WI: An Indian Alexander?

PhilippeO

Banned
from point of view of Indian, anything West of Indus River would look like vast desert and barren mountains, this would limit ambition of any would be conqueror. some product that Greek and Roman have, and heavily exported to India might make conquest more attractive. Almost in all of its entire history, India keep sucking Bullion to itself, because it had many thing that foreigner want, but want almost nothing from outside.
 
As Philippe points out above, what's the incentive? There's a reason why Indian expansion/cultural colonization was always more directed Eastwards to SE Asia. That's where you get your return on investment. To justify the ridiculous expense in men and treasure that conquering the Iranian plateau would take, you really need more of an incentive than Glory.

Arguably if you had an Indian Alexander he'd be first focused on uniting the subcontinent (which itself might well take a lifetime), and then pushing on to SE Asia. The logistics would be horrific but at least there's vaguely more sense in it than going West.

IOTL the precedents are the Maritime South Indian kingdoms which did culturally colonise, and at times may have conducted maritime campaigns against the Indianised kingdoms of SE Asia.
 
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