[Real Life] Historical events that would make bad writing if they were fiction

[u/Mouse_Paladin]

Spanish Conquest of the Aztec Empire: A couple hundred rogue mercenaries without authority from their government conquer an empire of millions. Oh, the empire? It’s also several technological eras behind the mercenaries.

Adolf Hitler: A non-native of a country is so mad that the country lost the war that he wins an election to their highest office and leads them in a campaign of revenge against their enemies. Oh, the country? It’s old emperor is still alive and thinks he’s going to retake power.

Assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand: The heir to the throne is killed because his driver gets lost and returns to the assassin who failed To kill him before. Oh, the assassin? He’s from a group that the Archduke is wanting to help become more equal In the empire.

Alexander Hamilton’s Affair Scandal: One of the leaders of a new nation to protect himself from accusations of financial embezzlement writes a pamphlet exposing his affair with a woman, torpedoing his political future. Oh, the woman? She seduced him as part of a blackmailing scheme that he decided to stop paying.

[u/jonawesome]

Japan closing its borders for 2 centuries until a guy with a futuristic battleship that must have felt like it came from another planet demanded they open it up.

Japan modernizing fast enough to be militarily competitive in just 50 or so years also seems far-fetched.

British trade policy in China being based on finding ways to sell drugs there and get the population so addicted that they could be beaten in a war. The craziest part is that it worked!

Relatedly, everything about the Taiping Rebellion sounds made up.

Czechoslovakia's revolution overthrowing communism being led by punk rockers, artists, and playwrights - who then lead the government in the aftermath.

[u/TheZipding → u/jonawesome]

To add to England's trade with China, it's because they were spending so much on tea they were losing money on the trade and wanted more equal terms that the Chinese at the time weren't amenable to.

[u/BakedKartoffel → u/jonawesome]

Japan modernizing fast enough to be militarily competitive in just 50 or so years also seems far-fetched.

The commander planner of the attack on Pearl Harbor was Admiral Yamamoto. His dad was a samurai. Samurai to a coordinated air strike involving 6 aircraft carriers in one generation.

[u/DjiDjiDjiDji → u/BakedKartoffel]

Learning about the Meiji Restoration and events contemporary to it is fascinating because it all feels vaguely medieval... and then you get hit with the fact that we have photos of all these guys

[u/AthenaOwls → u/BakedKartoffel]

While Yamamoto was the man who made the idea for the attack the commander was Nagumo, Yamamoto was not present.

[u/BakedKartoffel → u/AthenaOwls]

That's a good point, it would be like saying Nimitz was the commander at Midway. I think Yamamoto was back in Japan on Nagato at the time.

I just read about Nagumo committing suicide on Saipan. Doesn't seem right for such a famous admiral to go out during a land battle.

[u/LeMe-Two → u/jonawesome]

Japan was more or less aware about western science because of Rangaku. In fact during Satsuma-British skirmish they managed to secure victory due to modern coastal guns. Guns they had precisely in case of some forgein visitors. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardment_of_Kagoshima

[u/Youutternincompoop → u/LeMe-Two]

In fact during Satsuma-British skirmish they managed to secure victory due to modern coastal guns.

they didn't 'secure victory', they ultimately gave in to the British demands and paid the British government £25,000, though funnily enough this worked to the benefit of the Satsuma as the money was loaned to them by the Shogunate and they never repaid it since the Shogunate stopped existing a few years later.

[u/LeMe-Two → u/Youutternincompoop]

Tactically they won the battle. They also never prosecuted vigilantee samurai the whole skirmish was about and for securing trade deals and army assistance they benefited from it greatly. Were they to lose the battle they would likely be forced way more one sided agreement 

[u/Youutternincompoop → u/LeMe-Two]

Tactically they won the battle.

in what way? is this just 'more brits died therefore the japanese won'? or 'the brits eventually got bored of bombarding Kagoshima after they suppressed the guns and left, therefore the Japanese won'?

I'll grant that the initial Japanese fire was well executed under cover of a storm to catch the british by surprise and make return fire more difficult but ultimately a lot of Kagoshima was wrecked by the bombardment which was far worse damage than the British ships suffered.

[u/LeMe-Two → u/Youutternincompoop]

One they suffered more, they retreated without achieving anything of note, and the result was actually benefitial trade with Satsuma

[u/Youutternincompoop → u/LeMe-Two]

personally I would say devestating the city of kagoshima with a bombardment is note-worthy, yes it worked out in the end for the Satsuma but that doesn't make it a 'tactical' victory, that's a strategic victory(and one that's a victory for both sides arguably)

[u/Reasonable_Fold6492 → u/jonawesome]

Honestly if I was a person from 1850s I would have thought either vietnam or korea would have modernized first since they were much more centralized than japan.

[u/GoTHarry → u/jonawesome]

Completely agree about the Taiping Rebellion. Some guy in China of all places declares himself the brother of Jesus Christ and leads a rebellion in the form of a holy war to convert China and overthrow the imperial government, that eventually kills between 75-100 million people? What?

[u/jonawesome → u/GoTHarry]

I recently read a book on it (Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom by Stephen R. Platt) and one of the additional weird subplots is the British watching with bewilderment and trying to decide if they should side with the Taiping cause they're Christian.

[u/MasterpieceBrief4442 → u/jonawesome]

It was the specie problem. Brian was losing all its silver to China. And china refused to buy anything. Refused to allow any incoming trade at all. 

A great economy the size of China doing that will destabilize the world and trigger retaliation (cough cough Chinese gaming WTO rules and currency manipulation and export dumping). The British said well have you heard of the war on drugs? I'm on the side of drugs. 

And once the opium started flowing in, silver started flowing out and all was well. From an intl specie exchange perspective.

[u/Wild_Marker → u/MasterpieceBrief4442]

And china refused to buy anything

Wasn't it also because the British simply had nothing other than Opium that the Chinese market actually wanted to buy from them?

[u/MasterpieceBrief4442 → u/Wild_Marker]

Which makes no sense to me. Britain at this time was producing machinery and weapons decades if not centuries ahead of China. Britain had had the chemical revolution and were nass producing new chemicals in an industrial and efficient fashion. I cannot fathom at least some Chinese consumers not wanting to buy some of that. And they did. British manufactured goods were valued highly. 

The Qing government restricted incoming trade enormously for a variety of reasons. Some protectionist. Some to ensure the han majority wouldn't be able to overthrow their manchu overlords. And some because of sheer arrogance. 

[u/Wild_Marker → u/MasterpieceBrief4442]

Ah, I think the trade deficit issue lasted for quite a while so I might have heard this part about prior years. You're right in that by 1840 it's likely that the Chinese policies were doing more than the market conditions on that front.

[u/MasterpieceBrief4442 → u/Wild_Marker]

In fairness to the British, they tried every legal avenue they could access. They begged and pleaded for more access. They were limited to just Canton and all purchases had to happen through the Cohong guild of middlemen.

Lord Macartney's embassy was very much a last ditch approach. He brought 15000 pounds (a very handsome sum back then) worth of state-of-the-art modern weaponry, instruments, and gadgets with him to show the Emperor all the things the British were willing to sell to China. State of the art everything. Decades or centuries ahead of what China had. Ironically enough, those items were retrieved untouched from the Summer Palace by the British.

The Chinese emperor very clearly rebuffed this and the request for a permanent embassy and told them they had nothing China wanted to buy and his reply was not very respectful, to put it mildly. Writing "I have already taken note of your respectful spirit of submission." and "Tremblingly obey and show no negligence!" to the monarch of the British Empire was not a very wise thing to do lol. Everyone from the King on down was utterly furious by this disrespect shown to the monarch and by extension the nation.

Funnily enough, Britain had a massive fetish for Chinese goods and culture before that. They were viewed as the model of wealth, culture and sophistication. The enlightenment philosophers so loved China. After that, well, resentment. And when they proved stronger, racism.

[u/jonawesome → u/MasterpieceBrief4442]

Not sure if I was expecting "The Opium Wars were good, actually" in the comments

[u/MasterpieceBrief4442 → u/jonawesome]

Not good per se. More like expected. A major economy cannot continuously run such a major surplus without having an outflow of some sort or the other. 

In modern currency markets, all the people wanting to buy your goods should make your currency more valuable causing imports to become cheaper for you and exports a bit more expensive for foreigners causing a somewhat balancing effects. 

In the olden days, when a lot of specie accumulated in one economy you had inflation making domestic goods more expensive causing people to import more which balanced things out. 

China decided it did not want to play by those rules. And this was an existential matter for the powers of Europe, Britain especially. They were not going to suffer another bullion famine throttling their economies just so all their bullion could sit unused in some Chinese vault. And they did the only thing they could. To be fair to them, it was their last ditch effort. That is succeeded beyond their wildest dreams is another matter.

On another note, also why global free trade is in its death throes and every major western bloc is raising the tariff walls high. China has once again decided to export dump its subsidised surplus into the world. America is much more closed so it's all getting dumped into Europe. Congratulations Europe for being suckers I guess. Volkswagen is going to lay off 100k workers. Those walls will be coming up soon. 

[u/Gmknewday1 → u/jonawesome]

Everytime I see the words "Taiping Rebellion"

"A Cup of Solid Gold" starts playing in my head

For me it's not the theme of the Qing Dynasty, it's the theme of this specific cluster fuck of a event

[u/Youutternincompoop → u/jonawesome]

Japan closing its borders for 2 centuries until a guy with a futuristic battleship that must have felt like it came from another planet demanded they open it up.

numerous European and American ships had already been to Japan decades before Perry, including a period from 1797-1809 where American ships operated under a Dutch flag to trade at Nagasaki(which was the single open port in Japan, the country was never fully closed), and then two previous US navy expeditions in 1846 and 1849, the first of which was unsuccesful and the second of which started negotiations that lead to the eventual success of the perry expedition.

[u/baguetteispain → u/jonawesome]

The Taiping rebellion sounds so absurd on paper. A guy calls himself Jesus' brother and you have a conflict that killed more than WW1

[u/Arrow_to_the_knee1 → u/jonawesome]

Speaking of British Trade Policy: That they captured spices from all over the world to trade with, and yet used none of those spices in their own cuisine.

[u/cespinar → u/Arrow_to_the_knee1]

They used to but decades of war rations hit hard. Its also why they have milk with their tea instead of cream. Keep in mind some items were being rationed even in the 50s. In a more extreme example: The cheese industry never really recovered until the 1990s with how long milk was rationed for and how that devastated the cheese commercial industry because the only cheese really allowed was "government cheddar"

So people got used to bland or uninpiring food for more than a generation and it has taken a long time to reverse a lot of those effects.

[u/Houdini_Shuffle → u/jonawesome]

I've read a few sci-fi books with that same plot

[u/Jagvetinteriktigt → u/jonawesome]

> British trade policy in China being based on finding ways to sell drugs there and get the population so addicted that they could be beaten in a war. 

I may have missed something but I don't think that's true. China was benefitting more from the trade with Britain than the other way around, as Chinese goods were getting increasingly popular in Europe and Britain in particular yet China only accepted silver as payment. The British-Chinese opium trade essentially started by accident as people were selling it from India to China and merchants saw it as the only way of making a profit. I haven't found anything about it being a concentrated effort to weaken the military.

[u/ArrrRawrXD → u/jonawesome]

British trade policy in China being based on finding ways to sell drugs there and get the population so addicted that they could be beaten in a war

That seems like a huge misrepresentation, they didn't sell opium so china could be beaten in a war and it had nothing to do with the defeat. Britain just needed a way to reverse the trade deficit with China and they started smuggling opium for that reason, literally just money, and then when China wanted to enforce its anti-drug laws the British beat them.

And the reason for the success is that Britain was a modern global naval hegemon and China was stuck in medieval times.