Australia Colonised By India

Was India actually known for seafaring? IIRC, there was actually a prohibition on traveling overseas (of course, this didn't stop them from establishing colonies like Singapore).
 
Was India actually known for seafaring?

Quite. Southern Indian mercantile states more or less dominated the Indian Ocean naval trade for centuries.
There was some sort of theoretical prohibition, but mostly they didn't care much (there's been a thread about it here not long ago).
 

Driftless

Donor
What time frame are you thinking?

If it was the 4,000 years ago+/- from the note above, what is the draw to Northern Australia in that time? What is pulling them from far-away India to settle there?
 
The big question you need to be asking is not are they capable of it- of course they are; the question is why would they?
What is there to make them want to colonize Australia?
That is what you need to tackle
 

Rishi

Banned
Apparently, this kinda sorta might have happened IOTL. It was probably due to some isolated castaways during the Indus Valley Civilization landing in Northern Australia though, since a formal colony would have resulted in the transition of more cultural elements, including agriculture.

It's possible that Indians (in this case, probably Dravidians) transferred at least some aspects of their culture to Australia in antiquity because this carving resembling the Indian deity Ganesha was found in Queensland:

ganesa.jpg


Anyway, I digress. :p
I can easily imagine a timeline where the Tamils (or some other Dravidian people, possibly tribal) sailed to Australia millennia ago and established Australia as a fishing colony or something like that. Something I think is interesting is that both the Tamils and the indigenous Australians give prominence to serpents in their mythologies and the modern Indian state of Tamil Nadu isn't really that far away from Australia. Who knows what happened in the distant past?
 
^ There was no particular reason for Britain to settle it either, given a larger and much more fertile continent closer to home.

A settlement around Perth could arise either spontaneously by exiles, or proactively by a South Indian maritime empire seeking to dump its undesirables somewhere. After a few decades, word of rich gold deposits in the Outback will inevitably draw a rush of gold diggers, many of whom will stay.
 
We know ancient Indians got around. Sumerians clearly wrote about the Indus Valley Civilization, and there might of been trade contacts as far away as Egypt and Crete. By 3,000 years ago, there was a crop interchange between East Africa and India, when most notably sorghum made the journey over.

The bottom line is Australia is plenty close enough to have been drawn into the Indian cultural orbit as early as 5,000-3,000 years ago. Why is the more crucial question.
 
^ There was no particular reason for Britain to settle it either, given a larger and much more fertile continent closer to home.

A settlement around Perth could arise either spontaneously by exiles, or proactively by a South Indian maritime empire seeking to dump its undesirables somewhere. After a few decades, word of rich gold deposits in the Outback will inevitably draw a rush of gold diggers, many of whom will stay.

But the British had a reason other than colonizing for the sake of colonizing. They needed penal colonies and to secure another base from which to dominate the Indian and Pacific oceans.

Something as simple as a fishing outpost could eventually lead to further settlement, but you need some sort of incentive to get people to invest in colonial ventures - from both financing to motivating potential colonists.
 
We had a similar thread a month back. I cbf to search for it and dig up my analysis of the economic problems.

Let me just point out the problem with the "exiles" idea though. Exiles don't tend to strike out for the unknown and settle someplace spontaneously. They tend to hang around in societies on the periphery of their own society.
 
An empire in which Malays and Dravidians had equal status would not really be able to dump its undesirables in *Indonesia. Australia might be a handy dump for a continuing Chola Empire with such a context in mind.
 
An empire in which Malays and Dravidians had equal status would not really be able to dump its undesirables in *Indonesia. Australia might be a handy dump for a continuing Chola Empire with such a context in mind.

Why not, though? There are huge unsettled tracts of land in Borneo. The malay peoples of Indonesia IOTL were still in the process of settling beyond the coastlines of Borneo, for example, and even with the modern Indonesian resettlement programme, much of the interior is still barely populated.

Prison camps or settlements in the Bornean interior make much more sense than spending money shipping undesirables further off.
 
Why not, though? There are huge unsettled tracts of land in Borneo. The malay peoples of Indonesia IOTL were still in the process of settling beyond the coastlines of Borneo, for example, and even with the modern Indonesian resettlement programme, much of the interior is still barely populated.

Prison camps or settlements in the Bornean interior make much more sense than spending money shipping undesirables further off.

South east Asia is not only settled by Malays but almost all are under austronesians stock. Borneo was never predominantly Malay until recently. The natives in Borneo are more sea faring than the Indians in otl. There is little difference between Borneo natives and the Malagasy in Madagascar.

Going back to be the op, it would be more likely that Australia would be colonized by people from south east Asia than Indians. However, Hinduism and Indian culture spread in south east Asia otl. So it may be an austronesian civilization but with Indian influence like a Hindu Javan kingdom, etc.
 
South east Asia is not only settled by Malays but almost all are under austronesians stock. Borneo was never predominantly Malay until recently. The natives in Borneo are more sea faring than the Indians in otl. There is little difference between Borneo natives and the Malagasy in Madagascar.

Going back to be the op, it would be more likely that Australia would be colonized by people from south east Asia than Indians. However, Hinduism and Indian culture spread in south east Asia otl. So it may be an austronesian civilization but with Indian influence like a Hindu Javan kingdom, etc.

Yes, I understand.

What I mean is that despite the other Austronesian ethnicities in Borneo, there still were large tracts of relatively unsettled territory. Australia, while known to the Indonesians historically was never colonised by them precisely because the population pressure within the Indonesian archipelago never rose to an extent where such expeditions became necessary. It's telling that the Austronesians went all the way to Madagascar but despite knowing of Australia, never bothered settling there.
 
Is there an incentive, then, beyond pride? An Indian power colonising only because Europeans are also present?
 
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