For the latest map contest, I went a bit DBWI...
Ok, for this round, I am going to vanish the Din-i-Ilahi, AKA the Path of Wisdom or, vulgarly, Akbarism. After all, if not for the wisdom of the Turkish sage, Akbar, rather than taking on the mantle of the Sufi Revelator or the Hindu Guru, might have, like Akhenaten, made himself a God-king, the centerpiece of his own religion: and like Atenism, the new religion would have perished within a generation [1], rather than expanding over three centuries to become the characteristic faith of northern India.
Without the Revelations of Akbar, the Mogul Empire would have remained a Muslim regime ruling over Hindu masses, slowly becoming more intolerant as conversion took place and Muslims made an increasing share of the population. Although the Moghul Empire in this form probably would not have lasted too long, and some Hindu revivals and independent states probably would arise, the basic dynamic of Muslim advance and Hindu retreat as the rule-bound, no-take backs Islamic faith outcompeted the, at the time, rather disorganized and multifarious polytheism of the Hindu masses. In the end, increasing pressures on the Hindu population would lead to an increased disregard of the prohibitions on sea travel, and a Hindu Diaspora would scatter around the rim of the Indian ocean and beyond, here and there carving out a state and perhaps later falling to other Muslim assaults or Christian European conquerors.
Although probably less technologically apt and less open to outside ideas than the Moghul Realm as it became OTL, military competition – Hindu-Muslim and Muslim-Muslim - would drive technological progress to the extent that European colonialism would have no better opportunity for lodging a foothold in Northern India than OTL. The spread of technological and organizational advances to fellow Sunnis in the Ottoman Empire probably means that the Ottoman Empire does better than OTL, while the shaky later Iranian dynasties leads to the division of Iran between Sunni great powers, although a Shi’a reaction might in time drive foreign rulers from core Shi’a and Persian areas.
As OTL, European naval power and the local concerns of Indian states means that Europeans come to dominate in SE Asia and the Pacific. A major change is in China: OTL, the flow of new ideas between northern India and China has been seen by most historians as a major force behind the Qing intellectual revival, and some have spoken of a second great “Indian-Chinese exchange” comparable to that of the Buddhist in the early Middle Ages. Although Chinese followers of the Path of Wisdom remained a minority, it’s probably a good bet that without the Indian element, the Qing, a foreign dynasty with a need for legitimacy, would have been more conservative, more in-turned, like the later Ming before them. China’s encounter with Europeans was rocky enough OTL: given a China more rigid in its ancient certainties, less involved with the outside world, I can see breakdown, war, civil war, and eventually division into spheres of influence turning in time to colonial dominance, although due to the huge size of the country much of the interior remains largely no-man’s-land.
Nihon? Let’s just call it butterflies: I just wanted something different from the usual AH choices of totalitarian nuke-waggers or colonial partition.
India in time achieves some sort of balance of power between major Islamic states: it will probably be an unpleasant, Dominationist type of Islam, the conflict between modern notions of self-determination and the drive to convert the Hindu population leading to increasingly sharp repression. Looking now outward to a wider world, the Indian states will find themselves unpleasantly hemmed in by Christian states and colonial empires. (Yes, that is a greater Suristan. Sue me: I have always felt Suristan was the “almost made it” Islamic great power of OTL, so it will continue to show up in some form or other in a certain percentage of my maps).
Europe I mess up with the butterflies, although I do assume a unification of the German states as OTL, and throw in a (mostly) unified Italy for shits and giggles. Some sort of variant Great European War breaks out as technological and industrial advances outpace military understanding of the possibilities. . But without the Mughal Intervention, the war here continues, like the Pan-American wars of OTL, till a wide-spread wave of revolution puts an end to the fighting. (I suppose I am cheating a bit: it’s possible that ATL an American Great Power might take the role the Mughals did for one side or another). Taking advantage of the distraction of the European powers, the Islamic powers of India seize the colonies of weaker and/or revolution-torn European countries. We are left in 1923 with an Old World in worse shape than the Americas 1951 OTL, divided between shaky radical *Riccian regimes, alarmed reactionary regimes, and Islamic regimes espousing an unpleasant Dominationist version of Islam and clutching tight their new colonial booty…
Bruce
[1] Apologies, K!
