In honor of your return:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGlY3ubGzUY.
(BTW, Roots will look different in TTL).
Thanks! The trip was amazing - my first time in Asia - and was also a look at a country that modernized largely on its own terms and picked and chose from Western culture as it wanted. It gave me some ideas for what TTL's twentieth century might look like in parts of the non-Western world - we already know that the Malê aren't strong enough to have that degree of freedom, but the Ottomans potentially are. Among other things, there might be some very selective romanization and some interesting twists on Western popular art forms (although of course in TTL that will go both ways).
Roots - well, TTL has, and will have, two distinct slave/freedman narratives: the Gullah and Geechee, who largely kept their language and culture, and everyone else. The Gullah will have more cultural importance than OTL due to their prominence in South Carolina politics, and the greater commerce with West Africa during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries will affect African-American perceptions of the mother continent. I expect that the Roots-type stories from lowland South Carolina will focus on the reunion with Sierra Leone, while those from elsewhere will focus on cultural loss (as with the OTL book) and continue with the families' rediscovery of Africa during the Jim Crow and civil rights periods.
As to the latest update; looks like Persia is in for some... interesting times. I would *not* want to be in Tehran when the Russians' duplicity is uncovered...
Oh man, things don't look good in Persia...
Persia is going to be ugly. Since we don't know how the two sides compare in strength, a civil war seems like the most likely option. That would seem to benefit the FARs, since the Ottomans are already stretched and a Persian civil war would probably demand at least an increase in strength along the border. Plus, shipping weapons through a civil war would probably be difficult.
The Ottomans might end up stretched much more thinner than they can afford to.
The Ottomans, true, but Britain will be stretched a lot more as well....perhaps to breaking point....how many more concessions can they make to their colonies, the way things are going?
Persia will be at least as much of a headache for the Russians as for the British and Ottomans. Russia wanted a clean coup; instead, it will get
at best a civil war which will be an endless drain of money, materiel and possibly troops (which, at this point, they can't spare any more than the BOGs can). They need Persia just as much as the British do, both for defensive reasons (interdicting arms shipments to Central Asia and denying a refuge to southern Caucasian clansmen and feudalists who defy their rule) and offensive ones (opening a new front against the Ottomans and gaining a sea corridor to Oman and Yemen), so they'll have to commit resources they can ill afford to spend.
Overall, the traditionalists are stronger than the modernists; however, the modernists' strength is disproportionately concentrated in the cities, and control of the capital means something. Also, several provincial governors are aligned with the modernists, and some of the provinces they control are strategic, so there's no side with a clear advantage. The outcome may well depend on the majority of army officers and provincial officials who have no clear leaning toward either side, and the failure of the initial coup will be greeted with a flurry of bribery and mini-coups. It may end relatively quickly, if one side can secure the allegiance of the neutrals; on the other hand, it might not.
(BTW, the Russians' role in setting things off will be one of the great historical controversies of the early twentieth century, until archival research in the 1950s conclusively proves that they were the ones who forged the documents.)
EDIT: thinking about it, is Baluchistan part of British India ITTL?
It's nominally part of the Omani empire, although the British are "temporarily" occupying and administering it in order to prevent it from falling to the Russian-backed prince who holds much of Oman proper. By this time it is part of British India
de facto, with the
de jure situation to be settled after the war.
At this stage--I don't know for sure which way Iranian sympathies would be leading. They hated and feared both the overbearing Christian superpowers who proposed to fight over whose doormat their once-proud little empire was.
ITTL though I think the Tsars have stuck their feet deeper into their mouths regarding the dignity of Muslim peoples... Would I hold my breath for such sensitive, effective and fruitful policy coming from the Romanovs? No I would not! I think it would be a given that the Russian treatment of other Muslims would be what Iranians would expect is in store for them should the Russians gain the upper hand, and so on the whole when efforts to play both foreign Satans off against each other fall through, they will reluctantly turn to lining up with the British. Especially if the British are halfway astute. Perhaps they would be insincere in their promises, but at least the British would know the right promises to make, for what they are worth.
This is all correct, but the Russians do have the anti-modernist card to play - the British and (especially) the Ottomans are identified with the sort of liberal, modernist Islam that is the bane of the traditionalist faction. That faction may well figure that as a client state of Russia, they would be spared the sort of persecution that exists in the Russian Empire itself, and that however bad the Russians may be, an alliance with them is a lesser evil than a surrender to modernism. So while the structural factors probably do favor the BOGs, they don't do so overwhelmingly.
As for Central Asia, the British and Ottomans will both have agendas there - I promised a Lawrence of Uzbekistan, and we're getting two of them - but the Central Asians themselves won't necessarily subscribe to either one, or at least not fully.
Afghanistan is not going to be handed over to the Russians....I'd argue it's even more in the British interest to keep it under a light British hand than have it under Russian influence, more so than Persia....
No one really wants to
rule Afghanistan, but it's strategically important to both powers because it's a corridor to the Northwest Frontier. The Russians are spreading money and arms among the Afghan chiefs and nobles, with consequences that will become apparent later in the war.