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I was recently looking at my globe, and I realised that the Maldives seem to be in a good position for an Indian Ocean thalassocracy.

An obvious expansion would be the Chagos Islands, apparently Maldivian sailors used to get lost there from time to time. If the Maldivians settled the Chagos before the French did, their rule could be unchallenged.

This state could also expand into coastal areas of Sri Lanka and India, though I'm not an expert on Indian or Sri Lankan history. Lakshadweep seems like a pretty obvious addition to the empire.

The Seychelles could be another obvious expansion, they were uninhabited before the Europeans came along, and they are pretty close the Maldive and the Chagos Islands.

From the Seychelle they could settle the Masacarenes, they too were uninhabited before European colonisation. With all of the land in the Mascarenes, they might even be able to eclipse the Maldives in such an empire.

Other possible expansions I could see are the Cocos Islands, Christmas Island, the Comoros, parts of Madagascar, Zanzibar, the Andamans, and maybe even some coastal areas of East Africa.

The problem is that I don't know how such a civilisation would be started. An expanded Maldivian population could be helpful, maybe with the excess population settling the Chagos Islands or the Seychelles. However, I have no idea how this could happen, my only knowledge of Maldivian history comes from wikipedia.
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