Fiat Lux

Certain strings of Eurasian culture tend to get more attention paid to them in Alternate history than most. Europe in general tends to get more attention than other parts of Asia, simply because it has a greater publishing industry and people tend for obvious reasons to favor their own histories of their own culture. Other parts of Asia.....North Asia tends to fall to Russia too often, but complaints about Russia in AH are going to be in post # VI. East Asia, the cultural region that draws on Classical Chinese, tends to get a somewhat-skewed version of its history, but some degree of attention. Southwest Asian history will be post # V. Today's topic is what happens to India in AH or in historical fiction in general, which tends to be almost nothing of significance.

The problem is that Indian culture is both ancient and has exercised a very wide influence. While Christianity and Islam reflect a syncretism of Jewish culture with Greek and Arabic cultures respectively, Indian culture has syncretized with other parts of Asia in the form of Buddhist influences. Buddhism is the world's fourth-largest religion and would have been impossible without the influence of a prince from Maghada. Yet Indian contributions to world history are often ignored in other ways, as well. India, for one thing, is the ultimate origin of the Romany people, whose absence will change Europe. The subcontinent has also been a major cultural center and is the center of the largest subset of the Indo-European language family, as well as cultures with no other links anywhere else. It has also been a major center of Islam, and has one of the oldest Christian cultures in the world in Kerala.

Yet in AH there is almost complete ignorance of India and how it might impact things. AH that focused on an India that remained independent of colonial control and ironically not a unified state or that details what impact an evangelistic Hinduism might have had on the subcontinent and the world should be written. Another in the AH-Gripes series.

Why is it that back in Aboriginal times the South was the most advanced part of the country, with the only thing able to be properly called a civilization.....and now we're the retrogrades who are pissed that we gambled on treason and lost? The Mississippians showed that a powerful civilization could be built in this region....and then the Confederacy emerges and fucks all that up. Jefferson Davis? I hope you and yours are enjoying being burned to a crisp for doing that to the South. And the Klan of the 70s that ensured a good chunk of the population would have its minds censored? Same to you.

No, this isn't the character from Last of the Mohicans. This is a Native who saw nothing wrong with profiting off his compatriots' misery and was in general a ruthless brute. The guy's been romanticized when he was no more noble than the European armies in the Thirty Years' War. A true Forgotten Evil:

( Big ol' image behind cut... )

He's the one that's standing.

This time from Indigenous America:
( Image behind cut.... )

This man, Pope, single-handedly, or near-enough to it, threw out the Spaniards from traditional Pueblo lands. For that reason alone, he qualifies as this month's Bad-Ass of the Month.

While the inauguration of Barack Obama as the next leader of the United States is an awe-inspiring moment, and hats off to the new POTUS, BTW....I would like to remind people of a few realities we often tend to forget:

All inhabitants of all continents are not truly "native" as such. The Native Europeans are groups like the Mari and the Udmurts and the Euskera and the Sami. The Native Indians are the Adivasi such as the Sora, the Onge, and the Jarawa. The native East Asians are groups like the Ainu, the Ati, the Kavalan, and the Paiwan, and the native North Asians are the groups such as the Nenets, the Tuvans, the Samoyeds, and the Yukhaghirs now under Russian rule, as they have been for quite some time. Then, there are the indigenous African peoples who speak languages such as Efe, Twa, Juu, and Hoan. And of course, there are the more familiar Indigenous peoples such as the Wurundjeri, the Arrente, and the Yolgnu of Australia, and groups like the Jivaro, the Lumbee, the Klamath, the Lakota-Dakota-Nakota, the Najavo, the Muskogees, and the Apaches, and further south, the Yanomamo, the Quechua, the Nahua, the Mapuche, and the Fuegians.

Effectively, all continents have been stolen from others. That the Australian and American continents should have been stolen as blatantly and recently as they were is horrible and cruel, but all the same....it is just one of an endless series of stolen continents. When people start talking about giving the Basques their own countries...or the Nenets and the Ainu theirs...then might justice be done for Natchez and and the Nez Perce. It's shameful to say that it will hardly be done otherwise....
 

^This guy.

He managed to get the Indians to work together.

Unfortunately, he lost due to British wankery and his brother not understanding that he needed to wait a bit before attempting to jump Tippecanoe.

Oh, well. He still gets the BADASS OF THE MONTH AWARD.