In general, I think the notion that all of Asia would somehow have moved towards democracy in the absence of imperialism is itself 1) Eurocentric, as it takes European development to be the norm; 2) Whiggish, for the same reasons; 3) presentist. R. Bin Wong’s China Transformed is a pretty good book on how late imperial China simply did not have the political background necessary for representative government, not because it lagged behind but because it took a different path, one of “fractal” government.
I dont think anyone is arguing that without European imperialism, democracies would have popped up everywhere. Rather, that there were enlightenment style values in many places with potential for democratic development.
The Iroquois aren’t really relevant to OP because they couldn’t plausibly have dominated the world.
Ah gotcha.
Democracy, assuming we’re talking about representative democracy which all modern (country-sized) democracies are based upon, comes from representative institutions that reflect attempts to defuse a state-elite conflict. This sort of conflict dynamics did not exist in China, where the state was ideologically committed to small government and unobtrusive rule (Ming and Qing China had some of the lowest tax rates and official : population ratios in the world) and where the local elite and central state shared the same priorities (the perpetuation of jiaohua). So no representative government.
Representative democracy as we know it? Of course not, but it wouldnt require much for that to be averted in its own right.
But there was and has been an expectation of representation in china for centuries. The modern protests in which a new beauracrat is sent to avoid embarrasment is an old tradition.
The liberal revolutions of 1789 onward, whether with the Estates General or the role of the Diet of Hungary in 1848, were predicated on the (prior or current) existence of representative institutions.
Yes.
The PLC was not democratic, and nor was the (fairly autocratic in terms of the Maharaja’s authority) Khalsa state.
Direct democratic institutions are not democratic now?
Yes the Maharaj had strong authority, but that isnt unusual for the time period.
These were not natural developments of Early Modern Ottoman institutions but imitations of the West, and indeed the reforming monarchs eliminated or weakened the traditional informal curbs on monarchic absolutism (the janissaries, the seyhülislam). Also, the Ottoman “democratic institutions” as you call them were founded after all major European powers except Russia already had them.
First at the underlined, thats an absurd standard.
Countries and cultures dont exist in isolation, it would be equally absurd to say that Northern Europe didnt naturally develop constitutional rule just because it was developed earlier by the mediterranean cultures.
Secondly, the Ottomans had democracy in the 1840s, where many european countries wouldnt untill the next century.