Kaiser Wilhelm
Banned
This is very simple. Keep it non, ASB, but wank the Ottoman Empire as much as possible with the latest possible POD. Preferably close to the 1900s.
AHC: Ottoman wank
- Thread starter Kaiser Wilhelm
- Start date
Kaiser Wilhelm
Banned
That’s outside the scope of this part of the forum, unless your POD is in the 1800s
Kaiser Wilhelm
Banned
I feel it was pretty wanked IOTL. I mean originally it was just that little green area.
That’s fair, but I meant like it not becoming the “sick man of Europe”
Have Osman II be wildly successful in his attempt to curve the power of the Janissaries; it takes almost twenty years, but he's able to form a modern professional army disguised as a garrison force that when put together with the Sipahis, is able to overcome the Janissaries in an 'Auspicious Incident' analogue. As a result, the Ottomans are able to establish an uneasy truce with the Hapsburg Empire and Poland-Lithuania when a Great Turkish War analogue occurs that results in an Ottoman victory; Croatia, Dalmatia, Royal Hungary, southern Slovenia and Trieste annexed by the Ottoman Empire, but it gets a clear lesson across to the Ottomans; they are horribly overextended. As a result, the Ottomans' focus primarily becomes defense in Europe; the Carpathians are fortified and coastal forts establish in Trieste, Split, Rijeka, Dubrovnik, and Kotor plus a greatly expanded navy with the goal of providing a naval supply line via the Adriatic rather than the traditional overland routes. The Ottomans find themselves more or less at peace in Europe, only getting involved in wars against Austria and Russia to guarantee Polish/Crimean territorial integrity and establishing the border with Russia along the Volga and Don Rivers, at some point taking control of Astrakhan as their easternmost city in the steppe; the Caucasus region is more or less left to its own devices under very nominal vassalage.
As a result of the massively increased navy and the rise of a merchant marine, the Ottomans begin to put pressure on their North African subjects to cut back on piracy as trade begins to bloom in the Mediterranean and the North African sultanates become a political liability towards good relations with France and the Italian states. This results in Ottoman fleets departing from Constantinople to tighten the leashes of the Sultans of Tunis and Algiers, as well as establishing dedicated garrisons at Tunis, Algiers, and Oran. Ottoman attention turns eastwards over time, resulting in the takeover of all major Arabian trade ports, as well as the conquest of Hormuz(in a war with Persia) and Zanzibar(in a anti-Portuguese war against native allies/loose vassals). Another Ottoman expedition is launched to the East to break European strangleholds over trade in the East, that manages to find a good reception with several local states. A combined Ottoman-Acehnese force eventually manages to raze Batavia, resulting in far weaker trade links for the Dutch. Ottoman-friendly states arise throughout the East Indies which offer the Ottoman more competitive trade deals than those given to Europe, resulting in Ottoman merchants undercutting European merchants in much of Southern and Central Europe. As a result, the Portuguese East Indies more or less becomes a non-entity, and the Dutch East Indies becomes a barely profitable venture. Ottoman naval bases are established in the region and the Sultan is recognized as the Caliph. The Ottoman navy, in the course of war against the DEI company captured Cape Town. At first more of a casualty of war, the Dutch were unwilling to concede large amounts of gold for it so the Ottomans kept it to act as the key chokehold to limit European encroachment into the Indian Ocean. A large garrison and port was established, that quickly grew to outsize the local Boer population, as they only numbered less than 2,000. Utterly unwilling to be under the Sultans' rule, some revolted and died in the process, some headed inland where they and their ancestors intermarried with the local African populace, and some returned to Europe. The end result was that by 1740, the port was largely dominated by Swahili, Arab, and Turkish-speaking sailors and merchants.
Time passes and Ottoman merchants stumble onto Australia. Ottoman Australia is a thing, full of camels, bedouins and horrible things that can kill you in your sleep. The Maori are Islamicized over time via trade and recognize the Sultan as Caliph as well. At some point the Ottomans get involved in India with a similar policy found in Southeast Asia and establish friendly client states throughout the subcontinent, evict European traders, and crush European merchants by undercutting them. By about 1830 or so, the Ottomans' informal Empire in the East contains the majority of coastal India and the Deccan, southern Burma, Malacca, Java, Sumatra, Borneo, New Zealand, and much of historical Polynesia. The formal empire includes a few key cities such as Singapore(a cession by the Sultan of Malacca), a rebuilt Batavia christened Islamabad(or something along those lines, pan-Islamic sentiment is the goal), all of Australia, a few port cities in New Zealand, Goa, and direct control over some of the Spice Islands that had to be directly conquered from European powers. East Africa's coast is a formal Eyalet and the interior has been thoroughly Islamicized, Somalia is loosely held through several vassal-allies and Ethiopia is a weak, disunited state because RNG was kind to the Turks.
At some point the Turks and the Russians fought it out, and the Turks established client states along the Volga, more or less cutting Russia off from easy access to Central Asia and restricting them to the Siberian fringe. Turk-aligned states dominate Central Asia. Persia itself was conquered outright piecemeal and digested over the course of the 18th century. Morocco is an ally. Malta was conquered at some point as a landgrab during some general European war over some throne's succession. Sicily is ruled by a vassal Catholic king but dominated by a Turkish-Greek upper class, and was traded away from Austria after the Ottomans overran Vienna but had no plans to hold the place. Also, the Suez was built in the late 18th century. Because trade. Or something.
Anyways. 19th century. Imperialism, ho. The Ottomans seize most European holdings in the East Indies and the Indian Ocean. Some examples being the Philippines, Mozambique, and Bombay. Only the French seem to be able to hold on to what few colonies they had, namely Pondicherry, thanks to good relations between the two states, and the English, which have a few native allies. The Ottomans establish widely recognized claims from the southern border of Angola to the Cape, and from there up the east coast of Africa all the way to the Suez canal, and no European power dares challenge their nominal or direct sovereignty over the region. The Ottomans make a point of establishing themselves throughout the Pacific, with the farthest points being Rapa Nui and Hawaii, where a Muslim convert rises to power and conquers all of the Hawaiian islands with Ottoman aid, serving as a nominal vassal and giving the Sultan direct control of OTL's Pearl Harbor. The Ottomans largely avoid wars in Europe, but make a point of tearing chunks out of a neighbor willing to make war against them and establishing a local vassal-led state out of that chunk. This policy led to the creation of the Kingdom of Sardinia-Corsica, the reemergence of the Kingdom of Naples, the Kingdom of Polotsk, and the bullying of Venice and its Terrafirma into the Ottoman sphere, and the widely reported and acknowledged Ottoman support of multiple Russian factions in a bloody civil war. The war eventually stalemated, and a peace was enforced that resulted in Russia fracturing into multiple republics and the absorption of much of Russia's Siberian lands into states in Central and East Asia in the name of stability. The war that resulted in Russia ripping itself apart was largely a European affair that saw the adoption of industrial warfare and largely saw the continent impoverishing itself for little to no change in the status quo, as well as a war that the Ottomans only joined late so as to opportunistically tear apart the Russian menace.
With the discovery of the vast majority of the world's petroleum under their control, the Ottomans reached a new height of incontestable power, firmly placing them out of orbit of Europe and making them the unquestioned superpower of the world. Having the world's largest army, navy, air force, and economy, the Ottoman Empire's reach is global in scale and is synonymous with prosperity. Many states that were only nominally under the Ottoman umbrella have democratically petitioned to join the Empire as full Eyalets so as to receive the full benefits of the Empire's strong social safety net funded by petroleum, and this trend has shown no signs of slowing down. With the admission of Aceh and Hawaii into the Empire in the middle of the 20th century, the Empire reached a political quagmire when the nation of Ecuador petitioned to join the Empire as well, questioning whether it was proper/right to admit a non-Muslim state. Eventually, the Empire acceded to their request and Ecuador became the first non-Muslim state to willingly join the Empire. This opened the floodgates and soon many of the Empires' non-Muslim vassals were petitioning for direct annexation. The world was truly shocked though, when the Republic of Iberia requested admission into the Empire after having emerged from a civil war and looking hopelessly destitute. With the admission of Iberia into the Empire, the Ottomans' wealth was stretched to the limit in the funding put into the rebuilding of Iberia and any more requests for annexation were frozen for the time being at the start of the 21st century.
tl;dr the Ottomans stretch from the Pyrenees to the Indus, from Budapest to Cape Town, control >50% of Africa, own the entirety of the Indian Ocean, the vast majority of the Pacific, the Central Asian steppe, southern Russia and Hungary, Australia/New Zealand, and most of Muslim Southeast Asia. And Ecuador. Yes, this is ridiculous. But you asked for a wank, so here you go.
As a result of the massively increased navy and the rise of a merchant marine, the Ottomans begin to put pressure on their North African subjects to cut back on piracy as trade begins to bloom in the Mediterranean and the North African sultanates become a political liability towards good relations with France and the Italian states. This results in Ottoman fleets departing from Constantinople to tighten the leashes of the Sultans of Tunis and Algiers, as well as establishing dedicated garrisons at Tunis, Algiers, and Oran. Ottoman attention turns eastwards over time, resulting in the takeover of all major Arabian trade ports, as well as the conquest of Hormuz(in a war with Persia) and Zanzibar(in a anti-Portuguese war against native allies/loose vassals). Another Ottoman expedition is launched to the East to break European strangleholds over trade in the East, that manages to find a good reception with several local states. A combined Ottoman-Acehnese force eventually manages to raze Batavia, resulting in far weaker trade links for the Dutch. Ottoman-friendly states arise throughout the East Indies which offer the Ottoman more competitive trade deals than those given to Europe, resulting in Ottoman merchants undercutting European merchants in much of Southern and Central Europe. As a result, the Portuguese East Indies more or less becomes a non-entity, and the Dutch East Indies becomes a barely profitable venture. Ottoman naval bases are established in the region and the Sultan is recognized as the Caliph. The Ottoman navy, in the course of war against the DEI company captured Cape Town. At first more of a casualty of war, the Dutch were unwilling to concede large amounts of gold for it so the Ottomans kept it to act as the key chokehold to limit European encroachment into the Indian Ocean. A large garrison and port was established, that quickly grew to outsize the local Boer population, as they only numbered less than 2,000. Utterly unwilling to be under the Sultans' rule, some revolted and died in the process, some headed inland where they and their ancestors intermarried with the local African populace, and some returned to Europe. The end result was that by 1740, the port was largely dominated by Swahili, Arab, and Turkish-speaking sailors and merchants.
Time passes and Ottoman merchants stumble onto Australia. Ottoman Australia is a thing, full of camels, bedouins and horrible things that can kill you in your sleep. The Maori are Islamicized over time via trade and recognize the Sultan as Caliph as well. At some point the Ottomans get involved in India with a similar policy found in Southeast Asia and establish friendly client states throughout the subcontinent, evict European traders, and crush European merchants by undercutting them. By about 1830 or so, the Ottomans' informal Empire in the East contains the majority of coastal India and the Deccan, southern Burma, Malacca, Java, Sumatra, Borneo, New Zealand, and much of historical Polynesia. The formal empire includes a few key cities such as Singapore(a cession by the Sultan of Malacca), a rebuilt Batavia christened Islamabad(or something along those lines, pan-Islamic sentiment is the goal), all of Australia, a few port cities in New Zealand, Goa, and direct control over some of the Spice Islands that had to be directly conquered from European powers. East Africa's coast is a formal Eyalet and the interior has been thoroughly Islamicized, Somalia is loosely held through several vassal-allies and Ethiopia is a weak, disunited state because RNG was kind to the Turks.
At some point the Turks and the Russians fought it out, and the Turks established client states along the Volga, more or less cutting Russia off from easy access to Central Asia and restricting them to the Siberian fringe. Turk-aligned states dominate Central Asia. Persia itself was conquered outright piecemeal and digested over the course of the 18th century. Morocco is an ally. Malta was conquered at some point as a landgrab during some general European war over some throne's succession. Sicily is ruled by a vassal Catholic king but dominated by a Turkish-Greek upper class, and was traded away from Austria after the Ottomans overran Vienna but had no plans to hold the place. Also, the Suez was built in the late 18th century. Because trade. Or something.
Anyways. 19th century. Imperialism, ho. The Ottomans seize most European holdings in the East Indies and the Indian Ocean. Some examples being the Philippines, Mozambique, and Bombay. Only the French seem to be able to hold on to what few colonies they had, namely Pondicherry, thanks to good relations between the two states, and the English, which have a few native allies. The Ottomans establish widely recognized claims from the southern border of Angola to the Cape, and from there up the east coast of Africa all the way to the Suez canal, and no European power dares challenge their nominal or direct sovereignty over the region. The Ottomans make a point of establishing themselves throughout the Pacific, with the farthest points being Rapa Nui and Hawaii, where a Muslim convert rises to power and conquers all of the Hawaiian islands with Ottoman aid, serving as a nominal vassal and giving the Sultan direct control of OTL's Pearl Harbor. The Ottomans largely avoid wars in Europe, but make a point of tearing chunks out of a neighbor willing to make war against them and establishing a local vassal-led state out of that chunk. This policy led to the creation of the Kingdom of Sardinia-Corsica, the reemergence of the Kingdom of Naples, the Kingdom of Polotsk, and the bullying of Venice and its Terrafirma into the Ottoman sphere, and the widely reported and acknowledged Ottoman support of multiple Russian factions in a bloody civil war. The war eventually stalemated, and a peace was enforced that resulted in Russia fracturing into multiple republics and the absorption of much of Russia's Siberian lands into states in Central and East Asia in the name of stability. The war that resulted in Russia ripping itself apart was largely a European affair that saw the adoption of industrial warfare and largely saw the continent impoverishing itself for little to no change in the status quo, as well as a war that the Ottomans only joined late so as to opportunistically tear apart the Russian menace.
With the discovery of the vast majority of the world's petroleum under their control, the Ottomans reached a new height of incontestable power, firmly placing them out of orbit of Europe and making them the unquestioned superpower of the world. Having the world's largest army, navy, air force, and economy, the Ottoman Empire's reach is global in scale and is synonymous with prosperity. Many states that were only nominally under the Ottoman umbrella have democratically petitioned to join the Empire as full Eyalets so as to receive the full benefits of the Empire's strong social safety net funded by petroleum, and this trend has shown no signs of slowing down. With the admission of Aceh and Hawaii into the Empire in the middle of the 20th century, the Empire reached a political quagmire when the nation of Ecuador petitioned to join the Empire as well, questioning whether it was proper/right to admit a non-Muslim state. Eventually, the Empire acceded to their request and Ecuador became the first non-Muslim state to willingly join the Empire. This opened the floodgates and soon many of the Empires' non-Muslim vassals were petitioning for direct annexation. The world was truly shocked though, when the Republic of Iberia requested admission into the Empire after having emerged from a civil war and looking hopelessly destitute. With the admission of Iberia into the Empire, the Ottomans' wealth was stretched to the limit in the funding put into the rebuilding of Iberia and any more requests for annexation were frozen for the time being at the start of the 21st century.
tl;dr the Ottomans stretch from the Pyrenees to the Indus, from Budapest to Cape Town, control >50% of Africa, own the entirety of the Indian Ocean, the vast majority of the Pacific, the Central Asian steppe, southern Russia and Hungary, Australia/New Zealand, and most of Muslim Southeast Asia. And Ecuador. Yes, this is ridiculous. But you asked for a wank, so here you go.
OTL is OTL, though. A wank is bringing states to be more powerful than OTL. I'm not sure why people keep stating a wank or a screw when denoting states in our world. OTL is OTL; it is the middle-ground for how we in our world can gauge other timelines on whether or not other timelines are screws or wanks.
Anyways, back to the OP, the Ottoman Empire was carved up by European powers. It was already modernising at a slow to moderate pace so have the conservative branch rupture and let liberal advocates pursue more reforms. Also have the Ottoman Empire stay neutral in World War One.
Does that include Osman's idea to move the capital to Bursa or Cairo?
I understand the general principle. But if you look at the map above, the OTL outcome seems pretty astonishing for that little state in 1300 to achieve. To go from that little rump to a huge empire is not a middle-ground outcome ; it was like a 98th or 99th percentile outcome. You can make the Ottoman state a bit stronger still but only by so much - it's a lot easier to make it weaker all along.
Historical outcomes are by definition the most likely outcome.
What definition is this?
Every day is full of improbable events. If I buy a lottery ticket and win, was that the most likely outcome for my day?
I always like Osman II PoD. I actually made a map on said premise : https://elusivexeno.deviantart.com/art/Divine-Blessing-and-Mortal-Wisdom-718846897
What is more plausible? Something that happened (so we know in hindsight that it could happen) or something that didn't happen (if that could happen is just someone's guess)? AH is by definition implausible, because you're straying from events that we know are 100% possible from happening and it depends entirely on your own educated guesses, which is not something bad, a well-written and fun TL can afford to be implausible to an extent without being harmed, a TL that is nothing more than "OTL but different" can be quite boring.
It's also worthy of note that history isn't a series of "lotteries" that are many factors (material, economic, political) that defines the historical progress, sure AIR CURRENTS can change one sperm or two, but even if one person is different they wouldn't change events on a macrohistorical margin, you would get the same thing as OTL except with different flavors, which once again isn't bad depending in how you do it.
But that's off-topic.
That's not how things work at all. Otherwise I may as well look at England and say hmm, well, you started off as a clusterfuck of peoples invading the island over and over again, that you forged a national identity alone is a miracle, I'm gonna give a united England with OTL's borders a 50th percentile outcome, and the British Empire a 99.999% outcome. Nah, eff that. Either you can justify something by putting the legwork to explain how it happens, or not.
England is not that big, and it took centuries to unify anyway, so it's not some sort of unlikely scenario.
I don't get why Iberia would join the Ottoman empire at all, especially with a 18th century POD, makes no sense. The rest should be possible, although you have the Ottomans just overthrow centuries of trade routes building and colonial empires in a single swoop, which seems also unlikely at best.
One of the realistic chances was war of 1877/8, especially if it was fought a year or two earlier and the Russian military operations were not scr--ed by the inept "diplomatic efforts" of Alexander II and his Chancellor which did not stop even during the war. The problem with this specific war was that it was declared to be a "war fought for honor" (an idiocy that the European diplomats found quite entertaining) with an explicit Russian obligation (which nobody asked for and which resulted in a Congress of Berlin after Russia conveniently forgot about it after winning the war) not to expand Russian territory and not to create a big Slavic state on the Balkans. Strictly speaking, the whole affair was an idiocy triggered by Panslavic hysteria in Russia. It had nothing to do with the "imperial interests" and could be easily avoided if Alexander II was not such a weakling. Money wasted on this war would be much better spent on building the Black Sea fleet, a lot of lives would be saved, the government would not lose a lot of prestige and relations with Germany would not be soured.
Remove these factors and you will find the Ottomans in a really big trouble: their army is destroyed earlier with the lesser losses of the opponent and the Russians are marching in force to Istanbul and occupying it. However, as soon as this is accomplished, the victor is facing another problem: how on Earth Russia is going to held the Straits (which was one of the few coherent ideas behind the whole exercise)? The area is separated from Russia proper by presumably (but not necessarily) friendly Walachia/Romania and Bulgaria and Russia does not have any navy on the Black Sea. All these factors are making defense of the Straits for the next few years (until navy is built) quite problematic, especially with the Ottomans still being on the Asiatic part of them.