Challenge : Chinese Bengal !! Or, something even more.....

.... like, Bengali China ?! :eek:

Problems to be overcome in order to achieve this ? Kinda many. Mainly two huge things that lie between Bengal and China : Tibet and Burma. The roof of the world and a country that's just a mountain barrier away.

Until now I have found no remote possibility for any Bengali attempts to pull a Manchu on China to be able to be begun at all. IIRC there was a practice of restriction against sailing overseas applied in the country. Wonder if that is to be overcome, it can pave a better connection with China. I also don't know the slightest how the Bengalis perceived their eastern neighbors as, or their communication with people east of them in general, how far-reaching their attention was to the east, etc. Will there be anyway to deal with all of these problems by at least 5 centuries, so that a fairly better land connection with China can be established, with a PoD no earlier than 500 AD and no later than 700 AD ?

I've been all but fevering myself with the mental image of a Dynasty of Indian origin taking over the Mandate of Heaven. :eek::cool::D But if it'd just to have areas of present day Bangladesh to be conquered by the Chinese through a land route than the PoD can be as late as 1100. Whether it's for the Bengali dynasty scenario or the later scenario, must be realized before the year 1500 Anno Domini.

Well, that's all I guess. Any daring takers ? :cool:;)
 
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The jungles on the India/Burma/China border aren't gonna be easily passed through either, I think it's ASB...

Not so much so with 1500 as the latest limit for something like this to happen, me thinks, but I understand your pessimism very well. I do think that this kind of scenario can be only done with a combination of proto-industrial revolution or maybe even an outright one happening in China and a more east oriented Bengal and a politically more "lively" and certainly richer Irawady valley. This will be hard of course and implausible as well but I think that stranger things had happened.
 
Bump. I know this idea is really hard to realize, but I can't see why this kinda of situation cannot be manufactured with no less than 800 years long time provided. All right, I'll give some extension. You can have your time until 1700.
 
Okay.Some quotes from an earlier post of mine, quoting Early Ming China, by Edward Dryer.

*Political Unification: Chu Yuan-chang military victories permitted a
speedy reunification of the empire; he survived two apparent
assassination attempts in 1362 and 1380, attempts which, if successful,
would have shattered this unity; and the total victory of his son,
Yongle, in the civil war following his death ended the threat to unity
posed by the princes."

"Previous Chinese history suggests what might have happened if events
had gone differently. By 1360 most of China was under the control of
military regimes nominally loyal to the Yuan. If... the the rebel
leaders had been destroyed in the wars of the 1360s, the result would
have been nominal reunification under the Yuan, but in the fact the
situation would have resembled that of the late Eastern Han... or of
the middle and late Tang: a weak or powerless dynasty would have ruled
in name over a group of actually independent and mutually hostile
regional warlords. Judging from the late Tang example, such a state of
affairs could have gone on for generations."

Furthermore, in the Early Ming, there was a hereditary elite that
controlled the seperate military colonies, farmed by soldier-tenants,
and the ranks and salaries of military officers were set several grades
higher than those of civil officials of corresponding degrees of
responsibility. Nobles, in turn, were elevated to a position above the
nine ranks, so that they stood above all officials, civil or military.
But this dominance was undermined when the civil officials gained
control of the military in the years 1435-1440, and the military's
policy, supply system, and even the higher field commands were
monopolized by civil officials.

So, in the early Ming there existed "both an embryonic nobility and a
class of hereditary military officers, and the way was open to the
recfreation of powerful noble families connected to the dynasty by
marriage, a class of territorial magnates, or a combination of the
two".

*The Capital. Essentially, it was very weird for the Ming to locate
their capital in Bejing. The Yantze area was the economic heart of the
Empire at this point, and while the Yongle emperor may have placed the
capital at Bejing in order to defend against the Mongols, but the only
other emperor to follow his example was Zhengtong , in 1449.

Nanking was in the area of the Yangtze valley and the southern coastal
urban culture that had grown in population and importance during the
Southern Sung, and had the court and Emperors been directly involved in
that culture, who knows what would have happened?

Now, a state based in Nanjing, with its revenues from farmers being consumed by a series of great magnates... well, you won't get Zheng He. But you might get state-sponsored expeditions take control of Malaya. And from there...
 
PoD before 1100? Well thats unlikely IMO - there wouldn't be much cause to conquer the disunited and poorish Pyu and Mon city states, and doing it later would have to contend with powerful Khmer and various Indian polities.

Maybe a vastly more able and long lasting Yuan dynasty absorbs their vassal Pagan state and sinifies it for some reason, and when they do fall to an Alt-Ming, and that Ming are forced out of the north by nomads that sinic base is used for a proper conquest of south east Asia which puts them in conflict with some strong Indian power that dwells in Bengal. Either they then take the Brahmaputra Basin as a border region, or collapse and the Bengali power overtakes the Sinified SEA and then makes a crazy play for Chinese dominance (note if the Alt-ming industrialize, the Bengali's should be able to ape them - they had tremendous light industry OTL and the South Chinese should be an easier technological model to adapt than the Northern European on.)

On wait PoD extension to 1700? Well after a quick wikipedia-ing there might be an opening during the Qing conquest:
-Have Ava for some reason not hand over the Ming prisoners and Wu Sangui conquers the Irrawaddy region for the affront/its made Qing policy to destroy this dangerous polity.
-He then a) quickly dies (maybe of a jungle disease) before he can launch his OTL rebellion or b) The emperor doesn't force the three feudatory's to relocate and they don't rebel.
-If a) then moderately wealthy coastal lands on the Bay of Bengal and Brahmaputra basin could be of more interest to the Qing than the hard lands of Turkistan, and if b) then I bet a guy who in OTL named himself 'supreme generalissimo' wouldn't just rest on his laurels and expand in the late 17th century...maybe encroaching on bits of Bengal?
 
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