Will Kürlich Kerl
Banned
They were modernizing when the Iranian Revolution happened. Prevent that, say the Shah gets diagnosed earlier, like 1973, and prevent him from interfering with the economy, and you might be able to modernize Iran/Persia.
AHC: Make one of these South Asian states modernise
- Thread starter XanXar
- Start date
They were modernizing when the Iranian Revolution happened. Prevent that, say the Shah gets diagnosed earlier, like 1973, and prevent him from interfering with the economy, and you might be able to modernize Iran/Persia.
Well it did technically OTL, there are numerous chances before for it for Iran to modernise. The only one under the Safavids I can think of is make Abbas II live longer. From there he can change the policy of raising heirs in the haraams instead of making them governors. From there you can get better Shahs and more of a chance of modernisation.
It's conceivable for the Sikhs to provide mercenaries to the British, but at the same time, it's the succession that needs to be guarded to preserve their trajectory- it became chaotic too fast. If that can happen, then modernisation during the late 19th to early 20th century is possible.
The problem there, I think, is that the Punjab is simply too critical to the Raj's food supply for them to ignore. Nepal was relatively small and out-of-the-way - but the Punjab is huge population-wise and tremendously important, even before the Green Revolution. If the British don't have direct control, they'll want it to be firmly under their thumb. And then the Sikh state becomes just another ineffective princely state to be subsumed into India or Pakistan or whatever comes after the Raj.
Cheers,
Ganesha
Not at all, I would say, considering the very large area ruled over by the Sikhs. Even if they enter into some sort of favorable relationship with the British, a stable Sikh Empire would control a very important area and would be instrumental, because it would guard the Khyber Pass all the way to Lahore and onwards. And a British war with a stable Sikh Empire could go either way, I'd think.
SunDeep
Banned
Not really. Of course, the Sikh Empire is clearly too valuable a prize to be left alone to its own devices by the British East India Company, but they don't have to be left alone to retain independence. All they have to do is to hold out against the British until the Great Indian Mutiny takes place. Having a feasible POD that would have led to Sikh victory over the British at the Battle of Ferozeshah in the 1st Anglo-Sikh War- a split second decision, the slightest alteration to the trajectory of a bullet or a cannonball, one of the incompetent/treacherous Dogra commanders being killed or injured in the course of battle and being relieved of command by a more capable/loyal Sikh commander- would be the easiest thing in the world to conceive happening.
Such a victory would be a huge setback for the British campaign, and would at the very least lead to easier terms in the treaty which brings the war to an end, with the territory of the Jalandhar Doab almost certainly staying in their hands. After this, in all likelihood, the British treat the Anglo-Sikh War in the same manner as the Anglo-Afghan War (OTL's 1st, but probably the only one ITTL)- as a rash, unnecessary and ill-prepared campaign, with no need to repeat the debacle by rushing into a second attempt at conquest. The BEIC would build up a massive army in NW British India over time, ready and waiting to wage war with the Sikh Empire and bring them under their control in one fell swoop when the opportunity presents itself- a strategy which hits the fan for them in 1857, creating a much larger combat force of far better-equipped Indian insurgents than IOTL's Sepoy Mutiny, and giving them a far greater chance of success in the ensuing conflict- a fact which won't go unnoticed by several princely states' leaders, with at least a few ditching their neutrality and joining the rebels' cause ITTL, further boosting their chances of overthrowing company rule.
If the rebels achieve their goal of independence though, at least across a contiguous region of North, West and Central India, then it still wouldn't be the 'Indian First War of Independence' that Indians refer to it as in their textbooks and classrooms IOTL. If you're looking for a more Balkanised India in your timeline, then there's surely no other way you could go about it that would lead to a more certain outcome. You'd have the Mughals, the Marathas and Awadh, plus any other former princely states that managed to cast off the yoke of British oppression. Would the reinstated Mughals be willing to grant the other parties in their successful revolution enough freedom and independence to keep them united? Could they have done so? Or would the other major parties involved, the Maratha states and the Nawab of Awadh in particular, have refused to integrate into the new 'Mughal Confederacy', determined to never again let their kingdoms fall under the control of another domineering empire? Conversely, even if the rebels fail and things eventually play out exactly as they did IOTL, with the end of company rule and the establishment of the British Raj, the newly instated Viceroy would be extremely unlikely to make another attempt to conquer the Sikh Empire outright, especially in light of the Khalsa's reaction and conduct during the Great Indian Mutiny...
Based on OTL's Punjab during the crisis IOTL, this would have likely been either one of cold indifference, keeping out of the hostilities and allowing both sides to kill as many of each other as they liked; or, perhaps more likely, one of horrified consternation at the possible resurgence of the Mughal Empire. After all, which Empire carried out the executions of three of the Sikhs' Gurus, along with countless other martyrs, all in the most brutal and barbaric manner possible? Being burnt to death on a hot plate, beheaded, boiled in a pan, sawn in half from the bottom up, bricked alive (this method being used to execute Guru Gobind Singh's two youngest sons, who were only 9 and 7 years old respectively), only 150 years or so prior to the Mutiny (as recent in their timeframe as Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation is in ours)... The first attempt to establish a Sikh state was crushed by the Mughals in 1715, the first iteration of the Dal Khalsa under Banda Singh Bahadur killed off to the last man in an attack waged by the entire Imperial force- with the sole exception of Banda Singh and 700 prisoners of war, including his son, who were all taken back to Delhi to face public execution on a daily basis. Banda Singh's son was castrated before being killed, with the body parts force-fed down Banda's throat; and when it was his turn, several months later, Banda Singh first had his eyes gouged out, limbs chopped off and skin peeled off before finally being executed.
Afterwards, the Mughals deployed a standing army dedicated solely to carrying out a genocidal campaign against them, with the Sikh people and the Sikh faith only managing to endure by retreating to the hills and waging a guerrilla campaign for a full 25 years. For them, at the time of the Indian mutiny, it'd be a trauma just as recent as, and quite possibly, even more harsh a memory than, the rule of the Congo Free State would be to the people of the DRC today- or even that of Nazi Germany will be for the Jewish people by the time we reach the halfway point in this century. The British were merely relatively recent foes in a single, pretty short and honourably fought war, one which resulted in a Sikh victory/considerably more acceptable terms at the negotiating table than IOTL's 1st Anglo-Sikh War. In comparison, the prospect of the Mughal Empire rising again would perhaps be as nightmarish for the Sikh Empire as that of a Neo-Nazi, anti-Semitic unified Arab state might have been for the Israelis in an ATL's more visceral version of the Arab Spring. It'd be all too feasible to imagine the Sikhs offering to send the Khalsa army across the border to fight alongside the British, determined to crush those determined to restore the power of the Mughal Empire and calling for Jihad.
There’s no way the British, certainly not the BEIC, would turn down the Sikhs’ offer in the position they’d be in; and the Sikhs’ assistance in quelling the Great Indian Mutiny would be invaluable, vastly greater both in its military strength and strategic importance than that of Nepal’s Gurkhas ITTL. In the aftermath of the conflict, with the brownie points the Sikhs would earn for their contribution from both the British Raj in India and the British public back home, even the least grateful, most imperialistic Viceroy of India would have had a hard time drumming up support to wage war on the Sikhs again and annex their Kingdom. From this point, you could easily imagine the British granting the Sikhs some reward for their part from the war effort (perhaps territory in Himachal Pradesh, the British Punjab or the Upper Sindh, seized from rebellious Rajas or Nawabs), building friendly diplomatic relations with them, and eventually extending them some formal friendship agreement in the same manner as they did with Nepal IOTL.
Or, indeed, as they did with OTL's Empire of Japan by signing the Anglo-Japanese Alliance with them- probably a better model, given that both the Japanese Empire and Sikh Empire are estimated to have possessed roughly the same wealth and population at the time of the Indian Mutiny, a decade prior to the Meiji Restoration. The Anglo-Japanese Alliance certainly helped the Japanese in modernising their infrastructure, economy and especially their military IOTL, essentially granting them free range to embark on their campaign of Imperial expansion and to become the only non-western World Power. Why couldn't TTL's Anglo-Sikh Alliance be the key contributing factor which allows the Sikh Empire to modernise, and to earn its status as a World Power, in the same way as the Empire of Japan? Backed by the British, who have no choice but to either concede defeat to Russians in The Great Game or continue it by proxy, the battlefields of Central Asia and its Khanates await...
It is possible for an Afghan-Sikh alliance?
I know the two are traditional enemies, however is it possible that their interests could converge at some point? Maybe an anti-British alliance?
No nation of that period can modernise without a substantial sea trading system. That has to be supplemented with a strong navy and educational system. This is what all South Asian fiefdoms lacked in the 18th and 19th century. When you add in the frequent divisive conflicts and lack of a unifying agenda, it is quite obvious that they were headed nowhere but right on their knees ready to blow some Caucasians.
The Marathas were too gung ho about their pagan religion which itself is unorganized and therefore limited in scope and scale. Only a kingdom with over 30 million united subjects and strong developmental parameters mentioned above can survive the South Asia of that time.
Instead you have several practically landlocked fiefdoms squabbling over Islam/Hinduism, struggling to create a very limited identity of their own. That left them in a hurry to get nowhere.
An alliance is more likely between the Marathas and the Sikhs than the Sikhs and the Afghans. Islam was the main reason for Sikhism to form in the first place.
The Marathas were too gung ho about their pagan religion which itself is unorganized and therefore limited in scope and scale. Only a kingdom with over 30 million united subjects and strong developmental parameters mentioned above can survive the South Asia of that time.
Instead you have several practically landlocked fiefdoms squabbling over Islam/Hinduism, struggling to create a very limited identity of their own. That left them in a hurry to get nowhere.
An alliance is more likely between the Marathas and the Sikhs than the Sikhs and the Afghans. Islam was the main reason for Sikhism to form in the first place.
SunDeep
Banned
Well, in the potential scenario I plotted out, it'd be almost certain that Afghan and Sikh interests would converge at some point, making it possible for an alliance between them to form. Probably not an anti-British one though, at least not from the outset. After all, with the British left with no choice but to either continue The Great Game via proxy through the Sikhs or abandon it entirely, either path inevitably leads to the Russians marching on the warpath through Central Asia crossing over into Afghanistan. When the Russian Empire extends its control to their northern borders, the Afghans will need allies- and the Sikh Empire are going to be the first country they'll turn to (encouraged to go through with it and enter the alliance by the British to serve their own agenda and stall the Russians in The Great Game). Whether they actually end up as actual allies though, or whether Afghanistan ends up going the same way as Korea after OTL's Russo-Japanese War, is another matter entirely- but even IOTL, the Japanese got the modernisation of Korea up and underway.
And when would the Russian approximately reach the borders of Afghanistan, would this be before the Indian Mutiny?
Also how would the effect of having two relatively powerful (for the region) states during this time?
SunDeep
Banned
Fair bit afterward. IOTL, they got there in 1868, a decade later, and I can't see any reason why that timeframe would change noticeably ITTL. 1 or 2 years earlier, 3 years tops, and certainly no later than IOTL.
Flocculencio
Donor
I know. Sounds like someone has a few deep-wired prejudices to get over...
The joke, of course, is that if you want to use that outdated and essentially meaningless racial classification vocabulary, Maharashtrans (and Punjabis et al) are definitely "Caucasians" themselves...
Being a Syrian Orthodox Malayalee, I was interested in checking out the TL he was doing on South Indian Christianity, but if this is his attitude, I think I'll give it a miss.
Hmmm... How about the Malayalam-speaking kingdoms of Cochin and Travancore (with a possible "unification of the crowns")?
Lucius Verus
Banned
After reading your thread I noticed a missing element: specifically the differences in relative industrialization. It's one thing to endogenously industrialize, its another to industrialize under the market pressure of industrial England/Europe while also skipping a good deal of the trail and error during invention. Perhaps that would be a good way to categorize?
Could you please elaborate on those two categories? It sounds interesting and pretty helpful to this discussion as well.
Flocculencio
Donor
The general problem with Indian industrialisations is a lack of easily accessible coal. The subcontinent as a whole is somewhat fossil-fuel poor (with regard to deposits accessible with 19th C tech). Any Indian state's industrial efforts would likely have to be powered at least in large part by imported coal.
I've toyed with the idea of a very late 19th C leap forward by Cochin-Travancore based on hydropower (which Kerala has a lot of) but that's really very late and would have to be done under British hegemony (or, more interestingly, depending on the power balance in the Indian subcontinent, perhaps Cochin-Travancore could exist along the lines of Siam, balancing between two European hegemons).
Lucius Verus
Banned
Well what I was referring to was the different market policies and conditions of both scenarios.
Specifically: Pre-industrial
High development costs necessitating easy energy and conditions conductive to high marginal cost of labour. Generally the easiest way to do this is some sort of empire extracting wealth from others, internal developments tend to hit Malthusian walls. Conditions also favor mercantile policies for concentrating production in domestic markets, furthermore one needs a sufficiently large domestic market to concentrate skills and production as well as an international markets to acquire raw resources from.
Post-industrial
Things are a bit different, high marginal cost of labour isn't necessary anymore as the labour saving devices are already invented in another nation. In fact cheap labour is a boon as a nation can gain a competitive wage advantage. The main difference in terms of capital being that pre-industrial nations needed to raise the general standard of living, whereas in the post-industrial world one just needs to acquire enough capital to jump start factories. Furthermore while mercantile policies are still favorable for concentrating production-industrialized nations would favor free trade as it allows them to leverage their existing capital and skill accumulations against non-industrialized nations.