WI: S E Asia is one country
- Thread starter Jimbo808
- Start date
Democratic Kampuchea...
I refer the Honorable Gentleman to the previous answer...
No. Even in the best situtation in that the Japanese Empire combines all of these territories under an East Asian co-prosperity sphere, the distinctive traditions, languages, religions, of all of these countries stretching back hundreds of thousands of years would likely mean that this loose confederation of states would dissolve very quickly or be in a country in the vaguest sense of the world, plus a lot of these countries have a long history of rivalries with each other (especially on the Mainland SE Asian countries).
Would the Europeans, Americans, or Chinese be satisfied if one country uses her military to create a unified bloc in Southeast Asia, in a region whose trade connects the Pacific to the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean and is one of the most important regions of the global world market?
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Southeast Asia is already an ethnic hodgepodge. While there are no conventional POD that arrive with those five being combined, it is not ASB for multiple POD to get us there.
If France somehow got Thailand and Burma and avoided WWII, you would have them partially combined. Alternatively, Britain could get French Indochina with an odd set of PoD and then add Thailand to make it contiguous.
With an odd enough set of events in a decolonization movement, it can’t be called impossible for these countries to decide they are better off sticking together.
It probably wouldn’t work with a modern nation state, but if they are governed by their monarchs (though Burma’s is already gone by 1900), perhaps they could rotate monarchs like Malaysia or come to a common figurehead who outranked all of them. Maybe a scenario where one colonial power controls all of them decides to leave a dictator in charge to fight communism, combining all five into a common market with joint defense and immigration. They otherwise just get governed by their monarch or local power structures internally.
If France somehow got Thailand and Burma and avoided WWII, you would have them partially combined. Alternatively, Britain could get French Indochina with an odd set of PoD and then add Thailand to make it contiguous.
With an odd enough set of events in a decolonization movement, it can’t be called impossible for these countries to decide they are better off sticking together.
It probably wouldn’t work with a modern nation state, but if they are governed by their monarchs (though Burma’s is already gone by 1900), perhaps they could rotate monarchs like Malaysia or come to a common figurehead who outranked all of them. Maybe a scenario where one colonial power controls all of them decides to leave a dictator in charge to fight communism, combining all five into a common market with joint defense and immigration. They otherwise just get governed by their monarch or local power structures internally.
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In my TL Indochina is mostly a part of a larger Vietnam, while Laos is divided between Vietnam and Thailand.
Only Myanmar (Burma) itself has been fighting a massive ethnic civil war for 70 years, there is no way how 687,749,822 million people of countless different ethnic groups, languages, religions, and cultures will out of nowhere accept becoming a single state.
It would be like a mega Yugoslavia, countries like Burma already has had a civil war because of ethnic divides and Cambodia also had an ethnic genocide (though the killings weren't only ethnic.) So yeah it wouldn't work at all
Not with a post-1900 POD.
Maybe if you went pre-1900 some empire could consolidate it, like India was consolidated in OTL, but that would be an AHC and the consequences would depend heavily on how you got there.
Maybe if you went pre-1900 some empire could consolidate it, like India was consolidated in OTL, but that would be an AHC and the consequences would depend heavily on how you got there.
If you want this region to be united by people indigenous to the region, instead of a colonial power, your best bet is probably the First Toungoo Empire, which at its height controlled most if what you’re asking for save what’s essentially modern Cambodia and Vietnam. Now, how to get this empire to conquer the rest of SEA and maintain its hold to the modern day, I don’t have a clue. All I really know is that it existed and is probably the empire that came closest to uniting the region. If anyone else wants to figure the details of this empire’s remaining conquests and survival, be my guest.
Aung San, before his untimely death, was trying to engender an ideology that would appeal to all the disparate and unrelated peoples of Burma, which emphasized the land itself and each person's connection to it, and to their shared history and trauma. The power of shared trauma especially should not be underestimated, as it is responsible for such things as the LGBTQ acronym and associated movements. I personally think if Aung San had lived longer, Burma would be more stable and harmonious than it is today.
This idea I volunteer to you all.
This idea I volunteer to you all.
Old Siam….
Just need some sort of Centuries in the past POD to make this kind of {insert ruling nationality/ and or combined nationality} mainland SEA united.
Just need some sort of Centuries in the past POD to make this kind of {insert ruling nationality/ and or combined nationality} mainland SEA united.
The best chance historically would have been a trading confederation empire (Chola, Srivijaya, Majapahit), or a Indonesian-Philippine Muslim trading empire (which would not last very long due to the Europeans arriving very soon after).
A number of historians have coined the term emboxment in that ambitious Southeast Asian empires, particularily on the mainland, are occasionally able to subjugate a neighboring power, giving the defeated vassals equipment and arms as long as it professes its loyalty to the conquering king, but the degree to which a victorious power can control their defeated enemies is seriously hindered by the jungle terrain making cross-national communications too difficult to actually impose power upon the defeating kingdoms depending on transportation distances (called the mandala system). The First Taungoo Empire was a fragile empire and its peripheries quite easily broke free of Burmese control after Bayinnaung's death. I can also only name two major instances where a Buddhist empire actually subjugates a Muslim one historically (Arakan and Champa).
References:
Baker, Chris. Phongpaichit, Pasuk. A History of Thailand (Fourth Edition).
Lieberman, Victor B. Strange Parallels in Southeast Asia (Vol. 1).
Imagine telling a Buddhist Thai person or a Catholic Filipino that their new ruler is a Muslim Sultan from Borneo. It's like trying to unify all of Saharan Africa (or the Indian Subcontinent) into one country since Southeast Asia and Saharan Africa are basically the same sizes, even then the technological capacity for such unification would not be achieved until European industrialization and colonization in the 19th and 20th centuries, and then factor in European decolonization...
By the time the Muslims arrived to Southeast Asia in the 14th and 15th centuries, there were already significant Buddhist/Confucian civilizations in Bagan, Angkor, Dai Viet, and Ayutthaya, all of whom whose understandings of their world and the way their society is constructed are based off the major religions they follow. Typically, when a polytheistic king converts to a major religion, he or she only does it once in the course of a civilization's existence. This was achieved in Indonesia due to Hinduism's polytheism but when that religion is the structure that holds up a civilization, it becomes essentially impossible to eradicate or convert a kingdom who already adheres a major religion, short of colonization/conquest and complete societal reconstruction.
Comparing it with Saharan Africa again, most of North Africa is Muslim, yet they have never unified historically, divided by their languages, customs, cuisine, etc... Or look at Christian Europe historically...
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