Belated summary
I am in the Jurassic period and just got off the time machine. The summary is a little late. There are no extra chapters or anything. At most, I will post some personal opinions.
The United States ends this book here, and there is no pressure to end it early. The book begins after World War I. Continuing is nothing more than repeating the previous operations, how to seize other people's industries, and there is no more tricks to play.
This book is a sequel to American Slave Owners. I think it is about 170,000 words long. The protagonist of that book is really cruel, much more inhuman than the protagonist of this book. The old lady in this book is the heroine of Slave Owners.
After World War I, the development of the United States can be roughly guessed, and the rest is a matter of course. The protagonist has basically seized all the important industries, unless it is written about the electronic age, but that is still a long way off. The key is that the United States is already strong enough. If the protagonist continues to develop, how strong will the United States in the book be by then?
The United States in this book is stronger than in real time and space, but the concept of American Empire may not cover the real world. First of all, after occupying the Persian Gulf, there is definitely no room for maneuver in the Arab world. According to the territory of the Confederate States of America in the book, although its area is not large, it occupies 60% of the Persian Gulf's oil reserves, and the entire Persian Gulf accounts for 65% of the world's reserves.
Another reason is that the solution to the problem of black people in the United States will reduce the hidden dangers in the United States, but at the same time, it will be much more difficult to penetrate Africa. Africa is a little backward, but black people are definitely not stupid enough to not understand why the black population in the United States plummeted in the 20th century. In fact, even the white countries now do not trust black people. It is impossible for them to pretend that they have never been colonized. They just don’t have the right to speak out, or those former colonial powers are indeed far more developed than the current African countries, and African countries do not have the confidence to criticize them.
In the last chapter, because of Goa’s status, India has to be dealt with, and South Asia is probably doomed.
In this time and space, the sphere of influence of the United States in Western Europe is still stable, and the Five Eyes Alliance will be closer, but it will not be like the current situation where the United States is everywhere and even farting affects the national interests of the United States. There are gains and losses.
It seems that controlling the world is a grand blueprint, but power is mutual, and if you want everything, you will have to pay a huge price.
Take the United States today for example. It cannot give up any place. Once it gives up any place, the negative impact will be reflected back to the United States. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States has established influence in more countries. Military spending has not decreased but increased. Whether the United States can still support this continuous investment, it must continue to invest. This is a situation where it is difficult to get off the tiger.
Once they encounter areas that they cannot conquer, the areas where they have already established influence and control will become unstable, resulting in a significant increase in investment costs. As early as the end of the Cold War, some scholars in the United States hoped that the United States would not press on and try to hold the whole world in its hands. A country cannot afford such continuous investment, but people are greedy and want to make money, so they are not afraid.
Everyone thinks they are unique and smart and will never repeat the mistakes of previous countries. This is all an illusion.
The British Empire invested a lot of money to establish its influence and control, but it could no longer make a profit through colonial income, so it gave up its colonies. The Mongol Empire had already become one of the Four Khanates when the Song Dynasty was still around.
The United States is now secretly suppressing so many countries. Even if they don't all resist, if a small part of them does not cooperate, it will be enough to cause headaches for the US government. I won't say much about the United States. It was the chosen land in the industrial age. In the agricultural age, North America was not as good as China. Without mountains to block it, it was always harvested by cold currents. The centers of American civilization are all near the equator.
Of course, modern people can open their third eye and brag about how good the conditions are in the United States. In the agricultural era, that place was inhabited by nomadic tribes of Indians. If this applies to China, the question should be why didn’t the Han and Tang dynasties place their main core on the Mongolian Plateau, and it would have been better to have the capital in Ulaanbaatar.
Let's talk about China during the same period, the Qing Dynasty, right? The Qing Dynasty, I think, bullied the weak and feared the strong, fought agricultural countries and nomadic peoples like an old dog, and didn't follow the rules. This is not slander, bullying the weak and fearing the strong is not shameful, it is the basic principle between countries. During the Sui Dynasty, Emperor Wen of the Sui Dynasty instigated discord between the Turks and caused the Turks to split. It was a good move, no one can say it was bad, it was called a strategy.
The Qing Dynasty has a decent official status. This is not just a so-called expert, but basically a consensus in the field of Chinese history. Everyone knows that there are many negative impressions on the Internet. The reason for this impression is that the Chinese government believes that the Ming and Qing dynasties were the decline stage of ancient Chinese dynasty history, and basically they don't mention it if they can.
But the situation of the Qing Dynasty was different, because the territory was large and the population was large, and the Qing Dynasty had borders that had been used since ancient times. I have written before that the maps of the Yuan and Ming dynasties were changed due to political reasons with the Soviet Union, and they were drawn largely to the north. The Yuan Dynasty's tiger swallowing Siberia and the Ming Dynasty's northeast could at least draw the Kamchatka Peninsula, which were all special editions for their own country. Mr. Tan Qixiang himself also said that he opened up the territory for the Yuan and Ming dynasties for certain reasons, and relevant books are not difficult to find.
I learned about this when I was writing about the Soviet Union, and I saw pictures in the textbooks of the early days of the People's Republic of China. But I didn't dare to write a paragraph with such a chapter. The times were sensitive, and the Soviet Union didn't have a good reputation at that time. It's not like now, China has almost experienced the situation of the Soviet Union. If I could still write about the Soviet Union now, the sense of substitution would be much stronger.
Therefore, many historians in their seventies and eighties have been studying for decades, and many of them were historians before Tan Qixiang, so they naturally don’t attach much importance to the first impression of the Ming Dynasty. But some people say that the Ming Dynasty is a larger version of the Northern Song Dynasty, which is a bit too much.
Chinese history textbooks do not mention any internal contradictions or historical hatreds. Otherwise, Junggar, which is very important in the history books of many countries, would not be given just a few sentences. No one knows where the Junggar people went and why there is a Junggar Basin. You can look up the information yourself.
The number of people who died during the Ming-Qing transition is not mentioned, because if it is mentioned, then for the sake of fairness, it will definitely be mentioned during all changes of dynasties. That would be complicated. Every time my country changes dynasties, the population loss on paper is shockingly high, and not half of it is a routine operation.
Speaking of this issue, I suddenly remembered that it seems that many people use the registered population of Emperor Yang of Sui to put down the Tang Dynasty and prove that Li Shimin was just so-so. This proves nothing except that Emperor Yang of Sui was too low-level. If he hadn't made the world like that, would there have been so many population losses?
The Sui Dynasty is not evaluated as much as the Jin Dynasty today. We should thank Emperor Taizong of Tang. If Li Shimin could not stand the chaos and the Turks went south, the Sui Dynasty would definitely be evaluated lower than the Jin Dynasty. Since the usurpation of the throne, Yang Jian faced a better situation than Sima Yan. The rival Chen State that went south to unify the country had its capital on the Yangtze River without any buffer. The real emperor guarded the country's gate. It was far less powerful than the Wu State!
The Sui Dynasty had a good reputation, mainly thanks to Li Shimin, who quickly ended the chaotic times and did not give the Turks any chance.
The question of whether China can have an industrial revolution is probably impossible. In fact, the Ming and Qing dynasties are generally regarded as periods of decline in Chinese history, which basically tells everyone implicitly that the industrial revolution will not occur in China.
No one has mentioned the beginnings of capitalism in the Ming and Qing dynasties for a long time. To put it simply, the beginnings of capitalism in the Ming and Qing dynasties are a textbook summary. I don’t know why this topic is so popular on the Internet. I was interested in this topic before I was 20 years old, ten years ago.
This narrative is now being weakened in textbooks. The definition of the embryonic stage of capitalism is extremely outrageous. According to that definition, it seems that no dynasty does not meet the requirements, and even most countries that have reached a certain level have all of them.
The Industrial Revolution will definitely happen sooner or later, but we don’t know where or when it will happen. Anyway, the country where it happened, Britain, has several advantages. It is isolated overseas and is not easily affected by wars on the European continent, and its exploration is not easily disturbed. In addition, Britain is absolutely a heretic in terms of faith to the Roman Catholic Church in Europe. I have talked about the relationship between heresy and pagans too many times in my book.
It is also difficult to become a colonial empire. The Western concept of colonies did not start in modern times. The concept of colonies existed when the Roman Empire was still around. In the war between the Roman Empire and the Persian Empire, a treaty was signed as soon as the territories were ceded and compensations were paid. Even if the troops were at the gates of a city and the treaty was signed, they would withdraw. This is not considered stupid behavior in Chinese history.
The six kingdoms theory: cede five cities today, cede ten cities tomorrow, and then you can sleep peacefully for one night! After the Qin Dynasty, Chinese historical figures did not believe in the model of ceding land after fighting. Once it appeared, it would be a replica of the Qin Dynasty swallowing up the six kingdoms.
What China can do is to take the route of annexation while leaving the people behind. The example of Emperor Wu of Han annexing the south is too far away, while the example of Junggar is close enough. If we imagine it a little, China's expansion will definitely not be colonial expansion.
Moreover, the aftereffects of colonial expansion are too great. The problem of foreign population faced by the former colonial powers today is bound to happen. Perhaps in two or three hundred years, it will be included in our history textbooks as a warning.
Therefore, the Qing Dynasty could not be reformed at all, and it would be best if it were not reformed. It would be best if an empire that lasted for more than two hundred years perished. The interest groups that had been developed were beyond imagination, and this was true for any dynasty. Many novels have also written about the shameless character of the bureaucrats in the late Ming Dynasty.
The United States of America has been around for more than 200 years since its founding. It has some of the characteristics of the late Ming and Qing dynasties, with its party struggles of the late Ming dynasty and its arrogance of the late Qing dynasty. However, it is a modern society after all, so it will not be as obvious as in the late Ming and Qing dynasties.
It was good that the Qing Dynasty existed, at least it could be used to shirk responsibility, and the time of its demise was also good, as it was close to the outbreak of the World War, and all countries were sharpening their knives, so they should stop meddling in East Asian affairs.
Three thousand words seem to be enough. I originally wanted to compare the Chinese and Western civilizations. They are fundamentally different. After the Qin Dynasty, China took a completely different route. Now there is no need to make up the word count.
Anyway, it started with Britain, and then the industrial revolution was first learned by Europe, which had close resources, and impacted the whole world. It was impossible for China to have the same experience. Since the Qin Dynasty, China has been considered inferior in similar times. The nobles had the final say in the nominal monarchy, which was the case in the Jin Dynasty and the Southern and Northern Dynasties, especially in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, which lagged behind in the Northern Expedition.
The local forces were all hostile to each other, the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, just like Europe, which was called competition. It was not a good era. The central government did not care about things, the Yuan Dynasty! The Mongols could only be seen once a year when they collected taxes, and they were not even seen throughout the year. Emperor Hongwu looked down on this.
After China was unified by the Qin Dynasty, it was impossible for it to develop in the same environment as Europe. The general environment did not allow it. There were gains and losses. The agricultural era was undoubtedly successful. The transition to the industrial era was a bit more difficult, but compared with other civilizations, it was still quite successful. West Asia has always been Europe's rival. After the Ottoman Empire, the last superpower, was gone, West Asia was already in trouble. India, I look down on all religions, but the one I look down on the most is Hinduism.
The word count should be enough. In conclusion, the United States in this book is more stable than the current one. Its hegemony is not as outrageous as in modern times, but it is very stable, with gains and losses.
After finishing the first one, I didn’t think about starting a new book, but after being dragged out for two days of drinking, I thought carefully and started writing. At least it’s better than living a life of drunkenness and dreaming. I haven’t thought about the new book yet, but I will start thinking about it in two days.
I will not admit that the ending is bad. This book is a sequel. I have searched Qidian. Is there anyone more conscientious than me? The original plan was to write after World War I. There is nothing too difficult after that.
This chapter says don't help me find a country to write about. Yesterday a book friend suggested that I write about Egypt. When I thought of a country with 97% desert area, nothing and water that depends on the sky, I couldn't think of a normal way for Egypt to challenge the powers in modern times. Egypt 2,000 years ago was okay.
By the way, at the beginning of this book, I did want to fight the Civil War again, but later on, I felt that the protagonist could achieve his goal without fighting, and the timing of the book was a bit inconsistent with World War I, so in the end I just wrote about World War I.
(End of this chapter)
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