The name Uranus already broke the Roman theme. It's a Romanisation of the Greek name Ouranos. The equivalent Roman god was called Caelus.
Look to the West -- Thread II
- Thread starter Thande
- Start date
- Status
Alex Richards
Donor
Mind you, Uranium was discovered in 1789 OTL, so it must be a conscious choice not to depict those rows rather than a lack of discovery.
Thande
Donor
Part #116: The Last Hurrah
“Today’s triumph sows the seeds for tomorrow’s tragedy”
*
From—“A History of the Near and Middle East, Volume VIII, Part 3: The Ottoman Time of Troubles” by John Chauncey Parker (1970)—
In understanding the Persian intervention in the Time of Troubles, and the consequences it would have for both powers and beyond, it is important to recognise that what at first glance might look like an overwhelming Persian victory is in reality anything but. Persia certainly profited by its intervention, recovering the lands in Arabistan that the Ottomans had taken during the Turco-Persian War of 1806-09 and most of Azerbaijan even before one considers those gains in terms of influence rather than annexation. But in many ways the result represents a squandered opportunity, something quietly recognised by the Zand court at the time, even as they trumpted their triumphs to the heavens and urged their people to celebrate. The Time of Troubles was a peculiar period of Ottoman weakness of the kind that might come once every two or three centuries, and the Persians could have taken advantage of their divided, factional neighbour to a far greater extent than they did. It is true that some speculation on this matter by Persian nationalists has been overly fanciful, such as the suggestion by Dr Darius Sadeghi (A. J.-N. Jour. Lev. Stud., vol. 23, 1964[2]) that Persia could have pushed her borders as far as the Mediterranean Sea and reclaimed the lands of the Levant which no Persian emperor had ruled since Khosrau II of the pre-Islamic Sassanid dynasty. This seems rather unlikely even if chance had weighed more heavily in favour of Shah-Advocate Zaki Mohammed Shah and his Grand Vizier Nader Sadeq Khan Zand. But it is true that the gains that Persia made were relatively modest compared to the scale of the opportunity the country was gifted. It can, however, be argued (M. M. Muhammad, Trans. As. Soc. Const. (L.-R.), vol. 56, 1951[3]) that a more dramatic addition of territory to the Zands’ empire could potentially have been biting off more than they could chew and would have destabilised the country at a critical time. But there is no profit in what-ifs.
Part of Persia’s failings can be attributed to an inability to stick to a single objective besides that which everyone agreed on—reclaiming the territories lost in the Turco-Persian War. It is fair to say that this stage, in particular the occupation of Arabistan, was indeed carried out in a far more capable and organised manner than what would come later. Unlike the Turco-Persian War, in which the Persian army had still been transitioning from an obsolete Asian force wedded to the past to a more advanced, Portuguese-trained modern army approaching European standards and had suffered many problems of organisation and logistics as a consequence, the Persian forces had been homogenised in terms of equipment, composition and tactical doctrine. The Shah-Advocate, like many of his house, was a moderniser and had taken advantage of the finger-pointing over the failures of the Turco-Persian War to clear out the generals still stubbornly sticking to outdated military doctrines and promote younger officers. In this respect the army was much more capable. However, the Shah-Advocate’s actions had also separated it from the Persian aristocracy and court politics to a greater degree, which meant that internal politics swiftly developed within the army, with various factions each hoping to draw the attention of Shiraz[4] by their acts of heroism and military triumph. At first these tendencies remained suppressed, differences put aside due to an almost universally held conviction that retaking Arabistan must be priority number one. However, once this was accomplished—and particularly thanks to the unfortunate death of General Mirza Hossein from an infected wound. Hossein had been a useful figure, bridging the old guard and the new and helping to manage the political differences within the army. Though no particular talent as a battlefield general, when removed his value as a keystone holding the army together became apparent.
Still, the Persians had the advantage. The civil war in the Ottoman Empire was dominated by three factions in the Balkans and Anatolia, one in Egypt and one in Arabia. The Levant and Mesopotamia possessed little in the way of organised military forces, these generally rallying to one of the factions or another, and the Balkan Party and Shadow Faction pulling all the men that would follow their banner from the region to the main fronts in Europe and the Caucasus. There was little to stop the Persians from simply marching through Mesopotamia save the disorganised militiamen of the Azadis or ‘Freedomites’: in 1819 the southern city of Basra fell almost without a fight. With further Persian expansion in Azerbaijan blocked by the uncooperative Russians, in 1820 the Shah-Advocate turned all his army’s attention on Mesopotamia, with the intention of creating an independent emirate centred on the Shi’ite holy city of Najaf. This would require taking the effective Mesopotamian capital of Baghdad, a city which had once been considered the very centre of Islamic political power and scholarship, although invasions and distant rulers had reduced it to a dusty memory of its former self. Nonetheless, Baghdad was the key to Mesopotamia and the coup of obtaining rule over Najaf for the Persians (or rather their planned vassal state).
Unfortunately for the Persians, two key things went wrong at this point. One of them could have been prevented by the actions of the Persian government, the other could not. The first was the landing of the Portuguese East India Company—under the command of royal forces thanks to John VI and the ‘Aveiro Doctrine’, meaning it was not only the Persians who suffered from fractiousness and conniving in their military—at Couaite.[5] Part of the secret treaty the Shah-Advocate had signed in 1816 with the Portuguese Governor-General of Goa, Vitorino de Souza, handed over this key port to the PEIC for future trade in the Persian Gulf. However, it had been assumed on both sides that the Portuguese would not take possession of Couaite until after the war was over, as too close cooperation with Christian armed traders would probably damage the image of the Persians in the eyes of the local Shi’ite Muslims who might otherwise look on them as liberators—as, indeed, it did. The Portuguese moving in earlier can be attributed to the centralising Aveiro Doctrine, which had placed command of the Portuguese contribution to the anti-Ottoman intervention in the person of Admiral Orlando Coutinho rather than de Souza. Coutinho was a fairly skilled military commander, as his actions later on in the Popular Wars would prove, but had no experience in the East and was hopelessly out of his depth in a way that de Souza would not, being forced to rely on advisors. The result was that the ruling Al-Sabah clan in Couaite withdrew before the Portuguese invaders and rallied to the cause of the Azadis, supplementing them with men, money (acquired through Couaite’s trade fleet) and influence. This was a serious stumbling block to the Persians and more than negated the Grand Vizier’s propaganda campaign, which had used printing presses to turn out pro-Persian broadsheets in Arabic and employed agents to display them throughout towns in Mesopotamia. Nader Sadeq’s work is, in retrospect, widely praised as one of the first recognisably modern propaganda campaigns, but at the time the Portuguese’s actions ensured it was largely ineffective. The Persians even found the people of Basra turning against them, who had previously regarded their occupiers either with support or indifference.
Nonetheless the overwhelming Persian military force still told, and the army marched inexorably towards Baghdad. This is when their second piece of bad luck came into play. Abdul Hadi Pasha, the former wali of Egypt who had successfully united Egypt, Arabia and the Levant under his rule, now joined with the Azadis, who it turned out were led by his brother, the propagandist who used the pseudonym “Ibn Warraq”. It remains somewhat controversial whether Abdul Hadi’s decision to risk his army by meeting the Persians in battle was entirely his own. In Constantinople, where despite some degree of liberalisation the man is still almost deified, it is politically unwise to suggest his decisions could have been anything other than perfect. However there remains a persistent rumour that Abdul Hadi wished to take his forces to Anatolia in an attempt to defeat the other Ottoman factions, take Constantinople and thus reunite the Empire before facing the Persians, letting them have Mesopotamia for the present. According to this account, Ibn Warraq persuaded his brother that unless they used their forces to at least make a stand at Baghdad, the Azadis and the Ottoman people would dismiss them as no less self-interested than the other factions. Whatever the background to the decision, in March 1820 Abdul Hadi’s forces assembled at the city—whose people welcomed then, by now the rumour mill having exaggerated the Persians’ deal with the Portuguese into suggesting that the Shah-Advocate had converted to Christianity and proclaimed a crusade against Islam. In July the Persians attacked, and the Siege of Baghdad was joined.
Baghdad was a city that had been besieged many times before and was well equipped to be defended. The siege lasted eighteen months, a struggle between a less well armed and organised but supremely motivated and united through blood on one side of the walls, and a better armed and organised but fractious and somewhat inexperienced force on the other. Military historians disagree on how close the Persians came to victory. Some suggest that the city was never in danger of falling except perhaps through being starved out. Others contend that the breaches opened in the walls by General Ardeshir Gholami in November 1820 came close, but fell short when his Goanese cannon were sabotaged by Azadi infiltrators.
But though Abdul Hadi’s forces suffered in the siege, it is clear in retrospect that by accident or design it was the right decision for them to make. By fighting alongside the Baghdadis, it elevated his forces to a position at least equal in respect to that of the Balkan Party in terms of the Ottoman public eye—and the Balkan Party could be accused of only fighting to defend the region from which most of its members came, whereas Abdul Hadi and his leadership were not Mesopotamian. During this period the Shadow Faction was largely discredited as it was mostly seen as fighting other Ottomans rather than the invaders (though in reality Shadow troops did see some action against the Russians in Trebizond and arguably reduced the Russian advance). More to the point, while Abdul Hadi’s forces suffered no more than piecemeal losses to disease and the occasional Persian attack, the Shadows and Balkan Party were killing each other and weakening each others’ positions, changing the balance of power within the shattered empire.
The Persians’ eventual withdrawal from the city is often mistakenly regarded as an effect of the same potato famine that led to the Austrian and Russian interventions in the Time of Troubles petering out. This is, however, untrue: the Persian withdrawal began before the famine spread to Persia, and in any case the potato was a far less important staple crop to the Persians. The real causes were several: disease spreading throughout the armies encamped about Baghdad (some speculate deliberate contamination of water supplies by the Azadis) argument between political factions in the army and in Shiraz leading to a loss of spirit by the Persian troops, and the collapse of the Durrani Empire in the middle of the war, which led to a distracting additional front as Persia sought to capitalise on the downfall of a second neighbour. Once more, Persia certainly benefited from this, retaking Herat and Nishapur and vassalising the Khanate of Kalat, but this was also an admission that the operations in Mesopotamia were going nowhere. There was an attempt in early 1821 to bypass the besieged city and strike out for Najaf directly, Abdul Hadi’s forces safely bottled inside Baghdad, but this failed due to the Persians underestimating the level of anti-Persian feeling and Azadi infiltration among the locals, with even Shi’ites now generally opposed. General Amir Moderi’s march to and from Najaf among Kleinkrieger activity and locals removing their herds and burning their crops to starve his army was commemorated in The Retreat from Najaf by Alireza Tabrizi in 1853. This epic poem poignantly depicts the feeling of despair that Moderi’s men must have felt on their long retreat, feeling unable to trust any food or water they encountered lest it be poisoned by Azadis, their general in a fever and dying as they approached Basra only to find it in flames, its people in rebellion.
The revolt in Basra was unsuccessful. The Persians withdrew all their forces to the city, crushed the rebels and succeeded in carving out the Emirate they had desired, but it was a pale shadow of what had been planned: not an Emirate of Najaf, but an Emirate of Basra. While they did succeed in finding a sufficiently pliable Al-Sabah cousin to sit the makeshift throne, it was obvious to everyone that real power rested in the resident appointed by the Shah-Advocate. The first of these was none other than Nader Sadeq himself, supposedly to reward the Grand Vizier with his own achievement. In reality, of course, this represented a quiet acknowledgement of the failures of his policy. A new Grand Vizier, Hassan Kashfi, was appointed and pursued a policy of stabilising the frontier—seeking peace in all but name, as there remained no official Ottoman authority to negotiate with.
Persia’s entry into the strife consuming both the Ottoman and Durrani Empires therefore represents a case of missed opportunities stemming from an inability to focus on one target or front and splitting forces among several. This was recognised a few years later, when the death of Jangir Khan and the ensuing crisis in the Kazakh Khaganate led to a much more cautious Persian response—ironic, considering at this point a full-blooded intervention from Shiraz could have broken the fledgeling Khaganate before Jangir’s son succeeded in reuniting the factions and ensuring that Persia would continue to face a dangerous foe to her north.
A side front of Persia’s intervention should not be ignored. While it stripped troops from other fronts and therefore can be regarded as one of the objects of criticism mentioned above, it played an important role both in the expansion of Persian trade and the increasingly fractured relationship between Shiraz and Goa—or, as it was presented under the Aveiro Doctrine, Shiraz and Lisbon. This was the intervention against Oman. This is often presented, anachronistically, as revenge on the part of Shiraz for Abdul Hadi’s successful defence of Baghdad, given that one of Abdul Hadi’s key lieutenants was the former Ottoman resident in Oman, Esad Ali Bey, who had helped Abdul Hadi’s rise to power by providing him with an Omani fleet. This is, of course, nonsense. If there was a component of revenge to the Persians’ actions, it was because Omani pirate attacks on Persian hajjis had been the casus belli of the Turco-Persian War. But in reality the action can be justified in cold logic alone—by possessing Oman or at least influence over her, the Persians could claim control of all trade in the Persian Gulf.
The Portuguese somewhat redeemed themselves by providing the ships for this, Persia never having been a major maritime nation. The army that descended upon Oman was mostly Persian, but with a significant contribution from the Portuguese and their East India Company, including Marathi sepoys—needless to say, careful management was needed considering many such sepoys were Hindoos who had cut their military teeth fighting Muslim invaders. Perhaps surprisingly given the comedy of errors in other parts of the conflict, there were relatively little such incidents. The army landed in August 1822, aided by the fact that Esad Ali Bey’s removal of the fleet left the country vulnerable to invasion—ironic when his intention had been to end the Ottoman civil war swiftly enough for a new Ottoman leadership to defend Oman. The capital of Muscat was taken by the end of the year. Sultan Sayyid fled to the interior city of Nizwa and his supporters continued a Kleinkrieger war from there for decades to come. The more hardline Ibadi Islam of Nizwa influenced Sayyid’s supporters, changing the political and religious balance of the Arabian Peninsula just as had the defeat of the Wahhabis by Abdul Hadi. The Persians, electing not to try and annex the land over the water, installed a distant cousin of Sayyid as a puppet Sultan of Muscat, taking the name Sultan Bakarat bin Hamad al-Sayyid. As well as this rump Sultanate of Muscat being a Persian vassal and open to Portuguese trade, its overseas trade colonies were ceded to Portugal: this resulted in the Portuguese gaining control of the key African trade post of the island of Zanzibar and the surrounding Zanguebar coast. Despite this, many Persians ended up in the region due to working for the PEIC, resulting in a distinct Persian influence on the peoples of the area.
It was this, the apparent heights of Portuguese colonial triumph, which led to disagreements between the Persians and Portuguese that left their alliance largely broken. The issue was the island of Bahrain. Bahrain had gone back and forth between Oman and Persia several times over the centuries (the island suffering quite a lot in the process) but in the sixteenth century it had been Portuguese, and Admiral Coutinho (on John VI’s orders) used this rather dubious claim to demand the island be ‘returned’ to Portugal. Naturally the Persians refused. Bahrain was ruled by the Al-Makhdur family, who had pledged allegiance to the Zands ever since the 1760s, and the Persians would not sell out a loyal ally in such a way.[6] It has been suggested that this move was spearheaded by the new Grand Vizier Hassan Kashfi to make his name and score a propaganda victory against Mesopotamian Arabs claiming that the Persians were puppets of the Portuguese. It worked to some extent if this was the intent, but also seriously poisoned relationships between the two powers. Of course, Admiral Coutinho could have taken the island by force given his naval superiority, but was wary of exceeding the remit of his orders after the Variações case of a few years before, and backed down before the Persians.
And what of Abdul Hadi Pasha? He had made his name by his steadfast defence of Baghdad and had successfully kept most of Mesopotamia out of Persian hands. That counted for a lot. In 1823, supplemented with Azadi volunteers from Mesopotamia and the Levant, his army finally moved north. Esad Ali Bey did not go with him, feeling guilty over the fate of Oman. He returned to Egypt and acted as Abdul Hadi’s viceroy, giving the Omani fleet still based there a choice for their future. Given that the Persian-backed Sultanate of Muscat controlled the coastline, most of the Omani captains decided to stay with Abdul Hadi and formed the core of his Mediterranean navy—in terms of personnel, not ships, as the fleet was still based in the Red Sea and there was as yet no canal linking the two.
In the mid-1820s the Time of Troubles entered a new phase. The Russians, Austrians and Persians had all taken their pound of flesh from the fractured empire, but staunch resistance by Abdul Hadi and the Balkan Party had reduced that to less than it might have been. The Shadow Faction, struggling without many clear leaders and regarded by the people as opportunists, withered and died as it was faced with attacks on both sides. Abdul Hadi took Angora in 1824, while the weakened Balkan Party drove the Shadows from Bursa. The Sultan Murad VI, who had fled Constantinople at the start of the conflict, re-emerged from hiding and endorsed Abdul Hadi. The Shadow Faction is generally considered to have collapsed in any meaningful sense by the end of 1825, and now the only remaining sides in the long civil war were the Balkan Party and Abdul Hadi Pasha’s forces. Both were now well experienced and Europe watched, looking for a knock-out blow.
None came, of course, because both sides were also exhausted. Abdul Hadi did successfully lead his troops in a series of battles against the Balkan Party, mainly led by their general Yunus Musa Pasha, throughout the mid-1820s and in 1828 Bursa finally fell to his forces. But over a decade of war had passed and though Abdul Hadi was still popular with his men, there was little enthusiasm for further fighting. Abdul Hadi encouraged them with the idea that one last strike at Constantinople would topple the Balkan Party, but a siege joined from 1829-30 was not successful, and while Abdul Hadi retained his political power he recognised that there was little point in continuing the conflict. The same was true of the Balkan Party leader Ferid Naili Pasha, and from 1830—at a time when much of the rest of the world was charging into war—an uneasy peace settled between the two Ottoman factions. The divide fell neatly between Europe and Asia. Abdul Hadi Pasha’s men ruled all that remained of the Ottoman Empire in Asia and Africa under Sultan Murad VI in Bursa, while the Balkan Party ruled Europe (including Cyprus) under Sultan Mehmed V in Constantinople. Despite the disparity in terms of land area between the two groups and the fact that Murad VI was the rightful heir, the nations of Europe at this point mostly regarded the Balkan Party and Mehmed V as the legitimate Ottoman government: it was the one they mostly dealt with due to proximity, and it possessed Constantinople. The name “Janissary Sultanate” to describe the Balkan Party regime is an anachronistic one and only dates from the 1860s, long after the Time of Troubles was over. But for now it still had another decade to run...
*
From – “A History of Portugal” by Giuseppe Scappaticci, Royal Palermo Press (1942)
Pride comes before a fall. Every period of ascendancy of a nation is followed by a comeuppance. Great Britain won the Wars of Supremacy of the eighteenth century only to fall into deprivation and dictatorship in the nineteenth. Tragedy follows triumph. And so we turn to Portugal...
*
From: “The People’s Warriors: Understanding the Popular Wars, from their Foundations to their Aftershocks” by Peter Allington (1970)—
Possibly the biggest misconception about the Popular Wars is that they were not foreseen. It is common to imagine that the absolute monarchs and dictators who fell in the struggle mistakenly believed that their people loved them utterly and that nothing of this nature could ever befall them. For the most part, at least, this was not true. From the Congress of Copenhagen onwards, it was obvious to everyone with eyes to see that the settlement in Europe, born of exhaustion and opportunism, could not be preserved forever, and that the Jacobin Wars had ended in a fashion that did not provide any sense of conclusion or closure to the issues that had ignited them. It is fair to say, in the words of Rathbone (1897) that the Watchful Peace represents the Allies of the Jacobin Wars taking the Pandora’s Box of popular revolution and then putting aside their differences to all sit on top of it to jam the lid down like that of an uncooperative suitcase. Where Rathbone fails is in the assumption that those crowned heads truly believed that they could suppress the revolutionary box forever by their weight. Pressure indeed built up within to eventually explode and unleash another round of revolutions: but almost everyone realised this. The Watchful Peace was given that name for a reason, with every ruler looking out for the first signs of such an outbreak. Some, it is true, prepared to a greater degree than others, successfully appeasing their own people in advance with liberal concessions—Saxony being the obvious example. But when one considers which countries did benefit from the Popular Wars, which existing regimes managed to stay in power and cover themselves with glory, it is not such foresightedness that can be held responsible for this.
Indeed, the countries and regimes which benefited did so precisely because they were so distant, in both geographic terms and in terms of information exchange through trade and language, that it gave their rulers sufficient time to observe the dawning revolution elsewhere and prepare—if, that is, they recognised the signs. And in fairness it is more understandable than many authors presume that many of them did not. The reason for this, and the reason why the Popular Wars seem to have been such an unexpected surprise across Europe and the world, is simply because they did not start in any of the trouble spots that had long since been predicted for the theatre of revolution.
Not in France, the most obvious choice, thanks to a Jacobin resurgence. Not Germany, where the nationalist writings of Schmidt, the Mentian movement, discontent in the Hapsburg empire and the oligarchic rule of the Dutch States-General constantly simmered to threaten the status quo. Not Italy, where the crude carve-up of the country in the Jacobin Wars and the crisis of Papal power might spark a dozen causes. Not Great Britain, where the brutal and arbitrary rule of Joshua Churchill brought tensions to the boil. Not poor divided Spain, its people often reduced to second class citizens by their Portuguese or Neapolitan masters, yearning for their king over the water. Not Russia, beset with the political conflict of Slavic nativism versus European modernism. Not Scandinavia, where Sweden’s problems and Denmark’s diverse bag of German possessions were a problem that the existing political structure could not hope to solve.
No, when the Popular Wars finally came, it was from an angle that none had predicted, none had considered. And yet that can, in fact, be criticised, for the spark that exploded a revolutionary wave that would consume the world could, in some ways, be predicted. Unsurprisingly, the spark, the revolution, the war took its inspiration from the two great popular revolutions that had already shaken the world. So, too, would this one.
And it began in Brazil.
[1] Actually made up by Russian salesmen hawking ‘ethnic’ Japanese art, but never mind.
[2] Abbreviation for “The Authorised Joint-National Journal of Levantine Studies”.
[3] Abbreviation for “Transactions of the Asian Society of Constantinople (Linguistically-Restricted)”.
[4] The capital of Persia under the Zands.
[5] A Lusitanised version of “Kuwait”. Kuwait City existed at this point as a thriving trade port whose political status was ambiguous, ruled by Emirs of the Al-Sabah clan but making it deliberately unclear whether it was an Ottoman protectorate or not.
[6] OTL the Al-Makhdurs were overthrown in the 1780s by the Al-Khalifas, who are still the rulers of OTL modern Bahrain (at time of writing...) but in TTL this didn’t happen and the Al-Makhdurs still control Bahrain.
“Today’s triumph sows the seeds for tomorrow’s tragedy”
—Yapontsi proverb
[1]*
From—“A History of the Near and Middle East, Volume VIII, Part 3: The Ottoman Time of Troubles” by John Chauncey Parker (1970)—
In understanding the Persian intervention in the Time of Troubles, and the consequences it would have for both powers and beyond, it is important to recognise that what at first glance might look like an overwhelming Persian victory is in reality anything but. Persia certainly profited by its intervention, recovering the lands in Arabistan that the Ottomans had taken during the Turco-Persian War of 1806-09 and most of Azerbaijan even before one considers those gains in terms of influence rather than annexation. But in many ways the result represents a squandered opportunity, something quietly recognised by the Zand court at the time, even as they trumpted their triumphs to the heavens and urged their people to celebrate. The Time of Troubles was a peculiar period of Ottoman weakness of the kind that might come once every two or three centuries, and the Persians could have taken advantage of their divided, factional neighbour to a far greater extent than they did. It is true that some speculation on this matter by Persian nationalists has been overly fanciful, such as the suggestion by Dr Darius Sadeghi (A. J.-N. Jour. Lev. Stud., vol. 23, 1964[2]) that Persia could have pushed her borders as far as the Mediterranean Sea and reclaimed the lands of the Levant which no Persian emperor had ruled since Khosrau II of the pre-Islamic Sassanid dynasty. This seems rather unlikely even if chance had weighed more heavily in favour of Shah-Advocate Zaki Mohammed Shah and his Grand Vizier Nader Sadeq Khan Zand. But it is true that the gains that Persia made were relatively modest compared to the scale of the opportunity the country was gifted. It can, however, be argued (M. M. Muhammad, Trans. As. Soc. Const. (L.-R.), vol. 56, 1951[3]) that a more dramatic addition of territory to the Zands’ empire could potentially have been biting off more than they could chew and would have destabilised the country at a critical time. But there is no profit in what-ifs.
Part of Persia’s failings can be attributed to an inability to stick to a single objective besides that which everyone agreed on—reclaiming the territories lost in the Turco-Persian War. It is fair to say that this stage, in particular the occupation of Arabistan, was indeed carried out in a far more capable and organised manner than what would come later. Unlike the Turco-Persian War, in which the Persian army had still been transitioning from an obsolete Asian force wedded to the past to a more advanced, Portuguese-trained modern army approaching European standards and had suffered many problems of organisation and logistics as a consequence, the Persian forces had been homogenised in terms of equipment, composition and tactical doctrine. The Shah-Advocate, like many of his house, was a moderniser and had taken advantage of the finger-pointing over the failures of the Turco-Persian War to clear out the generals still stubbornly sticking to outdated military doctrines and promote younger officers. In this respect the army was much more capable. However, the Shah-Advocate’s actions had also separated it from the Persian aristocracy and court politics to a greater degree, which meant that internal politics swiftly developed within the army, with various factions each hoping to draw the attention of Shiraz[4] by their acts of heroism and military triumph. At first these tendencies remained suppressed, differences put aside due to an almost universally held conviction that retaking Arabistan must be priority number one. However, once this was accomplished—and particularly thanks to the unfortunate death of General Mirza Hossein from an infected wound. Hossein had been a useful figure, bridging the old guard and the new and helping to manage the political differences within the army. Though no particular talent as a battlefield general, when removed his value as a keystone holding the army together became apparent.
Still, the Persians had the advantage. The civil war in the Ottoman Empire was dominated by three factions in the Balkans and Anatolia, one in Egypt and one in Arabia. The Levant and Mesopotamia possessed little in the way of organised military forces, these generally rallying to one of the factions or another, and the Balkan Party and Shadow Faction pulling all the men that would follow their banner from the region to the main fronts in Europe and the Caucasus. There was little to stop the Persians from simply marching through Mesopotamia save the disorganised militiamen of the Azadis or ‘Freedomites’: in 1819 the southern city of Basra fell almost without a fight. With further Persian expansion in Azerbaijan blocked by the uncooperative Russians, in 1820 the Shah-Advocate turned all his army’s attention on Mesopotamia, with the intention of creating an independent emirate centred on the Shi’ite holy city of Najaf. This would require taking the effective Mesopotamian capital of Baghdad, a city which had once been considered the very centre of Islamic political power and scholarship, although invasions and distant rulers had reduced it to a dusty memory of its former self. Nonetheless, Baghdad was the key to Mesopotamia and the coup of obtaining rule over Najaf for the Persians (or rather their planned vassal state).
Unfortunately for the Persians, two key things went wrong at this point. One of them could have been prevented by the actions of the Persian government, the other could not. The first was the landing of the Portuguese East India Company—under the command of royal forces thanks to John VI and the ‘Aveiro Doctrine’, meaning it was not only the Persians who suffered from fractiousness and conniving in their military—at Couaite.[5] Part of the secret treaty the Shah-Advocate had signed in 1816 with the Portuguese Governor-General of Goa, Vitorino de Souza, handed over this key port to the PEIC for future trade in the Persian Gulf. However, it had been assumed on both sides that the Portuguese would not take possession of Couaite until after the war was over, as too close cooperation with Christian armed traders would probably damage the image of the Persians in the eyes of the local Shi’ite Muslims who might otherwise look on them as liberators—as, indeed, it did. The Portuguese moving in earlier can be attributed to the centralising Aveiro Doctrine, which had placed command of the Portuguese contribution to the anti-Ottoman intervention in the person of Admiral Orlando Coutinho rather than de Souza. Coutinho was a fairly skilled military commander, as his actions later on in the Popular Wars would prove, but had no experience in the East and was hopelessly out of his depth in a way that de Souza would not, being forced to rely on advisors. The result was that the ruling Al-Sabah clan in Couaite withdrew before the Portuguese invaders and rallied to the cause of the Azadis, supplementing them with men, money (acquired through Couaite’s trade fleet) and influence. This was a serious stumbling block to the Persians and more than negated the Grand Vizier’s propaganda campaign, which had used printing presses to turn out pro-Persian broadsheets in Arabic and employed agents to display them throughout towns in Mesopotamia. Nader Sadeq’s work is, in retrospect, widely praised as one of the first recognisably modern propaganda campaigns, but at the time the Portuguese’s actions ensured it was largely ineffective. The Persians even found the people of Basra turning against them, who had previously regarded their occupiers either with support or indifference.
Nonetheless the overwhelming Persian military force still told, and the army marched inexorably towards Baghdad. This is when their second piece of bad luck came into play. Abdul Hadi Pasha, the former wali of Egypt who had successfully united Egypt, Arabia and the Levant under his rule, now joined with the Azadis, who it turned out were led by his brother, the propagandist who used the pseudonym “Ibn Warraq”. It remains somewhat controversial whether Abdul Hadi’s decision to risk his army by meeting the Persians in battle was entirely his own. In Constantinople, where despite some degree of liberalisation the man is still almost deified, it is politically unwise to suggest his decisions could have been anything other than perfect. However there remains a persistent rumour that Abdul Hadi wished to take his forces to Anatolia in an attempt to defeat the other Ottoman factions, take Constantinople and thus reunite the Empire before facing the Persians, letting them have Mesopotamia for the present. According to this account, Ibn Warraq persuaded his brother that unless they used their forces to at least make a stand at Baghdad, the Azadis and the Ottoman people would dismiss them as no less self-interested than the other factions. Whatever the background to the decision, in March 1820 Abdul Hadi’s forces assembled at the city—whose people welcomed then, by now the rumour mill having exaggerated the Persians’ deal with the Portuguese into suggesting that the Shah-Advocate had converted to Christianity and proclaimed a crusade against Islam. In July the Persians attacked, and the Siege of Baghdad was joined.
Baghdad was a city that had been besieged many times before and was well equipped to be defended. The siege lasted eighteen months, a struggle between a less well armed and organised but supremely motivated and united through blood on one side of the walls, and a better armed and organised but fractious and somewhat inexperienced force on the other. Military historians disagree on how close the Persians came to victory. Some suggest that the city was never in danger of falling except perhaps through being starved out. Others contend that the breaches opened in the walls by General Ardeshir Gholami in November 1820 came close, but fell short when his Goanese cannon were sabotaged by Azadi infiltrators.
But though Abdul Hadi’s forces suffered in the siege, it is clear in retrospect that by accident or design it was the right decision for them to make. By fighting alongside the Baghdadis, it elevated his forces to a position at least equal in respect to that of the Balkan Party in terms of the Ottoman public eye—and the Balkan Party could be accused of only fighting to defend the region from which most of its members came, whereas Abdul Hadi and his leadership were not Mesopotamian. During this period the Shadow Faction was largely discredited as it was mostly seen as fighting other Ottomans rather than the invaders (though in reality Shadow troops did see some action against the Russians in Trebizond and arguably reduced the Russian advance). More to the point, while Abdul Hadi’s forces suffered no more than piecemeal losses to disease and the occasional Persian attack, the Shadows and Balkan Party were killing each other and weakening each others’ positions, changing the balance of power within the shattered empire.
The Persians’ eventual withdrawal from the city is often mistakenly regarded as an effect of the same potato famine that led to the Austrian and Russian interventions in the Time of Troubles petering out. This is, however, untrue: the Persian withdrawal began before the famine spread to Persia, and in any case the potato was a far less important staple crop to the Persians. The real causes were several: disease spreading throughout the armies encamped about Baghdad (some speculate deliberate contamination of water supplies by the Azadis) argument between political factions in the army and in Shiraz leading to a loss of spirit by the Persian troops, and the collapse of the Durrani Empire in the middle of the war, which led to a distracting additional front as Persia sought to capitalise on the downfall of a second neighbour. Once more, Persia certainly benefited from this, retaking Herat and Nishapur and vassalising the Khanate of Kalat, but this was also an admission that the operations in Mesopotamia were going nowhere. There was an attempt in early 1821 to bypass the besieged city and strike out for Najaf directly, Abdul Hadi’s forces safely bottled inside Baghdad, but this failed due to the Persians underestimating the level of anti-Persian feeling and Azadi infiltration among the locals, with even Shi’ites now generally opposed. General Amir Moderi’s march to and from Najaf among Kleinkrieger activity and locals removing their herds and burning their crops to starve his army was commemorated in The Retreat from Najaf by Alireza Tabrizi in 1853. This epic poem poignantly depicts the feeling of despair that Moderi’s men must have felt on their long retreat, feeling unable to trust any food or water they encountered lest it be poisoned by Azadis, their general in a fever and dying as they approached Basra only to find it in flames, its people in rebellion.
The revolt in Basra was unsuccessful. The Persians withdrew all their forces to the city, crushed the rebels and succeeded in carving out the Emirate they had desired, but it was a pale shadow of what had been planned: not an Emirate of Najaf, but an Emirate of Basra. While they did succeed in finding a sufficiently pliable Al-Sabah cousin to sit the makeshift throne, it was obvious to everyone that real power rested in the resident appointed by the Shah-Advocate. The first of these was none other than Nader Sadeq himself, supposedly to reward the Grand Vizier with his own achievement. In reality, of course, this represented a quiet acknowledgement of the failures of his policy. A new Grand Vizier, Hassan Kashfi, was appointed and pursued a policy of stabilising the frontier—seeking peace in all but name, as there remained no official Ottoman authority to negotiate with.
Persia’s entry into the strife consuming both the Ottoman and Durrani Empires therefore represents a case of missed opportunities stemming from an inability to focus on one target or front and splitting forces among several. This was recognised a few years later, when the death of Jangir Khan and the ensuing crisis in the Kazakh Khaganate led to a much more cautious Persian response—ironic, considering at this point a full-blooded intervention from Shiraz could have broken the fledgeling Khaganate before Jangir’s son succeeded in reuniting the factions and ensuring that Persia would continue to face a dangerous foe to her north.
A side front of Persia’s intervention should not be ignored. While it stripped troops from other fronts and therefore can be regarded as one of the objects of criticism mentioned above, it played an important role both in the expansion of Persian trade and the increasingly fractured relationship between Shiraz and Goa—or, as it was presented under the Aveiro Doctrine, Shiraz and Lisbon. This was the intervention against Oman. This is often presented, anachronistically, as revenge on the part of Shiraz for Abdul Hadi’s successful defence of Baghdad, given that one of Abdul Hadi’s key lieutenants was the former Ottoman resident in Oman, Esad Ali Bey, who had helped Abdul Hadi’s rise to power by providing him with an Omani fleet. This is, of course, nonsense. If there was a component of revenge to the Persians’ actions, it was because Omani pirate attacks on Persian hajjis had been the casus belli of the Turco-Persian War. But in reality the action can be justified in cold logic alone—by possessing Oman or at least influence over her, the Persians could claim control of all trade in the Persian Gulf.
The Portuguese somewhat redeemed themselves by providing the ships for this, Persia never having been a major maritime nation. The army that descended upon Oman was mostly Persian, but with a significant contribution from the Portuguese and their East India Company, including Marathi sepoys—needless to say, careful management was needed considering many such sepoys were Hindoos who had cut their military teeth fighting Muslim invaders. Perhaps surprisingly given the comedy of errors in other parts of the conflict, there were relatively little such incidents. The army landed in August 1822, aided by the fact that Esad Ali Bey’s removal of the fleet left the country vulnerable to invasion—ironic when his intention had been to end the Ottoman civil war swiftly enough for a new Ottoman leadership to defend Oman. The capital of Muscat was taken by the end of the year. Sultan Sayyid fled to the interior city of Nizwa and his supporters continued a Kleinkrieger war from there for decades to come. The more hardline Ibadi Islam of Nizwa influenced Sayyid’s supporters, changing the political and religious balance of the Arabian Peninsula just as had the defeat of the Wahhabis by Abdul Hadi. The Persians, electing not to try and annex the land over the water, installed a distant cousin of Sayyid as a puppet Sultan of Muscat, taking the name Sultan Bakarat bin Hamad al-Sayyid. As well as this rump Sultanate of Muscat being a Persian vassal and open to Portuguese trade, its overseas trade colonies were ceded to Portugal: this resulted in the Portuguese gaining control of the key African trade post of the island of Zanzibar and the surrounding Zanguebar coast. Despite this, many Persians ended up in the region due to working for the PEIC, resulting in a distinct Persian influence on the peoples of the area.
It was this, the apparent heights of Portuguese colonial triumph, which led to disagreements between the Persians and Portuguese that left their alliance largely broken. The issue was the island of Bahrain. Bahrain had gone back and forth between Oman and Persia several times over the centuries (the island suffering quite a lot in the process) but in the sixteenth century it had been Portuguese, and Admiral Coutinho (on John VI’s orders) used this rather dubious claim to demand the island be ‘returned’ to Portugal. Naturally the Persians refused. Bahrain was ruled by the Al-Makhdur family, who had pledged allegiance to the Zands ever since the 1760s, and the Persians would not sell out a loyal ally in such a way.[6] It has been suggested that this move was spearheaded by the new Grand Vizier Hassan Kashfi to make his name and score a propaganda victory against Mesopotamian Arabs claiming that the Persians were puppets of the Portuguese. It worked to some extent if this was the intent, but also seriously poisoned relationships between the two powers. Of course, Admiral Coutinho could have taken the island by force given his naval superiority, but was wary of exceeding the remit of his orders after the Variações case of a few years before, and backed down before the Persians.
And what of Abdul Hadi Pasha? He had made his name by his steadfast defence of Baghdad and had successfully kept most of Mesopotamia out of Persian hands. That counted for a lot. In 1823, supplemented with Azadi volunteers from Mesopotamia and the Levant, his army finally moved north. Esad Ali Bey did not go with him, feeling guilty over the fate of Oman. He returned to Egypt and acted as Abdul Hadi’s viceroy, giving the Omani fleet still based there a choice for their future. Given that the Persian-backed Sultanate of Muscat controlled the coastline, most of the Omani captains decided to stay with Abdul Hadi and formed the core of his Mediterranean navy—in terms of personnel, not ships, as the fleet was still based in the Red Sea and there was as yet no canal linking the two.
In the mid-1820s the Time of Troubles entered a new phase. The Russians, Austrians and Persians had all taken their pound of flesh from the fractured empire, but staunch resistance by Abdul Hadi and the Balkan Party had reduced that to less than it might have been. The Shadow Faction, struggling without many clear leaders and regarded by the people as opportunists, withered and died as it was faced with attacks on both sides. Abdul Hadi took Angora in 1824, while the weakened Balkan Party drove the Shadows from Bursa. The Sultan Murad VI, who had fled Constantinople at the start of the conflict, re-emerged from hiding and endorsed Abdul Hadi. The Shadow Faction is generally considered to have collapsed in any meaningful sense by the end of 1825, and now the only remaining sides in the long civil war were the Balkan Party and Abdul Hadi Pasha’s forces. Both were now well experienced and Europe watched, looking for a knock-out blow.
None came, of course, because both sides were also exhausted. Abdul Hadi did successfully lead his troops in a series of battles against the Balkan Party, mainly led by their general Yunus Musa Pasha, throughout the mid-1820s and in 1828 Bursa finally fell to his forces. But over a decade of war had passed and though Abdul Hadi was still popular with his men, there was little enthusiasm for further fighting. Abdul Hadi encouraged them with the idea that one last strike at Constantinople would topple the Balkan Party, but a siege joined from 1829-30 was not successful, and while Abdul Hadi retained his political power he recognised that there was little point in continuing the conflict. The same was true of the Balkan Party leader Ferid Naili Pasha, and from 1830—at a time when much of the rest of the world was charging into war—an uneasy peace settled between the two Ottoman factions. The divide fell neatly between Europe and Asia. Abdul Hadi Pasha’s men ruled all that remained of the Ottoman Empire in Asia and Africa under Sultan Murad VI in Bursa, while the Balkan Party ruled Europe (including Cyprus) under Sultan Mehmed V in Constantinople. Despite the disparity in terms of land area between the two groups and the fact that Murad VI was the rightful heir, the nations of Europe at this point mostly regarded the Balkan Party and Mehmed V as the legitimate Ottoman government: it was the one they mostly dealt with due to proximity, and it possessed Constantinople. The name “Janissary Sultanate” to describe the Balkan Party regime is an anachronistic one and only dates from the 1860s, long after the Time of Troubles was over. But for now it still had another decade to run...
*
From – “A History of Portugal” by Giuseppe Scappaticci, Royal Palermo Press (1942)
Pride comes before a fall. Every period of ascendancy of a nation is followed by a comeuppance. Great Britain won the Wars of Supremacy of the eighteenth century only to fall into deprivation and dictatorship in the nineteenth. Tragedy follows triumph. And so we turn to Portugal...
*
From: “The People’s Warriors: Understanding the Popular Wars, from their Foundations to their Aftershocks” by Peter Allington (1970)—
Possibly the biggest misconception about the Popular Wars is that they were not foreseen. It is common to imagine that the absolute monarchs and dictators who fell in the struggle mistakenly believed that their people loved them utterly and that nothing of this nature could ever befall them. For the most part, at least, this was not true. From the Congress of Copenhagen onwards, it was obvious to everyone with eyes to see that the settlement in Europe, born of exhaustion and opportunism, could not be preserved forever, and that the Jacobin Wars had ended in a fashion that did not provide any sense of conclusion or closure to the issues that had ignited them. It is fair to say, in the words of Rathbone (1897) that the Watchful Peace represents the Allies of the Jacobin Wars taking the Pandora’s Box of popular revolution and then putting aside their differences to all sit on top of it to jam the lid down like that of an uncooperative suitcase. Where Rathbone fails is in the assumption that those crowned heads truly believed that they could suppress the revolutionary box forever by their weight. Pressure indeed built up within to eventually explode and unleash another round of revolutions: but almost everyone realised this. The Watchful Peace was given that name for a reason, with every ruler looking out for the first signs of such an outbreak. Some, it is true, prepared to a greater degree than others, successfully appeasing their own people in advance with liberal concessions—Saxony being the obvious example. But when one considers which countries did benefit from the Popular Wars, which existing regimes managed to stay in power and cover themselves with glory, it is not such foresightedness that can be held responsible for this.
Indeed, the countries and regimes which benefited did so precisely because they were so distant, in both geographic terms and in terms of information exchange through trade and language, that it gave their rulers sufficient time to observe the dawning revolution elsewhere and prepare—if, that is, they recognised the signs. And in fairness it is more understandable than many authors presume that many of them did not. The reason for this, and the reason why the Popular Wars seem to have been such an unexpected surprise across Europe and the world, is simply because they did not start in any of the trouble spots that had long since been predicted for the theatre of revolution.
Not in France, the most obvious choice, thanks to a Jacobin resurgence. Not Germany, where the nationalist writings of Schmidt, the Mentian movement, discontent in the Hapsburg empire and the oligarchic rule of the Dutch States-General constantly simmered to threaten the status quo. Not Italy, where the crude carve-up of the country in the Jacobin Wars and the crisis of Papal power might spark a dozen causes. Not Great Britain, where the brutal and arbitrary rule of Joshua Churchill brought tensions to the boil. Not poor divided Spain, its people often reduced to second class citizens by their Portuguese or Neapolitan masters, yearning for their king over the water. Not Russia, beset with the political conflict of Slavic nativism versus European modernism. Not Scandinavia, where Sweden’s problems and Denmark’s diverse bag of German possessions were a problem that the existing political structure could not hope to solve.
No, when the Popular Wars finally came, it was from an angle that none had predicted, none had considered. And yet that can, in fact, be criticised, for the spark that exploded a revolutionary wave that would consume the world could, in some ways, be predicted. Unsurprisingly, the spark, the revolution, the war took its inspiration from the two great popular revolutions that had already shaken the world. So, too, would this one.
And it began in Brazil.
[1] Actually made up by Russian salesmen hawking ‘ethnic’ Japanese art, but never mind.
[2] Abbreviation for “The Authorised Joint-National Journal of Levantine Studies”.
[3] Abbreviation for “Transactions of the Asian Society of Constantinople (Linguistically-Restricted)”.
[4] The capital of Persia under the Zands.
[5] A Lusitanised version of “Kuwait”. Kuwait City existed at this point as a thriving trade port whose political status was ambiguous, ruled by Emirs of the Al-Sabah clan but making it deliberately unclear whether it was an Ottoman protectorate or not.
[6] OTL the Al-Makhdurs were overthrown in the 1780s by the Al-Khalifas, who are still the rulers of OTL modern Bahrain (at time of writing...) but in TTL this didn’t happen and the Al-Makhdurs still control Bahrain.
Wait, there was a discussion once about how often LttW predicts geopolitical events.
Cap'n, what have you done!
Thande
Donor
I mentioned a while back that I got cross about events in North Africa preempting the Popular Wars. I had the broad strokes sketched out long before the revolutions started there.
Same as before with the financial crisis, which I planned for LTTW before the real one started.
Interesting developments! Looks like at some point the Balkan Faction will collapse, and the renewed Ottoman Empire will be one that embraces its Arab and Egyptian constituents rather than simply tolerating them.
I'm guessing that a massive slave revolt is what sets Brazil off? Or an invasion on behalf of the UPSA with New Spain's support (or avowed neutrality...)?
I'm guessing that a massive slave revolt is what sets Brazil off? Or an invasion on behalf of the UPSA with New Spain's support (or avowed neutrality...)?
Hmmmm....
How much would it cost for you to write in a character known as the Le Grand Texaine in French Texas who rises to unbelievable oil wealth and power?
Thande
Donor
Hmmmm....
How much would it cost for you to write in a character known as the Le Grand Texaine in French Texas who rises to unbelievable oil wealth and power?
I may be forced to do that owing to my questionable policy of managing to incorporate even the most sarcastic suggestions. I suppose I get it from Thermo (anyone remember him) when I mentioned Polish Australia and he felt obliged to put it in "The Coronation of the Hun".
Funny how that tends to work out doesn't it? I guess it lies in the psychological "I can do what I want its my world!" concept of world building augmented with the challenge of making the absurd actually happen. It's how a lot of my regular readers and OTL dictators end up earning doctorates and being the authors of ITL papers...may favorite being the Mormon Dr. Kim Jong-Il of Brigham Young University.
Hold on a second. The last we heard of Pablo Sanchez, he was in Brazil...
'Course, so far as we know, he hasn't done any writing yet. But then, remember how much we know about him...
'Course, so far as we know, he hasn't done any writing yet. But then, remember how much we know about him...
I do not understand why troubles in Brazil would surprise so many people.
Any other major European colonial power in the Americas (Spain, Britain, France) experienced at least one successful major revolt (in the Viceroyalty of Peru,in the British North America colonies,in Saint-Domingue) and subsequently lost most of their American colonial possessions.
Wouldn't the success of their fellow Americans inspire the people of Brazil to demand autonomy or even more?
Why would observer not presume that Brazil is ripe for a massive change?
Any other major European colonial power in the Americas (Spain, Britain, France) experienced at least one successful major revolt (in the Viceroyalty of Peru,in the British North America colonies,in Saint-Domingue) and subsequently lost most of their American colonial possessions.
Wouldn't the success of their fellow Americans inspire the people of Brazil to demand autonomy or even more?
Why would observer not presume that Brazil is ripe for a massive change?
Thande
Donor
A rebellion of some kind in Brazil is not especially unexpected (minor ones already happened, as in OTL), but the point is that it is the catalyst for the peoples of Europe rising up against the Congress system. The latter was expected, but it was thought that the trigger would have to come from inside Europe due to people obsessing too specifically over the revolutionary and populist groups that sprung up during the Jacobin Wars. Being 'ready to fight the last war' as they said about some generals in the World Wars.
Cool map Thande, super story as well, I rushed through the compilation thread, it was an awesome read.
By the way, any chance of a in-depth view of Flanders and the UP? Will they continue growing closer together, perhaps merge at some point? That orange blob on the map looks far to small for my liking!
By the way, any chance of a in-depth view of Flanders and the UP? Will they continue growing closer together, perhaps merge at some point? That orange blob on the map looks far to small for my liking!
- Status