Here is an abstract for a paper of mine that was accepted for presentation at the 1999 International System Dynamics Conference in Wellington, New Zealand.
South Asia:
Varying Policies, Unvarying Results
South Asia is at the eastern end of a cultural milieu that extends through West Asia to Europe. Like Europe, it has seldom been governed by a unitary state. Unlike Europe, its patterns of diffusion and convection have been serial, not parallel, primarily as a result of its geographical setting. The Indian Ocean and the Himalayas leave the northwest as the only large passage to and from South Asia. The broad valleys of the Indus and the Ganges in the north, the highlands of the Deccan, and the Ghats in the south have created and historically held three distinctive cultures and polities. They have channeled the flow of civilization from north to south and back again, with minimal contact from the valley to the Ghats, and less with the peoples outside.
The author examines, via simulation, the characteristics of South Asia and the peoples to its northwest as they relate to the various states and cultures: their economic wealth, their military power, and their internal strength. It also examines the variety of policies adopted by the various states and the relative lack of difference each set of policies made. The conquests of South Asia by the Mughals and the British are also considered and contrasted.
This paper builds primarily on the theoretical framework the author presented at ISDC '95 in a paper entitled "Sustainable Civilization: Cohesion, Capacity, and External Contacts." It treats in detail the ineffectiveness of different bilateral policies of confrontation vs. cooperation in a multilateral, serially arranged world. |