AHC: "mare nostrum" in the indian ocean

just as rome had its mare nostrum in the Mediterranean, have any power make the Indian ocean their private lake. IMO, possible candidates include a wanked indian state, some kind of caliphate, or a hyper-wanked colonial european empire (but this seems unlikely considering how far they were from their population and economical center).
 
You mean owning the entire Indian Ocean coast or just applying supremacy there? The British did the latter during the 19th century.
 

Albert.Nik

Banned
British Empire is the only one I can think of. Or French or Dutch empires. Indian ocean is too big for an ancient or Medieval power to conquer.
My timeline about this is upcoming.
 
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Not sure if that's possible. The Roman Empire entirely surrounded the Mediterranean as a single state. Unlike the Roman Empire, the British can't really be said to have surrounded the Indian Ocean as there were various colonies in Africa and Asia that had access to the Indian Ocean, but that the British didn't own such as Indonesia, Somalia, and Madagascar. They controlled much of that ocean, but it wasn't their private lake, for they were sharing it with others. Any circumstances that would lead to the British completely making it their private lake would probably lead to the other European powers once again recognizing the British as too powerful, like they did in the ARW, and as a result, deciding to unite their forces in order to take the British down a peg.
 

Albert.Nik

Banned
Not sure if that's possible. The Roman Empire entirely surrounded the Mediterranean as a single state. Unlike the Roman Empire, the British can't really be said to have surrounded the Indian Ocean as there were various colonies in Africa and Asia that had access to the Indian Ocean, but that the British didn't own such as Indonesia, Somalia, and Madagascar. They controlled much of that ocean, but it wasn't their private lake, for they were sharing it with others. Any circumstances that would lead to the British completely making it their private lake would probably lead to the other European powers once again recognizing the British as too powerful, like they did in the ARW, and as a result, deciding to unite their forces in order to take the British down a peg.
You can say that again. Indian ocean is an open Ocean. You would need an another continent starting from the Southern latitudes of Africa and runs almost till Antarctica as Europe runs till the Arctic through the Baltic. That makes this question irrelevant until we are talking about a super advanced Civilization who can create it.
 

Albert.Nik

Banned
But still,let's say we ignore the open regions of the ocean beyond Cape town,then we need this empire to hold vast regions of Africa,entire Arabian Peninsula and probably the Middle East too,Iran,Pakistan,India,Lanka,Burma,Thailand,Malaysia,Indonesia,Australia and all the Islands. The closest we can get the is the British Empire and even for them,it needs several huge PODs over long periods to arrive at this. So that's the nearest we can get. No Medieval Caliphate or Empire can rule this huge.
 
But still,let's say we ignore the open regions of the ocean beyond Cape town,then we need this empire to hold vast regions of Africa,entire Arabian Peninsula and probably the Middle East too,Iran,Pakistan,India,Lanka,Burma,Thailand,Malaysia,Indonesia,Australia and all the Islands. The closest we can get the is the British Empire and even for them,it needs several huge PODs over long periods to arrive at this. So that's the nearest we can get. No Medieval Caliphate or Empire can rule this huge.

The Caliphate(s) also have no reason to acquire these lands. Expansion in other direction take precedence. A conquest of the Swahili coasts makes no sense in conjugation with a conquest of ‘India’ unless you have the idea of an Indian Ocean empire, which did not exist in the past.
 

Albert.Nik

Banned
The Caliphate(s) also have no reason to acquire these lands. Expansion in other direction take precedence. A conquest of the Swahili coasts makes no sense in conjugation with a conquest of ‘India’ unless you have the idea of an Indian Ocean empire, which did not exist in the past.
Not that they had no reason to. If these lands could be conquered easily,Wealth gain could be immense. But a Medieval or Late Antiquity POD empire then would collapse even with half of the territories needed to have this AHC. I wouldn't say a Post Industrial Empire cannot do this. It would be hard but not impossible. But yes,a large amount of Violence would exist before this Empire becomes a stable one if it does which would be used for crushing rebellions and attacks from outside. Multiple PODs would be needed as this involves first,crushing rebellions and taming the locals and then establishing permanent settlements of the Empire and then you see this happening. As I said,would need Multiple PODs or fairly early one that almost runs into Pre-Historic eras.
 
As a butterfly of principle POD's, I've toyed with an alt-Sultanate of Gujurat basically developing a Mar Nostrum type domination for the portion of the Indian Ocean between northwestern India and the Swahili Coast. Ultimately the sultanate probably has too many land-based enemies and interests to really pull this off, but I think that's more doable than the full Indian Ocean.
 
Have a united iberian peninsula who focus in africa instead of the americas, founding small outpost on the coasts of eastern africa, then eventually founding a colony a la british raj in india and accidentally discovering australia, if portugal had limited success being so small by focusing in the indian ocean, should the whole of the iberian penisula focusing on the indian ocean and ditching away the americas have a bigger success?, i mean all those resources poured over the americas could be redirected to the indian ocean if anything makes them unable of having the americas, the degree of control would vary by region (settler states in southern africa, and australia, trading colonies in indonesia, arabian peninsula and eastern africa, and india as a extractive colony) it wouldnt be a mare nostrum completely although
 
Malagasy wank? Get the island unified ASAP (lets say by the 11th century, using some sort of Islamic conquest as the means to do so) and carrying on a vibrant trade with the Arabs and India. They serve as intermediaries between Indonesia and the Arabs, finding Australia in the process. They also settle the islands in between to serve as way stations. Malagasy traders settle Australia and Southern Africa as well and live amongst the local peoples. As social organization and technology improves, the Malagasy later establish much more direct rule over these lesser populated areas and are able to exploit periods of weakness in India. They don't get quite as strong as the British, but by the 19th century they have more or less dominion over the Swahili, Arabs, and many coastal Indian states and their informal financial empire is even more powerful.
 
surviving Chola empire with trading posts and colonies as far west as Australia and as far west as Madagascar could achieve a limited version of this. Said empire will most likely dominate the Indian Ocean
 
Honestly, pre-telegraph the only method to secure an ocean was to occupy all of its coastlines. Effective control can't happen if pirates could simply sail/steam right on by 12 miles away while the official navy tried to squint real hard.
 
If India was united and colonialist, it should work out. Considering the manpower they have...

Being both is basically ASB. Any group that's dominating enough of India that they aren't facing so much threat from neighbors that investing huge quantities of resources into building a large colonial empire woulden't be a near suicidal risk for the homefront would be A) Sitting on too many other groups in the Subcontinent to be able to turn away from "occupying itself"/ maintaining internal stability over such a widespread, populated, and diverse domain and B) Have access to so many resources at home that there's no real motivation to go out and seize huge swaths of territory by force and establish a colonial monopoly, since regular trade and internal production would be far more cost-effective.

The only powers with a movitavtion to establish such a bloc would be one who could leverage it to make huge profits at home and secure enough there to make the investment worthwhile (Or at least the best possible route of advancement). For nations like the Dutch, Portugese, and Britain: who had few continental prospects *And in the later two cases, relatively few threats) and could make massive profit margins on goods that can't be produce in Europe, a big naval Empire had its benefits. For Indian states, no such advantage exists
 
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