Brahuis in Madagascar instead of Malays

[Terço]

Brahuis migrate to Madagascar instead of the Malays
Madagascar part of the Raj ?

 

[Terço]

Eventualy swahili merchants start spreading islam like they did in comoros and a mix between brahuis and swahilis occurs in costal towns leaving the highlands to the brahui tribes

 

[Terço]

Will a muslim Madagascar connected to Asia thru the comercial network of the swahilis be a hard nut to crack whem europeans (portuguese) arrive in the Indian Ocean ?
Will the mughals have any kind of interest in this ALT Madagascar ?
Vassals of the Empire ?
Regional power , capable of power projection ?

 

[Falecius]

Why on Earth the Brahuis of all people would end up there? They utterly lack any maritime tradition whatsoever, for the excellent reason that they do not live in the vicinity of any sea, and AFAIK never did in the established historical record (also, the closest coastal areas tend to lack anything needed for building ocean-going ships, such as, say, decent quantities of large trees).

 

[Terço]

Im not talking about the brahui population in Pakistan
In the same way the pakistani brahuis live in isolation , far away from the other dravidians and are genetic closer to balochis than tamils , i was thinking about northern dravidian migration to Madagascar fleeing indo aryan population pressure .

 

[Terço]

I imagine that by today , the dravidian element in Madagascar culture would be the language not the genetics
Bantu and arab migrations , plus the european presence in the age of colonization would change the genetic make up of the population

 

[Falecius]

Im not talking about the brahui population in Pakistan
In the same way the pakistani brahuis live in isolation , far away from the other dravidians and are genetic closer to balochis than tamils , i was thinking about northern dravidian migration to Madagascar fleeing indo aryan population pressure .

I see now... I am skeptical that it would be possible for the Late Indus valley people (assuming they actually spoke a Dravidian language, or more than one - a very reasonable but not proven assumption) to sail that far en masse (or at all), but at least they were in the position to theoretically do so.

 

[DarkKayder]

The most recent research into Madagascar and its Austronesian population indicates that they are descendant of impressed non-maritime people (barito speakers from borneo in this case) that formed the majority of Austronesian crews of this period. This seems to have been common practice, all the way to the "drop them wherever once they are no longer needed" part, with the Munda and Nicobarese Autroasiatics being candidates for this type of impressment and forced migration (see Roger Blench's and Paul Sidwell's papers to the effect of this "Munda maritime hypothesis"). This means that if you have any linguistic or cultural group living in the coastal vicinities of the Austronesian mercantile range (which seems to be much more extensive than we give it credit for), they could had ended up involuntarily disseminated to places very far from home. This is much more likely than a non maritime people somehow taking to sea for god-knows-where to flee from invasions.

 

[Terço]

That makes sense
For me it was strange that people from Borneo migrated from the midlle of Austronesian world to a Island in Africa
In Aceh they speak a chamic language and aceh is part of Sumatra were Malay is the main language so relics of the past are possible

 

[Terço]

What if a northern dravidian state uses the agulhas corrent and starts building outposts in eastern africa before the barito migration ?
The dravidians eventually get absorbed by the bantus in the mainland and add to the genepool of the swahilis , but in Madagascar they use indian agricultural toolset and prosper and when the baritos start arriving they are used as slaves so the baritos start slowly loosing the austranesian language and shift to dravidian
Madagascar starts exporting gum arabic and spices and terraced rice prodution allows a slow but constant increase in population .
Eventually arabs and islam arrive and some pretender to the throne converts and the sultanate of Madagascar beggins .

 

[Terço]

Will a Madagascar sultanate block the european expantion in the Indian Ocean?
Maybe several wars between portuguese Cape and Madagascar ?
Proxy wars in Swahili Coast ?

 

[Terço]

The malagasy will be part of the slave trade
Will the bantus slowly melt into the malagasy society like otl , or are we gonna see them becoming a fully black serf subculture under the rule of a ruling class of mixed austronesian/dravidian individuals ?

 

[Revachah]

The malagasy will be part of the slave trade
Will the bantus slowly melt into the malagasy society like otl , or are we gonna see them becoming a fully black serf subculture under the rule of a ruling class of mixed austronesian/dravidian individuals ?

Malagasy have been part of the slave trade since arrival with some being sent back to Indonesia.

The ruling classes/castes like OTL would be a mix of Austroneasians, Indians, Persians, Arabs, Africans and Chinese.

The serf and slave classes would as well but to lesser degrees.