Post by raharris1973 on Feb 21, 2023 1:45:07 GMT
What if the British Raj (an extensive version of it, with buffer territories, like Burma, nearby, archipelagos, Afghanistan, and Tibet), was ISOT from early 1897 to 1497?
Additionally, all British, Europeans, and American people present disappear in the ISOTed region, transferred to another timeline. This extends to anyone with a British, European, or American parent. But all British and European built property, machinery, infrastructure, and ships remain in place. Meanwhile, all members of 1897's worldwide South Asia diaspora are transported back to the territory of the British Raj, even second and third generation overseas South Asians.
The wider world of 1497 the now greater British-less Raj 'lands', dropped into it in looks like this.
The British Viceroy, his top staff, and senior military commanders are vanished into thin air.
The closest things to authorities are the Princes of the Princely States, the highest ranking Indian members of the Indian Civil Service, the King of Afghanistan, the Dalai Lama, the highest ranking Indian members of the Indian Army (NCOs or junior officers at this time?), and aspiring authorities include the Indian membership of the now 12 year old Indian National Congress.
How do these predominantly Indian actors deal with absence of the British, and deal with each other. What aspects and frameworks of the Raj system and elite negotiation within it continue, for at least awhile? Versus what matters start getting settled by resort to brute force?
I don't have a good roster of Indian princes of the day (for the Princely states), nor Indian Army Order of Battle, or the Indian Civil Service.
But I do have some links on people who were prominent political theorists and talkers of the time:
History of the Indian National Congress - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
The INC was mainly an elite talking shop, only just starting to talk to a wider public.
The first Indian who held office in the empire had been elected already, was affiliated with INC, and had started to make some news with his theory that economically, Britain was ripping off India.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dadabhai_Naoroji. (a Zoroastrian Parsi)
Muhammad Ali Jinnah worked for him.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bal_Gangadhar_Tilak was a Hindu about to launch into self-government talk and helped shelter people who reacted violently to the British anti-plague regime of 1897.
A lot of these guys seem to have the potential to keep working together like proper Victorian gentlemen, if they can make the right links to the on the ground tax collectors and soldiers and princes and not get completely ignored and violently shunted aside by cruder soldiers, landowners, princes, and merchant magnates.
The leading British Indian Muslim statesman of the time was en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syed_Ahmad_Khan.
He was in many ways the model Victorian gentleman and modernizer. But, he had already had expressed pessimism about about the Muslims and Hindus living together without the British without one sect running a system of domination against the other.
Leaders and peoples of the subcontinent could easily get absorbed into their own problems, competitive struggles for resources and power, and be mainly internally focused.
At the same time, they might be able to manage peace and federation on a large-scale (with any violent struggles localized) in sort of an HRE like structure. And, in comparing both their technology and their educated values (at the elite level) with those of any other peoples or rulers they encounter in the world, east or west, they could easily view themselves as most qualified or even obligated to judge and oversee global affairs - Brahmins and Muslims feeling that in a medieval world without Europeans and Americans, they represent the pinnacle of human enlightenment, and have inherited what has become a 'brown man's burden.'
How do elites and public in western India, or India writ large, deal with the arrival of that Portuguese rap scallion, Vasco Da Gama, later in the year. And how do the various authorities on the frontiers deal with the more primitive downtime frontiers with Ming China, Southeast Asia, Persia, and Central Asia?
Additionally, all British, Europeans, and American people present disappear in the ISOTed region, transferred to another timeline. This extends to anyone with a British, European, or American parent. But all British and European built property, machinery, infrastructure, and ships remain in place. Meanwhile, all members of 1897's worldwide South Asia diaspora are transported back to the territory of the British Raj, even second and third generation overseas South Asians.
The wider world of 1497 the now greater British-less Raj 'lands', dropped into it in looks like this.
The British Viceroy, his top staff, and senior military commanders are vanished into thin air.
The closest things to authorities are the Princes of the Princely States, the highest ranking Indian members of the Indian Civil Service, the King of Afghanistan, the Dalai Lama, the highest ranking Indian members of the Indian Army (NCOs or junior officers at this time?), and aspiring authorities include the Indian membership of the now 12 year old Indian National Congress.
How do these predominantly Indian actors deal with absence of the British, and deal with each other. What aspects and frameworks of the Raj system and elite negotiation within it continue, for at least awhile? Versus what matters start getting settled by resort to brute force?
I don't have a good roster of Indian princes of the day (for the Princely states), nor Indian Army Order of Battle, or the Indian Civil Service.
But I do have some links on people who were prominent political theorists and talkers of the time:
History of the Indian National Congress - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
The INC was mainly an elite talking shop, only just starting to talk to a wider public.
The first Indian who held office in the empire had been elected already, was affiliated with INC, and had started to make some news with his theory that economically, Britain was ripping off India.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dadabhai_Naoroji. (a Zoroastrian Parsi)
Muhammad Ali Jinnah worked for him.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bal_Gangadhar_Tilak was a Hindu about to launch into self-government talk and helped shelter people who reacted violently to the British anti-plague regime of 1897.
A lot of these guys seem to have the potential to keep working together like proper Victorian gentlemen, if they can make the right links to the on the ground tax collectors and soldiers and princes and not get completely ignored and violently shunted aside by cruder soldiers, landowners, princes, and merchant magnates.
The leading British Indian Muslim statesman of the time was en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syed_Ahmad_Khan.
He was in many ways the model Victorian gentleman and modernizer. But, he had already had expressed pessimism about about the Muslims and Hindus living together without the British without one sect running a system of domination against the other.
Leaders and peoples of the subcontinent could easily get absorbed into their own problems, competitive struggles for resources and power, and be mainly internally focused.
At the same time, they might be able to manage peace and federation on a large-scale (with any violent struggles localized) in sort of an HRE like structure. And, in comparing both their technology and their educated values (at the elite level) with those of any other peoples or rulers they encounter in the world, east or west, they could easily view themselves as most qualified or even obligated to judge and oversee global affairs - Brahmins and Muslims feeling that in a medieval world without Europeans and Americans, they represent the pinnacle of human enlightenment, and have inherited what has become a 'brown man's burden.'
How do elites and public in western India, or India writ large, deal with the arrival of that Portuguese rap scallion, Vasco Da Gama, later in the year. And how do the various authorities on the frontiers deal with the more primitive downtime frontiers with Ming China, Southeast Asia, Persia, and Central Asia?