Why is it that India has come so much closer to complete unification than Europe? From my understanding the Mauryan empire included every part of the subcontinent other than the southern tip. The closest Europe came to that was probably either Rome, which while large couldn't reasonably be considered the entire continent, or Napoleon's empire, which also was not quite large enough to compare. Why is this the case though? Both regions are within the same size range and although I'm biased towards seeing differences between European cultures it still seems that they're both about as culturally homogeneous. Thoughts?
>>1148581
Europe is convoluted as fuck geographically.
Also Roman communication systems. Since the kingdoms that exist a while after the fall of Rome still had the same Church and the same roads that united the Roman Empire, if you invaded someone then all the kings in Europe would have heard about it within a month. And then the whole of the region would be on your shit.
India is kind of dominated by the Ganges River basin. Europe doesn't really have a primary river basin like India, China, Egypt, or Mesopotamia have.
>>1148581
Geography. The answer to questions like this is usually geography
>>1148581
India had a common enemy in the eternal Anglo
Europe isn't even a real continent. Europe is a subcontinent.
India was unified by colonialism. The Mauryans only 'unified' India for a few decades and only controlled the main trade routes and population centers. The Mughals fell apart as soon as they tried to expand south.
Other than that there was no unity prior to British colonialism, which united India under a common regime. Indians then inherited that unified state with independence, and due to the development of a common Hindu identity they stuck together once the Islamic parts broke off.
India's geography isn't a naturally unified as it looks on a map. Climate and terrain split it into a bunch of different regional political centers that generally tended to be independent of one another, none being able to control any other for any significant period of time. The Indo-Gangetic Plain was often unified, but it was also often split between east and west. The Western Deccan had a string of different dynasties that were only rarely controlled from outside, a did Tamil Nadu and Orissa. Any empire that tried to unify these regions tended to quickly grow unstable and fall apart.
Well, uh...Europe is fucking huge and diverse. Meanwhile, India is India.
>>1148844
And what caused the diversity? Geography. The answer is geography.
>>1148771
So, like India?
>>1148840
Do you happen to have a map/s that shows those traditional regions in a comprehensive way for plebs with little knowledge?
>>1148893
Yes, except more so because India has it's own tectonic plate.
>>1148844
And India isn't huge and diverse?
>>1148908
Not really, sorry. I was really simplifying there anyway, since regions like the Western Deccan and the Ganges were themselves often divided, and then there are other regions like Kerala, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh to further complicate things. India's almost as big a clusterfuck as Europe for most of its history. Almost.
Here's the one of the Guptas and Vakatakas though. I'll see if I have any more.
>>1148977
Notice how the Marathas were revolting even before the Mughals finished conquering the Deccan.
>>1148973
No, because all those brown people look alike.
>>1148991
You can see some of the regional kingdoms here; Chalkyas in the Western Deccan, Pallavas in Tamil Nadu, and Harsha and Shashanka in the Gangetic Plain.
>>1149012
>>1148973
Less so politically.
>>1148991
What are the regions with pink borders (for example Tatta, Mysore or Golconda) supposed to be? Cultural regions? Historical kingdoms?
>>1149047
Provinces, I think. Most of them seem to be based on former sultanates. Golconda, Berar, Ahmadnagar and Bijapur were the former Deccani Sultanates, and Malwa, Gujarat and Bengal were also independent sultanates before their conquest by the Mughals.
>>1148581
Because a United India was the only way India was to be in any way relevant enough to bargain with the Western powers. After centuries of being ruled by the British Crown, Indians intermingled came to realize just how neccesary a large, centralized state was to success.
It would have all worked out fine if Ali Jinnah hadn't fucked everything up.
Thanks to him, there are now two even shittier versions of India, one of them with nukes and the other being a shithole even by Indian standards.
>>1148581
"Indian's" were as proud, parochial, and ethnically diverse as Europeans (probably more so) however the British came in (who may as well have been space aliens) and made the the differences irrelevant. You could be a Mughal emperor, a Nepalese farmer, an untouchable or a Brahmin, id didn't matter anymore. the EIC is alpha and omega now, Anglo-Saxons hold hegemony and you are all beholden to a king 14,000 miles away and not even the highest among you is worthy of his attention.
If Europe was humbled in such a way, we'd have less qualms about closer union.
>>1148840
>India was unified by colonialism
It would be easy to think this, and yet they still remain united while European nations like Spain and UK struggle to hold their national unity.
If it was only colonialism then they would have fractured back into their original states a loooooong time ago. Similar to the Balkans.
>>1149572
>European nations like Spain and UK struggle to hold their national unity
KEK
E
K
Oh god, first worlders don't even fucking know
>>1148581
But it hasn't.
>>1149587
>Oh god, first worlders don't even fucking know
Last time I checked 5% vote was all that kept Scotland part of the UK. Brexit would change that.
Does anyone have that screenshot of the thread where OP asked how the brits could control India , and used aliens destroying the US, Russia, UK and being taller and more advanced and healthier as an explanation?
>>1149808
Too bad that explanation was complete bullshit and left out and added in a lot of information. The analogy was pretty shit too. While brits did have superior technology to an extent, I would say it really only mattered in sailing for most of the colonizing of India. The way brits got control of India was due to India's disunity. They exploited differences between various peoples and the relative political weakness of India at the time(Mughals beginning to fall apart) to take over the subcontinent. The disunity between the peoples of India helped them during the Indian Mutiny too(ex. Sikhs worked with the British in taking down the Mutiny because they were scared that they would be persecuted again under a reinstated Mughal Empire).
>>1149572
>yet they still remain united
Except splitting into India and Pakistan and Bangladesh and Sri Lanka........
You are aware that India i.e. the Indian subcontinent, contains more countries than the Republic of India, the country commonly called India, right?
>>1149639
It's a gap of 10%, not 5%.
>>1150274
>While brits did have superior technology to an extent, I would say it really only mattered in sailing for most of the colonizing of India
I'm sure there was more to it than sailing, but you're right in that it wasn't some super-modernized army gunning down medieval swordsmen. The Brits were actually copying some Indian military technology as late as the early 19th century.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congreve_rocket
>>1148601
when otomans were invading europe french and swedish were backstabbing European countries
>>1148840
Sounds spot on to me. India was never unified before independence from Britain. The Maryans, the Guptas, etc. dominated the Indus-Ganges region but could never fully penetrate the south. It was always diverse.
Just look at modern India, the amount of strife about religious, linguistic, cultural, ideological, etc. is crazy, it's like a fractal image, the more you zoom in the more diversity and conflict you see.
>>1148991
Hey, The Times world history book, I've got that. The maps are great but they try to squeeze in too much info, even the ones for history I know about are confusing.
Yet another thing easily explained by Spengler.
>>1148581
Indian nationalism is based around religion and shared cultural values, European nationalism is based around different ethnic groups. Also, India needed to unite as one to throw out a colonial power; Europe has never needed to do that. The closest thing you have approaching that are the Crusades and anti-Ottoman ventures.
Europe is never going to be a unified state, especially not after the EU's bungling of everything and making even a federation something completely unpalatable.
>>1149288
>the british might as well have been space aliens
For those who haven't seen it.
>>1150733
more interesting would be the brits recruiting a lot LOT of cavalry especially of the rajput variety during their early days. A lot of early brit cavalry officers went full native, took natives names, wives and became fully indianized. Of course the eternal anglo fucked this up.
>>1148581
Europe is actually twice as big as India
>>1149036
How do you validate that statement?
>India has come so much closer to complete unification
Has it? We should've discussed the truthfulness of this statement before diving into the rest of your post.
>>1150891
Rivers are the seat of all ancient civilizations. The greater the outflow generally the larger the population the river can support. The Ganges takes up most of the subcontinent's outflow. Europe doesn't have anything comparable to it.
>>1151179
The Hyperborean Finnish Khaganate wasn't based on any such river.
>>1151179
except the indus nourished western india
Western parts of UP and delhi are irrigated by yamuna.
Everything south of bengal is not irrigated by the rivers at all, this includes all of south india which was influenced extremely heavily by Northern India.
>>1151189
Ah shit, I meant Indus, not Ganges. The Indus River is has the greatest outflow.
Anyway, it's the silt filled water flowing down from the Himalayas that fed Indias ancient civilizations and the outflow of all the rivers are rather concentrated relative to the river systems of Europe.
>>1150894
The first time Indians met brits was in 1600's. There really was no "Whoa. Aliums" as both cunts were at the same level of knowledge.
Hell, Indians saw Portucunts as more trouble than Brits.
Shitty Anglo Nationalist analogy right there.
>>1149100
They both have nukes, that's the problem (for the world)
>>1150848
The dutch and the english too.
>>1151428
This really does scare me.
http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/RobockToonSciAmJan2010.pdf
>>1151452
>nuclear winter meme
>again
While a small-scale nuclear exchange would undoubtedly be devastating, the concept of nuclear winter relies on flawed methods and is pretty much impossible.
That study you posted, for example, is assuming an exchange performed with the express intention of ejecting as much material as possible into the atmosphere, and ignores the reality of nuclear doctrine. A significant amount of weapons are going to be aimed at the other guy's weapons, meaning that many will be lost without ever being used and others will be hitting sparsely populated areas where you're not getting much debris ejected upwards. Plus, they seem to rely on a flimsy firestorm premise without any real analysis of if the cities hit would even be able to reach firestorm conditions. They don't bother to explain their methods for determining how the firestorms are behaving, and they don't even say how they came about calculating the projected amount of material ejected into the atmosphere.
Odds are they're making the same flawed assumptions that every previous Nuclear Winter scenario does - cities are hit with nukes for maximum coverage regardless of military doctrine, every area hit experiences firestorms just like Japan's cities did, and clear, dry weather persists the whole time while what remains of emergency services sit with their thumbs up their asses.
>>1152091
That is only in hopes you can hit your target before your enemy can get its birds off the ground. If you are the targeted nation then you your only option is to nuke your enemies major cities. That is why the MAD doctrine was created. Perfect preemptive strikes are an unreasonable explanation in war, which is why MAD is still part of the nuclear arms landscape. If America launched a preemptive strike then the Russia has in place plans to nuke American cities, because hitting empty nuclear silos would be pointless. America knows this and therefore would ideally never attempt such a strike.
>Plus, they seem to rely on a flimsy firestorm premise without any real analysis of if the cities hit would even be able to reach firestorm conditions
Are you going to absurdly cite the Iraqi oil fields?
>>1152145
With the kind of massive exchange you're talking about, you're going to have attacks coming in waves, and even in a retaliatory strike, there's still going to be some warheads left over to hit. Plus, there's strategic targets other than enemy warheads - command centers, airfields, ports, etc that are going to warrant direct attacks far more than another city.
In the smaller Indo-Pakistani exchange discussed, you're dealing with a scenario where the most likely targets are going to be fairly tactical. Soldiers along the front are going to be thoroughly fucked, and you're likely going to see quite a few strikes on strategic airfields and possible launch locations.
However, with little over a hundred warheads between the two powers, you're not going to get many warheads aimed at cities, if they decide to do so at all. Especially given the massive disparity in manpower and resources the Indians have, Pakistan would need every one of its warheads to be directed at tactical and operational-level targets, and India would likely do the same. It'd take a completely unrealistic exchange solely targeted at population centers with no attempts by either side to stop incoming warheads for the scenario discussed to take place.
Also, what do you mean when you bring up the Kuwaiti oil fires? The point I was making there was that projections always seem to assume that every city behaves exactly the same in a fire. IIRC, the firestorm models used for these projections tend to be based off of just a couple of famous examples, like San Francisco or the firebombing of Japan, and they fail to take into account things like local climate and weather conditions or the way buildings in the city in question are constructed.
>>1150894
>Doesn't even go over the importance of the Indian Mutiny and later the Jallian Wala Bagh Massacre
This analogy is shit.
>>1152547
The scope of the article goes beyond that specific conflict. Any amount of ash pumped up above the hydrosphere would negatively impact global food stability, and the current Indo-Paki standoff is won't necessarily stay confined to just 100 warheads nor will that region be the last to threaten humanity with a nuclear war.
Nuclear Winter is a real threat and the meme that it doesn't exist needs to die, else humanity might be royally fucked over because some politician is one excuse short of not pressing the button.
>Also, what do you mean when you bring up the Kuwaiti oil fires?
Oh, well let me lay it out for you.
Carl Sagan came up with the Nuclear Winter hypothesis. Modelling then and now supports the theory. However Carl Sagan on live television, not long before he died, warned that if Iraq burned the Kuwait oil fields a sort of nuclear winter might happen due to the heat and ash. But this never happened. Then, some dude with no expertise in the field who rights survival books for a living became a big advocate of Nuclear Winter being a farce (maybe because he wanted a nuclear exchange to make his survival fantasies a reality, IDK). In truth though, Carl Sagan just goofed up by thinking a bunch of oil fields over many square kilometers could produce the same BTUs a mega-city would produce if hit with one or more thermonuclear warheads. It turns out that nuclear fireball and subsequent firestorm is necessary to punch a hole above the hydrosphere. Once above the hydrosphere, the ash is VERY long lived. It stays up there for decades, blocking sunlight.
>>1152625
You're missing the point though - the mega-city burns wouldn't happen, at least not on the scale everyone always predicts.
Yes, warheads were deployed with the intention of burning cities to dust and getting most of that debris into the upper atmosphere would likely have a global effect. But with a limited exchange like the one discussed in that article, you're lucky if you even get the regional impact that the Kuwait oil fires had.
I'm not arguing that the science behind debris in the upper atmosphere causing climate change is wrong. Hell, if anything that's been definitely proven by the Tambora eruption. I'm saying that their methods for determining how much debris actually is ejected is very flawed.
>>1152709
>If a directly hit by one ore more thermonuclear detonations a city will not eject significant amounts of ash above the hydrosphere
You have no grounds to claim that.
Firestorms are not freak accidents. They are the unavoidable result of large areas going up in suddenly. The initial nuclear fireball would be enough to punch a hole above the hydrosphere and the firestorm would supply the ash and the continuing convection.
>>1149572
You know the comparison actually works against your point?
>>1150292
The gap was 10% but they needed 5% to get 50%
>>1152745
Are you just not reading anything I'm posting? The nukes won't be hitting the cities directly, but rather targets closer to the battlefield that aren't going to burn nearly as well as you're projecting.
The one or two cities that may end up being hit will be burning no worse than the worst firestorms that we've seen through history (Tokyo, Hamburg, etc) - there sure as shit will be a lot of stuff thrown up, but it'll be no more damaging than these conventional firestorms.
You're also vastly overestimating the power of nuclear weapons. Since the '60s, yields have been dropping to the point that I'd be surprised if you could even find a weapon deployed by either side above 100 kilotons. They're still devastatingly powerful, but they're not massive city-destroying devices like you're making them out to be. To get an idea of what India and Pakistan are working with, you'd likely have to use the entire arsenal if you wanted to turn just one of the megacities into an unstoppable firestorm.
You're overstating the effects of the firestorms and ignoring the bigger environmental problem, like the fact that even a limited nuclear exchange is probably going to fuck with the ozone layer quite a bit.
>>1149572
This is surprisingly coherent given its retarded content
>>1153117
As I've already argued and I assumed you acknowledged, MAD is still a relevant nuclear doctrine specifically in defense of first strikes. There will be targeted cities on both side unless the preemptive strike is perfect, which no military analyst would assume.
>>1153117
Dude, any thermonuclear device is more powerful than Fat Man or Little Boy, and the reduction in size is made up for by saturating the target area. In fact a few "small" thermonuclear weapons detonated simultaneously are so effective at annihilating the target area that the USA and Russia until recently had agreed not to use MIRV weapons.
>>1153161
And you're completely misunderstanding the concept of MAD. MAD is merely assuring you've got second-strike capabilities so that you can retaliate against their strategic targets. It is not - and never has been - anyone's policy to go after cities purely to cause maximum damage. Especially in the case of India and Pakistan, neither nation has enough warheads to even seriously consider such a strike, as they're going to need everything they have to deal with operational-level targets.
>>1153215
>and the reduction in size is made up for by saturating the target area
No. Yields dropped because delivery systems got more accurate. MIRVs are intended for hitting multiple targets with a single delivery device, not saturating a single target. Even in the case where you're deploying multiple warheads against a single target, they're not spreading out to maximize the area they're affecting, but rather hitting the same point multiple times.
The MIRV agreements weren't due to fears of anything so much as costs. The nuclear arms race was getting absurdly expensive for all sides, and the alternative to arms reduction treaties would have been ever more money being poured into new missiles, missile defense systems, and advanced reentry vehicles. Hell, the technology to build a fully-functional missile shield has been around since the '70s. The problem is that it only encourages the enemy to build more missiles and invest in new technologies to make sure their warheads can still get through, and that tends to be cheaper than establishing and maintaining an effective missile shield.
>>1153264
>And you're completely misunderstanding the concept of MAD. MAD is merely assuring you've got second-strike capabilities so that you can retaliate against their strategic targets. It is not - and never has been - anyone's policy to go after cities purely to cause maximum damage. Especially in the case of India and Pakistan, neither nation has enough warheads to even seriously consider such a strike, as they're going to need everything they have to deal with operational-level targets.
What? I misunderstand nothing. Maybe you forgot my what I argued.
MAD is still a relevant military doctrine because in response to a nuclear first strike the only recourse is to launch against military and civilian targets because there is no point in nuking empty missile silos or an airstrip that has already sent its bombers.
And you are flat out wrong about several smaller warheads being less effective at taking out a city than one large warhead.
>>1148840
>India was unified by colonialism.
>>1153296
>MAD is still a relevant military doctrine because in response to a nuclear first strike the only recourse is to launch against military and civilian targets because there is no point in nuking empty missile silos or an airstrip that has already sent its bombers.
Yes, but the things targeted by a second strike aren't going to be exclusively cities, and even in the case where cities are targeted, it'll be strategic targets - transportation hubs, ports, factories - that aren't as conducive to a massive firestorm. Plus, in the India vs Pakistan scenario discussed here, you've got the issue of there being a huge threat from conventional troops. The majority of either side's arsenal is likely going to be deployed against local targets like airbases, communication hubs, and troop concentrations rather than cities.
>And you are flat out wrong about several smaller warheads being less effective at taking out a city than one large warhead.
If that was the goal, then yes, numerous smaller warheads would be more efficient at leveling a city than a single large one. But MIRVs aren't used for blanketing target areas - they're used to allow a single missile to hit multiple targets.
>>1153308
He's right, but not in the way you think
Colonial India required several member of the upper class to work together in unison and cooperation under British supervision. This intermingling of intellegencia, often Western educated, allowed for Ideas to be exchanged and, eventually, formulate into a concrete Pan-Indian independence movement.
Its remarkable, you had people born for Punjab, Gujarat, Bengal, Orissa, all working together to unite an entire sub-continent of people.
>>1153340
>Yes, but the things targeted by a second strike aren't going to be exclusively cities
So now your argument is that only some of the targets won't be cities? Well then I guess we agree. And yet you still ignore the doctrine of MAD.
Second strikes ALWAYS target population centers. Everyone knows in a nuclear war both nations would be so fucked up one side invading the other would be impossible, but that's only true if you hit their most vital targets. If America nuked the USSR's/Russia's cities and whereas only some corn fields in the American heartland were targeted and some naval bases across the world then America would be able to invade a lot sooner than vice versa. That's the whole point of MAD. Kill everyone possible so they will never be a threat again. If America is afraid of losing half of it's population to a nuclear exchange then they won't be foolhardy enough to use a first strike. If only their military bases at risk then there is a lot less reason to avoid a first strike.
And look at nuclear targeting maps from the Cold War. The idea that only one tiny warhead would hit Chicago or New York is again, flat out wrong. Cities are targeted with many warheads to both ensure multiple warheads get through missile defenses and to ensure maximum destruction of the target.
>>1151187
It was based on rivers of blood
>>1150894
You do realize that the alien invasion genre was written as a commentary on the horrors of colonialism, right?
>>1153357
>orissa
>working
ayylmao
>>1154524
t.Bihari street shitter
>>1150894
India had the same level of technology as Britain when they first met
India didn't really start falling behind until colonialism
