian army, etc.

—– 300.9 —–2022-04-04 22:24:54+08:00:

Yep. As noted, the ‘Tartarian Empire’ did exist. It was the Mongol Empire. And then that collapsed. No need to make as big a deal out of it as the Tartaria-stans do.

—– 300.10 —–2022-04-04 22:26:00+08:00:

If it involves secret coverups, someone has to be doing the covering.

—– 300.11 —–2022-04-04 22:27:17+08:00:

Yeah, Calli/DDK is infamously bad at damage control; her general ‘fuck the haters and keep on trucking’ approach is something that in a sense works for her in the moment but doesn’t do much to actually deflate the drama. That said, I do feel like there’s a bit of a case of her not being omniscient here. She might only be seeing – or only really taking notice of – the criticism of her old work, not of the racial slurs side of things, and arguably it is the latter where you do need to make a clear statement whereas the former can arguably be addressed with ‘you are coming at this having just discovered my work and are deliberately going after old work which I’ve already disavowed’. Though that might be the more generous take.

—– 300.12 —–2022-04-05 14:29:15+08:00:

Not everyone can afford the luxury of presuming all or even most criticism is in good faith.

—– 300.13 —–2022-04-06 02:52:54+08:00:

So, this is something I vaguely recall because I did watch the core exchange of videos as someone who was a viewer of both Oates and EoT at the time:

As far as I can tell, it was not ContraPoints but Rationality Rules who was the third party in the drama; RR had done a video on why trans athletes shouldn’t compete in professional sports, which EoT objected to. How Oates came to be drawn into it is not entirely clear to me anymore, although my recollection is that it had to do with her being friends with RR and not calling him out on holding a transphobic position. It seems like the full drama with regards to Oates in particular played out over Twitter some months later rather than on Youtube, and a summary of the Twitter drama, admittedly from a relatively pro-EoT position, can be found here. I don’t recall what RR did later, as I was never an RR viewer, but I know Oates’ position was that she wasn’t going to publicly denounce or cut ties with RR over his opinion on an issue on which she herself wasn’t qualified to speak, and that she didn’t believe he was intentionally malicious.

From what I can tell, nobody comes out looking amazing: RR ended up parroting a pretty common transphobic position; Oates’ defence (not being informed enough on the issue to properly comment) was comprehensible but pretty weak (i.e. why not inform yourself, then?); EoT was quite overtly hostile to the point of appearing to tell someone on Twitter to commit suicide. Even if RR’s video was transphobic, EoT did themselves no favours by adopting a hostile stance and presuming bad faith on the part of all parties involved.

—– 300.14 —–2022-04-10 12:55:32+08:00:

I’ve never quite been sure where i stand with EoT. On the one hand I did occasionally still watch them until quite recently because I did think it valuable to maintain some exposure to a particularly strong trans viewpoint, but the more I see of EoT’s behaviour on social media the less inclined I am to support them in particular. I just find it hard to get behind someone who will hurl insults and ad hominems at people who may have bad opinions but hold them in good faith, and who will adamantly refuse to having committed any wrongdoing. This is basically what irked me the most about the situation over the alleged call to suicide: EoT’s defence that they weren’t intending on calling on Oates to kill herself doesn’t change the fact that they nevertheless did, by writing a statement that very much implied it. (Which, to open another can of worms, is similar to why I’m honestly very unsympathetic to Lindsay Ellis over the Raya situation, where there’s a double-whammy of using the existence of bad faith criticism to decline acknowledgement of good faith criticism, and also refusing to admit that harm was caused regardless of intent.)

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