Malê Rising
- Thread starter Jonathan Edelstein
- Start date
Aram Sakalian, The Young Ottomans from Tanzimat to Democracy (Stamboul: Abdülhamid University Press, 2011)
… The Ottoman army advanced on Haifa in June 1910 with every expectation of fighting a decisive battle against the unofficial national legislature. Even as it marched, however, events behind the lines bid fair to take the matter out of its hands. In northwest Anatolia, armed trade unionists took over several cities and declared them workers’ communes. Rumblings of rebellion stirred in the Balkans, with Albanian hill clans gathering and Bulgarians demonstrating in the streets of Sofia and Niš. Worst of all, the citizens of Stamboul rose up in support of the opposition, seizing key government buildings and putting the diminished garrison under siege.
The army commander, Ismet Ali Pasha, was still confident that he could defeat the rebel forces at Haifa, but that would do little good if the empire fell to pieces in the meantime. He spent a sleepless night in his command tent after learning of the Stamboul uprising, and then took what he believed to be the only available option: he declared that Sultan Abdülhamid was deposed in favor of his brother Mehmed V and that the army would support the Haifa legislature as the legitimate national government. The Sultan, who was with him, was put under arrest before he could cause trouble, and Ismet Ali entered Haifa alone to swear an oath of loyalty to the provisional government. The Ottoman Revolution was accomplished.
Having swung its support to the revolution, however, the army was now the most powerful force within it. Ismet Ali acted against the rebellions in Stamboul and Anatolia without consulting the new government; on July 11, he crushed the Izmit commune in a bloody battle and opened the road to the capital, and on July 15, he entered Stamboul against scattered resistance and put the city under martial law. The last remaining workers’ commune at Adapazari surrendered two days later after a punishing siege. Several members of the provisional legislature, including Lev Bronshtein, protested the army’s action, but Ismet Ali had presented them with a fait accompli, and no other faction had enough force to challenge him.
The new government quickly became a de facto triumvirate of Bronshtein (by now widely known as “Lev Pasha”), Ismet Ali Pasha, and former vizier Abdul Hadi Pasha, who returned from internal exile to rally the entrenched bureaucracy. The relationship was an uneasy one, and each was accused of selling out by his more militant allies, but none could easily overcome the others. Ismet Ali needed Bronshtein and the Haifa government to maintain legitimacy, Lev Pasha needed a functioning army to keep the empire together, and both needed the civil service to keep the state running.
Bronshtein’s presence, and the liberal majority in the Haifa legislature, ensured that some radicalism would remain in the revolution, but the army and civil service swung it in a more conservative direction than it might otherwise have gone. The September by-elections held to fill the remaining legislative seats – which were carried out under military supervision – returned a substantially more conservative slate of representatives than had been elected in May.
The constitution reported out of the assembly in April 1911 was thus a blend of radicalism, conservatism and sheer pragmatic accommodation. The radicalism showed most clearly in the strengthened bill of rights, the equality of the Arabic language throughout the empire, the elimination of the Sultan’s political powers, and the institution of universal male suffrage. All property qualifications for the franchise were eliminated and, just as importantly, rural voters were now equal to urban ones; for the first time, peasants would vote on their own behalf rather than having their votes cast for them by village headmen. The constitution did not, however, incorporate any economic rights other than a right to collective bargaining, did not give the vote to women, retained the millet system for personal status matters, and kept the central bank independent of the government, all items that Lev Pasha and his allies fought for bitterly but lost.
The pragmatism and balancing of power blocs showed in the framing of the government. The office of the Sultan was retained and, while stripped of his governing powers, the monarch remained the supreme religious judge, able to overturn qadis’ decisions and issue rulings of great impact on daily life and political ethics. The Sultan’s place as political executive was taken by a nine-member council in which the army, the ulema, the trade unions, the industrialists and the central bank would nominate representatives to sit alongside four members chosen by the legislature for a four-year term. The president of this council, who had to be one of the legislative members, would be prime minister of the nation and would appoint the cabinet, but could not make major decisions without a vote of the full council.
The legislature consisted of a directly elected lower house, the Mejlis, and an indirectly elected senate, with half the senators chosen by the vilayet governments and the other half chosen by the sanjaks and by a new category of independent cities which had sanjak status. Legislators nominated to the executive council could be either members of the Mejlis or senators, and both houses were equal in the submission and consideration of bills. The two houses, sitting together, could question and dismiss cabinet ministers, but could not dismiss members of the executive council once elected; executives could be impeached only by a two-thirds vote of their fellow councilors.
The empire’s structure below the national level was a matter of much debate. The ultimate consensus was for an empire that was not federal but was substantially decentralized; the sanjaks and independent cities would have no sovereignty and limited taxing powers, but would have broad local authority on a long list of matters. The vilayets were largely de-emphasized; although they remained in existence as administrative units and played a part in choosing the senate, they had few other functions.
Each sanjak and vilayet would have a governor appointed by the central government; however, the local council could reject an appointee or dismiss him for malfeasance. Beyond that, the sanjaks were granted wide latitude in choosing their form of government. Some, especially those that had parallel governments before the revolution, had elected councils; others had councils of notables chosen by some form of co-option; still more combined the two by having an elected lower house and an upper house consisting of provincial notables or religious figures. A few, mainly in the industrial regions of Anatolia, instituted corporatist or syndicalist councils in which the workers, or both the workers and industrialists, had a dominant political role. The sanjaks also had the option of extending the vote to women – which about a third of them did immediately and half by 1920, with varying degrees of qualification – and could set their own language policies and override the millet system in local matters.
The decentralized system satisfied neither the federalists nor the proponents of a unitary state. But at the same time, it alleviated some of the bitterness over the crushing of the workers’ communes and the suppression of the Stamboul uprising, because it gave sanjaks and cities broad latitude to be as progressive or conservative as they wanted to be. The trade unions were able to regain some of the ground they had lost in northwest Anatolia and the Levant, often by re-enacting the informal deals they had made with the industrial class in the year prior to the revolution, while regions such as Albania, eastern Anatolia and rural Arab districts achieved local control and kept much power in the hands of native elites. This would be the compromise on which the new Ottoman state would survive the turbulent 1910s through 1930s, with many political conflicts being contained by being devolved to the sanjak level.
Another compromise decided the fate of the outlying provinces. Many of the delegates from Yemen, the Arabian desert and Bulgaria were outright separatists, and even the more moderate representatives demanded strong local autonomy. For the first two, the Sultan’s continuing role as Caliph provided the solution. The Yemeni and Bedouin chiefs swore allegiance to the Sultan in his capacity as supreme judge, agreed to abide by his rulings in Islamic matters, and pledged to pay an annual religious tax that was roughly equivalent to their existing tribute. In exchange, they were not made part of any sanjak or vilayet, and were effectively independent in their relations with neighboring countries. Many nationalists grumbled, but there was precedent with Egypt, and the consensus was that the empire had done well to shed such rebellious and economically marginal territories.
Bulgaria proved harder, but a compromise was eventually found there as well; the Bulgarian separatists realized that they couldn’t defeat the Ottoman army on their own and that Russia was neither able nor inclined to help them, while a majority of the Ottoman negotiators recognized that Bulgaria would be a running sore if the status quo were maintained. The final draft of the constitution declared that Bulgaria, within borders that maintained the empire’s territorial contiguity in the Balkans, was a semi-independent principality such as Serbia and Montenegro had been before 1878. The Ottoman army would control the border, and Bulgaria would have no armed forces of its own, but it would otherwise not be garrisoned by Ottoman troops and would have the power to collect taxes and make its own laws. The Bulgarian prince would also be allowed to send ambassadors to foreign capitals and make his own trade policy, although he would be obligated to make no moves that put him directly in conflict with the Porte.
The constitution left no one completely happy, but it was one that the stability-starved citizens were willing to accept. The election of October 1911, which chose a permanent legislature to replace the provisional assembly, bore this out, with most seats being won by supporters of the constitution and with the Democratic Party and Progressive Arab Union holding narrow majorities in both houses. After some negotiation, the volatile Abdul Hadi Pasha became president of the executive council. Lev Pasha was offered a seat on the council but turned it down, assuming correctly that he would be sidelined if he accepted the post. Instead, as a leader of the PAU – he had spent most of his political career in the Arab movement, and considered himself an Arab Jew as well as a follower of the Bahá'u'lláh – he was elected speaker of the Mejlis, which was a far better and more visible post for a born agitator like him.
By this time, former Sultan Abdülhamid had also come to terms with the new order. He was released from house arrest and allowed to retain the post of Ottoman judge on the International Court of Arbitration, in which he would continue to influence the development of Islamic international law. This was, ironically, exactly the role that his old nemesis Midhat Pasha had once envisioned for him…
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Şefik Seren, An Economic History of the Ottoman Empire (Stamboul: Tulip Press, 1982)
… The years of instability had taken a heavy toll on the Ottoman economy. A lira in 1911 was worth one thirtieth of a 1906 lira, which in turn was worth little more than a third of a prewar gold lira. By 1912, political stability and renewed confidence in the central bank had reined in the inflation rate, and the “new lira” issued that year at a ratio of 100 to 1 proved stable, but in the meantime, the emerging middle class had seen its savings decimated.
For some, the inflation of 1906-11 was a blessing in disguise; peasants who had taken part in land-purchase programs after the war were able to retire their debts and own their land free and clear, while the empire’s own internal debt was virtually wiped out. But this was more than offset by local bank failures, businesses starved for credit, and the greater burden of foreign debt, much of which was denominated in hard currency.
The last of these would prove especially difficult, and in 1913, the government opened negotiations with its creditors for a writedown. The talks went relatively smoothly; the stability of the new government and the continuity of the central bank had inspired trust among the creditor nations, and they greatly preferred a writedown to a default. But coming on top of the Russian writedown of 1908, the British debt crisis of 1910-11 and Britain’s partial default earlier in 1913, it strained the global financial system almost to the breaking point, causing an acute financial crisis that would spread to Austria the following year.
The economic crisis would define the remainder of the 1910s in the Ottoman Empire. It did not fare as badly as some countries; surrounded as it was by neighbors with limited industry and little or no war debt, it was able to continue expanding the markets for its industrial products. Turkestan, also, was still growing, and its cultural and religious links with the Ottomans enabled it to become a significant trading partner. But the Ottoman economy still suffered with the reduction in European trade and the continuing losses to the middle class from bank failures and diminished investments.
This environment created a groundswell of support for the social insurance programs that Lev Pasha advocated from the well of the Mejlis. He would find allies in the imamate, many of whom had absorbed some Abacarist and Belloist teachings over the decades and who preached that social justice was a key obligation of the government during hard times. In 1915 and 1916, the legislature passed a series of acts regulating the banks, establishing old-age pensions and unemployment insurance funds to which workers in both the formal and informal sectors could contribute, and creating public works programs for the unemployed. These programs at both the national and local level – some sanjaks went farther than the central government – were used to build extensive rural infrastructure, improve roads and ports, and expand the developing power grid.
It would be a public works project that, in 1918, led to the discovery of the Mosul oil fields and ushered in the next phase of Ottoman development…
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Tamar Benvenisti, On the Borders: Religious Reformism in the Ottoman Periphery (Stamboul: Four Ways Press, 2006)
… Egypt prospered in the years after the war. It had contributed troops and materiel to the Ottoman war effort, and the Libyan front had occasionally spilled over into its western desert, but the Nile Valley heartland had remained untouched and casualties had not been heavy. The emerging textile industry had profited from Ottoman war contracts, and under Riyad Pasha’s technocratic government, much of the tax revenue from these sales was reinvested in infrastructure and industrial development.
For a time during the 1900s, the aging Riyad Pasha’s quasi-Belloist ideals of apolitical government seemed like a model for the developing world. He led a succession of cabinets composed of doctors, scientists and engineers, and without the need to be responsible to shifting electoral majorities, these governments were free to engage in long-range planning. Public health and sanitation improved greatly, by some accounts adding a full decade to life expectancy, and rates of public investment were among the highest in the world. The growing appeal of Muhammad Abduh’s neo-Mu’tazilite teachings manifested itself in school construction and increasing educational participation; by 1910, 50 percent of boys and 10 percent of girls attended primary school, and secondary education had become common in the cities.
But all this time, discontent was growing among those left behind: while the cities became rich, rural development lagged, with Sudan and Upper Egypt particularly neglected. Riyad Pasha’s meritocracy left many voices unheard, and development projects were often done without regard to the communities they disrupted and the people they displaced. There had been calls for more democracy even before the war, and afterward, the village and district advisory councils became rallying points for the people to demand a genuine parliament and responsible government. And in the south, Belloist peasants withdrew as they had in Muhammad Ahmad’s time, in protest against heavy taxation and government neglect.
The Ottoman Revolution and the 1911 constitution, which replaced the paternalistic system of the Young Ottomans with a more developed democracy, fueled Egyptian demands for similar reforms, and Riyad Pasha’s death the same year left the government without a clear leader. And the Ottoman economic crisis hit Egypt particularly hard; Egyptians had bought many lira-denominated war bonds, and declining Ottoman imports cut heavily into the textile industry’s profits.
By 1915, matters had reached a critical point, with peasant withdrawals in the south nearly universal and civil disobedience growing in the cities. The corruption that had always existed in rural districts had made its way to the capital as prices rose and it became difficult to live on a civil servant’s salary. As in the Ottoman Empire during the years before the revolution, even many of the elites believed that fundamental change was necessary, but there was little consensus on how.
On the morning of October 20, 1915, a group of radical junior army officers took things into their own hands and overthrew the government. These officers were heavily influenced by Muhammad Abduh’s scientific Islamism and support for popular government, and they declared the formation of an Egyptian Republic and announced elections for a constitutional assembly. The elections would be less democratic than promised – they would take place with a heavy military thumb on the scale, and would be dominated by supporters of the junta – but for the first time, Egypt would have a legislature with genuine power. The new constitution, ratified in early 1917, provided for an American-style presidential system (which the officers favored because the government would not be responsible to the legislature) with a two-house parliament and multiple tiers of local government, all elected by universal male suffrage.
Later that year, Said Elgendy, the chairman of the junta, was sworn in as Egypt’s first elected president. As a follower of Abduh, he retained many of the technocratic aspects of the Riyad Pasha government, but he also instituted an intensive program of rural development similar to the Ottoman public works programs, and created a corps of itinerant rural teachers modeled on the Malê and Javanese jajis. He was particularly concerned with education for girls, and many of those taught by the jaji corps would become the voices of Egypt’s emerging feminism…
… In 1910, Bornu had finally recovered from its devastating wartime losses, and reconstructed itself around the postwar Belloist agricultural communes. Like the original Belloist colonies of the 1840s and 50s, these colonies became centers of education, extending their religious influence into the Kingdom of the Arabs and Ottoman Libya. Belloism had also spread outside the Bornu Empire proper to the vassal states of Darfur and Ouaddai and the Toubou and Tuareg tribes of the eastern Sahara, knitting them more closely to the state; by the early 1910s, although still nominally independent, they functioned as integral provinces of the sultanate.
Bornu’s position in Africa made it an economic and cultural bridge between the Ottoman world and the British, French and German empires. The Lagos-Ilorin-Kano railroad was extended to Bornu during the war, and afterward, a flourishing trade grew up between Bornu and the Malê successor states; after 1915, the sultanate would become a place of exile for Labor Belloists from the northern tier of British West Africa. And in the southeast, the vassal kingdom of Ouaddai bordered on N'Délé, the German-allied kingdom founded by an exiled Catholic Buganda prince; the N'Délé dynasty courted Bornu as a counterweight to German influence, and Ouaddai became an important trade route from German Central Africa to Egypt and the Ottoman world. And ideas as well as goods would flow both ways; by 1920, Belloism had begun to influence popular Catholic ritual in the countries to the south…
… At the eastern edge of the Ottoman sphere, the Caucasus was in a state of ferment. Both the Christian kingdoms and the Muslim khanates were controlled by their feudal landholding families, who dominated the parliaments and were virtually absolute lords within their rural domains. The cities were opposition strongholds; in Georgia and Armenia, war veterans and the emerging working class demanded a true voice in government, and as the Baku oil fields began to be developed in earnest after 1905, Shirvan became home to a large, discontented and brawling trade union movement. The opposition in all three countries – Christian and Muslim both – was influenced by Abacarism and the egalitarian reformism of Central Asian teacher Abay Qunanbaiuli, and also by Marxist and narodnik ideologies filtering down from Russia.
The Decade of Revolutions would come to the Caucasus in 1912, when an oil workers’ strike in Baku spread into an uprising throughout Shirvan. With the Khan and the imamate acting as mediator, an arrangement was brokered between the rebels and the traditional elite, and in 1914, a parliament of expanded powers with a socialist majority was inaugurated. This government’s writ did not extend far beyond the capital city and the oil fields, however, and the feudal families continued to act as lords of their holdings, and by 1918, relations between the two had degenerated into a low-grade civil war with mounting atrocities on both sides.
In Georgia and Armenia, the revolutions would be more peaceful but just as incomplete. Popular protest forced the introduction of universal suffrage in both countries, resulting in the election of liberal parliaments in Georgia in 1913 and Armenia the following year. Both legislatures enacted progressive constitutions and attempted to reform the government and military to create unitary states. But as in Shirvan, the feudal families, most of whom had private armies and could count on the loyalty of their peasants, resisted the expansion of national government and drove off or even killed officials who came into their territory. By 1920, their quarrels sometimes spilled over into Persia and Anatolia and endangered the oil pipelines to Stamboul and the trade routes to Turkestan, forcing the Ottoman government to intervene…
Deleted member 67076
So the Porte finally found that sweet, delicious oil.
Jonathan, will/could that oil money be used to fund the development of a welfare state like OTL Saudi Arabia?
Jonathan, will/could that oil money be used to fund the development of a welfare state like OTL Saudi Arabia?
Hnau
Banned
Could you remind us what the Arabian Peninsula looks like? What territories are autonomous? And, in the case of the Bedouins... what's going to happen when they find they have such a huge amount of oil under their feet? Could this finance pushes for even more independence?
Sounds good, but I wanted to know did the territory of semi-independent Bulgaria expanded at all towards the eastern coastline? Or did the borders of "Bulgaria" stay where they were immediately after the war?
It looks like TTL's analogue of the Crash of '29, coming two decades after the Great War just like OTL's did. But I'm going to guess that it's a bit less sudden than our timeline's. I'm surprised Britain needed to default even partially... I would have expected Germany to do that if any of the former BOG did. The Germans probably borrowed a huge amount of money and also have some population worries, yeah?
About ten years earlier than OTL! That makes sense, with technological progression and industrial modernization being slightly farther ahead in this world. Exciting.
I can't see Bedouin autonomy lasting very long once the scope of their oil wealth becomes evident.
Saudi Arabia is'nt really a Welfare State, it's a 'Give lots of Money to Citizens to keep them in line while getting millions of foreigners to do all the dity work' State.
The Ottoman revolution goes a bit too neat for my taste - "everybody has won and everybody gets prizes".
It is now. Knowing Jonathan, something crazy is going to happen in the Empire later on that will either see it (a) explode in a cloud of nationalist/socialist/islamist/other frenzy, or (b) go for full-blown modernisation (in the Male Rising style, mind - we're not talking Kemalism here*).
*At least I hope not...
Well, looks like the Empire has finally found the equivalent of liquid gold.
Of course, who's to say they might blow it up due to mismanagement?
Of course, who's to say they might blow it up due to mismanagement?
By the 1910s there are. This actually isn't that much of an advance on OTL, in which a woman served as Danish Minister of Education in 1924, and in TTL, there's also the Ilorin precedent in which the education system has traditionally been a woman's job.
Well, looks like the Empire has finally found the equivalent of liquid gold.
Of course, who's to say they might blow it up due to mismanagement?
The Ottoman Empire is too big to manage its oil resources in the style of Saudi Arabia or the Gulf mini-states. The key to a Saudi or UAE-style state is not only large oil reserves but a population small enough for the oil to provide everyone with a middle-class living standard.
In developing countries where there isn't enough oil to go around, distribution of oil rents can be a major political problem, especially if the oil resources are located in an area far from the political center. There will be a great deal of friction between the Iraqi Arabs and Kurds who want the Mosul and Kirkuk oil wealth for themselves, while the Porte will want to use it "for the good of the country" (which will often mean "for the capital city and politically favored industrial towns"). Corruption will also be an issue. Some of the oil rents will be put to good use, but the oil fields will be both a blessing and a curse.
The Hejaz is integrally Ottoman; Najd and most of Yemen are Ottoman but autonomous (and, after 1911, hardly even that); the Trucial States and Aden are British; Oman is, well, Omani; the Hadhramaut is divided between Ottoman vassals, Omani vassals and independent emirs.
Both of the above are true - the Bedouins and the Porte will both want to control the oil. The Ottomans have the bigger army, but the Bedouin tribes can cause a lot of trouble, and depending on the geopolitics of the time, they might be able to rope the British and/or Omanis in on their side. It all has the potential to be a mess.
About ten years earlier than OTL! That makes sense, with technological progression and industrial modernization being slightly farther ahead in this world. Exciting.
Well, in OTL they had a pretty good idea of the Mosul oil fields' existence in the early 1910s, but exploitation was interrupted by World War I and then by squabbling among the imperial powers as to who would get the drilling rights. In TTL the war is over and imperial rivalries aren't a factor, so there will be fewer delays, although the companies that exploit the oil will be partly foreign-owned.
*Bulgaria doesn't have a seacoast. On this map, Bulgaria consists of (a) the two sanjaks of Sofia vilayet; (b) the two sanjaks in Tuna vilayet that have a Bulgarian majority; and (c) that part of Filibe (Plovdiv) sanjak north of the Maritsa river. It may also have that panhandle in the Rusçuk sanjak. Note that the map is for 1878 and that population patterns have changed considerably since then with Bulgarians moving into the autonomous region, Muslims moving out and loyal Muslim refugees being settled in the border regions, so that Skopje, Monastir, the southern part of Filibe and that sanjak just east of Salonika are now Muslim-majority.
The terms of Bulgaria's quasi-independence give it access to the Ottoman ports in exchange for an annual fee.
It's a more gradual thing, yes. Germany has a big war debt, but it also has a proactive industrial development policy, economic hegemony over central Europe and a fairly high rate of labor immigration, so it's been able to keep growth ahead of its debt obligations.
Britain has a slower industrial growth rate, and also sank a lot of money into colonial and dominion industries during the war. Remember the attempts to shut down Indian industrial development after the war ended? Guess who a lot of those industrialists owed money to, and guess what happened to some of those loans. The combination of these factors put Britain in a more precarious position, and its debt crisis also came at the wrong point in its business cycle.
The Ottoman revolution goes a bit too neat for my taste - "everybody has won and everybody gets prizes".
I'm also astonished at the Sultan accompanying his army to Haifa - when was the last time an Ottoman Sultan was in the field with his army?
Analytical Engine beat me to it. The post-revolution deals are working out in the short term, but oil development and the Caucasian intervention will reveal that many of these deals have expiration dates. There will be some rough times during the 1920s and 30s - the Ottomans may be due some peace and prosperity after all they've been through, but they aren't quite there yet.
Russia/central Asia/northern China/Japan/Ethiopia next - yes, that combination makes sense in TTL.
Woo, 3 weeks later and I'm now completely caught up. This TL has been a great read. I'm more knowledgeable of American history, so it's been great learning about areas I don't know much about, and the sort of butterflies that can affect those areas I do. I look forward to reading this as it's updated.
Fascinating update, Jonathan! I'm interested in Egypt - why would a Republic seem appealing to the junta members? Is it because they tired of the Ottoman example? And how do the British, French, and Ottomans react to the new regime in Egypt (which doesn't seem that different from the old one). I can't remember - there's still a Suez Canal ITTL, correct? If so, is it the British who control it?
Cheers,
Ganesha
Cheers,
Ganesha
Actually, moreso than any other Gulf State (with the exception of Bahrain) Saudi nationals are more likely to do menial work. One can find Saudi waiters, gas station attendants, what not.
Also, I have to say that I'm rather glad that Abdulhamid didn't get a totally miserable ending. The Ottoman Empire needed reform and he was standing in the way of it. Let's hope that they make the best of the Mosul oil fields.
Oh no, by Dirty Work I don't mean normal service jobs, but things like construction and stuff that's literally dirty, basically the jobs the Saudi's don't want to do.
Hmm... this could be an issue that the Saudis might just shoot themselves in the foot with. I expect that, with the extra cash flowing from their oil exports, they might relegate the "so-dirty-I-don't-want-to-be-within-ten-feet-of-you" jobs to the immigrants coming to their land. On the other hand, this is the world where Abcarism and Belloism and even Qunanbaiulism are viable and powerful tools to oppose the establishment with, plus with some credible examples coming from Egypt and West Africa. If the Saudis start treating their immigrants like crap, then they might be in for a shock of their lives.
Also, it hasn't been explicitly said in this timeline, but I have a sure feeling that Wahhabism is seen as discredited and only practiced by some of the inhabitants. This could lead to an ideological conflict that might discredit the movement even further once the immigrants start coming in;how do you mould a populace who wants more freedom than you'd be willing to give? You can't instill fear forever (though I'll bet some of the Saudis will try).
I neglected to answer that part of your comment. He was with the army because both he and his generals believed the capital city was unsafe. They were right, but it turned out there were other things he needed to worry about more.
Thanks! Is there anything in particular, in the United States or elsewhere, that you'd like to see? We'll next visit the US in the 1930s.
The junta declared a republic because it's easier for an ex-junior officer with no royal blood to call himself president than to call himself king. They weren't interested in ruling in a khedive's name - they knew, from the example of their Ottoman neighbors, that even a symbolic monarch could be a restraint on their power.
The difference between the old and new regimes is that the new government is more grass-roots, more focused on the periphery rather than the capital city, and more concerned with observing the forms (albeit not necessarily the substance) of popular democracy. They aren't seen as particularly threatening by foreign powers, given that they agreed to honor the Suez Canal treaties and their (nominal) obligations to the Porte.
The Suez Canal was built on schedule, and it's run by an international consortium, although in practical terms that means Britain.
He was a bit like the original Young Ottomans - progressive by 1870s standards, but standing in the way of progress by 1910. As a judge on the international court, he'll continue to have a part in Ottoman diplomacy, but he's out of politics for good.
Well, we don't know yet whether the House of Saud will take power in TTL, or whether the Porte, another eastern Arabian dynasty or someone else entirely will end up on top in central Arabia. But whoever runs the oil fields will certainly find that mistreating guest workers can be a dangerous game.
I've mentioned that many of the Arabian Bedouins practice a Wahhabi-inflected Belloism - some aspects of Wahhabism, such as the rejection of jurisprudence and received wisdom and back-to-basics reformism, appeal to Belloists of the more austere sort. There are also more orthodox Wahhabis in Nejd and the Persian Gulf littoral. Some of them were recruited by Colonel Mikoyan to fight against the Ottoman Empire in order to purify it. The religious balance in the Arabian peninsula will be different from OTL, and there will be some deeply radical currents along with the deeply conservative ones, but the Wahhabis will still be in the mix.
Beyond that... well, you'll see when we get to the 1920s and 30s.
While it's unlikely IMO that they'll take power over a large chunk of Arabia ITTL, the Sauds were already in power in South Central Arabia before the PoD, and actually had ruled over a pretty large state in the late 18th century to early 19th century.
In my opinion, from the way it looks - and discounting any unknown players that are sure to come in this timeline - there could be a minimum of three main competitors battling it out for the Arabian Peninsula once the black gold of Ghawar is discovered.
The Hashimites (House of Hashim) = Emirs of the holy city of Mecca since basically forever with a bloodline reaching far back to the prophet Muhammad through his daughter Fatimah (or so they say). In OTL, they established a "Kingdom of Hejaz" which lasted until the 20's until the Sauds annexed it. In this timeline, they may want to keep their pedigree posts with extra vigor...
The Al Rashid (House of Rashid) = Emirs of the city of Ha'il (a stopover city for Hajj pilgrims), they have some history of cooperating with the Ottomans and even drove the Sauds into exile for a short while in OTL. They (or the earlier ones at least) also had some record of tolerance toward the Shia's, which rankled the Wahhabis of their time, meaning that they could be more flexible in gaining power. However, their opinions on the line of succession often makes their rule kinda unstable in some years too, so that needs work.
The Sauds (House of Saud) = Based in Riyadh, the Sauds have a long history of establishment in the Najd, and their First Saudi State basically formed the outline of OTL Saudi Arabia. Gaining dominance through allying with the Salafis, they have a strong commitment to Wahhabism and reunifying the Peninsula under their flag, claiming Mecca, Medina and their old home city of Riyadh (which was taken by the Rashids). Seeing that they're still in exile ITTL, their future can really go either way...
From the looks of it, two of those families have the power (and one a need) to unify the Peninsula, and one family wants to keep their place as it is.
Well then, let the Game of Thrones begins...
The Hashimites (House of Hashim) = Emirs of the holy city of Mecca since basically forever with a bloodline reaching far back to the prophet Muhammad through his daughter Fatimah (or so they say). In OTL, they established a "Kingdom of Hejaz" which lasted until the 20's until the Sauds annexed it. In this timeline, they may want to keep their pedigree posts with extra vigor...
The Al Rashid (House of Rashid) = Emirs of the city of Ha'il (a stopover city for Hajj pilgrims), they have some history of cooperating with the Ottomans and even drove the Sauds into exile for a short while in OTL. They (or the earlier ones at least) also had some record of tolerance toward the Shia's, which rankled the Wahhabis of their time, meaning that they could be more flexible in gaining power. However, their opinions on the line of succession often makes their rule kinda unstable in some years too, so that needs work.
The Sauds (House of Saud) = Based in Riyadh, the Sauds have a long history of establishment in the Najd, and their First Saudi State basically formed the outline of OTL Saudi Arabia. Gaining dominance through allying with the Salafis, they have a strong commitment to Wahhabism and reunifying the Peninsula under their flag, claiming Mecca, Medina and their old home city of Riyadh (which was taken by the Rashids). Seeing that they're still in exile ITTL, their future can really go either way...
From the looks of it, two of those families have the power (and one a need) to unify the Peninsula, and one family wants to keep their place as it is.
Well then, let the Game of Thrones begins...
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Excellent stuff! I assume Sarajevo is one of the progressive de-milleted and universal ensuffraged city-sanjaks?
True, but they were in exile by the end of the 19th century in OTL. My guess is that this would also be the case in TTL. Even if the al-Rashids didn't defeat them in the early 1890s, they'd have likely fought on the FAR side during the war - and even though the Porte recognized Arabia's postwar autonomy, they had ways of helping local leaders they liked get rid of leaders they didn't. So it's probably the house of Rashid in central and eastern Arabia and the Hashemites in Hejaz, with the house of Saud living the life of exiled noblemen in Egypt (or maybe Yemen or even Ethiopia, if Egypt is too close to the Porte).
From what you say, it looks like the al-Rashids and the Hashemites will support the status quo, while the Saudis will be looking to kick the whole thing down and make a comeback. The Sauds might still have strong support among the desert tribes, particularly the Wahhabis and those dissatisfied with the al-Rashids' rule.
Might some outside force - the British in the Trucial States, for instance - be interested in backing the Sauds' comeback, or possibly promoting a dark-horse candidate of their own (a minor Bani Khalid sheikh or Omani prince)?
It is. The war gave Sarajevo a fairly permanent case of liberalism (or maybe it empowered the liberalism that existed there before); the Sarajevans are very proud of the way they managed their own affairs while standing off the Austrians, and have never lost the independent streak.