Alexander The Great died young, but do we know anything of what his ambitions were? What was he planning to do in the rest of his life provided everything went smoothly?

Part of the problem for Alexander studies is that almost all of his intentions are mysterious. Any words about what Alexander wanted are at one remove from Alexander, even at the best of times.

Even in India (3-4 years before his death), there is debate about how personally ambitious Alexander was and to what extent his ambition conflicted with the desires of his army. Most historians believe that Alexander knew that he had already conquered the Persian Empire by the time that he was passing through the Hindu Kush. By this time, Alexander was in pursuit of the "encircling river", because it was only upon reaching this that he could confirm that all eastern threats had submitted. This ambition seems fairly likely. The fact that he stopped before finding this encircling river has suggested that upon reaching the River Beas, Alexander conceded to the demands of his fatigued and demoralised army. Alexander took his army down the Indus river, and by 325 was set on returning to Babylon. Yet this might not have been the end of Alexander's desires for expansion. Waldemar Heckel has made arguments both about the trip down the Indus and about the return to Babylon. Going down the Indus, he argues, was the best way to further pacify the region (Alexander did fight the Mallian campaign whilst travelling). Then the arrival at Babylon was a way of centralising government so that preparations for another expedition could be as smooth as possible. This view therefore attaches Alexander's apparent refocus upon governing with a continued, if latent, desire for campaigning. Whichever view you find more compelling, you should also notice that this is an inconclusive and largely abstract debate about what Alexander's personal vision was for a campaign he had been pursuing for over a decade.

Needless to say, there was no further movements upon India, and Hellenic influence over India deteriorated very quickly. Alexander died soon after returning to Babylon and there are two documents that claim to contain what Alexander was planning on his deathbed. A Last Will is recorded in the Alexander Romance (3.33). This Will allocates satrapies, decrees reimbursement for Thebes, and establishes funeral arrangements. The Alexander Romance is enormously suspect: it is a composite document, it is quasi-fictional, and Heckel has rejected the Will as a forgery. You can read the other document, the Last Plans, here. I am not sure how credible Diodorus is as a historian of Alexander, but Stoneman says that none of the claims here are too outrageous to be believed. Indeed, if Alexander's "pothos" was undiminished after the shortcomings in India, it is not unlikely that Arabia or Carthage were next on the list. The temples and tombs are not uncharacteristic and seem congruent with Alexander's obsession with piety and Homeric mythology. Perhaps the most controversial is the claim that Alexander desired migration and miscegenation between east and west.

At least part of the reason that this point has been so controversial is that it appears to be the most relevant to the debate previously mentioned - over how far Alexander was going to go to secure his lands before another expedition. But even if we accept these Last Plans as true, you should be able to see that, much like with India, even if we know the policies that Alexander had, it is very difficult to put our finger on motivations. The migrations could have been desired because of realist security concerns, because of some idealistic "Brotherhood of Man", because of Alexander's "orientalising tendency", or perhaps even other reasons. There really is not enough evidence to say. It seems to me that many conclusions on this matter are made based on what seems most fitting to the historian's interpretation of Alexander's overall character, and this is something that has been noticeably fluid over the centuries.

Main sources are, once again, a textbook by Richard Stoneman. The arguments by Heckel are in a paper "Alexander's Conquest of Asia" and in his book "The Last Days and Testament of Alexander the Great". The Alexander Romance and Diodorus' history are easily accessible online. Some of the ideas like Brotherhood of Man and orientalising tendency are interpretative shorthand and appear in lots of different studies.