Ming China, 1644: The Rise of the Nanyang Empire

[Pure wish-fulfillment] [Not historically accurate] [Fight the Tatars]

In the seventeenth year of the Chongzhen reign (1644), the catastrophic upheaval of the Jiashen year began.

It was an age when heaven and earth seemed to collapse. Li Zicheng’s rebel army breached Beijing, and the Chongzhen Emperor hanged himself on Coal Hill. Beyond Shanhai Pass, Dorgon’s Eight Banners cavalry swept forward, poised to overrun the Central Plains. Far to the south, the corrupt Southern Ming court still indulged in wine and pleasure along the Qinhuai River, while its factions fought tooth and nail over who would take the throne.

Faced with the Manchu Qing’s seemingly invincible dominance on land, Zheng Shaoyuan refused to get trapped in a doomed land war. Starting from Songjiang Prefecture, he used the Zheng family’s maritime resources to intercept fleeing craftsmen and wealth, and build a modern navy far ahead of its time.

If the land had become a battlefield of slaughter, then he would claim the right to survive from the sea. He would monopolize trade with Japan, drive out the Dutch East India Company, and colonize the islands of the South Seas. With broadsides from sailing ships of the line, he would shatter the shackles of the old era; with a torrent of commerce and steel, he would seize the Qing dynasty by its economic throat.

This is a story of defying fate in the face of desperation, and an ironclad epic of forging China’s backbone anew through sea power.