Xisheng: Difference between revisions

From 1750 to 1830 approximately fifty new towns were founded on the territory, important cities such as the port of Yuzhen in the Bay of Honghai, Tuzicheng and Luwei on Chimor territory, Goumao and Chouma southeast by the Ajaw lands and Hewen as a garrison town northeast of Rixis. Rixis itself was completely transformed from the former capital of [[Ixa'Taka]] into a center of Qian power, the majority of its original population was pushed outside the city boundaries and later pushed even further into outlying villages to farm there and work the new mines and plantations. The Pinghai Department at this time also became one of the main 'tributaries' that fed the vast stream of slaves that were sent into the [[Southern slave trade]]. Slavery became a mainstay of the economy of coastal Xisheng until limitations were put in place, too many native men of working age were being sold away and shortages of labor were affecting the profitability of many local enterprises. The extension of formal slavery to Xisheng carried out serious consequences for the colony in the form of slave revolts. The excessive cruelty of the settler slavers erupted in rebellions in 1812, 1835, 1875 and a last great slave uprising in 1892.

===Autonomy under the Army of Conquest===  

The military requirements of the campaigns of the Qian dynasty in [[Australis]] and internal revolts in the mainland necessitated by 1770 the gradual withdrawal and redeployment of regular Qian forces from Xisheng. To maintain a sufficiently strong force of deterrence in the colony, the Qian bureaucracy empowered the Governor-General, the local elites and the [[Xisheng Trading Company]] to recruit and equip its own military formations. Ostensibly under the authority of the Ministry of War, in practice these private armies were obedient only to whoever armed and paid them. After a period of tension and skirmishes, a realignment of the interests of local actors led to a process of centralization that coalesced all disparate armies into a single entity dubbed the [[Army of Conquest]]. By the 1850's the power of the [[Army of Conquest]] began to outpace the capacity of the factions that created it to maintain their control over it. The military authority of successive Governor-Generals crumbled away as they only had direct control over at most two thousand troops, the [[Army of Conquest]] numbered some 30,000 at this point. The impetus to construct the [[Great Arsenal]] allowed the army to build its own arms factories and foundries in Xisheng to equip its forces, becoming an entirely self sufficient native military force. With private financial support, the [[Army of Conquest]] founded the Xisheng Military College to train its own officer cadres independently from the Qian army. This institution recruited from all the layers of settler society regardless of class and instructed them in the army's political goals of territorial expansion, strategic autonomy from the mainland and local hegemony over civilian authorities. The most famous alumni of this institution was [[Hong Huanxiong]] who eventually rose to the highest rank attainable in the army, that of Great Marshal.  

[[File:Yuan Shikai in uniform.jpg|thumb|Hong Huanxiong, Great Marshal of the [[Army of Conquest]] in the early 20th century.]]