I know it is too early 2 say this, but I hope Israel gains independence ITTL and there is hopefully no Arab conflict.
A Destiny Realized: A Timeline of Afsharid Iran and Beyond
- Thread starter Nassirisimo
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- iran islam persia persia wank
Well the use of President for Chief Executive comes from the chairman of executive council role so it wouldn't surprise me to see it repeated where the executive council is one person.
I don't think the Jewish population in Palestine is big enough for any sort of "independence" movement. Late Ottoman Palestine had a 2-5% Jewish population. If anything, it would be, like OTL an effort at Jewish colonization of the region.
Maybe something similar to what seems to be happening in LTTW will happen, with the Monarchy identifying more and more with the colonies and eventually the Metropole trying to secede.
And thus the French have shown nationalism can overcome even the most devout revolutionaries.
I HAVE SO MANY QUESTIONS.
1. How did he do it?
2. What is Aden like?
3. What is Britain thinking about this?
4. Are his family members also joining him there?
Going to ask some question on the unrelated note, since we've been through Christmas and coming close to the New Years Eve, what's Christmas is like in TTL Iran?
Depends on the calendar, and even if Western, their Christmas would probably only now be underway as we're early in the 12 days.
I guess you could call him an OTL cousin. Highly implausible, but partially put in for rule of cool, as are some OTL characters who will still show their faces.
The word "president" was used in pre-Revolutionary France, albeit only as the head of a Parlement. While the name was chosen somewhat for its convenience, the word was in usage in France and it does not appear to be too implausible that a more stable French Republic would choose it over say, the title of Consul. The French system ITTL has undergone a lot of changes, but to try and sum up the current situation, France's president is elected by the members of the National Assembly, though can not be a member of it. Candidates for the presidency are usually from the National Assembly at any rate, and resign their seats only when legally required.
It may take a few decades (if that) for all involved to notice, but with New Spain in a better potential position going forward, and many of the other colonies rapidly expanding, I doubt that rule centred on Spain will be tenable for all that long. I suppose then the question is the one SealTheRealDeal poses. Certainly with more models for Republican governments, the increasingly confident colonies of Spain may well seek to emulate them and build their own nations.
That's far, far into the future. The Jewish population of Palestine is still relatively small, and it's not a guarantee that Arabs will be independent at this point. To be honest, Israel is unlikely but I suppose it depends on how the situation pans out around the world for Jews. There is a big chance that a movement similar to Zionism emerges, but whether it will be like OTL's Zionism is too early to tell.
I would suppose that the difficulty is that while Portugal's Monarchy (and this will be covered) has one domineering colony, Spain had a number of powerful colonies, even if New Spain was the most populous.
One does have to keep in mind that Europe has never had a "Congress System" as in OTL, and there is more of a spirit of "Every country for itself" as there was in the 18th century, though this increasingly means nations as opposed to dynasties. I suppose what happens to the moderates depends on what happens going forward.
1. Aden was more or less abandoned by this point in OTL prior to the British taking over. In this case, this strapping adventurer helped the Sultan of Lahej with some pesky Zaidi problem, and has earned his own state subject to Lahej with it. Although Richard is a Muslim by this point in the story it is worth saying that he has by no means gone completely native.
2. At the moment Aden is a small trading port, preferred by Europeans who need to re-supply on their way to Iran or sometimes even to India. Its population are mostly Arabs, though there is already a community of Indians, Europeans and free Africans.
3. For the time being Richard is barely on the radar of the foreign office, though future events will soon make him more important.
4. A few may join, but no doubt he'll be taking advantage of his new religion to create a somewhat larger progeny than most Brits. The Brook/Mubarak dynasty probably won't be as interesting as they were in another excellent timeline on here, but still...
That's a very good question. The majority of Christians in Iran are Armenians, who by and large follow the Apostolic Church. In regards to the religious practices of Armenians, I have to say that I am unfortunately ignorant. There are no celebrations by Muslims to be certain.
Flags are unfortunately not one of my strong points.
This seems to be the banner of the Afshars, though there were different banners used by both the Iranian army and navy during the Afsharid era. It might be worthwhile trying to practice a bit making a few however.
Changing Tides - The Middle East 1832 to 1844
An Empire Transformed - The Ottoman Empire before the Second Great Turkish War
The near-century between the final defeat of the Ottomans at the hands of Nader Shah in 1746 and the Great Turkish War of 1845-1849 was a time of revolutionary change for the Empire. What had previously been a sprawling but disparate empire dominated by local elites and nomads had become a relatively modernised state. Especially in the Empire’s core lands near its great capital, the administration and infrastructure was on par with many of its European neighbours. The Ottoman Empire was even the site of the first railway in the world outside of Europe, which connected the old capital of Bursa to the sea. In much of the Empire, the power of the central state was established both in theory and in practice, as tax farmers and tribal chiefs had given way to tax collectors and governors who answered to the Porte.
Despite the great achievements of the Ottoman Empire however, it was not a modern state, and was certainly not on par with the states of Western Europe. It was true that a more centralised model of government had been established, but while this was present in areas such as the Marmara Basin, Western Anatolia and parts of the Balkans, other areas of the Empire retained a social and political structure that more closely resembled the empire of a hundred years ago. In Eastern Anatolia, Kurdish chieftains were where the real power lay as opposed to the administrators sent by the central government. In much of the Balkans, the Ottoman government found it expedient to work with local Muslim landlords to keep order in the provinces rather than forcing them to submit to the new order. Even in the Arab provinces, where the Ayan notables had been more than happy to reorganize their own private holdings along more modern lines, they had jealously guarded their local privileges, ensuring that little of the regions booming economies made their way to the government in Constantinople.
It is little surprise then that the Ottoman Empire of the period was judged to be a “mere imitation of a civilized state” by many in Europe. To the conservative powers, in particular Russia, the fact that millions of Christians were subject to Muslim rule was intolerable. In France and her sister republics, the Ottoman Empire was the exemplar of “Oriental Despotism”, a reputation that had been secured with fanciful and often lurid depictions of the Empire in literature and art. It was only her value in the game of European politics which prevented her from becoming a larger target for her neighbours, as even those powers which despised her recognised that the Empire was very much a power to be taken into account. This had been confirmed in the Russo-Turkish war of 1833-35, in which a Russian attempt to destroy the remnants of the Crimean Khanate was rebuffed. Although the Ottomans had gained little beyond a few border forts, the fact that she had held her own against one of Europe’s greatest powers where even her great Iranian neighbours had failed was evidence enough of her might.
Economically too, the Empire’s importance seemed only to be increasing. As the Ottomans stood aloof from many of Europe’s conflicts at this time, she was seen increasingly as an island of stability on the part of some canny merchants. The Empire’s rising cotton production found ready buyers, particularly amongst the merchants of Marseilles, although rather than investment in industry or other capital-heavy projects, much of the profits from her agricultural exports were spent on consumption. Low-tariff trade agreements further led to the decline of the Ottoman manufacturing sector, which remained behind those of Europe technologically and organizationally. As in Iran, the guilds proved ill-suited to protect their members from the impact of cheaper imports from Europe. Thus even as overall prosperity in the empire rose, so too did urban unemployment. Carl Engel in his seminal work “A History of the Capitalist System” identified the Ottoman Empire as the first of what he named the “Economically Colonised” states, one which resembled the European colonies of the Americas economically by being a producer of raw materials and importer of manufactured goods [1].
Despite a tendency toward economic backwardness however, the same could not be said of other areas such as education or the provision of infrastructure. Education had been the remit of the ulema until the 19th century, but as a clearer picture of educational systems in Europe developed in the wake of travellers such as Djemal Ali returning, the Ottoman government began to establish a system of state schools. By the 1840s, around 500 state schools educated 65,000 children, a far cry from some of the near-universal educational systems being established in limited areas of Europe but an enormous improvement on what had previously been available. And whereas traditional religious education had concentrated nearly entirely on the Islamic sciences, the new state schools emphasised literacy and numeracy, and those who had studied there began to fill the ranks of the bureaucracy and the officer corps. The government also invested in urban infrastructure such as the water supplies and lighting, though this tended to be limited to the largest cities of the empire near to its core.
The effects of increased literacy and a more sophisticated educational system were not always in the interests of the Ottoman Government however. The early 1840s saw the establishment of Arab literary societies in Mount Lebanon and Egypt, purportedly to preserve and promote literature in the Arabic language, but they had soon become a magnet for an infant Arab Nationalism. Although at this point it was present only amongst Arab Christians, whose increased contact with Europe and lack of common religion with their Turkish rulers had begun to foster a sense of separation with Constantinople. In the Balkans however, the growing force of Nationalism was a far more serious threat. The Greeks had already risen in revolt in 1816 and had fought a long, bitter guerrilla struggle. The result had brought some reform to the Ottoman government, but the majority of Christians in the Balkans remained dissatisfied with their second-class status. Intellectuals tended to look back to the great medieval empires of Serbia and Bulgaria, as well as that of Byzantium for inspiration, though what unrest did manifest itself was largely in the form of the exploited peasantry, many of whom remained in a state of serfdom in a Europe where the institution was rapidly disappearing.
[1] – Carl Engel is no relation to Frederick Engels, as he is a British Jew but he is something of an analogue to Marx/Engels, as is his book to Das Kapital. The analogue is not an exact one however, and both changed people involved and changed circumstances will mean the direction of the left will greatly differ.
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Abd al-Qadir, Algerian Freedom Fighter and later King of Algeria
France's Failed Gambit - The Algerian War
Abd al-Qadir, Algerian Freedom Fighter and later King of Algeria
France's Failed Gambit - The Algerian War
France’s Algerian adventure has often been considered one of the greatest follies of the French state in the 19th century. “A plan without a plan, to conquer a country that wasn’t a country” was a common joke on the lips of Parisians, and has been the conclusion of many historians. Such a characterisation is a little unfair however, and has traditionally ignored the factors that drove France toward her invasion of the country. Although journalists, politicians and some later historians painted the motives of President Berger and his generals as dominated by greed and a foolish desire for personal and national glory, in reality the picture was somewhat more complicated. The Marseilles merchants who would later condemn the war for its disruption to Mediterranean trade initially lobbied for the war, thinking that a conquest of Algeria could better secure its grain supplies. And there were many in the French intelligentsia who thought that properly administered by France, Algeria could go from being a disunited, backward state to being a beacon of good and possibly republican governance in the Muslim world.
And indeed, the French Invasion brought a great deal of change to Algeria, though not in the way that the French had hoped for. The initial invasion, which was only to capture Algiers and the other coastal ports, had destabilised the balance of power between the various authorities in Algeria, namely those in the centre (previously the Dey of Algiers) and the various tribal leaders in the mountainous interior of Algeria. Many of these tribal leaders refused to see the French as a replacement for the Dey, and within the interior of the country, who now struggled to find a balance with each other. By 1833, a religious leader named Abd al-Qadir had emerged as the most powerful of the Algerian leaders, and with the promise of British support began to wage a war against the French on the coast of Algeria, as well as those Algerian leaders who preferred the domination of the French to that of a rival Algerian leader.
Although in many respects, his struggle was a traditional Islamic Jihad, there were a number of modern aspects of Abd al-Qadir’s state. Drawing from a mixture of European and reformed Islamic administrative methods, his state was far more centralised and organized than the Ottoman Vilayet of Algiers. Although he had framed his struggle in a traditional way, he did not seek to re-impose Ottoman Government upon Algeria, instead seeking to make an Algeria independent of anyone else, as its western neighbour Morocco was. The nature of the threat that Abd al-Qadir posed to the French was changed when he conquered the city of Oran. With the Straits of Gibraltar left unguarded by Spain’s neutrality, the British were able to unofficially start supplying the Algerians. Without declaring war on the British and threatening their own supply lines, and at any rate with their own hands full fighting in Europe against the Austrians, the French steadily saw their position deteriorate.
The year 1835 seemed to be a watershed for the Islamic world. In the West, the Algerians finally pushed the last remnants of the French forces out, months before France’s war in Europe would come to an end once again. In the centre, the Ottomans had fended off an attack by the Russians, once again asserting their domination on the Crimean Peninsula. Abd al-Qadir’s victory was all the more electrifying however, and he himself was a figure of admiration amongst Europeans for his chivalrous conduct towards French prisoners of war and Christians in general. Rather than looting and recrimination, Abd al-Qadir was magnanimous in victory, earning positive comparisons to historical leaders such as Jugurtha and Saladin. That he allowed even French traders to remain after his victory ensured that at least for the merchants of Marseilles, their aims from the war had been fulfilled, and his more effective administration meant the end both of the corsairs (who at any rate were almost an irrelevancy by this point) and the beginnings of a closer integration of Algeria to the economy of the wider world, as both Morocco and Tunisia had already experienced.
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Author's Notes - We see the second of our big OTL figures who will appear in this timeline. Due to reasons of plausibility, I will be trying to keep significant figures from OTL out of the timeline, though we will see familiar faces crop up, at least until later on in the 19th century. This is a bit of "rule of cool" admittedly, but those who appear in the narratives will almost all be people who did not exist in OTL.
Otherwise, there is a strong bit of foreshadowing over what will happen in regards to the Ottoman Empire. They have maintained themselves as a serious power far more successfully than their OTL equivalent and in some perverse fashion they have Nader to thank for it. Part of the drawback is that the Ottomans are seen as being able to take care of themselves, which may prove to be detrimental in the long run. Rest assured, all will be revealed in the not-too-distant future.
Deleted member 67076
I'm noticing that the increased wealth of the Islamic world relative to OTL is now starting to reap dividends as states are able to better resist incursions through centralization and better organization.
I'd also note that the Ottoman efforts of centralization, land reform, and agricultural modernization are going to lead to a new class of landed magnates and their educated dependents unlike those before. Kinda like the late 1800s of the historical era, albeit 40 years earlier. Expect lots of political changes as a result. Perhaps a federalist movement?
I'd also note that the Ottoman efforts of centralization, land reform, and agricultural modernization are going to lead to a new class of landed magnates and their educated dependents unlike those before. Kinda like the late 1800s of the historical era, albeit 40 years earlier. Expect lots of political changes as a result. Perhaps a federalist movement?
"Rule of Cool" aside, I think it's also about giving iconic figures that failed in OTL the chance to obtain the victory(s) they deserved. With Abd al Qadir being the example, as his lifelong devotion to the fair treatment of all people's deserved to be rewarded.
How can there be Kurds in the Ottoman Empire when the majority of their homeland is part of the Afsharid Dynasty in this TL?
How can there be Kurds in the Ottoman Empire when the majority of their homeland is part of the Afsharid Dynasty in this TL?
The majority of Kurdistan is, but part of it is still in the Ottoman Empire. Thus, there are Kurds in the Ottoman Empire.
While true, it would stand to reason that they would be out numbered by Armenians or Pontic Greeks in Anatolia. Right?
There was a real mess of Kurdish principalities even IOTL until the 19th Century.
Note that the part of Anatolia we are talking about is not anywhere near Armenia nor Pontus.
The great majority of Armenians, too, are part of the Persian Empire. Although it's a little hard to eyeball from the large map exactly where the Iran-Turkey border lies relative to OTL.
Didn't the world maps done by Nassirisimo confirm what you are saying?