Malê Rising
- Thread starter Jonathan Edelstein
- Start date
And the tantalizing image of "Lev Pasha!"
By strict butterfly theory, this guy is at best a brother of our own Lev Davidovitch and one growing up in a very different milieu at that. Chances are he isn't a lot like Leon Trotsky. But even though he's clearly going to be oriented much more on an Eastern, Islamic world (I guess he's still Jewish, of his father's Reconstructionist leanings) I suppose the intellectual habits of his father's household still make him an intellectual firecracker of some kind or other. Presumably one with a profound influence on whatever the Ottoman state or its central Asian successors will evolve into, hence the title.
By strict butterfly theory, this guy is at best a brother of our own Lev Davidovitch and one growing up in a very different milieu at that. Chances are he isn't a lot like Leon Trotsky. But even though he's clearly going to be oriented much more on an Eastern, Islamic world (I guess he's still Jewish, of his father's Reconstructionist leanings) I suppose the intellectual habits of his father's household still make him an intellectual firecracker of some kind or other. Presumably one with a profound influence on whatever the Ottoman state or its central Asian successors will evolve into, hence the title.
Oops! Guess one of us (who isn't you) is a bit too preoccupied with spaceflight timelines.
I'm the opposite, I only understand animal flight by analogy with human technological aeronautics.
And I disagree with what I've been rather forcefully slapped down with, represented as the consensus of everyone else following the thread, that apparently everyone but me thinks human engine-powered aviation was just a matter of will; interest was insufficient OTL, they say, so it waited until the first decade of the 20th century, but here with the war looming, governments and big commercial firms take an interest and so we'll have airplanes flying and airships hopefully better than their OTL contemporary counterparts navigating in time for the Great War.
There's been a miscommunication. The consensus is not that war looming will do anything to promote flight of any sort whatsoever. Certainly this is not being argued by anyone to result in the machines being ready in time for the war.
Rather, the consensus is that total war by all major (European) industrial powers will do so by the end of the war. More specifically, this is a war in an era where technological and geographical constraints make OTL's attempted solutions (a deep Russian invasion, tanks, the various campaigns in Turkey, poison gas, etc.) impossible.
Our discussion here:
https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?p=6356006&highlight=Gallipoli#post6356006
I really do feel the discussion will benefit if you take a brief look at what's come before.
Maxim's craft was hands-down superior to those of the Wrights. You're right in saying that control was what he lacked. Where I for one disagree is the assumption of costs that you seem to be making.
They did indeed fail, and a factor in why they did so was indeed because they'd failed to provision for control, but by far this was not the decisive reason. Ultimately it was a matter of cost and scale. Both Maxim and the Wrights were operating on extremely fixed budgets. Maxim went big early, and so also went bust early. The brothers Wright followed a much more sustainable formula, working up to their goals incrementally without threatening their budget. Obviously, for a private investor of fixed means, theirs was the appropriate strategy. An expensive failure would end any such project.
I would argue that a state-backed venture would not be subject to the same constraints. Were Maxim's experiments to have occurred in wartime (or at least the kind of wartime we're looking at), they likely would have occurred much faster due to increased funding, and several different attempts might even have been pursued in parallel, as with the Manhattan Project. And the national governments of at least France and Britain would easily be able to eat the costs of a few ruined steam planes when balanced against the sums poured uselessly into static fronts in northern Europe (and, I expect, central Asia) and strategically useless ones elsewhere. Honestly, I'd think even the relatively minor combatants - Northern Germany, Russia, and Austria-Hungary - could manage that much. And that's still discounting the Italians and Americans, who could conceivably attempt to build them for sale to the belligerents even if they don't actively take part. Among the latter five, I'd rate limited technical expertise as a much bigger factor than cost with the exception of the first and last.
And finally, it stretches the imagination that only one power would attempt this. Certainly they'd know that the potential would be there for their opponents. Certain powers would also be liable to intelligence leaks. Regardless, I suspect that they'd not be willing to risk having done nothing if their opposite numbers theoretically had the capability. And theoretically they do.
On the matter of dirigibles versus planes, I'll only note that the loss of a crashed steam plane is likely an order of magnitude less than that of a crashed airship. And airships do crash.
May I apologize for giving the impression of slapping down your arguments? I had not intended that. I'm afraid I was frustrated to find the substantial arguments I'd made earlier dismissed out of hand in the first few paragraphs of your.... treatise? Especially as it seemed they weren't responded to in your argument. Hopefully it's a little clearer now, and more collegial.
This is a response to both the comments before the update (which I was too exhausted to deal with last night) and those after. Also, thanks to everyone who posted encouragement and praise.
He gave up (or was forced to give up) more power somewhat sooner, so his ego had less play domestically; he compensated for it with a foreign policy even more adventurous than OTL, and part of the reason for the colonial expansion was to stave off the day when the bills for that policy came due.
There will be, and has been, a racist reaction, but politics makes strange bedfellows; the clerical branch of the French right doesn't care for Africans, but many of those in the statist, blood-and-soil branch see them as valiant soldiers who have forged a bond of blood with France. The iconic image of Africans in TTL's France is that of the tirailleur, which gives them a certain amount of patriotic cachet, although it doesn't work with everyone. Likewise, on the left, not everyone is sure whether Africans are working-class allies, handmaidens of the oppressor or crypto-rightist primitives. Things will get very strange during the war, and not always in a good way.
Hmmm, is there a possibility of a split between the Persian believers, who regard themselves as a new faith and the more conservative converts in the Ottoman Empire who prefer to see themselves as a reformist movement within Islam?
To be sure, Belloism has evolved quite a bit from the early days; there are many different flavors of it by this point in the timeline, some of which have very idiosyncratic definitions of withdrawal from politics. And even the original form of Belloism emphasized that the communes, although separate, are not monasteries, and have a responsibility to educate and guide their neighbors. That said, though, I agree that Baha'u'llah would oppose Belloist doctrine - as you say, even the Belloist military or labor brotherhoods would be anathema to him. I expect that he would indeed write against the Belloists.
As can be seen from the most recent update (posted after your comment), I went this route, which I think makes the most geopolitical sense: Persia is Russia's route back into the Caucasus. With the Great War looming, that would definitely bring Britain in to act as a counterweight. This might be a time, however, when the Russian and British interests in Persia are not united - both would want Persia as a strategic military outpost as well as an economic dependency - which might lead to Britain (and ultimately the Ottomans, who will be on the British side of the Great War) supporting the opposite, modernist faction in the Persian court.
What I'm tentatively seeing for the postwar period is an initial, ham-handed effort at top-down reform, followed by something resembling the Constitutional Revolution in which Ottoman-inspired reformists may take part. It's all very tentative at this point, and you're much more knowledgeable about the relevant history and cultural traits than I am, so I'd be grateful for any advice you care to give when we get to that point.
Closer to the 1970s than the 1930s. This will not be a timeline in which technology is significantly advanced over OTL; there will be some factors that will tend to speed its advancement, but others that will slow it down. I expect that during the mid-twentieth century, some fields like medicine and agriculture will be ahead of OTL, others will be a bit behind, and aeronautics will probably be about the same.
That said, the orbital flight will be made by... no, that would be telling.
Admiral Matt gave pretty much the answer I was planning to give: (a) that we're talking about the development of primitive fixed-wing aircraft by the end of the war, not the beginning; and (b) that high-budget government crash programs would have capabilities not available to gentleman amateurs. The only thing I'll add is that there will be separate crash programs working to improve the internal combustion engine, because better engines would have all kinds of militarily useful application, and the fruits of the engine program's labors would be available to the people who are working on powered flight.
If the war begins in 1893 as currently planned, we're talking about a Kitty Hawk-level plane in early 1896, and something like the Demoiselle or maybe a little better by war's end in 1897. There would simultaneously be development of dirigibles, which are bigger platforms and have a higher service ceiling.
BTW, this discussion of early flight, including your comments, has been very educational - that's one of the reasons I love writing this timeline.
Daztur is correct about the Great War coalitions, although there will also be secondary players on each side - Brazil, Portugal, Korea, possibly even Ethiopia and some of the other Latin American states. The French amity with the Porte has gone the way of Portugal's with Britain: lost in the clash of empires.
The societies that Senator Chickpea points to, may or may not die; thus far, I've condemned only one country, and it isn't any of those three. You can take it for granted, however, that they'll all be profoundly changed whether they win or lose.
TTL's Lev is either an ATL sibling or an ATL half-sibling (he may or may not have the same mother) - same name, close to the same age, but a different mix of genes and obviously a different environment. He'll have some of OTL Lev's personality traits, though, and "intellectual firecracker" is a good way to describe what he will be.
"Pasha" was a somewhat amorphous title, not necessarily (or even usually) indicating rulership of the empire; young Lev might grow up to be a general, a governor or a diplomat. Not, of course, that any of those would preclude him from having a significant influence on the development of the state.
He gave up (or was forced to give up) more power somewhat sooner, so his ego had less play domestically; he compensated for it with a foreign policy even more adventurous than OTL, and part of the reason for the colonial expansion was to stave off the day when the bills for that policy came due.
There will be, and has been, a racist reaction, but politics makes strange bedfellows; the clerical branch of the French right doesn't care for Africans, but many of those in the statist, blood-and-soil branch see them as valiant soldiers who have forged a bond of blood with France. The iconic image of Africans in TTL's France is that of the tirailleur, which gives them a certain amount of patriotic cachet, although it doesn't work with everyone. Likewise, on the left, not everyone is sure whether Africans are working-class allies, handmaidens of the oppressor or crypto-rightist primitives. Things will get very strange during the war, and not always in a good way.
Hmmm, is there a possibility of a split between the Persian believers, who regard themselves as a new faith and the more conservative converts in the Ottoman Empire who prefer to see themselves as a reformist movement within Islam?
To be sure, Belloism has evolved quite a bit from the early days; there are many different flavors of it by this point in the timeline, some of which have very idiosyncratic definitions of withdrawal from politics. And even the original form of Belloism emphasized that the communes, although separate, are not monasteries, and have a responsibility to educate and guide their neighbors. That said, though, I agree that Baha'u'llah would oppose Belloist doctrine - as you say, even the Belloist military or labor brotherhoods would be anathema to him. I expect that he would indeed write against the Belloists.
As can be seen from the most recent update (posted after your comment), I went this route, which I think makes the most geopolitical sense: Persia is Russia's route back into the Caucasus. With the Great War looming, that would definitely bring Britain in to act as a counterweight. This might be a time, however, when the Russian and British interests in Persia are not united - both would want Persia as a strategic military outpost as well as an economic dependency - which might lead to Britain (and ultimately the Ottomans, who will be on the British side of the Great War) supporting the opposite, modernist faction in the Persian court.
What I'm tentatively seeing for the postwar period is an initial, ham-handed effort at top-down reform, followed by something resembling the Constitutional Revolution in which Ottoman-inspired reformists may take part. It's all very tentative at this point, and you're much more knowledgeable about the relevant history and cultural traits than I am, so I'd be grateful for any advice you care to give when we get to that point.
Closer to the 1970s than the 1930s. This will not be a timeline in which technology is significantly advanced over OTL; there will be some factors that will tend to speed its advancement, but others that will slow it down. I expect that during the mid-twentieth century, some fields like medicine and agriculture will be ahead of OTL, others will be a bit behind, and aeronautics will probably be about the same.
That said, the orbital flight will be made by... no, that would be telling.
Admiral Matt gave pretty much the answer I was planning to give: (a) that we're talking about the development of primitive fixed-wing aircraft by the end of the war, not the beginning; and (b) that high-budget government crash programs would have capabilities not available to gentleman amateurs. The only thing I'll add is that there will be separate crash programs working to improve the internal combustion engine, because better engines would have all kinds of militarily useful application, and the fruits of the engine program's labors would be available to the people who are working on powered flight.
If the war begins in 1893 as currently planned, we're talking about a Kitty Hawk-level plane in early 1896, and something like the Demoiselle or maybe a little better by war's end in 1897. There would simultaneously be development of dirigibles, which are bigger platforms and have a higher service ceiling.
BTW, this discussion of early flight, including your comments, has been very educational - that's one of the reasons I love writing this timeline.
Daztur is correct about the Great War coalitions, although there will also be secondary players on each side - Brazil, Portugal, Korea, possibly even Ethiopia and some of the other Latin American states. The French amity with the Porte has gone the way of Portugal's with Britain: lost in the clash of empires.
The societies that Senator Chickpea points to, may or may not die; thus far, I've condemned only one country, and it isn't any of those three. You can take it for granted, however, that they'll all be profoundly changed whether they win or lose.
TTL's Lev is either an ATL sibling or an ATL half-sibling (he may or may not have the same mother) - same name, close to the same age, but a different mix of genes and obviously a different environment. He'll have some of OTL Lev's personality traits, though, and "intellectual firecracker" is a good way to describe what he will be.
"Pasha" was a somewhat amorphous title, not necessarily (or even usually) indicating rulership of the empire; young Lev might grow up to be a general, a governor or a diplomat. Not, of course, that any of those would preclude him from having a significant influence on the development of the state.
Well, if in the period 1893-96, 3 years, we have arrived at aviation comparable to OTL 1904, what that says is that 3 years of wartime development equals 11 years peacetime. So each year is nearly worth 4 of peacetime years.
Apply that to the period 1914-18 OTL and we are saying that if there were no Great War, world aviation would reach OTL 1918 levels around 1929! Does that seem reasonable?
That's a question; it might.
Also, taken along with your remark that on the whole there is no general pattern of advance in technology over OTL in the long run, then after the war aeronautical development, for example, will plod along slowly again, so that by 1918 the two timelines are about on a par. (Ignoring the third "no war at all" timeline which by this reasoning is simply retarded compared to either by about a decade and a half!)
Some specific remarks on how it might go, given other remarks by Admiral Matt:
If, as he suggests, we get a big-money project making a big airplane, on the larger scales favored by people like Maxim and Langley (and Sikorsky, in Russia) and this is what makes a steam-powered airplane feasible--well, the motive to switch over to a set of gasoline engines will be to increase endurance and range. Because the tricky thing in employing steam engines for aviation is, making a condenser that allows one to reuse the water for the boiler. That requires orders of magnitude more radiator area than the sorts of radiators water-cooled gasoline (or diesel) engines need. So the solution is to run the water once through, then simply vent it. The steam cycle is less efficient because the lower limit of pressure is atmospheric, rather than the lower-than-atmospheric pressures one gets by condensing water and reusing it. But the big problem is, the water gets used up the way fuel does, only I think for every kilogram of fuel one is venting many kilograms of water. In effect, if you can lift a given weight of propellant, a steam aero engine means you can have only a fraction of that be fuel, the rest is water reserve.
Also, steam engines are inherently less efficient than all but the crudest IC engines, due to poorer thermodynamics; the lower temperature of the ideal cycle is higher (steam temperature, 100 C at sea level) and the highest temperature is lower, since it is limited by the strength of steels at high temperatures, whereas in a spark or even compression ignition engine, the peak temperature can be much higher, because it only stays that high for a fraction of a second, then the expansion of the cylinder cools it down.
On the other hand, steam engine design is a much more mature technology in 1892, so that helps a bit.
The upshot is, if it is feasible to make one's first airplane a big one, and all the various problems I mentioned can be solved by throwing money at them in a big government-contracted funded development effort, the airplane one initially gets has very short legs. It can't stay in the air very long before it has to land for more water and fuel.
But this might be OK and impressive in context; send the plane up for a quick look over the enemy lines, then it lands again for a report on what the crew saw. (Big plane, might as well start with a crew of at least two, a pilot and an observer).
For what it's worth, a steam engine can probably be made much quieter than an IC engine; this might come in handy in helping the observer and pilot communicate with each other.
I believe the 1930s Besler steam plane allowed the flyers to talk to people on the ground as they flew by.
For dirigibles on the other hand, venting water along with burning fuel compounds a peculiar problem airships have that airplanes don't. With an airplane, burning up fuel lightens the load and (until the fuel runs out!) raises the margins of maneuverability. (If you've designed the plane right that is; losing weight out of balance throws the trim of the plane off). But airships have, roughly speaking, a fixed lift from their lifting gas, and so lowering the weight means the ship is out of trim in the sense that if it took off with just the right amount of lift gas to balance its weight, it is now light and will tend to keep climbing until it reaches "pressure height," the altitude at which its lift gas has expanded to fill the available volume. Then if you've designed it right, the gas will valve out of safety valves, lowering the lift permanently. (If you haven't provided automatic safety valves, you'd better vent manually because if you don't the trapped lift gas will soon reach relative pressures where something ruptures; these pressures are not very high because to have any hope of aerostatic lift working you've made everything quite light hence flimsy.)
If we are using hydrogen for lift, this might be all right, though actually hydrogen is not that cheap to make. (It just looks cheap compared to helium, which in this time frame is by the way quite unavailable to anyone). But it's still a sloppy way to operate, especially because venting hydrogen is a fire hazard, right when you are under fire!
The problem still exists with IC engines of course, unless one is burning a fuel that is formulated to have the same density as air. But it would be multiplied with an open-cycle steam engine!
Actually, I've corresponded with someone who is very serious about using steam as a lifting gas; it is the third most effective lift gas known in fact, right after hydrogen and helium, having about 55 percent the lift of hydrogen by volume. Tom Goodey has even patented the concept of using a steam ballonet as a condenser for an airborne closed-cycle steam engine! The tricky bit here, even in terms of modern materials, is that actually a balloon full of steam will take quite a while to condense, based on his experiments. Where I get lost is, I am not sure I know how to estimate just how much water throughput a steam engine of reasonable efficiency and power requires: if I knew that I could estimate the size of ballonet needed to return the necessary flow of water back to the engine.
In the meantime, the water, once vaporized, is providing lift in the steam ballonet. If one can get fancy with this approach it offers the option of variable net lift; boiling a kilogram of water relieves one kilogram of weight and also displaces about two kilograms of air, for a net lift increase of two kilograms; similarly letting that kilogram condense would ballast the ship down by a net two kilograms or so. But trying to make it that elaborate is tricky, especially with a rather primitive hydrogen lift system.
And despite its literally steampunk sound, steam aerostation as Goodey is trying to work it relies a lot on advanced modern materials. Modern hot-air balloons enjoyed a renaissance in recent generations mainly because new lightweight, strong, heat-tolerant fabrics were developed after WWII; Goodey's experimental steam balloons use that same kind of fabric.
It isn't clear to me that anything at all suitable can be made in the late 19th century. It would be very tricky to try to seal up any fabric typically used in those days for balloons (such as silk, or cotton) with something that would be flexible at both room temperature and 100 degrees Celsius. And water is chemically active, steam with its heat even more so. I suspect most fabrics available at the time would simply disintegrate!
So airships too would benefit very much from practical IC or diesel engines.
Airships generally require much lower power levels for a given lift than airplanes do, so achieving the highest power/weight ratio is not quite as paramount for them; getting better fuel efficiency can be worth a considerable increase in engine weight. So if the problem of preventing the sparks from an early gasoline engine from setting off the hydrogen can be solved, a somewhat balky and weak IC engine could be used in an airship sooner than in an airplane. Engine failure equals crash landing for an airplane; for an airship it need not.
Again I want to stress, though, an airship at the state of the art OTL 1905-10 is still not all that impressive. Here's the first few Zeppelins for instance, with the LZ-3, which first flew in 1907, being the first of them that could be called successful. The Lebaudy Republique was its contemporary French competition.
This article, which is not attributed, appears to have been written in the 1920s and gives a sense of the Italian design philosophy of semirigid airships. Forlanini's first effort, the Leonardo Da Vinci, took him about 9 years to build and I believe the first, sepia-toned, picture depicts it. Here's a 1914 article on Forlanini's second semirigid, "City of Milan."
In general I'm finding it rather hard to find images of the types of airships operating in the middle of the first decade of the 20th century, and that, I think, is because even that late they were quite primitive. But this is the sort of state of the art we can expect to reach by the end of the Male Rising timeline's 1890s Great War, on the sanguine assumption that on the whole the rival military-industrial complexes of the Great Powers will indeed set aside significant funds and resources on the off-chance that they might come up with something militarily useful before their enemies do, and that such forced-draft development will indeed accelerate the general pace of progress by a factor of three or four or more.
OK, then so be it!
Unfortunately arriving at a 1910 at best or so state of the art by 1899 will not open the way to dirigibles or airplanes serving as practical modes of transport any time soon, especially if we then assume that the pace will not have the OTL acceleration of 1914-18. Broadly speaking, around the end of WWI OTL is about when aircraft of either type became really practical.
Perhaps I can hope for a bit of continued intensive development of larger airships, of the semirigid and rigid types, with an eye toward commercial applications. OTL a number of projects continued for some years after the war in various countries.
But that would put the timeline decisively ahead of OTL, and that is not going to happen.
....
It is a peculiarly Turkish, in fact Ottoman, title, right?
This suggests to me that the Ottoman regime does survive the Great War, long enough for young Lev to come of age and reach some kind of distinction in it.
And presumably not trying to overthrow it. (He might be the kind of reformer that conservatives accuse of being as bad as a rebel, but he's not labeling himself as such, apparently, and others agree he's a good Ottoman subject).
Though I suppose another way to come by the title would be if the Ottoman Empire does collapse, and not long after that there are revolutionaries trying to restore a revised version of it, with who (but you!) can guess what success.
Hey Jonathan, good to see you. BTW, since we're approaching the early modern era here, I was wondering if you'd like to hear some automobile-related ideas.
I would subscribe to this TL, but only if you promise that the Caliph has his orbital summer palace on Deimos not Phobos
Why does it matter whether he reigns by fear or terror?
It's just more stylish that way.
Either way, awesome update as always, Mr. Edelstein. Love watching things unfurl, and they have a tendency to do that, here. Would you say that there are any chances of a period piece from the Ottoman Empire? I think it'd be interesting to see how things have affected the actual people there.
Umm... Water is molecular weight 18. That's certainly lighter than air which averages about 29. But Methane is 16 and Ammonia 15. OK, so steam is, by definition 100+degrees, but if you heated Methane or Ammonia, they'd be even better, so 'third best lifting gas' is ... only true if you look at it from the right angle.
In fact, mental calculations suggest that the lifting capacity of steam at 100degrees ought to be about the same as ammonia at room temperature. Or so (maybe only if you have a very warm room
)Of course, keeping air out of your flammable lifting gasses would be ... fun. But that's the same problem you have with hydrogen.
Your other problem with steam is all that condensing water. How much (heavy) liquid water do you have dribbling down the sides of the balloon before you collect it again, compared to steam (light) lifting the balloon.
The fact that no one's done it before now does suggest that the problems are significant.
There would also be interesting problems involved with rain/ascending into clouds. If nothing else, the rate of cooling of your steam lift gas would go up hugely - and you'd get parasitic water on the outside (if actual rain/snow - if merely clouds, the heat of the balloon might evaporate mini-droplets).
Something I really like about this timeline is the way you make all the societies you describe sympathetic. In this timeline, I feel for everyone as they inevitably hurtle towards self-destruction.
It's sounding interesting already.
And the politics you describe inhibiting the coherence of pre-war French racism is making sense.
Sociologically the Bahá'í faith is very schism resistant. There's a host of reasons for it. (And those are actually some of the most interesting differences between the Bahá'í faith and previous religions.) The short of it is that Bahá'ís who want to be a reformist movement within Islam would be most likely to leave the faith entirely and become reformist Muslims, rather than quaisi Bahá'í Muslim reformists.
Even communal living (at least, when it involves living in homogenous communes) are seen badly by the Bahá'í writings.
I forgot about the changes in the Caucasus... Those will have a biiiiig effect on Persia. The Khanate of Shirvan is made up of territory that was conquered from the Persians within living memory. The tribes in the North would have less sympathy with Persia, having fought them as often as they fought for them, but the southern Azeri areas still considered itself a Persian province. People moved across the borders continuously, as did trade and investment. Whatever happens in Persia will effect the Khanate of Shirvan, whatever happens in the Khanate of Shirvan will effect Persia. This could either pull the Persians and Russians closer, or drive them further apart (and the same with the Ottomans). There will almost certainly be people in both the Khanate and in Persia working to bring about a reunification. Also, the entire Caucasus region had been an area of competition between the Persians and the Ottomans for centuries. There will be people in Armenia and Georgia who will speak in favour of a Persian alliance.
Rail links to the Caucasian kingdoms could be some of the more useful projects of the foreign powers in the region. All three would want to reduce their dependency the Ottomans and the Russians, and improving trade and transport with weaker Persia would be one way to do that.
The interactions between the Georgian, Armenian and Azeri people in the Caucasus and in Persia is also going to be a major conduit of new ideas into Persia. We may also see the Persian Georgians and Armenians growing to greater commercial prominence than they did OTL, due to trade with the Caucasus. (The Azeris will be as influential as they have always been in Persia - which is to say very influential.)
I agree that Russia will court Persia to strengthen its position in the Caucasus. I don't think Persia will be keen on seeing Russia get too strong. Persia had just spent a century getting regularly kicked by the Russians in both the Caucasus and Central Asia. No-one in Persia would want to see Russia return to that level of strength. On the other hand, Russia might be able to pose as an ally against the resurgent Ottomans. Also, Persia had a sizable trade deficit with Russia, which gives St. Petersburg some financial leverage over the court in Tehran.
Also, Persia and the Khanate of Shirvan are key to the Ottoman position in the Caucasus as well. The Caspian Gates at Derbent are the main pass through the mountains. It was for this reason that the Byzantine Empire used to pay a subsidy to the Sassanid Persians to maintain the fortresses in Azerbaijan - the Ottomans in this TL will have similar reasons to invest in the security of the passes against the Russian barbarians.
Also, looking at the map in post 898 - Russia controls alot more of Central Asia than it did in OTL's 1880. I'm not sure if that is an intentional change, or if it is an effect of map-maker ignorance. OTL the area was still a patchwork of independent states, Russian clients and Russian colonies. With the defeat of Russia by the Turks, Central Asia may see an upsurge in British, Afgan, Persian, Chinese, and even Turkish attempts to meddle in the area.
Also, what is going on in Poland? I can't see the Congress Kingdom standing by quietly while the Caucasus gets local government, and then a decade of reaction falls across the Empire.
I'm not sure there would be a ham-handed top-down reform. Nazzer o-Din Shah had already tried to reform the country in this way during the 1860s. It didn't work well, and the Shah had the liberalism beaten out of him by the experience. For the remainder of his reign, he was much more conservative. Now the Ottoman success may re-awaken the Shah's belief in liberal reformism, or it might not. I'm not really sure. If he does become convinced that reformism can work, I suspect he will be much more cautious than he was the first time around. Perhaps a national bank, given the Ottoman success, and military reforms. There might be proposals for an elected advisory council slowly being put together. But that is unlikely to happen before the war.
EDIT: And I've never really thought about the effects of a resurgent late-Ottoman Empire on Persia before. Very interesting stuff to mull over.
fasquardon
It's sounding interesting already.
And the politics you describe inhibiting the coherence of pre-war French racism is making sense.
Sociologically the Bahá'í faith is very schism resistant. There's a host of reasons for it. (And those are actually some of the most interesting differences between the Bahá'í faith and previous religions.) The short of it is that Bahá'ís who want to be a reformist movement within Islam would be most likely to leave the faith entirely and become reformist Muslims, rather than quaisi Bahá'í Muslim reformists.
Even communal living (at least, when it involves living in homogenous communes) are seen badly by the Bahá'í writings.
I forgot about the changes in the Caucasus... Those will have a biiiiig effect on Persia. The Khanate of Shirvan is made up of territory that was conquered from the Persians within living memory. The tribes in the North would have less sympathy with Persia, having fought them as often as they fought for them, but the southern Azeri areas still considered itself a Persian province. People moved across the borders continuously, as did trade and investment. Whatever happens in Persia will effect the Khanate of Shirvan, whatever happens in the Khanate of Shirvan will effect Persia. This could either pull the Persians and Russians closer, or drive them further apart (and the same with the Ottomans). There will almost certainly be people in both the Khanate and in Persia working to bring about a reunification. Also, the entire Caucasus region had been an area of competition between the Persians and the Ottomans for centuries. There will be people in Armenia and Georgia who will speak in favour of a Persian alliance.
Rail links to the Caucasian kingdoms could be some of the more useful projects of the foreign powers in the region. All three would want to reduce their dependency the Ottomans and the Russians, and improving trade and transport with weaker Persia would be one way to do that.
The interactions between the Georgian, Armenian and Azeri people in the Caucasus and in Persia is also going to be a major conduit of new ideas into Persia. We may also see the Persian Georgians and Armenians growing to greater commercial prominence than they did OTL, due to trade with the Caucasus. (The Azeris will be as influential as they have always been in Persia - which is to say very influential.)
I agree that Russia will court Persia to strengthen its position in the Caucasus. I don't think Persia will be keen on seeing Russia get too strong. Persia had just spent a century getting regularly kicked by the Russians in both the Caucasus and Central Asia. No-one in Persia would want to see Russia return to that level of strength. On the other hand, Russia might be able to pose as an ally against the resurgent Ottomans. Also, Persia had a sizable trade deficit with Russia, which gives St. Petersburg some financial leverage over the court in Tehran.
Also, Persia and the Khanate of Shirvan are key to the Ottoman position in the Caucasus as well. The Caspian Gates at Derbent are the main pass through the mountains. It was for this reason that the Byzantine Empire used to pay a subsidy to the Sassanid Persians to maintain the fortresses in Azerbaijan - the Ottomans in this TL will have similar reasons to invest in the security of the passes against the Russian barbarians.
Also, looking at the map in post 898 - Russia controls alot more of Central Asia than it did in OTL's 1880. I'm not sure if that is an intentional change, or if it is an effect of map-maker ignorance. OTL the area was still a patchwork of independent states, Russian clients and Russian colonies. With the defeat of Russia by the Turks, Central Asia may see an upsurge in British, Afgan, Persian, Chinese, and even Turkish attempts to meddle in the area.
Also, what is going on in Poland? I can't see the Congress Kingdom standing by quietly while the Caucasus gets local government, and then a decade of reaction falls across the Empire.
I'm not sure there would be a ham-handed top-down reform. Nazzer o-Din Shah had already tried to reform the country in this way during the 1860s. It didn't work well, and the Shah had the liberalism beaten out of him by the experience. For the remainder of his reign, he was much more conservative. Now the Ottoman success may re-awaken the Shah's belief in liberal reformism, or it might not. I'm not really sure. If he does become convinced that reformism can work, I suspect he will be much more cautious than he was the first time around. Perhaps a national bank, given the Ottoman success, and military reforms. There might be proposals for an elected advisory council slowly being put together. But that is unlikely to happen before the war.
EDIT: And I've never really thought about the effects of a resurgent late-Ottoman Empire on Persia before. Very interesting stuff to mull over.
fasquardon
There is of course no way to tell, but that seems fundamentally reasonable to me. Wartime crash programs come about as close as possible to non-cost-conscious R&D, with budgets and staffing levels much higher than any private company would be willing to commit, returns measured by usefulness rather than profit, and more willingness to consider radical redesign. Given that we’re talking about a new technology which had hitherto been pioneered by gentleman amateurs on very limited resources, a 4:1 progress ratio doesn’t seem out of line.
Hmmm, I’m not sure if things will revert to the mean that quickly. An earlier introduction of the 1905-08 state of the art will have postwar consequences: among other things, corporate investors will know that powered flight has real potential rather than being a pipe dream, and governments (especially those with far-flung empires) will see the obvious possibilities for mail delivery, diplomacy and passenger service. I’d anticipate some continued progress between 1900 and 1920.
On the other hand, there was another period of rapid progress during OTL’s twentieth century that may not have a counterpart in this one, or that may proceed very differently. If TTL’s aviation technology is still ahead of us in 1940, it might not be in 1950; for instance, there might be a considerably slower adoption of jet aircraft.
Also, while I said that I expect TTL’s technology to be at rough parity with ours, that isn’t etched in stone. I can think of several reasons why TTL would be higher-tech: greater prosperity in the colonies fueling greater demand; the existence of research institutions in areas of the world that didn’t have them in OTL; more people whose talents would have been underutilized in OTL finding work that matches their potential. Depending on how the twentieth century goes, there may also be reasons for TTL to be lower-tech: for instance, if there’s no WW2-equivalent (or if that war comes at a time when nuclear research is not yet practical), then nuclear physics could be substantially delayed.
Maybe I should retract my expectation of parity, because too much of the twentieth century is still unresolved. I’m wary of straying too far from OTL’s tech level, though, because I don’t want this timeline to become all about the tech. There are some excellent tech timelines on this forum; this isn’t one of them.
There could also be different development tracks, with some countries going for big planes and others for small powered gliders. The big planes will be good for short-range recon and possibly psychological warfare, but the medium-range recon you could get out of a small plane would be at least as valuable. We’re talking about a war in which positional warfare is king, and a plane that can detect troop movements 20 miles behind enemy lines or pick out weakly held areas where a concentrated attack might force a breakthrough could be very useful.
I think they would throw some money at the project, once the full impact of industrial trench warfare becomes apparent; they’d be looking for practically any means of breaking the stalemate, and powered flight would be just enough on the verge of possibility to pursue. They won’t come up with any game-changers, but I think it’s reasonable that a concentrated R&D program could lead to some significant progress.
I’d certainly like to hear them, starting with the obligatory alternate name for automobiles (I’m tempted to just call them motorcars, but something more seems to be expected on this forum). Also, do I know you under another name?
There’s an excellent chance of that – probably not until during or after the war, but if a story comes to mind in the meantime, I’ll put it in.
Thanks. That’s quite intentional; most conflicts are morally ambiguous, and I tend to disfavor Manichaean struggles of good and evil. Of course, some societies in TTL are more sympathetic than others; Russia, for instance, is pretty badly in need of a shakeup (and will get one).
In other words, reformist Muslims who think that Baha’u’llah had some good points but don’t see him as a prophet (or at least not a law-bearing one)? I’ll have to think about this some more.
The Armenians and Georgians, as Christian (or in Georgia’s case, mostly-Christian) peoples, historically looked to Russia to protect them from both the Ottomans and the Persians. Unless the Tsar badly misplays his hand – which could happen, of course – they’d probably want to stick with a Russian alliance rather than a Persian one.
The khanates, on the other hand – yes, now that you mention it, there would certainly be factions at court which would seek alliance or even unification with Persia. This would keep the Ottoman intelligence service very busy, and would give Russia another reason to court the Shah.
I like the idea of railroads through Persia and a Caucasian conduit for reformist ideas, although a great deal will depend on how the regional map is affected by the postwar settlement.
Russia might also offer a carrot to Persia by proposing that they carve up the Caucasus between them, albeit with the intention of keeping Persia as a very junior partner and dominating the areas that are nominally Persian.
There will be quite a bit of that during the war.
Oh, Poland isn’t happy. There’s a lot of unrest there already, and during the war it will be a major battleground.
You’ve all got it wrong. The Ottomans will colonize every planet, moon and asteroid in the Solar System that begins with M. Most of their heavy industry will be on Ottomercury, but the Sultan will reign from Ottomimas, which will be converted into an actual Death Star and used to shoot deadly rays at the unbelievers.
There will be a facility on Deimos, certainly, but it will be a prison. Or maybe a treasure vault.
I've written a response to you, but my purpose in citing Tom Goodey's "Flying Teakettle" site was to avoid bogging down the thread in these technicalities.
If there is general interest, I'd urge people to check out that site, and then remember, Goodey was (I hope still is, it's been 8 years since I last corresponded with him) working with late 20th/early 21st century materials!
The main reason I brought it up here is, the notion of the steam ballonet as a steam condenser for a steam engine, and auxiliary uses as variable lift/ballast. Both uses are very problematic with 19th century materials, as far as I can tell.
As far as post-war technology, people forget how much the world wars retarded technology as well. For example, zeppelins may have advanced much better without the pressures of the war forcing them down unsustainable design paths. Solar power is likely to have been 60 years ahead of where we got OTL if the early pioneers had not died in the war and the financial exhaustion post-war starved most all new technologies of investment. The Manhattan project arguably did more harm than good to nuclear technology. While it produced atom bombs, it also meant lots of money was wasted on fission weapons, rather than a slower, steadier, paced nuclear program that went straight for the fusion bomb. As for the rest of nuclear technology - it did enormous amounts of harm to have everything designed around producing weapons. Reactors that are good at producing power need a different design than reactors that are good at producing weapons grade fissile material. The glut of prop aircraft after WW2 did alot to delay the development of civilian jet technology. And who knows the impact of the men and women who died before showing any sign of what they might be capable of, the impact of the ruined economies that throttled the innovation of whole regions.
So in general, I find the arguments in favour war as a technological stimulant to sound more like "just so" stories to comfort people that all the blood and suffering was worth it.
Sometimes war provides a good environment for certain advances, sometimes it provides a bad environment for certain advances. The net effects seem rather a mixed bag to me. And I think in most cases, any retardant or accellerant effects that wars have are eventually (i.e. over the course of a century or two) cancelled out by forces returning advancement to the mean (the mean itself being driven by the scale and density of human population). For example, I am reading alot about the British industrial revolution at the moment. And there is no good evidence that any of the wars Britain engaged in between 1700 and 200 helped or hindered the long term trends of economic and industrial advancement of the UK.
Hmmmm. Well, this did remind me that there is at least one school of Judaism that sees Christ as a prophet (but not as the Messiah) - I forget what it is called, but it might be a pattern for what you want to do. In the Jewish example, that only happened after Christianity had become the dominant religion. The Bahá'í faith is still a fair ways achieving that versus Islam.
I'd be impressed if you could spin a plausible story for how such a movement could come about.
I suspect most Islamic liberals will still at best see the Bahá'ís as misguided, at worst as the incarnation of all that is evil.
There were plenty of Muslim Armenians as well.
And the Tsar already has misplayed his hand by losing the war against the Ottomans. The Georgians and Armenians were both a diverse and fractious lot, and they didn't fall into neat political groupings according to their religion. OTL Russia was able to conquer the territory early in the 19th Century, and hold it effectively by being much stronger than the other two Empires and by using patronage to ensure that pro-Russian Christian nobles gained the upper hand in both regions. In this TL, that process has experienced a significant setback by making Georgian and Armenian politics depend less on playing well to St. Petersburg, and more about the old familiar game of playing all the neighbours off against each-other.
I wasn't so much thinking that pro-Persians, pro-Turks and pro-Russians will be squaring off in an internal cold war - more that the Turks and the Russians will be having a cold war, while Persia tries to make sure neither power exerts too much actual control of the Caucasus and the Georgians and Armenians themselves use the Empires to further their own goals (most of which will be petty personal and family goals). So the people I spoke of who might favor a Persian alliance would probably themselves be split into the Turko-Persian-alliance faction, the Russo-Persian-alliance faction and the independent-Persian-alliance faction. The actual splits being very amorphous, and people who might belong to one faction one week would be in another faction by the next depending on events on the ground... While there are strong cultural links between Persia and Georgia and Armenia, there are strong cultural links between the Caucasian Kingdoms and the other two Empires. So while there will be people who are genuine Persophiles, I expect most who want to get closer to Persia would do so to weaken the position of the Turks or the Russians. Hence why I was thinking the movements of trade and ideas would be the main effects here, since stimulating trans-Persian trade would reduce the hold that the Ottoman and Russian Empires would have on the Caucasian Kingdoms. Though also we may see some Georgian and Armenian sons being sent to the Dar ul-Funun (the first modern university in the Middle East, founded in 1851) by fathers who can't send their sons to Oxford or Paris, but don't want their children growing too close to the Turkish or Russian oppressors.
fasquardon
So in general, I find the arguments in favour war as a technological stimulant to sound more like "just so" stories to comfort people that all the blood and suffering was worth it.
Sometimes war provides a good environment for certain advances, sometimes it provides a bad environment for certain advances. The net effects seem rather a mixed bag to me. And I think in most cases, any retardant or accellerant effects that wars have are eventually (i.e. over the course of a century or two) cancelled out by forces returning advancement to the mean (the mean itself being driven by the scale and density of human population). For example, I am reading alot about the British industrial revolution at the moment. And there is no good evidence that any of the wars Britain engaged in between 1700 and 200 helped or hindered the long term trends of economic and industrial advancement of the UK.
Hmmmm. Well, this did remind me that there is at least one school of Judaism that sees Christ as a prophet (but not as the Messiah) - I forget what it is called, but it might be a pattern for what you want to do. In the Jewish example, that only happened after Christianity had become the dominant religion. The Bahá'í faith is still a fair ways achieving that versus Islam.
I'd be impressed if you could spin a plausible story for how such a movement could come about.
I suspect most Islamic liberals will still at best see the Bahá'ís as misguided, at worst as the incarnation of all that is evil.
There were plenty of Muslim Armenians as well.
And the Tsar already has misplayed his hand by losing the war against the Ottomans. The Georgians and Armenians were both a diverse and fractious lot, and they didn't fall into neat political groupings according to their religion. OTL Russia was able to conquer the territory early in the 19th Century, and hold it effectively by being much stronger than the other two Empires and by using patronage to ensure that pro-Russian Christian nobles gained the upper hand in both regions. In this TL, that process has experienced a significant setback by making Georgian and Armenian politics depend less on playing well to St. Petersburg, and more about the old familiar game of playing all the neighbours off against each-other.
I wasn't so much thinking that pro-Persians, pro-Turks and pro-Russians will be squaring off in an internal cold war - more that the Turks and the Russians will be having a cold war, while Persia tries to make sure neither power exerts too much actual control of the Caucasus and the Georgians and Armenians themselves use the Empires to further their own goals (most of which will be petty personal and family goals). So the people I spoke of who might favor a Persian alliance would probably themselves be split into the Turko-Persian-alliance faction, the Russo-Persian-alliance faction and the independent-Persian-alliance faction. The actual splits being very amorphous, and people who might belong to one faction one week would be in another faction by the next depending on events on the ground... While there are strong cultural links between Persia and Georgia and Armenia, there are strong cultural links between the Caucasian Kingdoms and the other two Empires. So while there will be people who are genuine Persophiles, I expect most who want to get closer to Persia would do so to weaken the position of the Turks or the Russians. Hence why I was thinking the movements of trade and ideas would be the main effects here, since stimulating trans-Persian trade would reduce the hold that the Ottoman and Russian Empires would have on the Caucasian Kingdoms. Though also we may see some Georgian and Armenian sons being sent to the Dar ul-Funun (the first modern university in the Middle East, founded in 1851) by fathers who can't send their sons to Oxford or Paris, but don't want their children growing too close to the Turkish or Russian oppressors.
fasquardon
I must say I am intrigued with the idea of dual purpose treasure vault/prisons. My interest was first sparked when I visited the Castle of Saint Angelo, aka Hadrian's Tomb, where a tomb was turned into a treasury and castle. We all know of course how big a Romanphile the Ottomartians are
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Jonathan, my question for you is this. Where did you or better I should say where do you find the research materials particularly in pertaining to the situations in West Africa. Your attention to detail is outstanding yet there never seems to be that many sources online or in libraries (to my knowledge) on the small, yet important things in Africa. Rivers, mountains, kingdoms, can be accessed easily but knowing or finding the amount of small yet important details that enrich your TL seems difficult to locate. Wikipedia and many other sources, electronic and printed both, are usually not very deep nor do they seem to provide many details. Books on Africa tend to be written from a European viewpoint and tend to only glaze over the surface while not mentioning many of the small kernels of truth. So my main question is: how & where did you find so much source material for this great TL? Joho