Butterfly effect that have happened throughout history.

The decision of a Tang dynasty emperor to give a Turkic nobleman more status led to Central Asia becoming Turkic, the creation of Russia and Turkey, the Spanish colonization of America and eventually the USA.

The year is 742 and the Tang dynasty looks like this:

The Tang is arguably at its peak, the emperor would probably be known as one of the greatest Chinese emperors if not THE greatest emperor had he not made one major error.

The Tang dynasty at the time had something like 45% of the world’s economy and was socially and culturally flourishing, much of the major innovations in economic policy that powered the Song golden age found their roots in Tang dynasty economic policy. It was cosmopolitan, socially vibrant, scientifically advanced and arguably still had some room left to keep going up.

That is, until this guy right here gets promoted to regional warlord of the North:

This is An Lushan, a Turkic-Central Asian nobleman who was in the service of the Tang army in the 7th century AD. As a general he led his troops to defeat several rebellions by Khitans and other tribes on the Northern frontier and as a result gained a lot of power and prestige in the Tang court.

One of his major policies was to bring more non-Han soldiers and generals into the Tang army, so the Emperor says well he’s successful enough in defeating the Khitans and Turks, let’s go ahead and let him get his wish.

An Lushan had somehow managed to get permission to have not one region, but three out of nine military regions on the Northern border and he controlled nearly 50% of the Tang elite cavalry, many of whom were Turkic or Mongolic in origin.

So now An Lushan has a bunch of soldiers whom are more loyal to him than the emperor, and also most of his generals are Turko-Mongol and certainly do not place the emperor over their resident Khagan. He then decided “fuck it, I’m gonna try to create my own dynasty now” which leads to a rebellion named after him and a small dynasty called the Yan dynasty centered around Hebei.

The rebellion caused the Chinese population to drop from ~50 million to 20 million and the Tang dynasty never really recovers from it, had the rebellion not happened the Tang would’ve likely kept going for another century or two considering that the Tang actually managed to stay alive for another century in our timeline even with this rebellion occurring.

Now the Tang dynasty was forced to devolve much central power to regional warlords known as Jiedushi, which meant that the local warlords fragment into much smaller statelets than in previous collapses, for example the Han dynasty collapsed led to the three Kingdoms periods while the Jin dynasty collapse led to again a relatively stable 2–3 kingdom period. The Tang collapsed into 5 dynasties and 10 kingdoms, relatively ripen for something dramatic to happen.

“Even after the difficult suppression of that rebellion, some jiedushi such as the Three Fanzhen of Hebei were allowed to retain their powers due to the weakened state of the court. The jiedushi were one the primary factors which contributed to the political division of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, a period marked by continuous infighting among rival kingdoms, dynasties, and regional regimes established by jiedushi.”

Now, remember the small group that An Lushan managed to suppress as a general the Khitans? Well the Khitans used to be a small semi-nomadic tribe in the Liao river valley that had been a vassal tribe to either the Turkic people in Mongolia or the Tang dynasty, the sudden collapse of Tang hegemony meant they were finally free to expand.

The political environment of Northern China is so fractured that the Khitans whom were originally a weak semi-nomadic polity in Manchuria are able to effectively blitzkrieg themselves into Northern China.

The Khitans then expanded into Mongolia and Northern China, establishing the Liao dynasty.

See that small yellow strip? That is called the 16 prefectures, a small but extremely important territory that completes the great wall, without it the great wall is essentially useless and as a result the Chinese dynasty that reunifies most of the country suddenly has a major problem on their hands.

The Khitans could attack south and retreat north whenever they wanted but the Song couldn’t follow back, as a result of this the Song and Liao fought pretty much non-stop for the first century of their existences, and neither could really make a big dent in each others defenses. Eventually the Song and Liao decided to settle the issue by having the Song pay the Liao a fixed amount of silk and other treasure each year to keep the Khitans from invading and the Song and Liao had peace for a while.

But the Song never really forgot about how a big piece of territory that was supposed to be theirs is in the hands of some barbarians. Even then the Khitans were actually faithful to the treaty, as long as the Song paid up, nothing happened.

One thing that is a common theme throughout history is when a settled civilization is being harassed by a nomadic one, and the settled civilization decides to call up some other nomads to beat up the original ones but then it turns out that the old nomads were becoming more like the sedentary civilization while the new nomads end up beating up the settled civilization even more after they are done.

So the Song never really forgot about how the Khitans took their land and decided to call up another semi-nomadic group of barbarians called the Jurchens (ancestral to the later Manchus) to come destroy the Liao.

Now in the meantime the Liao had actually sinicized to such a degree that when the Mongols rolled around, they actually called the Khitans Chinese and put them in the racial caste system they made as Northern Chinese instead of Semu or Mongol, this is despite the Khitans being very close to Mongols ethnically (The Modern name of China in Mongolian is still derived from the term “Khitan”). The Liao had begun its own process of sedentarization, with the construction of the Liao great wall to block various Mongolic and Turkic tribes and the Khitans began to pick up agriculture.

This meant that the Liao stood no chance against the Jurchens whom were still very much horse barbarians and the Liao got rolled over, but the Liao envoy dispatched to the Song had a warning they really should’ve taken seriously:

“We might’ve been horse barbarians 200 years ago but you guys don’t know, we aren’t those horse barbarians anymore! when the Jurchens take over our lands, they will take over your lands too!”

And what did the Song do? They ignore their advice and begin attacking the Khitans themselves, obviously due to the geography they get totally destroyed and the Jurchens have to finish the Liao themselves and just as the Liao envoys said the Jurchens marched south and conquered Northern China.

Now the Song is really fucked, not only did they lose their pretty terrible defensive line in the north but now they are set all the way back to the Huai river and the Jurchens can just launch attacks on a huge front, the Jurchens and Song fight wars on and off for the next century.

Now as the Liao collapsed they lost control over Mongolia, so the Jin dynasty which sees itself as a successor of the Liao basically tries to walk into Mongolia again, a few of the Mongol tribes align themselves but one of those tribes doesn’t, the name of the tribe? Khamag Mongol.

So the Jin never really was able to control Mongolia like the Khitans were, so they decide to go the good ol’ divide and conquer route, they decide to support the Tatars against the Mongols, the Tatars capture Genghis Khan’s grandfather and the Jin have him tortured and executed which leads to huge enmity between Jurchen aligned tribes and anti-Jin tribes.

This was the first motivation for the Mongols to eventually start attacking the Jin dynasty. Now the Jin dynasty itself became like the Liao that preceded them, the Jin became sinicized and slowly lost the marital ability that had allowed them to conquer the Khitans and subdue to proto-Mongolic tribes as well as conquer Northern China, so by the time the Mongols roll around the Jin get absolutely wrecked by the Mongols.

So the Mongols are now supremely confident, they managed to defeat the Jin and now they develop tactics they used during their war with the Jin and consolidate their forces, now swelling with Khitan, Jurchen and even Han defectors from the Jin whom would later form the core of the Mongol army later on.

Remember those Khitans from earlier? A splinter group of them whom had refused to submit to the Jin actually fled west to Xinjiang and created a dynasty called the Western Liao in Xinjiang that bordered the Khwarezmian empire which controlled Iran and Central Asia.

The Western Liao had recently had a coup d’etat, a Naiman prince fled to Western Liao and was given a position, only for him to betray the emperor and take power for himself. Now the Mongols had a major reason to go into Central Asia, the prince could use the Western Liao as a stepping stone to reconquer his tribal lands from the Mongols and this was a very big threat. The Mongols then invaded the Western Liao and put to rest the last remnants of the Khitan Liao dynasty.

Now the Mongols border Russia, Central Asia, Iran and China.

Eventually the Mongols conquer China, Iran, Central Asia, Russia and the middle east:

First instance of the butterfly effect:

So the Mongols end up invading central Asia and killing 90% of Iran and Central Asia’s population, which led to the end of the historical dominance of Iranian languages in the area. The result of this conquest meant that the centuries old dominance of Iranian cultures and languages ends up being supplanted by Turkic languages in less than a decade.

Now that’s not the only instance:

The destruction in Central Asia leads to the displacement of various Turkic tribes that fled the Mongol conquest to the only place that had a similar climate and terrain to Central Asia that was not under the control of the Mongols - Anatolia.

To the north of the Ottomans on the Eastern European plain the Mongols then conquer the Kipchak-Cumans and the early Russian states, the legacy of this is the unification of the disparate Russian states into the Muscovy duchy. Which is the basis of modern day Russia.

The Mongol empire ushers in a new era of trade and commerce along the silk road, one fellow from Italy named Marco Polo decides to head east and eventually ends up in China. His writings and stories are recorded and passed around in Europe and paint the picture of Asia as a rich and prosperous continent that has a lot of treasure waiting to be taken and a lot of heathens waiting to be Christianized.

The Ottomans would then eventually cut off trade between Asia and Europe, which leads to the Spanish and Portuguese to seek alternative trading routes. One of these fellows named Cristobal Colon is inspired by Marco Polo’s original stories and decides he wants to try to get to Asia, he decides to get west instead of east which leads to him bumping into two new continents.

This eventually leads to the Spanish colonization of the America’s

Soon one of the countries that was a rival of the Spanish that wanted in on all the gold and resources the Spanish now had in abundance due to the colonization of the America’s starts to claim the Eastern coast of the United States

Which then expands to the Continental US we know today.

Synopsis: The decision of a Tang emperor to give a Turkic nobleman more status leads to the decline of the Tang dynasty which leads to the rise of the Khitans which leads to the rise of the Jurchens which leads to the rise of the Mongols, whom unify Russia under Moscow, displace Iranic languages from Central Asia and push Turkic tribes into Anatolia, which leads to the Ottoman ban on European trade heading East which leads to Spanish ships heading west which leads to European colonization of the America’s and eventually leads to the establishment of the United States.

The darkest period of Chinese history 1839-1949

Imagine being one of the most powerful countries in history. Imagine having a long, rich history of almost 5000 years. Imagine being one of history’s 4 biggest empires. Imagine, for thousands of years, having been the “almost” centre of the world. Wars were fought to get access to your trade. Empires expanded to reach you. European adventurers accidentally “discovered” a new continent to find you. Imagine being the birthplace of some of history’s most important inventions such as paper and gunpowder. Imagine all of that, then imagine that all being gone.

Now imagine your country in poverty. Imagine what was once the most powerful of empires, being raped and colonized by “barbarians” half a world away. Imagine losing a war to a country that was once your vassal. Imagine having your land taken after losing humiliating war after humiliating war.

Ladies, gentlemen, carrots, parrots, everyone and everything in-between, allow me to introduce you to the century of humiliation.

The century of humiliation (1839–1949) started when the Qing Dynasty (清朝) of China lost the first opium war to the British Empire in 1839. Before then, China had been feared and respected. European powers had been, literally, fighting to get to trade with China. But China was an isolationist country. European traders were only allowed to trade with China from a few ports in the south (Canton). Trade with China was also hard, China only accepted silver and this was draining the treasures of the British Empire. So the British tried to trade opium for tea and they tried to sell opium for silver which they could then use to buy tea.

Understandably, the Chinese were not happy about addictive and harmful drugs flooding into China. The Qing government tried to ban Opium, but it started to be smuggled in illegally through India. Eventually, the Chinese had enough and they destroyed a bunch of British Opium by dumping it into harbours.

The British retaliated, claiming that the Chinese destroyed their property and that the Chinese needed to pay compensation. Obviously, the Chinese didn’t. So long story short, the British and Chinese started fighting.

The Chinese had expected that the British wouldn’t really fight and that they would quickly sue for peace as there would be limited British Soldiers in Asia. But the British has soldiers in India and SE Asia, which were quickly mobilized. The Chinese had much less advanced weapons, fighting for a large part with swords and traditional weapons. The British had rifles and muskets. The Chinese had traditional ships called Junks and fireships, the British had steamships and cannons. The British made their way up the Chinese coast, and the Yangtze River, winning battle after battle. China quickly sued for peace and signed very unequal treaties. It had to pay reparations to Britain and it had to give land to Britain. This was in the form of Hong Kong.

Over the next few decades, other European powers and even the US got involved in China. China was split up and divided amongst the European powers. Japan too got involved.

Russia took Tuva, parts of Mongolia and a large portion of Manchuria.

The Germans took Qing Dao.

The British took Hong Kong.

And the French took some lands in the south which were added to the French Indo-China colony.

China was humiliated and even Japan, a long time vassal of China and a nation who the Chinese saw as lesser, took land from them. Japan took Taiwan, Sakhalin and Korea.

China was being colonized. And it was powerless to stop it.

Now let’s fast forward to the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1912. The Qing had fallen after a civil war and had been replaced by the Republic of China, led by the KMT. For a moment it looked like China was about to become a rich, prosperous and stable democracy. But…

The ROC was founded by Sun Yet Sen (Sun Zhong Shan), but Sun wouldn’t lead it for long. The leadership of the ROC was quickly handed to Yuan Shi Kai. Yuan became the president of China and quickly gathered power as a dictator. Then he declared himself to be the emperor of China. Then there was another civil war, this time the country fell under the control of warlord states. China was divided. Eventually the ROC “retook control” and “reunified” the country.

By this time ww1 had ended and the central powers had lost. Because of the league of nations, China couldn’t just annex its old lands that were controlled by Germany. China tried to appeal to the league of nations, but its lands such as Qingdao, were given to the Japanese. More humiliation. China saw that the world didn’t care about it.

Please keep in mind that by this point, China had been being screwed over for almost 80 years. China had been colonized and defeated. China had been robbed and raped and pillaged. Foreign powers had occupied and taken over Chinese land and what was once the 4th largest empire in history had lost thousands of kilometres of land and had become a 3rd world country. At this time, China was an impoverished and war-torn country and, oh boy, was it about to get worse.

Let’s skip a few unimportant people and start to talk about Chiang Kai Shek (Jiang Jie Shi). Chiang became the president of China in 1928. It didn’t take long before he established himself as a dictator, controlling the country through a military dictatorship. He was a generalissimo, but he didn’t ever really have control over the entire country. Tibet and Xinjiang, both important and large Chinese territories, started to act with almost total autonomy. Mongolia was basically a Russian puppet state and much of the country was lawless and uncontrolled, run by warlords. China was basically a divided nation. But still, Chiang ruled with an iron fist. He cracked down on workers’ rights protests and unionists, sometimes violently. The lands that he did control, he led poorly and cruelly. This led to the CCP and the communist revolution. Peasants were basically owned as slaves by landlords and warlords and still China was being screwed over by foreign powers. China had divided, for the first time in almost 700 years. China was, yet again, humiliated. China had gone from a respected empire to a half dead, rotting shell of a country, broken into bits and pieces.

So then there was a Chinese civil war, again. The Communist guerrillas vs the nationalist KMT. But this wasn’t just a civil war, it was also a war for China’s future. The Communists and the modern CCP, as much much nationalistic as they are communist. They fought, yes, to get power and yes, for workers’ and farmers’ rights, but also for the very heart and soul of China. They fought to save China from humiliation. The Communists fought as nationalists, looking to finally rebuild the country. The Chinese civil war was bloody, the nation falling further into poverty and war. More and more and more humiliation. Then ww2 happened and to the Chinese, it was the second Sino-Japanese war. The Japanese invaded China through Manchuria, taking it over and heading southward. Japan, an old vassal of China’s and a country whose culture was almost copy and pasted from China, was beating China bad. The civil war stopped, both sides worked together to fight the Japanese, but it wasn’t enough. It didn’t take the Japanese long to invaded down to Nanjing, at that time the capital. During the annexation of Nanjing, the Japanese raped the city in one of the worst mass rapes in history. What happened there, and in the rest of China, is called, by some historians, a genocide. It almost rivals the Holocaust. I, obviously, won’t show images of the rape of Nanjing as it would be incredibly insensitive. It was a terrible mass rape where terrible atrocities were committed. Search it up if you are interested, but I won’t give details here as it may be inappropriate to some readers. Anyway, the rape of Nanjing was one of the final nails in the coffin for the collective dignity of the Chinese people. It was the ultimate humiliation for the Chinese people. It showed that China was too weak. China could be taken over by the Japanese. China had become a third world country and a husk of a nation. Chinese people were living as slaves as the most important parts of their country had been taken over.

Another humiliation came at the end of the war. China never got the chance to defeat Japan. America did it.

Then another humiliation, China didn’t get the Korean Peninsula back, instead it got split between the USSR and the USA.

Then another humiliation. The UN didn’t let it partition Japan, like the rest of the allies did with the rest of the Axis, instead it all went to the US.

Then China was plunged again into civil war.

This time, the KMT didn’t even really rebuild the country. The peasantry was still in poverty and many were slaves. So the Communists started to gain traction. The Communists got volunteers and got a massive peasant army.

After 4 years of fighting, it was over. The republic had fled, the country was reunified and it was finally over. On October 1st, 1949, Mao gave his famous speech at Tiananmen Square, announcing that the People’s republic of China had been founded.

That day, the century of humiliation officially ended. China had a government of their own. But China was still a rotten, skeleton of a country. In truth, the century of humiliation ended. The country was still divided, the country was still poor and the scars of the century of humiliation were still fresh. China had gotten out of the century of humiliation, but it was yet to recover.

China had gone from this:

(This isn’t a full map, at its height the Qing empire controlled Korea)

To this:

Britain still controlled Hong Kong, Portugal still controlled Macau, and the Nationalists still controlled Taiwan. In fact, the majority of the Chinese people were not represented in the UN. The UN still only recognized the KMT as the official government of China. “Red” China, was nothing in the world’s eyes.

Under the CCP, China eventually took back Xinjiang and Tibet and got back Macau and Hong Kong. China eventually got rid of the warlords and became united again. Then, in 1997, Hong Kong was given back to China. Then, the oldest, deepest and most noticeable wound from the century of humiliation finally healed. The century of humiliation had officially ended for China in the 40’s, but when Hong Kong was returned, China was reunified. The century of humiliation finally, truly ended.

The scars are still there today, even as China becomes a world power, the scars are still there. The Koreas are independent nations, Taiwan is still controlled by the ROC, Mongolia is a separate country and Hong Kong still has protests. But they are healed, and the Chinese people don’t really notice them.

To the Chinese people, China is returning to its old days. Personally, I think China can never have those old days back, the world has changed too much. But China has healed and China is moving into the new world, ready to try to put the past century behind it.

Ohaguro, 御 歯 黒, 鉄 浆) is a Japanese fashion and practice of blackining teeth

Japanese women blackened their teeth using iron and vinegar. Blackening of teeth indicated a married status of a woman. Before entering her husband’s house, the wife went around seven relatives who gave her iron-containing paint, and then a procedure called “first blackening” began.

Photo: Ohaguro (ohaguro, 御 歯 黒, 鉄 浆) is a Japanese fashion and practice of blackining teeth.

In the 14-15th centuries ohaguro was generally seen among adults. Though in the 16-17th centuries when daughters of military commanders were around 9 years old, they would blacken their teeth as a marking of their maturity age to prepare for political marriage of convince. The practice of blackening teeth was a practice among wealthy families and concerned only girls entering adulthood, which at that time began about 9 years old.

Later okhaguro spread among the men of the court aristocracy. This Japanese tradition was borrowed from Korea and existed from ancient times until the beginning of the 20th century. .

Samurai despised this style, but among the representatives of the house of Tyra, it was customary to follow such a rite. At some point, blackening teeth became fashionable for both genders, and finally became widespread among non-noble women. The tradition remained until the Edo era, when all married women shaved their eyebrows and painted their teeth.

Different Reasons for Ohaguro:

1. It was also done to preserve the teeth into old age, as it prevents tooth decay similar to the mechanism of modern dental sealants.
2. It was seen as a sign of maturity, beauty, and of civilization.
3. A common belief is that blackened teeth differentiated humans from animals.
4. Teeth blackening is often done in conjunction with traditions of teeth filing and evulsion, as well as other body modification customs like tattoos.
5. It is said that military commanders who were struck in the head on the battlefield and who did not want to be ugly would wear average women's make-up and would blacken their teeth. These faces imitated the Noh masks of women and young boys.
6. Its importance was expressed by such a proverb - "Since black always remains black without changing, so will the relationship between husband and wife." Blackened teeth showed that the wife swore eternal allegiance to her husband.

Photo: An Akha woman from Myanmar with blackened teeth

The European Attitude

Teeth blackening and filing were regarded with fascination and disapproval by early European explorers and colonists. The practice survives in some isolated ethnic groups in Southeast Asia and Oceania, but has mostly disappeared after the introduction of Western beauty standards during the colonial era.

Many Westerners, including Engelbert Kaempfer, Philipp Franz von Siebold, and Rutherford Alcock, who visited Edo-era Japan, described ohaguro as an abhorrent custom which disfigured women. Alcock conjectured that the purpose of it is chastity by making the women intentionally unattractive to prevent potential extra-marital relationship.

However, Japanese social scientist Kyouji Watanabe disagrees with this theory. Based on the fact that Japanese girls were allowed a large degree of both social and sexual liberty until the time of Ohaguro when they assume the responsibility of wife and mother, Watanabe thinks that it is a social ritual by which both society and a girl herself confirm the determination of matured women.[

History

1. The case of ohaguro was recorded in the book "The Tale of Genji" in the 11th century
2. Traces of blackened teeth can be seen in the buried bones and haniwa (250 to 538 CE) from the Kofun period.
3. Shōsōin, a treasure house connected to Tōdai-ji in Nara, holds the teachings brought to Japan by Jianzhen in 753.

During the Edo period in the 18-19th centuries, due to the smell and labor required for the coloring process, tradition gradually began to recede into the past. Although married women, unmarried women over 18, prostitutes and geisha still blackened their teeth. In rural areas, the ceremony was performed only during special celebrations, such as Matsuri (holidays), weddings or funerals.

On February 5, 1870, the Japanese government banned ohaguro and the tradition gradually became obsolete. After the Meiji period, it temporarily spread, but it almost entirely died out in the Taishō period (ending in 1927). In contemporary times, the only places where ohaguro can be seen is in plays, hanamachi (geisha districts), some festivals, and movies.

The word "ohaguro" was a Japanese aristocratic term. There is an alternate reading for ohaguro, 鉄漿 kane (literally 'iron drink'). At the old Imperial palace in Kyoto, it was called fushimizu (五倍子水). Among the civilians, such words as kanetsuke (鉄漿付け), tsukegane (つけがね) and hagurome (歯黒め) were used.

The practice of blackening teeth continues among many minority groups in China, Pacific Islands and Southeast Asia. It is mainly prevalent in older women, though the practice is still carried on by some younger women. Sometimes artificial teeth are used to achieve blackened teeth. Further west, teeth blackening has been documented as far as Madagascar and medieval Russia

Source:

Zumbroich, Thomas J. (2015). "The missī-stained finger-tip of the fair': A cultural history of teeth and gum blackening in South Asia".