AH:Challange Ottoman Common

Don Grey

Banned
As we all now one of the biggest thorns on the ottoman's back was nationalism and manpower. Your misson if you chose to except it is to get a comman identity which makes ethnic and religious diffrences pointless or irrelevent.

How you achive this is up to you. Weather you us convertion program, langauge programs, culture programs, give them all equal rights do what ever you like how ever you like but no terror campaigns. You can change economic plans infrastructer change battle results inact reforms etc(basicly your the eternal padisha what would you do or change). But you cannot use handwaviums or ASB's everything must be as realistic as possible. Thats why i will give you the chance to start early or late what ever you like.

The end results must be no nationalism problams seen in the otl and christians if you want to keep them christan must be as willing to joing the military as muslims and see the empire as theres too. And If this is achived what will the effects of increased loyalty/stability and manpower have on the empire? It doesnt have to be perfect but try your best.

I will be giving you two POD's.One will be in 1683 the largest extent of the ottoman empire were you have no equal and vast amount of wealth map seen below. Either start employing you programs/changes then and try to keep as much as possible or you can pick the pod of year 1800 your choice.

12067428.png
 
As we all now one of the biggest thorns on the ottoman's back was nationalism and manpower. Your misson if you chose to except it is to get a comman identity which makes ethnic and religious diffrences pointless or irrelevent.

How you achive this is up to you. Weather you us convertion program, langauge programs, culture programs, give them all equal rights do what ever you like how ever you like but no terror campaigns. You can change economic plans infrastructer change battle results inact reforms etc(basicly your the eternal padisha what would you do or change). But you cannot use handwaviums or ASB's everything must be as realistic as possible. Thats why i will give you the chance to start early or late what ever you like.

The end results must be no nationalism problams seen in the otl and christians if you want to keep them christan must be as willing to joing the military as muslims and see the empire as theres too. And If this is achived what will the effects of increased loyalty/stability and manpower have on the empire? It doesnt have to be perfect but try your best.

I will be giving you two POD's.One will be in 1683 the largest extent of the ottoman empire were you have no equal and vast amount of wealth map seen below. Either start employing you programs/changes then and try to keep as much as possible or you can pick the pod of year 1800 your choice.

12067428.png


Language I think ultimately would be the unifying factor for the different ethnicities and religion of the Empire. This is not to say that such a language should be imposed but is encouraged to be taught in schools be they Christian, Muslim, Jewish or secular to serve as a sort of language for let's say a Greek and a Turk or a Turk or an Arab to communicate with one another. Maybe Ottoman Turkish. Kind of like how American English is in the USA.
 
If I recall correctly, formal Ottoman Turkish had a lot of loanwords from other languages that your average peasant wouldn't recognize, to the point of being almost unintelligible.

This isn't to say that there can't be something that bridges the gap. Apparently in western Asia Minor, there were large communities of mixed Turks and Greeks, who spoke Turkish but wrote in Greek.
 
Hmm, when did the Ottomans begin allowing Christians into the military?

I think around the nineteenth century with the reforms they included the ability for Christians to join the military. Maybe the Ottoman Empire could be like Syria is now with a mainly Christian officer corps or at least a large minority of them being Christian. I think Ottoman Turkish is the one of the few things that can unite the Empire. You just have to educate them.

If you want a POD starting in 1453, you need to have the Patriachate disbanded to allow more Ottoman Christians to convert to Islam.
 
I think around the nineteenth century with the reforms they included the ability for Christians to join the military. Maybe the Ottoman Empire could be like Syria is now with a mainly Christian officer corps or at least a large minority of them being Christian. I think Ottoman Turkish is the one of the few things that can unite the Empire. You just have to educate them.

If you want a POD starting in 1453, you need to have the Patriachate disbanded to allow more Ottoman Christians to convert to Islam.
The problem with education is that huge parts of the empire were at the back of beyond until the later 19th century. Can you even educate enough without massive rail investment?
 
The problem with education is that huge parts of the empire were at the back of beyond until the later 19th century. Can you even educate enough without massive rail investment?

I suppose that is a major problem. Didn't the Sultans devote any attention to having basic education reach the masses?
 

Keenir

Banned
As we all now one of the biggest thorns on the ottoman's back was nationalism and manpower. Your misson if you chose to except it is to get a comman identity which makes ethnic and religious diffrences pointless or irrelevent.

The end results must be no nationalism problams seen in the otl and christians if you want to keep them christan must be as willing to joing the military as muslims and see the empire as theres too.

the problem there is, is that many of the Empire's Christians, were also the bankers and construction men of the Empire. (the Armenians particularly were good at banking; and Sinan was born Christian)

also, Christians didn't have to fight in the military...but the other side of that coin, was that Christians had to pay taxes.

And If this is achived what will the effects of increased loyalty/stability and manpower have on the empire? It doesnt have to be perfect but try your best.

it almost doesn't matter when the divergence is -- one of the biggest problems in avoiding divisive nationalism, is that the Ottoman Empire's cornerstone was the millet system.

yes, everyone in the Empire was an Ottoman by loyalty to the Emperor, but beyond that, everyone had their religious subgroup.

I suppose that is a major problem. Didn't the Sultans devote any attention to having basic education reach the masses?

does sponsoring madrassas and synagogues count?
 

Don Grey

Banned
If I recall correctly, formal Ottoman Turkish had a lot of loanwords from other languages that your average peasant wouldn't recognize, to the point of being almost unintelligible.

This isn't to say that there can't be something that bridges the gap. Apparently in western Asia Minor, there were large communities of mixed Turks and Greeks, who spoke Turkish but wrote in Greek.

Yes that is one of the major problams. Ottoman turkish maybe a very poetic and elegent language but it is also very complicated. Forget recognizing most peasants wont even now some of concepts.
 

Don Grey

Banned
I think around the nineteenth century with the reforms they included the ability for Christians to join the military. Maybe the Ottoman Empire could be like Syria is now with a mainly Christian officer corps or at least a large minority of them being Christian. I think Ottoman Turkish is the one of the few things that can unite the Empire. You just have to educate them.

If you want a POD starting in 1453, you need to have the Patriachate disbanded to allow more Ottoman Christians to convert to Islam.

Well i cant bring back the pod to 1453 to do that if nessecary but the church also served as a tax collecter which made things much easyer. Taxes from christians would be collected at the church through there own means which would then be given to the state.

You can have the pod 1453 if you can find an alternative for tax collection administration of christian subjects.
 

Don Grey

Banned
The problem with education is that huge parts of the empire were at the back of beyond until the later 19th century. Can you even educate enough without massive rail investment?

The lack of rail system is a problam ofcourse. But if you start early even the minimal effects will be of great importants because when communications and transportation improves you will have a good bass.

And the christians areas were close to istanbul plus the balkans were the power base.Even with the do what you want atitude of otl muslims in the balkans was still a majorit or a pularity. The point of the game is too keep as much of the balkans and caucauses as possible and make sure there loyal.

I suppose that is a major problem. Didn't the Sultans devote any attention to having basic education reach the masses?

Yes he did but was mainly consontraited in major cities.
 

Don Grey

Banned
the problem there is, is that many of the Empire's Christians, were also the bankers and construction men of the Empire. (the Armenians particularly were good at banking; and Sinan was born Christian)

also, Christians didn't have to fight in the military...but the other side of that coin, was that Christians had to pay taxes.



it almost doesn't matter when the divergence is -- one of the biggest problems in avoiding divisive nationalism, is that the Ottoman Empire's cornerstone was the millet system.

yes, everyone in the Empire was an Ottoman by loyalty to the Emperor, but beyond that, everyone had their religious subgroup.

Well the religion tax wasnt the only source of revanue. Keep in mind the christian tax was quite low (to a point it made it very easy for large groups of christians to become rich merchants).Also Keep in mind that during ww1 russia's pop compaired to the ottomans was 6 to 8 times its size and even during the suleiman era when the empire was at largest extent france was 3 times the pop size of the ottomans. The use of christians in the military would have had a great boost in there expantion. They spanned 3 continents with there conditions now imagin if the christians had converted to islam or were loyal subjects to the point of muslims enough to do military service. The value of being able to use all of its pop militarily would surpass the value of the religion tax ten fold.

Because of the added loyalty stability (not having to keep an eye on non-muslims subject) and manpower we could see a bigger ottomans empire while being cohisive in its richest regions at the same time.

As for you other part it was the millet system that did them in. The empire comprised of sevral millets. While only the muslim millet was the back bone of the empire. The millet system at first worked great but it left people to be free to choose what they want to be. Very noble at first but when nationalism came along it gave the base foundation to those millet to be nationalities.

The common millet/national identity like being american or french etc something that makes religious and ethnic diffrences irrelevent or you can use converstion or other methods your choice.
 
Well i cant bring back the pod to 1453 to do that if nessecary but the church also served as a tax collecter which made things much easyer. Taxes from christians would be collected at the church through there own means which would then be given to the state.

You can have the pod 1453 if you can find an alternative for tax collection administration of christian subjects.

You have to give equal legal rights to Christian subjects, allow them an equal say when in trial and what not and the freedom to build their own house of worship whenever and wherever they want as long as they don't cause trouble. Forget the jizya, I heard that the amount was very low but at the nineteenth century, it's pointless in having it. Replace it with a new head tax for all people regardless of race.

And to subtley encourage some conversion, have the Koran translated into the local languages which must be recognized as minority languages in their minority majority regions. And nix the millet system. It had its merits but it did in the empire and we don't want that. Give them representation somehow in the government via a legislative body.


I think Ottoman Turkish or a modified version of it would need to be taught en masse to the locals in order for them to communicate with each other. The locals can still learn their own language early on and then learn Ottoman Turkish [because who doesn't want to advance ahead?]


The Ottoman Empire should secularize a bit while stilll having the reputation of being an Islamic empire. Like England. The House of Osman can only be Muslim and the laws would probably still be a liberal interpretation of Islamic Sharia law and Western law [because it is a fact that the Ottomans brought a moderate form of Islam to the Balksn]
 
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