Europe and west's fate in Asia/China progress..

Hyderabad at its largest was almost the size of France, Mysore was maybe 2/3rd that size as was Madurai. Travancore had around the same land area as Belgium.

Each of these forms a good basis for a nation state too since they vaguely conform to different ethnolinguistic regions- Hyderabad for the Telingana, Mysore for the Kannadiga, Madurai for the Tamils and Travancore for the Malayalees.

Hyderabad and Madurai have coal resources, though this isn't anthracite but lower quality brown coal. Travanacore has geography very well suited to water power- though that would only come much later unless the technological progression works very differently with someone figuring out how to build a primitive hydro generator somehow.

It would be fascinating to see independent Indian states experience a wave of nationalism in the 18th/19th centuries.

We've covered the reason for China's difficulties pretty thoroughly. Here's what I'm not at all sure about: why didn't any part of India industrialize?

I know that some parts came fairly close - but no Indian state ever achieved the level of industrialization that most parts of Europe did before India was fully colonized.

India had a rich linguistic tradition, a large class of well-educated, literate leaders, and plenty of natural resources. What prevented India from remaining on par militarily and politically with Europe?

Indian states had occasional successes, such as in the Dutch-Travancore war, but the Dutch were small potatoes by that time, and very overstretched.

Cheers,
Ganesha
 
It would be fascinating to see independent Indian states experience a wave of nationalism in the 18th/19th centuries.

We've covered the reason for China's difficulties pretty thoroughly. Here's what I'm not at all sure about: why didn't any part of India industrialize?

I know that some parts came fairly close - but no Indian state ever achieved the level of industrialization that most parts of Europe did before India was fully colonized.

India had a rich linguistic tradition, a large class of well-educated, literate leaders, and plenty of natural resources. What prevented India from remaining on par militarily and politically with Europe?

Indian states had occasional successes, such as in the Dutch-Travancore war, but the Dutch were small potatoes by that time, and very overstretched.

Cheers,
Ganesha

I think we need to remember that India in the 16th-17th centuries was undergoing massive upheaval. The collapse of Mughal authority set off massive shockwaves that affected the entire subcontinent.

The Indo-Gangetic Plain became a hotbed of feuding factions- the Sikhs were busy consolidating power in the Punjab, the Rajput princes were fighting among themselves, in Central India the Mahratta Confederacy was expanding to fill the gap but was itself a loose and disorganised federation with it's own factional problems. If you think about it the situation in North and Central India was almsot like that of Germany in the 30 years war- perhaps not as intensively destructive but across a larger area and on a longer timescale.

The South also got majorly affected by these problems- you had all sorts of adventurers roaming around creating chaos. Hyderabad and Mysore were constantly at war until Mysore got it's government overthrown by northern adventurers. In Kerala societal disruption from various incursions (coming after the chaos that the Portuguese had sown with their Inquisition) resulted in a disintegration of central authority with Nair nobles ignoring royal authority. Travancore managed to establish itself and was on the way to becoming the preeminent Malayalee power- it defeated Cochin and the Dutch and was on the way to making Calicut a vassal.

Basically the European powers arrived at a moment of massive chaos- this same chaos wasn't really particularly good for societal development. There was a thriving large scale cottage industry system of textile manufacture in India but this possible precursor to something larger was of course squashed by the EIC.
 
And it sounds like - correct me if I'm wrong - India's lead (obviously this should really be broken down by region), if any, was not so great.

On a level with Europe, apparently. Better in certain aspects, certainly. But not enough that even averting this chaos promises a significantly earlier industrial revolution than OTL's European one.

Obviously circumstances might change this, just looking at how they were when things started sliding into this mess, and then the Europeans showed up with the ability to ensure the mess never got straightened out as it would have within an India left to its own devices.
 
And it sounds like - correct me if I'm wrong - India's lead (obviously this should really be broken down by region), if any, was not so great.

On a level with Europe, apparently. Better in certain aspects, certainly. But not enough that even averting this chaos promises a significantly earlier industrial revolution than OTL's European one.

Obviously circumstances might change this, just looking at how they were when things started sliding into this mess, and then the Europeans showed up with the ability to ensure the mess never got straightened out as it would have within an India left to its own devices.

Oh certainly- I'm not implying that India's lead was that great. One major problem is the issue of banking- Europe was far ahead of India in terms of financial structures.
 
The problem here, as always, is what we define as Europe and West, and what qualifies as Asia. In terms of future hegemons of the world in Asia, either some of the South Indian princely states or one of the Chinese Empires would be the most likely contender, and in Chinese terms it's easiest to go with the Song as they came closest to an industrial revolution before the European one. A major difference between something the size and scale of Song China being the first to industrialize and something the size and scale of the British Isles doing so is that China is essentially comparable to industrialization beginning with the USA or France: it's big, it has a *lot* of potential to look for markets, and it has a lot of conveniently nearby and conveniently weak neighbors already used to seeing the Son of Heaven as their sovereign in theory and now about to be required to do so fully in practice.

The result of a huge state, densely populated, being the first to industrialize is not exactly the same as with the UK: China's sheer mass offers means to do something with its criminals and cuckoos other than dumping them on the natives, while it has Japan and Vietnam and such areas (terms admittedly anachronistic in a strictly historical sense here) to start extending influence into.

However if the Indian princely states start also industrializing, their pattern might wind up resembling that of OTL Imperial Japan: influenced by another industrial/industrializing power, starting their own process, they need coal, there are neighbors they might conquer to start boosting their power and that of their new system, thus good for them while not necessarily for the neighbors in question.
 
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