Apart from places like Ethiopia, Africa was probably always doomed to succumbing to european colonization due to the insurmountable technology gap. But what could India and China have done differently that could have prevented them from suffering the same fate?
>>1396727
United so that foreign powers didn't play them off against each other.
Europe's ascent just happened to coincide with the major empires in both India and China (Mughals and Qing respectively) entering periods of decline. In previous eras they might have bounced back stronger after an initial period of unrest, but this time there was a strong, hungry and most importantly, maritime culture (western europe) there to take advantage of their moment of weakness
>>1396727
It's hard which ever countries industrialized first have such an unbelievable advantage over other countries. It really isn't even close, so unless they could industrialize first which is unlikely (maybe China could). Now they couldn't surpasse the Europeans but United and strong China and India would be able to make any European occupation too much cost to be worth it even in our timeline.
>>1396738
the colonization of India was already well underway in the 1700s though, which was well before the industrial revolution.
>>1396727
India was colonized.
China wasn't. Since:
1) Priorities of Colonialists changed (i.e. more on capitalism and selling China shit and simply staying on the coastal cities.)
2) Can't do the same Divide & Conquer philosophy with the Chinese.
3) The Chinks - despite on the downside side of things- actually managed to play off European Colonial rivalries versus each other, ensuring nobody was to make it someone's India. See
>China tattling to Britain and Russia about German Encroachment in Shandong
>China siding with Russia in the Ruso-Japanese War in order to curtail Japan's involvement in Manchuria.
To name a few. Though the Qing dun goofed with the Boxer Rebellion. Thankfully however Yuan Shikai and the Beiyang Army were smart enough not to support the Boxer rebels and turn the whole of China into a battleground.
>>1396748
I know I am just saying I don't see how anyway India could avoid colonization from industrialized powers.
>>1396758
China got fucked over pretty goddamn hard by the Opium Wars. Maybe they weren't directly colonized but they were certainly dominated and exploited enough that they may as well have been
the key difference is that with China the europeans weren't interested in their natural resources (as was the case in India and Africa) as their massive population that would provide an ideal market for european goods (which really just wound up being opium, the one resource the chinese didn't already have and wound up desperately wanting) and as a cheap exportable labor force
Werent the Mughals a gunpowder empire? How the hell did pre-industrial revolution Britain manage to conquer them?
>>1396769
used a divide and conquer strategy to gradually turn all the different religious and ethnic groups within the empire against each other
