AH Challenge: Liberal democratic Middle East, dictatorial Europe.

The POD has to be pre-1900, I think, but the intended question is what happens in a 20th Century with a Middle East that is what we would consider liberal democratic while Europe is various shades of dictatorships/absolute monarchies? What kind of POD might produce this, and what would the results be for Middle Eastern democracies with the oil money?
 
This should be in pre-1900, since you'd need a PoD much earlier to have both.

I can think of ways to get one or the other, but not both with a 20th c. (or near) PoD.
 
First, how are we defining middle east? A democratic Ottoman empire might do the trick with post-1900 PODs if we just want Asia west of Iran plus maaaybe Egypt.

Europe full of various nasty dictatorships hardly requires a pre-1900 POD, but it would require a pre-1900 POD if you want forms of government like those in the Middle Eastern monarchies.

Bruce
 

wormyguy

Banned
I was thinking something involving a Nazi victory, although Soviet occupation of all/most of Western Europe could do it too. Then a liberalizing regime in Turkey and the United States fill in the power vacuum in the Middle East.
 
I was thinking something involving a Nazi victory, although Soviet occupation of all/most of Western Europe could do it too. Then a liberalizing regime in Turkey and the United States fill in the power vacuum in the Middle East.

They may fill the power vacuum, but I'm not quite sure how they establish liberal democracy in Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Yemen....

Bruce
 

boredatwork

Banned
I'll take a stab.

The ottomans sit out WW1, focus on strengthening & liberalizing(modernizing) their society.


In Europe 'proper' WW1 get's set off largely on cue, but proceeds differently - due to various butterflies, the end result is a series of xenophobic military/monarchial dictatorships, lightly sprinkled with revanchist demagogues and totalitarian communist rebellions from Russia (the butterflies weren't enough to derail that portion of OTL).

For next couple of decades, Europe remains a divided armed camp, fighting various skirmishes with shifting alliances. The Ottomans continue to develop, becoming a primary trade partner for the US (which also sat out the European War) and the various ex-colonial states (constant warfare & high states of readiness gradually bankrupted the core imperial states, combined with the increasing reluctance of the colonials to get slaughtered in the various metropoles' pointless bloodletting, a series of successful independence movements kicked off at various points, resulting in a largely decolonized world slightly in advance of OTL).

By the later 20th century (1970-1980) the Ottoman Imperial Republic, Nippon, China, Brazil, the United States of America, Argentina, Chile, Australia, India, and Malaysia are the wealthiest and most advanced nations of the world.

Europe is a squalid, squabbling, repressed backwater, just beginning to break away from 4 generations of intercenine slaughter.
 
First, how are we defining middle east? A democratic Ottoman empire might do the trick with post-1900 PODs if we just want Asia west of Iran plus maaaybe Egypt.

Europe full of various nasty dictatorships hardly requires a pre-1900 POD, but it would require a pre-1900 POD if you want forms of government like those in the Middle Eastern monarchies.

Bruce

Inter-war you had a whole slew of dictatorial monarchies in Europe, and when you throw in Germany, Poland, Spain, Portugal and the USSR by 1939 liberal democratic countries were something of a minority!

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 

boredatwork

Banned
Inter-war you had a whole slew of dictatorial monarchies in Europe, and when you throw in Germany, Poland, Spain, Portugal and the USSR by 1939 liberal democratic countries were something of a minority!

Best Regards
Grey Wolf

so, amusingly enough - one way to have a regressed, dictatorial Europe, is to avoid WW2.

huh
 
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