Was India this weak in RL?

[Rikissa]

There's a passage in "Guns, Germs and Steel" where Jared Diamond describes China as a "monolithic, isolated Empire" when only some basic research would have shown him that Chinese history was neither as static as the term "monolithic" would imply and that Chinese rulers were anything but isolationist (diplomacy with other countries was an important aspect of their propaganda). Views like this are really common, even published authors just assume and don't bother to check.

 

[Drake_Hound]

It's not that. It's more a question of "There were empires that didn't have anything to do with us, then we went over there and this is how we interacted"

well then you know how we will react if we ever find aliens in space and hope they are not like us .
Guilliable and peacefull , instead of being like us , cynical and decietfull .

Or else it is quickly game over for us

 

[LoyalistRedcoat]

well then you know how we will react if we ever find aliens in space and hope they are not like us .
Guilliable and peacefull , instead of being like us , cynical and decietfull .

Or else it is quickly game over for us

I don't get your reference but India and China do show up in most history classes and laymen texts pre-european contact when they're relevant to world history, like India as part of the rise of Islam and China with the voyages of Zheng He and the origin of the black death, and later the mongols and so on. They're internal politics through the ages are simply not relevant to classes or courses not focused on them specifically.

 

[Spartanlemur]

They were also terribly managed. The Indians had been dealing with their massive population for millennia and knew what to do, the British had no clue that such a large population could even be stable so they had no reason to try to fix it. Malthusian thought was the dominant thinking in British government and according to T. Malthus famines aren't a problem, population is the problem and famine is a solution. Wilful neglect was justified by western ignorance and arrogance.

I think you misinterpret Malthus. Famines are only the solution to mismanaged years of plenty (where people are allowed to feed more kids than they would normally). Population is a problem, and many people, myself included, believe that even today.
More farms = larger population with static living standards. Economic. Historians commonly view the pre-industrial world as the "Malthusian World" where living standards do not increase.

And a point: while famines can be viewed as a failure to effectively diversify crops, they occur anyway due to universal weather conditions. How can famines be a problem if you can't (at the time) actually solve them? Population was the lion's share of the problem. Fact.

 

[Drake_Hound]

I think you misinterpret Malthus. Famines are only the solution to mismanaged years of plenty (where people are allowed to feed more kids than they would normally). Population is a problem, and many people, myself included, believe that even today.
More farms = larger population with static living standards. Economic. Historians commonly view the pre-industrial world as the "Malthusian World" where living standards do not increase.

And a point: while famines can be viewed as a failure to effectively diversify crops, they occur anyway due to universal weather conditions. How can famines be a problem if you can't (at the time) actually solve them? Population was the lion's share of the problem. Fact.

People forget that even in 1968 China had the worst famine in the world 1 million+ people died cause of starvation, before they had to accept the west help for food delivery , thus leading to birth control of 1 child max a couple , unless you eant to pay the 25% extra tax , 3rd child is 75% tax and fines .

Well you can have more childeren if you want , cause beggars a plenty those don't pay tax or have a future .

Indian introduced the class system cause it is a way to keep population in control !
those at the lowest levels are being kept undercontrol by the one up there , etc !
So even if the lowest level revolted , the pyramid system would keep everything in check .
If one classs revolted , they were kept in line by the other classes .

Thus it is a ingenius system of control , that has been proven on a simple human notion envy and jealousy .
The reason slum dog millionair is so popular is cause of that , somebody just skipped a lot of classes .
while in these modern day doable , once you hit the middle class , you are still not one of them , the class above definetly not

 

[Trin Tragula]

Vijayanagar is related more to EU4 than ck2 but:
Why would a big city = high tax? VIJ had its military roots in that area, it wasnt their souce or income.
I would agree that tax base in general should be higher in India in EU4 but relative to other provinces they got it right IMO.
VIJ lived of the much richer Tamil lands as well as the trade of the coromandel coast to fund their empire. The city grew big as any other administrative centre due to the large realm it controlled, when the empire fel apart the city quickly shrank to around 50 000 to then slowly continue to diminish. No. other metropolis took its place in that province. That area has at best various minor powers in it after that.
Indian capitals are generelly very large, that does not mean the lands they occupied was extremely rich.
Anyone interested in VIJ ought to start by reading Stein as an introduction IMO, he devotes some time to how the various regions in the empire seems to have interacted.

Now kannauj in ck2 is entirely different. That area is indeed supposed to be very rich and while kannauj was huge there was also plenty of other big cities in the area, etc. I agree more holdings would be good there.

 

[JohnnyPorno]

"Hinduism" as an actual "religion" didn't come into being until the 1950's, post-WWII. It's basically the sum of all of the different, inter-related Indian beliefs that were spread throughout cities and villages for centuries.

"India", for a very very long time, was split into many different tiny territories with cultural and religious similarities. The Afghans invaded and made an empire out of it for a while...but it slowly crumbled.

The British rolled in when it was weak, and being the least threatening of the European nations, was accepted and more-or-less embraced by Indian rulers for quite a while. Many of the early British from the East India Company even went "native" themselves.

India, to my knowledge was never united like China, in and unto itself, but through foreign invaders.

 

[Oriental Despot]

India, to my knowledge was never united like China, in and unto itself, but through foreign invaders.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mauryan_empire

 

[Jokolytic]

Actually our modern numerals like 0 were invented by the ARABS, the India credit is a myth pushed by anti-Arab west...

 

[Fishman786]

Actually our modern numerals like 0 were invented by the ARABS, the India credit is a myth pushed by anti-Arab west...

Not true, they were definitely invented in India.

 

[Magean]

Not true, they were definitely invented in India.

I've read a funny anecdote somewhere, according to which the Indians invented the 0 because they needed it for mythological calendar calculations. Because the length of the eras in Hinduism is so long (billions of billions of years...), that a reckoning trick was felt necessary. So they used the 0.

 

[FreeSoc]

Actually our modern numerals like 0 were invented by the ARABS, the India credit is a myth pushed by anti-Arab west...

Sorry nope.

The Arabs developed it, and it only got from India to the West because of travelling through and being developed in the Muslim world, but it's an Indian invention (as is 0 itself as a number).

If you quote two Islamic book titles mentioned in that Wikipedia article, namely "On the Calculation with Hindu Numerals" and "On the Use of the Indian Numerals", it becomes fairly obvious where the system originated.

 

[Fishman786]

Even the look of Indian numerals is kind of closer to the western ones than the current Arabic numerals are.

Gurmukhi Panjabi

Hindi

Arabi

 

[BRK]

No. It's a game, though, and games have their limitations and abstractions, as well as target audiences. Safe to say PI are not exactly targeting the Indian market with their products..

Numerals are an Indian invention, as is the contribution of Hindu mathematics to the advancement of science in general, such as further refinement and development of the dasha mulya (decimal) system. How would rocket science have been worked out -by counting on your fingers like cavemen? Just as true as the fact that Arabs brought it to Europe. Perfumes? Maybe, whatever. Just as it's true that the first to reach the moon were Americans. I don't know why denial of things that are so fundamental is even a thing. Insecurities?

 

[Closet Skeleton]

I think you misinterpret Malthus.

I wouldn't be the only one. Putting Malthus himself in charge of a province wouldn't necessarily be the same as a guy who's primary influence is Malthus any more than the variety of people who claimed Clauswitz as their inspiration actually acted like Clauswitz would have.

The problem with Malthusian thought in India was that Malthus was very clever and convincing but based his findings off European population data that was way lower than Indian populations had ever been.

The right idea in one set of circumstances can be catastrophic if mistakenly applied to the wrong ones.

Chinese rulers were anything but isolationist (diplomacy with other countries was an important aspect of their propaganda). Views like this are really common, even published authors just assume and don't bother to check.

Isolationism was an important element of politics in China, the mistake people make is assuming that it was always the dominant one or that a government that pursued some massive isolationist projects like the Great Wall would have to be generally isolationist in all areas.

Even Chinese diplomacy had a 'stand off-ish' character, but that was more about elitism and power politics than actual isolationism.

Maybe in the mid-to-late middle ages. But in 876 basically everywhere outside of parts of Islamic Spain and the Byzantine Empire was dirt poor by global standards.

Variations in Europe would naturally disappear when comparing the continent to the rest of the globe.

Rome was about 50,000 people in the 9th century

Rome's massive imperial population was reliant on imported grain that was cut off by the Vandals (and later the Arabs). Its not a good measure for Italy as a whole which was very urbanised but not full of Romes.

 

[Ezumiyr]

In game, Kanauj has a whopping two subholdings, putting it on par with random backwaters in Scandinivia or Russia. Come on paradox, why is this happening?

Because CK2 is no longer a realistic / historical game at all. The only thing that matters is fun.
This is why India looks like an underdevelopped subcontinent, and why the ERE has doukes instead of governors (etc).

 

[Thure]

Because CK2 is no longer a realistic / historical game at all. The only thing that matters is fun.
This is why India looks like an underdevelopped subcontinent, and why the ERE has doukes instead of governors (etc).

Ehhh... No. CK2 is stilla historical based game. And the byzantine empire had dux because... Dux were governors in the Byzantine empire since the Komnenos.

 

[Baalshazar]

Just a request, can I get some sources on what people state? Sorry, but I don't trust what people say on here. I'd really like to look some of this Indian stuff up.

 

[Naman]

Just a request, can I get some sources on what people state? Sorry, but I don't trust what people say on here. I'd really like to look some of this Indian stuff up.

Can you elaborate your doubt in more detail? For which particular quote do you need source?

 

[nijis]

India had a huge population and was quite advanced in a number of fields - mathematics as has been mentioned, manufacturing (ie, wootz steel...) Militarily, however, it was not terribly successful. This wasn't a question of Hindu vs Muslim, it applied to any army based in the subcontinent. As far as I can think, no Indian-based military since the Cholas in the 11th century managed to conquer outside the subcontinent.

The main reason, according to sources at the time, is that most of the subcontinent was a terrible place to raise horses. The difficulty that Indian states had in acquiring horses, and the exorbitant prices they were willing to pay, is quite well-established.

That being said, it sounds like India should be able to resist conquest and assimilation. However, all states in CK ought to be able to better resist conquest and assimilation - particularly in an "old" civilization where the elite language, the vernacular, and the religion are closely interconnected, like India.

'Hinduism" as an actual "religion" didn't come into being until the 1950's, post-WWII.

Many modern Hindus overstate the degree to which Hinduism is and always has been a unified religion like the Abrahamic monotheisms, but you're going overboard here. Mass movements to create a unified doctrine of Hinduism date at least to the late 19th century. Medieval intellectuals recognized the idea of Hinduism, even if they didn't call it that. The most popular deities changed from time to time and place to place, but Sanskrit as a holy language, the narratives of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, the Vedas, and a number of related concepts have all spanned the country from north to south for a couple of thousand years, at least.