[Ridwan]

Quoted this from a friend in facebook. I think it's an excellent thought meal for us all :

I think one of the biggest failures of OTL historiography is the attempt to shoehorn the peculiar pattern of Western Europe into a global one, and as such attempting to ham-handedly force patterns of history that may actually be Sui Generis into a European model. East Asia is to me the most obvious example of where this analysis would actually fail quite solidly as far as any evidence-based aspect to historical analysis.

In East Asia China is simultaneously an imperial overlord, cultural originator/culture source, and a civilization that evolved and changed dramatically in its own right, with its changes likewise drastically affecting its neighbors. From a European POV, China had far earlier than Europe most of the ingredients of modern science, including a rationalistic apatheistic view of natural causes, the absence of a prevailing orthodoxy to limit scientific inquiry, a technological focus, but China has its own set of historical issues to confront. First among them the major weakness of the Imperial system in the form of the eunuch and harem problems, which repeatedly destabilized the imperial system from within. Second, poor geography where the tribal confederacies to the north were concerned, meaning a pattern of repeated conquest by said same Confederacies, which whether they assimilated or not was a devastating experience at the time. Third and finally, China had the issues that its imperial-dynastic structure, while suited to expand, had no rivals equivalent to itself, creating the long term issue that is most relevant to issues of Chinese 'stagnation'.

But because China was both so large and an innovator relative to its neighbors, Chinese influence in China's vincinity was extremely pervasive. Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and even Indonesia all adopted heavy influence from Chinese culture, albeit Confucian ideology limits the degree in official sources to which the reality of independence and independent systems of government/cultural history could be acknowledged.

Indochina, as the name indicates, and Indonesia became overlaid by both Indian and Islamic influences, creating a hybrid of East Asian, Hindu, and Muslim cultures that makes this region the most distinctive aspect of East Asia, though in Indonesia and in the Malyasia region Chinese influence was all out of proportion to Chinese numbers. In the case of the Indochinese societies, any strong Chinese dynasty worth its salt tried conquering them with various degrees of success.

In the cases of Korea and Japan, the power of both systems fluctuated and both adapted very different elements of Confucianism. Choson built a Korean system that was powerful but intact and inwardly focused, albeit in the long term helping Korea into the problems that enabled the conquest of the Japanese. Choson did this, however, on the basis of a longer-term cultural/civilizational history where the unenviable geographic location between China and Japan was a continual problem.

In Japan's case alone among the countries in question, the dynasty never (officially) fell, but it still degenerated in the vein of Confucian thinking. This is where the Bafuku/Shogunates stepped in, adopting the concept of autocracy and dynamism in a new form, meaning Japanese politics, while still seeing the occasional Imperial resurgence instead had a Shogunate dynastic cycle instead of a monarchical one.

For all of East Asia, thus, the 19th Century becomes a turning point, but it's one in different ways. China meets the concept of nationalism, and as like all these states it's de facto multi-ethnic and in practice run by a dynasty of another nationality, it starts having nationalistic issues where Chinese nationalism is strongly opposed to the dynastic structure, this ultimately combining with civil war and defeat in foreign wars to topple the dynasties. In Japan the collapse of the Tokugawa system sees the rise of a military system patterned on that of the German Empire, significantly because this exempted the military altogether from civilian control, thus continuity more than change (not that this worked well for Germany or Japan in the long term). Indonesia and Indochina, however, are conquered by Dutch, French, and British in various parts of each.

The 20th Century saw this imperial era collapse as bloodily as it begins, and the rise of Communism reflects a means for systems that originated with authoritarian politics to accomplish a Bismarckian goal of industrialization without sacrificing much of the older system in practice if at all possible. In this regard the Korean War for China is a moment of national rebirth as a military power, screws over Korea into a Forever War and Japan loses WWII but becomes one of the richest countries on the planet afterward. Vietnam, of course, defeated all comers in a military sense in the 20th Century, earning the most consistent win streak out of all of them.

The thing is that this is not a Western European pattern, it's something in its own right, it's got its own weaknesses and strengths, and European influence to a great extent as I see it has been greatly exaggerated. East Asia did not imitate Europe, it took from Europe the parts it wanted and neglected the rest. This is why from an AH POV, the difficulty of writing PODs for non-European societies is that it should be treated from the POV of what are in actual fact more separate histories with sui generis patterns than is generally the case. The countries in this part of the world all have their own separate histories, but as with Europe nationalism is still as much nonsense here in terms of history and anachronism as it is in a European context.

Thus to me the greatest weakness of how East Asia can be treated in AH discussions is to treat Western Europe as the norm and to judge East Asia/SE Asia on the basis of Europe. In reality such histories should be viewed in their own rights, as their own tales. Your thoughts?