Long term fate of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires without ww1

Hashasheen

Banned
I'm not persuaded by the notion that the Ottomans would have pulled through. They were essentially ruling a series of Arab nationalities - Iraqi's, Syrians, Palestinians, Jordanians and Arabians without particularly close ethnic or linguistic ties to the Ottoman.
As much as I hate to say it, Arabs stayed pretty loyal to the Ottomans through the war. It was only the bedouins and those bought that turned to the Allies. Also, those identities never existed until 19w0, and even then were rather shakey until the late 40's.

These nationalities and population centres substantially outnumbered the Ottoman Turks. I can't see the Ottomans avoiding a collision course. I note that in Europe, the Ottoman holdings had been steadily dismembered by nationalist uprising that they were consistently unable to cope with. .
Bulgaria wasn't. The Ottomans had their chance to absorb all major groups in the empire rather well I think (well, besides the Armenians) and they were on the path to doing so. Only the educated Christian urbanites held any real objection to the Ottomans and their rule.

Arab nationalism was arguably on the rise,
Not really. Outside the Sharif of Mecca, such a thing was unknown. An Arab would refer to his village, town or city, and little else. Tribal issues also dominated.

and Pan-Arabism dates back to other pan-national movements - Zionism, Pan-Slavism, Pan-Italianism, Pan-Germanism.
No it doesn't. All those Pans- have their own time periods. Arabism was more in the 60's and 50's and was shown to be a failure due to egotistical strongmen battling for influence.

So, sooner or later the Arabs were going to strike out on their own, if nothing else. Nor do I see the Arabs as really being all that enthusiastic about their oil wealth bypassing them and going to Istanbul
The big difference might be that the Arab revolt might result in the creation of an Arab superstate, or superstates - something ruled from Baghdad or Damascus.
While I heartily welcome this in any TL, I'm slightly more realistic. The Arabs wouldn't randomly get shafted by the Turks. They're Ottoman citizens as well, they'd get their cut of the profits and the benefits.

Even without the Arabs, the Kurds would end up being a major challenge, particular since the Ottomans would incorporate the Kurdish populations of Syria and Iraq as well as Turkey.
Why? I recall them being rather loyal to the Turks, serving as counter-guerillas against the Armenians, who remained the only home-grown opposition in the region.

Finally, even without WWI, the Colonial powers were still biting off bits and pieces of the Ottoman, and would have likely continued to try and do so. France was already invested in Syria and Lebanon. The brits were already invested in Palestine.
They invested, but so did everyone else. Frankly, these investments helped them against the Russians and their Armenian project.

And there's a likely prospect of a Balkan league war - Attaturk's new country was able to fight off the Greeks. But an Ottoman fight against Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, Macedon, etc. might well lead to an erosion of anatolian territories.
Bulgaria and the Ottomans were good allies, and neither would have entered WW1 without the other. Serbia has no border with them now, and Macedon is a small shitty country with no military worth mentioning. The Ottomans also have the benefit of not going through 4 years of war with the Allies, and possessing larger forces and a less devastated population. The only reason they won OTL was because of Turkish high command failures that boggle the mind as to the scale of ineptitude.
 
Austria is pretty much destinted to collapse because of its multi-ethnic, multi-national composition. If they tried centuries before to start assimilating their subjects, then they might have continued. However, I think the Habsburg Empire would have collapsed in the end. It would have been like the mess in Bosnia, only on a much bigger scale.
 
As much as I hate to say it, Arabs stayed pretty loyal to the Ottomans through the war.

But generally don't subject peoples tend to remain loyal during wartime? There's a lot of propaganda about supporting the Empire. There's usually a lot of jobs and economic activity connected with supporting the war effort. The imperial hand tends to rest lightly so that people are generally feeling pretty good about the Empire. Taxes will rise, but generally this doesn't happen early on and may not be significant until late stages, if ever.

Also, those identities never existed until 19w0, and even then were rather shakey until the late 40's.

Nevertheless, we're not talking about ignorant peoples digging in the dirt with sticks. We're talking about urban centres who preceded most European cities, places with incredibly long traditions of literacy, sophisticated politics, and organized economic activity.


The Ottomans had their chance to absorb all major groups in the empire rather well I think (well, besides the Armenians) and they were on the path to doing so.

And the Kurds, and so on. I'm not sure I understand what you're talking about here. The Ottoman Empire was never a democracy. It never had a constitution, or a bill of rights, or a federal system, or substantive mechanisms for local rule or representation. So how were they going to relate to or 'absorb' all major groups?

This is the problem with Empires. Someone has to be in charge. And that means everyone else is not. There are the people that rule, and then there are the people who are ruled. As long as the people that rule have the advantages (population, economic clout and infrastructure), the people who are ruled have to lump it or find their own accommodation and place in the Empire. When the people who are ruled have their own set of toys, inevitably, they find they'd rather not be ruled.

This isn't any kind of radical argument. This is just human nature and history at work.

Only the educated Christian urbanites held any real objection to the Ottomans and their rule.

You got the polling data, hunh? ;)

No it doesn't. All those Pans- have their own time periods. Arabism was more in the 60's and 50's and was shown to be a failure due to egotistical strongmen battling for influence.

The Pans all have their own time periods, but their roots are solidly in the 19th century, and derived from pretty much the same set of intellectual baggage, which in turn derived from the American and French revolutions. Mid-20th century Pan-Arabism isn't what we're talking about.

While I heartily welcome this in any TL, I'm slightly more realistic. The Arabs wouldn't randomly get shafted by the Turks. They're Ottoman citizens as well, they'd get their cut of the profits and the benefits.

Because the Ottoman was a democratic federation with a strong constitutional framework that made sure that local interests received fair treatment. And because Arabs could look at their oil wealth and figure that 15% was a fair cut, as opposed to 100% if they could break away?

Why? I recall them being rather loyal to the Turks, serving as counter-guerillas against the Armenians, who remained the only home-grown opposition in the region.

The only reason they (allies) won OTL was because of Turkish high command failures that boggle the mind as to the scale of ineptitude.

Sure. But if we avoided WWI, the high command and ruling elites would magically get a clue?

I dunno, seems to me that human intelligence and competence, all other things being equal, is a constant. The Ottoman High command was not naturally incompetent, and they weren't magically incompetent just for this occasion. Rather, they were the product of an Ottoman system of elite rule that had evolved to protect and promote incompetence.

If you agree that the Ottoman Empire was its own worst enemy in WWI, then it seems to me that you have to agree that the Ottoman Empire was going to be its own worst enemy without WWI.

If George W. Bush has taught us anything, it is to never underestimate the ability of idiots to take a position of overwhelming advantage and to piss it all away.

One could argue that if Roman Empire never got sacked, it would still be around today, and that if Isaac Newton hadn't died of something or other, he'd still be gamboling around apple trees. So theoretically, without WWI, the Ottoman Empire might have survived. But that's hardly a guarantee.

If someone wants to go through the trouble of doing a formal timeline showing an Ottoman Survival, well and good.

But its not a foregone conclusion. In my view, not even a very good bet.
 
Austria is pretty much destinted to collapse because of its multi-ethnic, multi-national composition. If they tried centuries before to start assimilating their subjects, then they might have continued. However, I think the Habsburg Empire would have collapsed in the end. It would have been like the mess in Bosnia, only on a much bigger scale.

No. The Hapsburg empire could collapse, and it would probably be violent, but that violence would be the violence of great armies. The most developed paramilitary organisation in the empire, the Polish "Riflemna's Associations", were Austrophil. The empire was made extremely confusing and sometimes ineffective by its diversity and complex constitutional balance, but the battles were fought in parliament and the schoolrooms.
 
That's a rather racist means of describing citizens of Baghdad or Damascus, don't you think?

It;s a prejudiced description of people from the Arabian peninsula, but those prejudices were widely held by the Ottoman government and my Damascene and Baghdadian Arabs (and somewhat grounded in fact, it must be said...). The people of the Mashriq didn't consider themselves "Arabs" particularly so much as Arab-speakin Muslim Iraqi/Syrian/Damascene/Baghdadian Ottomans.

Your argument, as nearly as I can tell, is that Arab nationalism is somehow created out of nothing by WWI. That's hardly the case.

No. The argument is that in the aftermath of WW1, the Ottoman Empire was destroyed without hope of rebirth, and the people of the Mashriq under colonial domination turned to the doctrines of their Christian neighbours with an emphasis on liberation and common identity, which, with the destruction of the Ottomans, was a lot more credible to Arabist Muslims and then the population at large.

The Ottomans had lost control of Egypt, in part because of Arab nationalist movements,

What? No. The general breakdown of the Ottoman empire in the earlier fifth of the 19th C was warlordism, and the differance between the governments established by strongmen in Egypt and the western Balkans is that one lasted and the other didn't. The man who seized control of Egypt was an Albanian, and he established his dynasty using shrewdness, a strong army with a nationalist agenda, and the interest of the European powers in the region.

and in the early 19th century, Egypt had vied for power over Arab territories in Palestine and even into Syria, with the Ottomans.

It fought with the Ottomans for control of these regions because it was strong, the Ottomans were weak, and its rulers were ambitious, but the people there, lacking nationalist loyalities, weren't for one side or the other.

Nationalist uprisings of various sorts were hardly confined to Europe. The British had had to struggle, for instance, with a Sepoy rebellion.

That was an anti-colonial rebellion, whereas the Ottomans had thoroughly integrated most of the Mashriq into their metropole. It also had very little to do with the modern Indian nationalism that emerged in the following decades escept serving as an inspiration.

The reality of the Ottoman Empire was that the Turks were an ethnic minority in their Empire, ruling as economic and political hinterlands regions which were rival urban centres in their own right.

The reality is that if you had a quick wit and a good command of Ottoman Turkish (which wasn't spoken or understoof by villagers in any province, Turk or Arab), you could work your way up the Ottoman system regardless of national backgroun. Witness Foreign Minister Norandunkian.

The citizens of Baghdad or Damascus were as numerous, as educated and as ambitious as the citizens of Istanbul.

This isn't true at all. Istanbul was bigger, and much more power and political influence was concentrated their. As I said, the distinction between Istanbul and Everywhere Else was the defining one in the Ottoman Empire, and Istanbul was a cosmopolitan city: the divide was not Turkish/Arab.

It's not hard to imagine or assume that centrifugal forces would be at work on the Ottoman Empire.

It's not, but doing the research proves that it was too weak to demolish the Empire's structures without a push.

Indeed, its a fairly irrational leap of faith to assume that absent WWI these forces would not be at present.

But the war gives evidence in the opposite direction: in the war which broke Russia, a country that was in no way on its way to implosion in 1914, the Ottomans fought succesfully on multiple fronts with limited resources agaisnt formidable foes. Could an accident waiting to happen have humbled the imperial powers at Gallipoli, turned around and stopped the Russians in Anatolia, all while making Britain's conquest of the Mashriq a slow and costly headache notably lacking in cheering crowds of liberated Arabs?

To compare the Ottoman Empire to other contemporary non-western states - Ethiopia, Persia, Thailand and China, what is most significant about these states, their big difference from the Ottomans, is that while several of them might be considered 'Empires', ruling constituencies lording it over subject peoples and lands, nowhere else was it so lop sided, and nowhere else were there rival urban polities.

Flase comaprison. The Ottoman Empire was western, to say nothing of your misrepresentation of how it worked (Muslim universlaism, extreme centralism in the capital).

Take Persia and Ethiopia for example. Both were national groups - the Farsi and Amhara, who had conquered and ruled over their neighbors. The Farsi of Iran may have consituted 50% of the population, the Amhara somewhat similar. But for the most part, they outnumbered their subjects. And more importantly neither the conquered peoples of Iran or Ethiopia had their own rival polities, metropolitan centers, economic and political zones to rival or challenge the Imperial one.

But ancient conquests in pre-nationalist eras were not nearly as relevant to Muslim Arabs and Kurds as the real trheat of being conquered by somebody else worse than the Ottomans.

The Ottoman Turks, as I've pointed out, were a minority in their own Empire, and this Empire incorporated not merely hinterland communities, but rival urban metropolitan complexes. Egypt had challenged the Ottomans in the 19th century. Inevitably, Syria and Mesopotamia would challenge in the 20th.

Nothing is inevitable.

There's a difference between winning a battle with a superior army, and winning a war which proves far too costly. The Soviets lost Afghanistan not because they were ever defeated anywhere, but because the war never ever went away, it just kept costing and costing, and eventually it just wasn't worth it.

But the Ottomans in 1878 in 1912 weren't fighting to prop up a regime against a large part of its own people, only to keep areas where their own society was firmly established and their own support base was strong.

Not really. I'm merely making the assumption that in the absence of WWI, cultural and economic forces would continue to operate, and that many of these would have found their own pathways. While the Ottoman's might have had more options to save themselves, the tide was against them.

You haven't named a single "economic factor".
 

Hashasheen

Banned
But generally don't subject peoples tend to remain loyal during wartime?
Except they're not Subject people, they're citizens of the empire.

Nevertheless, we're not talking about ignorant peoples digging in the dirt with sticks. We're talking about urban centres who preceded most European cities, places with incredibly long traditions of literacy, sophisticated politics, and organized economic activity.
Which degenerated over time in the MIddle East.

And the Kurds, and so on. I'm not sure I understand what you're talking about here. The Ottoman Empire was never a democracy. It never had a constitution, or a bill of rights, or a federal system, or substantive mechanisms for local rule or representation. So how were they going to relate to or 'absorb' all major groups?
They had Parliament of some sort I think. As for how they absorbed it, they basically expanded and provided the services and good any successful country needs to maintain the loyalty of its citizens over so many decades.

This is the problem with Empires. Someone has to be in charge. And that means everyone else is not. There are the people that rule, and then there are the people who are ruled. As long as the people that rule have the advantages (population, economic clout and infrastructure), the people who are ruled have to lump it or find their own accommodation and place in the Empire. When the people who are ruled have their own set of toys, inevitably, they find they'd rather not be ruled.
Except this wasn't some ethno-centric goverment like Imperial 30's Japan. Arabs were citizens and had positiions of relative influence and power. They weren't the Roma in modern-day Hungary.

You got the polling data, huh? ;)
Considering I lived my life here and this is my area of expertise for the most part, I'm pretty confident. ;)

The Pans all have their own time periods, but their roots are solidly in the 19th century, and derived from pretty much the same set of intellectual baggage, which in turn derived from the American and French revolutions. Mid-20th century Pan-Arabism isn't what we're talking about.
But it's the only serious effort made. 19th century Pan-Arabism was little more than a joke and only a dream by the Sharif of Mecca. Neither his sons nor any other dynasty actually attempted to accomplish this.

Because the Ottoman was a democratic federation with a strong constitutional framework that made sure that local interests received fair treatment. And because Arabs could look at their oil wealth and figure that 15% was a fair cut, as opposed to 100% if they could break away?
Why doesn't Alaska secede, since they've got all the oil and the infrastructure is already there? Your working on the assumption they're going to just wake up one day and say "Fuck the Sultan. I want to be my own ruler." Human nature doesn't work like that.

Sure. But if we avoided WWI, the high command and ruling elites would magically get a clue?

I dunno, seems to me that human intelligence and competence, all other things being equal, is a constant. The Ottoman High command was not naturally incompetent, and they weren't magically incompetent just for this occasion. Rather, they were the product of an Ottoman system of elite rule that had evolved to protect and promote incompetence.

If you agree that the Ottoman Empire was its own worst enemy in WWI, then it seems to me that you have to agree that the Ottoman Empire was going to be its own worst enemy without WWI.
I was talking about the military command in the Balkan wars, not WW1. The military chose the opposite tactics and strategies to carry out the war than what would have gotten them a draw or a win. It wasn't a matter of incompetence, rather that they were unable to adapt in time to win back the campaign.
 
But generally don't subject peoples tend to remain loyal during wartime? There's a lot of propaganda about supporting the Empire. There's usually a lot of jobs and economic activity connected with supporting the war effort. The imperial hand tends to rest lightly so that people are generally feeling pretty good about the Empire. Taxes will rise, but generally this doesn't happen early on and may not be significant until late stages, if ever.

The Armenians, who actually had a strong, fervently anti-Ottoman nationalist ideology running through their political life, embarked on a self-destructive war against the Empire, which pretty much demolishes this argument.

Nevertheless, we're not talking about ignorant peoples digging in the dirt with sticks. We're talking about urban centres who preceded most European cities, places with incredibly long traditions of literacy, sophisticated politics, and organized economic activity.

Sure, but you haven't presented any evidence as to why they should inherently be anti-Ottoman.

And the Kurds, and so on. I'm not sure I understand what you're talking about here. The Ottoman Empire was never a democracy. It never had a constitution, or a bill of rights, or a federal system, or substantive mechanisms for local rule or representation. So how were they going to relate to or 'absorb' all major groups?

The Ottoman Empire had a fairly progressive constitution between 1876 and 1878 and agains from 1908 until the end, and it actually worked for a considerable part of that time. You clearly don't know much about this subject at all.

This is the problem with Empires. Someone has to be in charge. And that means everyone else is not. There are the people that rule, and then there are the people who are ruled. As long as the people that rule have the advantages (population, economic clout and infrastructure), the people who are ruled have to lump it or find their own accommodation and place in the Empire. When the people who are ruled have their own set of toys, inevitably, they find they'd rather not be ruled.

Thing is, the Ottomans weren't a colonial empire. The advantages which the population of Istanbul enjoyed over everyone else might be comapred to poor France, long under the iron-fisted rule of Parisians.

This isn't any kind of radical argument. This is just human nature and history at work.

It's a good explanation of the end of colonial privelage systems, but you've got it into your head that the Ottomans were such a system. They weren't, and I think you've made it clear with your remark about constitutions that you don't know enough about the Ottomans to be making such strong assertions.

You got the polling data, hunh? ;)

He has the weight of documentary evidence.

The Pans all have their own time periods, but their roots are solidly in the 19th century, and derived from pretty much the same set of intellectual baggage, which in turn derived from the American and French revolutions. Mid-20th century Pan-Arabism isn't what we're talking about.

You're wrong. The pans had differant roots. Russian-style pan-Slavism was deeply religious and opposed to Franco-American ideas of the liberty of the individual in favour of romanticising the village commune.

Because the Ottoman was a democratic federation with a strong constitutional framework that made sure that local interests received fair treatment. And because Arabs could look at their oil wealth and figure that 15% was a fair cut, as opposed to 100% if they could break away?

The Ottomans in 1914 had a strog constitutional frameowrk in which Arabs could easily go to the highest reaches. Syria and Palestine were completely integrated to the system, which consisted of Istanbul taking the wealth of everybody in Anatolia and the Mashriq and spending it where they pleased. And if the oil industry is where the money is, Istanbul is probably taking money from the more established economies of Anatolia to fund infrastructural developments connected with the oil industry.

Sure. But if we avoided WWI, the high command and ruling elites would magically get a clue?

He refers to the Allies of the Balkan War. The Ottomans in WW1 had a military machine that essentially won (the Turkish army of the Independence War was in personal, equipment, doctrine, and pretty much everything else a rebranded Ottoman army). It repelled an attack on its capital. It gave valuable assistance to Bulgaria. It held back the Russians in Anatolia long enough for Russia to break, which allowed it to advance to Baku and Petrovsk and withdraw later by agreement, returning to dish the Armenians. It had to withdraw from the Mashriq against overwhelming pressure, but retreated intact to Anatolia and repelled all attacks. This is all with very limited resources and some quixotic adventures in Galicia and the Sinai... an astounding military achievment.

I dunno, seems to me that human intelligence and competence, all other things being equal, is a constant. The Ottoman High command was not naturally incompetent, and they weren't magically incompetent just for this occasion. Rather, they were the product of an Ottoman system of elite rule that had evolved to protect and promote incompetence.

Thus explaining the dynamism and vitality of the Ottoman state in the atmosphere of revolutionary change after 1908, and the remarkable competence of the Ottomans during the Great War.

If you agree that the Ottoman Empire was its own worst enemy in WWI, then it seems to me that you have to agree that the Ottoman Empire was going to be its own worst enemy without WWI.

The Russians were the Ottoman Empire's worst enemy during WW1, sending the most against it and ahving the most success, so I don't have to agree with you at all.

If George W. Bush has taught us anything, it is to never underestimate the ability of idiots to take a position of overwhelming advantage and to piss it all away.

And your proof that the Ottoman leadership of the 1910s were idiots is?

One could argue that if Roman Empire never got sacked, it would still be around today, and that if Isaac Newton hadn't died of something or other, he'd still be gamboling around apple trees. So theoretically, without WWI, the Ottoman Empire might have survived. But that's hardly a guarantee.

Nothing is guarantted.

If someone wants to go through the trouble of doing a formal timeline showing an Ottoman Survival, well and good.

But its not a foregone conclusion. In my view, not even a very good bet.

The evidence you've been putting forward is vague and bogus, and you've shown an ignorance of the Ottoman period. You'll note that I came into this debate arguing that the Ottomans were in severe danger os destruction as an independent state in 1914.
 
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