India and China Adopting Roman and European Knowledge

What if India and China did not merely trade with the Roman Empire and the subsequent Western European kingdoms, but also sent scholars west to learn their ways and adopt/incorporate their knowledge? What do you think India and China could invent incorporating Roman/European knowledge with their own? Guns?
 
What if India and China did not merely trade with the Roman Empire and the subsequent Western European kingdoms, but also sent scholars west to learn their ways and adopt/incorporate their knowledge? What do you think India and China could invent incorporating Roman/European knowledge with their own? Guns?
In Roman times, not much. Concrete and bridge building perhaps?
 
China invented guns.....

As for sending people to Europe,I don't know about India,but why would China actually do that?It's too far away,and there's not really motivation as to why they would do so either.
 

MrP

Banned
Until the 1400s, knowledge tended to flow from east to west, not the other way around.

What could India and China have learnt from the Romans that they didn't already know?
 
China invented guns.....

As for sending people to Europe,I don't know about India,but why would China actually do that?It's too far away,and there's not really motivation as to why they would do so either.
I meant a more advanced weapon closer to a European gun. I just wanted to see how differently they would turn out today if they had "superior" knowledge of the west and whether they'd be able to stand up to European imperialists when they approached.
 

I meant a more advanced weapon closer to a European gun. I just wanted to see how differently they would turn out today if they had "superior" knowledge of the west.
There's no 'superior knowledge' of the west at this point,at least not much that I know of.
 
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MrP

Banned
There's no 'superior knowledge' of the west at this point.
Seconded. Europe only gained a technological and military edge on the Eastern civilisations in the early modern era. And as late as the 1790s the British were still picking up military ideas from the Indian kingdoms (see Mysorean rockets).
 
Say hello to the mongol empire!

Basically, your ahc happened IRL and especially under the reign of Kublai Kahn.

As far back as Ogodei, it was common for mongol rulers to transport learned individuals across the world to where they were most needed, most commonly between Islamic and Chinese civilisations but also Europe for its stone and steelwork and clever use of glass.

Now India is interesting in this case, never having been properly conquered by the mongols and thus not fully privy to their expansive network. How you would get both parts of Europe and India to be conquered is a challenge, namely as in the court of Ogodei, the descision ultimately went in favour of attacking Europe.

Somehow gt both, and you will get more European stuff going to India.
 
Han and Tang China had contact with Rome and that could grow. But it would have to go both ways.

Western Europe was the poorest part of the Roman Empire, and it was even more abject for centuries after the fall of Western Rome. Western Eurasian knowledge can be easily picked up at Damascus/Antioch or Constantinople. There is no need to go so far
 

I meant a more advanced weapon closer to a European gun. I just wanted to see how differently they would turn out today if they had "superior" knowledge of the west and whether they'd be able to stand up to European imperialists when they approached.
As far as handheld guns went, the Ming Dynasty had the best in the world. Not so much in cannons though. I'd say the main reason for Chinese weakness was more Qing mismanagement in the later years than technology.
 
Plus I doubt that any representant of Chinese power would be allowed anywhere near a foundry in the XVIth century.

Just like the tea for China, cannons were THE source of power for Europe
 
I meant, learning could have occurred at an earlier point, leading to earlier develop€emts. Not that they did learn IOTL.
 
Seconded. Europe only gained a technological and military edge on the Eastern civilisations in the early modern era. And as late as the 1790s the British were still picking up military ideas from the Indian kingdoms (see Mysorean rockets).

Yup- the European advantage in India in the 18th C was organisational, not technological. The infantry revolution from the thirty years war onwards gave Europeans a near monopoly on drilled mass infantry as the arm of decision.

Indian armies, on the other hand tended to rely too much on tech, so to speak, with a lot of money spent on flashy artillery. I believe I've read somewhere that Indian battle lines tended to field proportionately far more artillery than Europeans did. The problem was that European trained infantry could hold together under fire and then break the opposing lines. Artillery without cover was useless.
 
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