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
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