What happens if Alexander the Great goes West instead of East?

Albert.Nik

Banned
I bet he would have gone after India and did he ever have a chance of conquering India
Depends on what you call India. If you say today's India,then small part and short lived. The descendent Buddhist Indo-Greek Empire went upto today's Mathura and even beyond too. Then India stretched from Tajikistan and Afghanistan itself.
 
Everybody already mentioned the biggest riches were in the East, but let's assume he went West nonetheless.

I'd say he's up for the challenge. He inherited from his father the finest army of his time, and showed incredible capacities to adapt to new situations on the field.

Sicily and Magna Graecia? No problems. Etruscans? No problems. Rome? No problems (no matter what you say, Livy). He may have some tough time in central Italy against the Samnites, but ultimately, with scorched earth tactics, he could break them. Going further in Gaul and Spain would have presented very little interest to him, but he could have conquered the coastal parts before his logistic lines start to stretch too much.

Carthage would have been the biggest prize, and saw some epic battles. He would have to set up a navy first, which wasn't his forte, but being Alexander the Great, he would have found a way, or made one.
 
I have no doubt that had he lived to old age he would have at some point turn his attention West. But only once his Empire in central Asia firmly established and depending on whether or not he keeps probing India and how he handles conflict with Chandragupta Maurya (who would found the Maurya Empire in OTL India). But I doubt he would have gone beyond the Italian Peninsula and Carthage, leaving the Iberian peninsula and Gual and all those Celts to his heirs.
 
That is incredibly wrong. Carthage was by this point one of the greatest cities in the world, ruling over much of North Africa, and controlling much of the trade network in the Western Mediterranean. Moreover, they were one of the Greeks' traditional enemies, to the point that classical historians claimed their was a conspiracy between the Carthaginians and the Persians to conquer all the Greeks together, the former from the west and the latter from the east; Himera and Syracuse were traditionally said to have been fought on the same day.
Okay, then Alexander can go west, but it will be South-West through Egypt towards Cartage and on towards what is now Dakkar, rather then North-West through the Alps and towards what is now Lisbon
 
Okay, then Alexander can go west, but it will be South-West through Egypt towards Cartage and on towards what is now Dakkar, rather then North-West through the Alps and towards what is now Lisbon
No reason for him to go through the Alps; he can go from Greece to Sicily and from there to Carthage and on to Iberia.
 
Another factor that needs to be considered: how do the Persians react to Alexander taking the majority of the Hellenic World's martial forces on an adventure across the Adriatic, while leaving behind only recently frog-marched Greek City-States behind who may be willing to play that classical role of accepting Imperial subsidies to be friendly to Persia and push against the potentially unfriendly hegemon?
 
The problem in going west is that the farther he goes the harder it is to maintain what he already has together, that bunch of tribes, cities and kingdoms that just hate each other and fought each other until last week are now coherced to live together, those territories aren't going to give him the same amount of manpower and riches. Without the prestige of the battles he won and the riches of the east it would be a lot harder to keep the greek cities under his thumb. No matter how many slaughters happen in the west no battle, not even winning against an army of one million enemies will give him the same prestige that Gaugamela gave to him. Because all of it I think that Alexander isn't going as far as he went IOTL, just Italy, Carthage, and Illyria will be enough to make his hands full for the rest of his life.
 
No reason for him to go through the Alps; he can go from Greece to Sicily and from there to Carthage and on to Iberia.

There wasn't much reason to march through Gedrosia either, but Alexander did it anyway. I wouldn't say it's inevitable or even likely that he'd try it, but I wouldn't be surprised if he tried either.
 
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