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One thing that amazes me about places like India and Indonesia is that they have (roughly) enough consensus and homogenity to form functioning states, yet are so big and diverse that they will never have one homogenus "culture" to any meaningful extend (for instance one native language that most people would consider to be "their" language). They are countries with the diversity of regions and continents, more like the roman empire than european nation-states.

So with a POD prior to 1900, what other places could end up housing multi-national democracies of "Indian" proportions? Knowing of course that India and Indonesia have unique histories and geographical properties (say, abundant agricultural resources that support huge and diverse populations) that won't be easy to replicate elsewhere. So your states could come together for entirely different reasons.

I would consider a surviving Roman Empire, a (mostly) slavic "india" streching from central europe to the Ural and a North American agricultural civilization uniting the native nations. I want to say one large sub-saharan democracy in Africa but I'm not sure how I would go about this.
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