AH challenge: Western settler colony in Mesopotamia

Hendryk

Banned
Posted in the pre-1900 forum, but post-1900 PODs are acceptable as well.

Thinking back on how France turned Algeria into a settler colony, and how nasty that situation made it for all concerned when the inevitable eventually happened and the place became independent, I thought of a challenge: have a Western power (defined as Western European or American) claim Mesopotamia as a colony anytime between 1800 and 1950, and have Westerners come to said colony as permanent settlers until they amount to a plurality of the population.

All of these settlers may not necessarily be from the colonizing power, just as a fair percentage of settlers in Algeria came from Spain and Italy rather than France itself. But their loyalty should definitely go to the colonizing power.
 
I think that geographical realities prevent Iraq/Mesopotamia from becoming an Algerianesque situation. It's pretty much a hop skip and jump across the Medterranean from France to Algeria, not so for the West/Mesopotamia. For any western power to claim and hold Mesopotamia they'd need significant naval power.

But I'd wager that any POD (or series of POD's) limited to the 19th century and onward would have to begin with the premature death of Mahmud II, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, before the birth of his son. With Mahmud II dead the already fragile Ottoman Empire probably collapses under the weight of a succession crisis and chaos ensues.

As the Ottoman Empire is partitioned, Russia certainly makes a play for the Dardanelles and perhaps Central Asia. British fears of Russia gaining a warm water port result in them intervening and claiming Iraq/Kuwait and then settling it.
 
I think that you will also need to limit the POD to 1921 at which point Iraq is a British Mandate or even earlier i.e. 1913 as most of Europe will be pretty busy dealing with WWI at this point.
As far as America sending settlers there, why? They were Isolationist and had lots of land in ....America, that they could settle.
I don't know about Germany though, I believe that they had Imperialist ambitions.
Personally though I think possibly the only nation able to do this would be Britain, it had colonies in the area, the power to do so, and obviously had some interest in the area because of how heavily involved they got in Mesopotamia in WWI.

I might be wrong, let me know.
 
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