A rant about India in ATLs

Flocculencio · Dec 26, 2005

I always get a bit irritated in scenarios where people give the East Indies to China or Japan even when the scenario also includes a united India. The fragmented India in OTL was able to pretty much culturally colonise everything from Thailand southwards- a united India is going to be even more influential.

I guess that this is because China and Japan are probably more familiar civilisations to most westerners than India is- still, if you have a united India in a TL it's much more likely to either conquer SE Asia or have it as a vassal than China (or Japan!?) is.

Especially where Japan's concerned. If you've got a united China and a united India I could see Chinese dominance of SE Asia occuring quite easily- you just need a few wars which China wins.

But Japan? I'm sorry but Japan projecting it's power all the way past China and then being able to keep a united India out of the East Indies is a wee bit far fetched.

Sorry about the rant but I don't think that India gets treated very fairly in most TLs and this is one aspect of that.

carlton_bach · Dec 26, 2005

I hear ya. BUt let's face it, the reason is easy enough to see. I go to my public library to get reading matter and -
China: about three yards of books, from exhibition catalogues on the Huangdi tomb to a new biography of Mao, a (lousy) collection of Confucian sayings and three or four 'universal' histories-
Japan: About the same amount, from alarmist rants about 'Japan inc' taking over the world to lavishly illustrated screeds about Bushido and a neo-Marxist history of the Isles.
India: a biography of Gandhi, a book about elephants and a collection of Anglo-Indian humorous prose. OK, and a book about the Kashmir conflict since 1995.

meh

Flocculencio · Dec 26, 2005

carlton_bach said:
I hear ya. BUt let's face it, the reason is easy enough to see. I go to my public library to get reading matter and...

Yeah, that's a problem too, one I hadn't thought of. Public libraries in England tend to be pretty decent regarding India but I'd guess that outside the UK, India itself and a few other places (like Singapore) with a large Indian minority, material might not be readily available.

Like I said I guess the whole Japan thing is what gets on my nerves even more than China- to be fair to Japan, they were pretty irrelevant on the wider world stage until about 150 years ago and you still get PODs BC which end up with Japan in the Philippines, SE Asia and Australia with a united India mysteriously relegated to the borders of British India or more often the Republic of India

NapoleonXIV · Dec 26, 2005

Flocculencio said:
I always get a bit irritated in scenarios where people give the East Indies to China or Japan even when the scenario also includes a united India. The fragmented India in OTL was able to pretty much culturally colonise everything from Thailand southwards- a united India is going to be even more influential.

I guess that this is because China and Japan are probably more familiar civilisations to most westerners than India is- still, if you have a united India in a TL it's much more likely to either conquer SE Asia or have it as a vassal than China (or Japan!?) is.

Especially where Japan's concerned. If you've got a united China and a united India I could see Chinese dominance of SE Asia occuring quite easily- you just need a few wars which China wins.

But Japan? I'm sorry but Japan projecting it's power all the way past China and then being able to keep a united India out of the East Indies is a wee bit far fetched.

Sorry about the rant but I don't think that India gets treated very fairly in most TLs and this is one aspect of that.

Another reason might be that this is Alternate history and a weak India is more alternate than most. You'll see more timelines where there's a very weak or ineffectual US than where the US owns all of North Am.

A question. Since the British are carving up India in the 18thc and China in the 19th why wouldn't an expansionist Edo Japan be a rather natural candidate for East Asian superpower? Especially if they decide to keep on with the development of firearms, in which their swordsmiths had become the world leaders by the late 1500's .

Flocculencio · Dec 26, 2005

NapoleonXIV said:
Another reason might be that this is Alternate history and a weak India is more alternate than most. You'll see more timelines where there's a very weak or ineffectual US than where the US owns all of North Am.

Well actually I'd say that a unified India would be more alternate than most since in OTL India wasn't united until the Brits came along. If India is united in most pre-19th C POD TLs I think it's generally because people aren't that familiar with it and so chuck in an Indian Empire to go along with all their other empires.

Since the British are carving up India in the 18thc and China in the 19th why wouldn't an expansionist Edo Japan be a rather natural candidate for East Asian superpower? Especially if they decide to keep on with the development of firearms, in which their swordsmiths had become the world leaders by the late 1500's

I was speaking more of TLs with earlier PODs- once the Japanese are exposed to Western technology all bets are off. However, in TL's with earlier PODs Japan managing to prevail in SE Asia against a United China AND a united India is verging on ASB. It and Korea are far more likely to be in a similar relationship to China as the Indonesian kingdoms will be to India.

Straha · Dec 26, 2005

In my confederate victory TL which is in progress I've got a united india, a china split between north/south china and a japan ruling OTL's japan/taiwan/korea. India in this world is the biggest asian power....

Faeelin · Dec 26, 2005

A lot of it is, as carlton points out, that India seems to be less well studied.

I don't think the term "colonization" is really accurate for what happened in southeast asia, though; the natives decided to adopt certain parts of the indian culture for their own benefit; it wasn't as if hordes of indian conquistadors stormed ashore there.

Flocculencio · Dec 27, 2005

Faeelin said:
I don't think the term "colonization" is really accurate for what happened in southeast asia, though; the natives decided to adopt certain parts of the indian culture for their own benefit; it wasn't as if hordes of indian conquistadors stormed ashore there.

Thats why I specified "cultural colonisation" not "colonisation" in my original post. As you say, the natives were Indianised when they adopted parts of Indian culture from Indian merchants and brahmins not generally through force. Still doesn't change the fact that until the arrival of Islam, most SE Asian kingdoms were firmly within the South Indian cultural sphere as opposed to a Chinese or Japanese (!) one.

Tyr · Dec 27, 2005

Well look at the way things are- China and Japan are ancient unified nations. India was a collection of many different states and peoples that make Europe look united.
If you want a unified India I'd think most of its energy would go into the huge task of uniting itself leaving China free to do as it wants (with Japan tagging after them)

carlton_bach · Dec 27, 2005

Leej said:
Well look at the way things are- China and Japan are ancient unified nations. India was a collection of many different states and peoples that make Europe look united.
If you want a unified India I'd think most of its energy would go into the huge task of uniting itself leaving China free to do as it wants (with Japan tagging after them)

Japan isn't all that ancient as a unified nation. The national ideology projects unity back to pretty much antediluvial times, but as late as the 600s, there was little to suggest the Japanese rulers could make it stick. Cultural unity, more or less, yes, if you except places like Hokkaido or Okinawa, but political unity was long in the coming.

And keep in mind that the Mercator map isn't terribly good at relative sizes. India is pretty damned big, even a fragment is a force to be reckoned with. Frex, after Plassey the Honourable Company found itself misgoverning about four times as many Indians as there were Britons at the time. And that was just Bengal.

Tyr · Dec 27, 2005

carlton_bach said:
Japan isn't all that ancient as a unified nation. The national ideology projects unity back to pretty much antediluvial times, but as late as the 600s, there was little to suggest the Japanese rulers could make it stick. Cultural unity, more or less, yes, if you except places like Hokkaido or Okinawa, but political unity was long in the coming.

And keep in mind that the Mercator map isn't terribly good at relative sizes. India is pretty damned big, even a fragment is a force to be reckoned with. Frex, after Plassey the Honourable Company found itself misgoverning about four times as many Indians as there were Britons at the time. And that was just Bengal.

But if a fragment is working on conquering all the rest it still won't have much time for going abroad.

And China had a lot of periods of not being 100% unified too.

MrP · Dec 27, 2005

Leej said:
But if a fragment is working on conquering all the rest it still won't have much time for going abroad.

And China had a lot of periods of not being 100% unified too.

But she needn't conquer the rest. Take Spain, she had European adventures but still crafted a sizeable empire across the Atlantic. I agree with Flocc, there's no reason a bit of India couldn't do just the same.

Hendryk · Dec 27, 2005

You know, a few days ago, I visited with a Laotian friend an exhibition in Paris about Champa architecture. Quite interesting. It showed how Indian cultural influence spread as far as the southern regions of Vietnam from the 7th to the 15th centuries. The architectural styles used by the Champa culture, not to mention the heavily Hinduized form of Theravada Buddhism the local people practiced (complete with lingams), were clearly Indian in origin.

Tyr · Dec 27, 2005

MrP said:
But she needn't conquer the rest. Take Spain, she had European adventures but still crafted a sizeable empire across the Atlantic. I agree with Flocc, there's no reason a bit of India couldn't do just the same.

Yes they must conquer the rest.
Read what is written- the scenario involves a united India.
This needs a land based conquering Indian nation.

Kidblast · Dec 27, 2005

Well, India was almost all unified by the Mogul Empire, except for Tamil Nadu and Kerala, so it isn't impossible. I think people forget that fact.

MrP · Dec 27, 2005

Leej said:
Yes they must conquer the rest.
Read what is written- the scenario involves a united India.
This needs a land based conquering Indian nation.

Eh? You mean this?

Flocculencio said:
if you have a united India in a TL it's much more likely to either conquer SE Asia or have it as a vassal than China (or Japan!?) is.

There's no requirement for a single Indian state specified by Flocc that I can see in any of the above. He says ATLs would be less OTL if there were, and that it's strange in ATLs to have really powerful Chinese or Japanese overseas empires coexisting with this unified India, which has strangely ignored control of other lands.

So there be no requirement for the colonising India in an ATL to be united under one rule, unless I've missed aught.

Akiyama · Dec 27, 2005

Ken Hite (a GURPS writer) once wrote an A to Z of alternate history. IIRC . . .

I is for Indians. That's Native American Indians of course, not Indians from India, who never achieve anything.

Faeelin · Dec 27, 2005

Flocculencio said:
Thats why I specified "cultural colonisation" not "colonisation" in my original post. As you say, the natives were Indianised when they adopted parts of Indian culture from Indian merchants and brahmins not generally through force. Still doesn't change the fact that until the arrival of Islam, most SE Asian kingdoms were firmly within the South Indian cultural sphere as opposed to a Chinese or Japanese (!) one.

Of course, the Chinese didn't begin settling in southeast asia for centuries; between the Song and Ming dynasties. So it'd make sense that they'd be Indian, no?

Hendryk · Dec 27, 2005

Faeelin said:
Of course, the Chinese didn't begin settling in southeast asia for centuries; between the Song and Ming dynasties. So it'd make sense that they'd be Indian, no?

Depends. Most of Vietnam was under direct Chinese administration from the Han to the Tang dynasties, about a millennium. And it did remain a cultural if not a permanent political satellite of China for most of the following millennium as well.

Tyr · Dec 27, 2005

MrP said:
Eh? You mean this?

There's no requirement for a single Indian state specified by Flocc that I can see in any of the above. He says ATLs would be less OTL if there were, and that it's strange in ATLs to have really powerful Chinese or Japanese overseas empires coexisting with this unified India, which has strangely ignored control of other lands.

So there be no requirement for the colonising India in an ATL to be united under one rule, unless I've missed aught.

Eh?

I always get a bit irritated in scenarios where people give the East Indies to China or Japan even when the scenario also includes a united India. The fragmented India in OTL was able to pretty much culturally colonise everything from Thailand southwards- a united India is going to be even more influential.

Mentions united India quite clearly.