s destabilized the country enough that it could never fully unify.
The history of both modern nations are fairly short compared to the cultural history of the regions respectively. They're wasn't anything like "all Indians belong together" or "all Chinese belong together" before their recent nation-forming. If either region reached modern era in a more divisive period, there could very well be multiple modern nations in their place today. For India it is the Mughal and then British who "forced" all the different peoples into a same superstate, whereas if not for the Manchurian conquest and acquisition of Mongolia, Tibet etc., these regions would likely belong to their own independent states instead of China. Had Ottoman empire survived to this day, it would be comparable to India or China but somewhere in between - with strongly culturally related peoples (through history and religion) that are also very distinct from region to region, and we would be asking similar questions about them.
[–]RuinEleint 3 points 10 hours ago
Asoka actually chose peaceful consolidation and tried to use Buddhism to unify India. He sent missionaries to Sri Lanka, Tibet, China, and I think Greece.
The issue was never simply invaders through the North West, but also repeated weakness and fragmentation of the indigenous kingdoms. The Guptas actually successfully fought the Huns and this was after their golden age. Chandragupta Maurya defeated Alexander's general Seleucus when he tried to regain Alexander's conquests in India. But at other times, there was simply no united powerful Indian political entity to resist invasion.
[–]hammersklavier 16 points 11 hours ago*
It occurs to me this might actually be -- ironically -- because the middle Ganges valley is too optimal for the development of a centralized state.
See, the Chinese heartland in antiquity was the North China Plain, which is one of the world's largest alluvial plains. This means it is incredibly fertile but also incredibly flat and prone to flooding. The Yellow River has, in fact, changed course between 18 and 26 times in recorded history -- and has reached the sea, at various times, on either side of the Shandong Peninsula. In fact, its mouth changed most recently in the 20th century!
Because of this, centralized states developed early on the North China Plain as an extension of the hydraulic engineering needed to keep the river where it was "supposed" to go and not wreck people's fields after every big rain. These coalesced into the Shang and early Zhou dynasties, fragmented in the Warring States period, and were more-or-less permanently unified by the Qin Dynasty ... However, the nature of the heartland necessitated greater Chinese centralization, just due to the titanic effort needed to (not always successfully) keep the Yellow River in check.
If this is the case, then it makes sense why a bunch of Timurid exiles carrying Persian ideas of administration were the ones who formed the longest-lasting unification of India prior to British meddling.
[–]khoonirobo 50 points 20 hours ago
This! India was really influenced by a multitude of incoming and internally generated influences but never had a truly long period of stability and thus homogenisation. Without the homogenisation part the multitude of cultures continue to exist in pockets and influence each other in broader swathes. An example, take language, the only really common language is English, which is no - ones mother tongue. No language has the status of a 'national language' though there are multitude of nationally recognised languages.
[–]ludonarrator 2 points 14 hours ago
This is (almost) correct; most of present day India is astonishingly isolated from all sides. This is also why the location of Kashmir - which currently happens to be under Indian control (sort of illegally so, too) - is considered extremely valuable, being the centre point of three competing nations in the Himalayas: India, China, and Pakistan, and has been in a state of constant war for several decades now.
[–]Mequittingthenet [score hidden] an hour ago
I