AHC: India the second Europe

Challenge: With a POD after 1648, have the Indian subcontinent resist colonization from Europe. Instead, have the different countries of the Indian subcontinent industrialize and become Great Powers in their own right.
 
OK- the first part is easier than the second part.

Let me address the industrialisation first. That's difficult because India as a whole doesn't have easy preindustrial access to large coal deposits (it has coal but you need a preexisting industrial base to effectively exploit it).

As for resisting colonisation- this is somewhat easier. Indian history in the 18th and 19th C becomes clearer when you see it as a power vacuum in the aftermath of imperial collapse. From Humayun to Aurangzeb, the Mughal Empire had expanded and become the hegemon of much of the subcontinent. After Aurangzeb's death and the attendant collapse, all sorts of people sprung into the power vacuum with the knock on effects being felt even in states which hadn't strictly been under Mughal hegemony (c.f. Mysore where the local Wodeyar dynasty was overthrown by adventurers, leading to the chaos which the British exploited).

Given a reduction in this chaos, or a swifter recovery from it, European interests will remain purely trade interests into the 19th C- only when full on industrialisation gives them the edge will you see more overt imperialism and it'll come in the form not of direct conquest but in unequal treaties and concession ports.
 
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