Sikh Empire

Something we may be forgetting here. How would Punjab society in the 1840s react to industrialisation? Could Kharak Singh successfully push reform without creating dissent and opposition among other vested interests. Many industrialising nations have found it insufficient merely to build a few model factories and railways. To make Western-style industrialisation possible you must also adopt a Western mindset: education and financial systems, and to a certain extent governmental and social practices. This would inevitably threaten the existing order and reformers such as Li Hongzhang found their efforts opposed by elements in the ruling establishment. Alone in the 19th century only Japan was able to industrialise, and even though it was culturally homogeneous and politically centralised it was not without any small amount of resistance.

Maybe the Khalsa has the motive and political clout to ram through modernisation, but even then it was notoriously democratic and factionalised. How would it affect Sikh society at large? Who would support it and who would not? Could they pull it off?

I would like to see this timeline developed though, it has a lot of potential. Thread necro
 
Something we may be forgetting here. How would Punjab society in the 1840s react to industrialisation? Could Kharak Singh successfully push reform without creating dissent and opposition among other vested interests. Many industrialising nations have found it insufficient merely to build a few model factories and railways. To make Western-style industrialisation possible you must also adopt a Western mindset: education and financial systems, and to a certain extent governmental and social practices. This would inevitably threaten the existing order and reformers such as Li Hongzhang found their efforts opposed by elements in the ruling establishment. Alone in the 19th century only Japan was able to industrialise, and even though it was culturally homogeneous and politically centralised it was not without any small amount of resistance.

Maybe the Khalsa has the motive and political clout to ram through modernisation, but even then it was notoriously democratic and factionalised. How would it affect Sikh society at large? Who would support it and who would not? Could they pull it off?

I would like to see this timeline developed though, it has a lot of potential. Thread necro

Interesting points- as you say, the Khalsa was notoriously factionalised.

However, it got to the state it did because Ranjit Singh spent the latter half of his life in bed with his concubines. If, ITTL, he's more dynamic and grooms Kharak as an equally dynamic leader, the Khalsa may well be more willing to bend the knee.

I also accept your point about other interests but at thispoint the Khalsa was the ruling factor in the Sikh Empire. It'd be quite easy for them to crush any opposition. I could see Khalistan becoming Asia's Prussia- the army with a country.
 

Ak-84

Banned
First of all I have to say whoa! Keep the ATL at least realistic.

1) In OTL the sikhs sufferd because they were fighting on too many fronts. They would have been better served if they had stayed on the plains, the moment they crossed Jehlum into the mountains, into the Potohar, Hazara, Kashmir and Vale of Peshawar, they struggled. They did well enough, even winning a decisive victory at Nowshera, but it was difficult to hold on to these areas, in both the Anglo-Sikh wars lots of the army was committed to these areas, in the first they lost Kashmir to the Brits.

2) Second, how the hell are they supposed to have access to the sea? In OTL, they got nowhere near the coast, and they were suffering reverses up north.

3) Most likely option for there to be a Sikh empire which survives

i) The Sikhs abandon Kashmir (except Jummu), Potohar, Peshawar and Hazara. The northern border is the Salt Range, the Indus the Western border, and Ambala the eastern border, the Southern Sindh desert provides a defendable border. So they have reasonably secure borders and an army not away trying to pacify these territorys.

ii) there is a huge muslim exodus to Delhi and Afghan territory as their was in OTL, but much larger.

iii) Now with secure western borders and a level of industrialisation, there is a state which is strong enough to withstand British incursions, I suspect the British push up the the Beas regardless. With the Afghans busy against the Russian the Sikhs are secure from that end, besides having a natural barrier, and both they and the British have an reason to keep the Russians out of Afghanistan.

4) There can be no mutiny in this TL, the cause of the mutiny were based upoin the losses suffered in the Anglo-Sikh and Anglo-Afghan wars, indeed many regts which distinguished themselves in those wars rebelled, the 21st Native Infantry for instance. Without the losses in war and the feeling of mistreatment, the Bengal army dose not rebel.
 
First of all I have to say whoa! Keep the ATL at least realistic.

I consider realism secondary to a good story- my TLs are generally only developed as the base for AH fiction writing. This is one which didn't pan out into a short story.
 
Top