Yeah. It's the main port for the ottomans in the eastern Mediterranean.
Osman Reborn; The Survival of Ottoman Democracy [An Ottoman TL set in the 1900s]
- Thread starter Sarthak
- Start date
I am enjoying your timeline..
However a small nitpick:
The government of the Netherlands is located in The Hague and not Amsterdam.
Amsterdam is just the capital dejure.
However a small nitpick:
The government of the Netherlands is located in The Hague and not Amsterdam.
Amsterdam is just the capital dejure.
Yes The Hague is the defato capital.
Exept for the Queen’s residence. She lives in Palace at Loo near Apeldoorn.
Sukarno would be around his late teen and early adulthood. I believe IOTL this is when He's started developing his ideology. It'll be interesting how different he is here than Otl. I could see him developing a slightly more moderate view if the Volksraad managed to be more successful in raising the welfare of native indonesians, especially Javanese who formed much of the independence movement, but I'm not knowledgable enough to be certain.
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Chapter 51: Societal Changes
Osman Reborn
Chapter 51: Societal Changes
***
“The Chinese Civil War became much more serious after the Warlords of China began to concentrate their forces against the Imperial Chinese Army. The Battle of Dingxi led by Prince De in Ningxia made sure that the Chinese Mongols managed to create a pincer movement against the Imperial troops in Central China, thus bypassing much of their defenses. Similarly, the Warlords in Sichuan were also starting to invade the northern tracts of lands to group up with Prince De, with the intention of splitting Imperial China into two.
This move from Prince De was however thwarted when Deng Yanda, a young colonel of the Imperial Chinese Army managed to rally the Central Chinese armies and managed to defeat Prince De at the Battle of Tianshui, thus allowing the creation of the Tianshui corridor, which would allow Imperial China to remain connected via land to its western provinces.
Deng Yanda, the hero of the Tianshui Corridor
The Warlords enjoyed greater success in the south, where Republican and anti-monarchical sentiment was most powerful. The warlords managed to invade these territories pretty quickly and were sweeping through the lands. In the north however, the Warlords were not having as much of a good time in the Chinese Civil War. The most modern and most experienced armies of the Imperial Chinese Army were based in Zhili to defend Beijing from attacks from Manchuria, Inner Mongolia and Shanxi. The Warlords had only managed to bloody themselves with no gain as these veteran units of the Chinese army managed to stop any sort of warlord advance on Beijing in several hotly contested battles in the Zhili Campaign.
In Anhui, the military situation was much worse for the Warlords. Without a land connecting with the rest of the Warlords, the Anhui Clique was being pressured by the Imperial Chinese and Provisional Republic, as both sides squeezed into Anhui, with the Anhui Clique being unable to contest both of the powers attacking them. By the end of the year 1922, around half of Anhui was occupied. Of course, the fact that Imperial China and the Provisional Republic were not allied and were enemies made things all the more complicated in Anhui, as the troops devolved into three way battles that left hundreds of thousands killed and wounded, only for the battles to remain inconclusive.
Politically, the 13th Dalai Lama, who was also the Governor of Tibet for the Imperial Chinese Government, had warned Beijing that he would not be able to defend Tibet from any incursion from Sichuan if the vital land connection was lost. The Dalai Lama could raise a lot of troops, but said troops would be useless if the equipment being sent over from Beijing through the railway system did not arrive. Losing the land connection would have had disastrous consequences domestically in Tibet as well. Several monks and higher officials in Tibet were already questioning why they couldn’t just become an independent nation and were plotting against the Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama for his part had come to accept Chinese rule, on the condition that a special autonomy for the region was guaranteed. The position of Governor of Tibet being synonymous with the Dalai Lama was just one of these regional powers given to Tibet. The Lama knew that if the Tianshui corridor was lost, then the internal conspirators within Lhasa and Shigatse would erupt into a general rebellion against the Chinese government. For the Lama, this was bad news, as he also knew that the warlords would sweep in and conquer Tibet, removing all of its autonomous powers. As such, after reinforcing the frontlines in the Tibetan Plateau, all of the remainder troops that the Lama could muster were sent to Tianshui to aid the defense of the corridor. He also used the Tibetan diaspora in Nepal and Bhutan to seek foreign aid for the Imperial Chinese. Nepalese Tibetans and Bhutanese Tibetans came to Tibet as volunteers and aided the Tibetan manpower situation as well.
Tibetan troops being mobilized for the Chinese Civil War.
However other than internal problems, China had more grievous problems to face. That of Russia and Japan. Russia had not signed the Five Power Treaty and for good reason. The Russians saw the Chinese Civil War as a means of trying to increase their lost power in the Far East. The Russian Ambassador to the Chinese, Nikolai Kudashev was ordered by Tsar Nicholas II to use all delaying means that was considered necessary to delay any sort of diplomatic arrangement between Beijing and St. Petersburg. The Russians in particular were worried about the Chinese Eastern Railway, which was still under the jurisdiction of the Russian government. The Railway ran right inside of Manchuria’s territory and would become involved in the fighting. In fact, the few bombers that Imperial China was in ownership of, had already started to bomb some strategic sites in Manchuria, including a few stations of the Chinese Imperial Railway.
On the 15th of October, 1922, the Russian government rejected an offer from the Hongxian Emperor asking for a diplomatic treaty that would allow the Chinese to fight the civil war without foreign distractions such as Russia. The continued aerial attacks on the Chinese Eastern Railway had alienated the Russians and the Russian government was also quite unhappy with the reported friendly relations between the Ottoman Empire and the Chinese Empire. Considering the Ottoman Empire was a British ally, the Chinese Empire was a de-facto British ally as well, something that was in direct challenge to Russia’s geopolitical interests. This resulted in Russia starting to intrigue with the Warlord of Manchuria, Guo Songling. Guo was all the happier to accept Russian aid, and after giving promises to increase the railway lease, and the to allow a Russian base after the war in one of Manchuria’s ports, the Manchurian warlord was soon swamped with Russian aid in the form of weapons, ammunitions, and food. When the Chinese government found out that there were Russian weapons found in the hands of Manchurian rebels, the government cut off all diplomatic relations in a fit of anger.
Japan on the other hand, had signed the Five Power Treaty. This was almost immediately undermined by the fact that the once lucrative South Manchuria Railway, which had an excess of 140 million dollars in investment from Japan, had fallen by 70% after the Chinese Civil War broke out. The Japanese government was not happy with this massive loss of economic commodities in Manchuria, and on the 29th of October, 1922, demanded that the Chinese government do something to protect Japanese commercial interests in Manchuria. The Chinese government wanted to give false hopes, however the Hongxian Emperor was blunt, and told Japan that as Manchuria was in rebel hands, the protection of the South Manchuria Railway could not be guaranteed. He did offer to compensate Japan, however the sheer amount of money that was being lost for Japan was nearly impossible for the Chinese to compensate in their financial situation.
The Japanese Foreign Minister, Kato Takaaki was not in favor of an intervention in China, stating that it would alienate Britain and the United States of America, both of whom had huge stakes in the region. However, led by Minister of the Interior, Kanetake Oura, who was also a military official, the cabinet voted upon intervention in mainland china in the Chinese Civil War. The decision was met with incredulity in China, and a diplomatic note asking for clarification of the ‘intervention’ was asked.
Frontlines of the Chinese Civil War by the end of 1922
Red - Warlords Alliance
Green - Imperial China
Purple - Provisional Republic of China
No such clarification was forthcoming for the Chinese. Military preparations for an intervention had already commenced, but thankfully for China, it was the death of Prime Minister Okuma Shigenobu and his replacement by Foreign Minister Kato Takaaki that ended any ideas of a full scale Japanese intervention. Kato repealed the order, however in order to placate the Military and the Ministry of Finance, Japanese troops were dispatched to key tactical railway stations of the South Manchurian Railway, whilst he reiterated to China that the Japanese Empire would remain neutral whilst armed. The seeds for the Second Sino-Japanese War were already sown.” The Chinese Civil War: Domestic and Foreign Politics in Perspective © 2005
“One of the key foundations of Mustafa Kemal Pasha and the Liberal Party’s victory in the 1922 General Elections was their promise that they would reform the Ottoman Empire into a general welfare state. And the July Reforms that had been implemented were supposed to be the starter of the economic and social reform plan. However, after said bills had passed through the Ottoman Chamber of Deputies, the Ottoman Government was stuck with the costs and problems of implementation. This meant that the government for the time being had to stall any other reformist ideas that they wished to implement politically, whilst allowing the executive to enforce the new reforms. The Ottoman government could not afford to commit the same mistakes that the Qing Dynasty had committed; rushing into reforms that exploded right in their faces. The ruling political apparatus in the Ottoman Empire, whether they be from the center, right, or left, all recognized this fact, and were all cautious about implementing reforms all over the place.
As the other bills came into implementation, the earlier concerns about too many reforms were taken into account, and softer, yet still significant reforms were undertaken by the Ottoman Empire. After the July Reforms, the Ottoman Empire decided that it would be much better served if they turned their attention to justice and educational reforms, which were softer, and subtler subjects for reform.
True prison reform in the Ottoman Empire was first promulgated by Sultan Abdulmejid II in 1850, when the Imperial Ottoman Penal Code was established as a part of the Ottoman Tanzimat Reforms. Before the Penal Code was adopted, the state of Ottoman prisons was dire. People starved to death inside of the prisons, and the lucky ones that survived clung on to life with desperation only seen in the most anguished of men. Practical reasons aside, the Ottomans also engaged in justice and prison reforms for ideological purposes, as in the late 19th century, a notion that prisons and punishments demonstrated the level of civilization of a country was adopted worldwide.
Charles George Gordon, 'Major Gordon' in Ottoman garbs
In 1858, the first Ottoman prison reform took place under the command of Abdulmejid II and Major Gordon, a British military officer who specialized in the treatment and care of prisoners of war. Gordon had been acquainted with the Ottoman Government due to the Crimean War, and was happy to give his services to the empire, though he complained profusely to his British colleagues about ‘the hellish Turkoman’ prisons. Though Gordon unsuccessfully tried to imitate the British and American system to labor prisons in the Ottoman Empire, he successfully managed to reform the Ottoman criminal system by introducing the four-part classification of criminal behavior into the Ottoman Empire – Accused (Zanli), Misdemeanor (Kabahat Sahiplerine), Petty Offence (Erbab-I cunhaya), and Serious Offense (Murtekib-I cinayet).
Despite these criminal and judicial reforms, the Ottoman Empire during the Tanzimat and Hamidian Era continued to enjoy western level of prisons only in Constantinople. Criminals who were caught by the government often begged to be incarcerated into the Istanbul prisons, which were more like luxurious house arrests compared to the dreadful conditions of other Ottoman prisons throughout the Empire.
The cover of the Imperial Ottoman Penal Code
For all that Abdulhamid II was a cruel despot, one of the more major reforms that he had conducted was the 1880 Prison Regulation. The 1880 law forbid prison guards from torturing the prisoners, and had demanded that each district have at least one jail with the standards meeting the nationwide consensus. This system was implemented by 1889, and though other than Constantinople, prisons were still lacking in quality throughout the empire, the situation became much better after the implementation of the 1880 Code. The 1908-09 Revolution had put further prison and criminal reforms that Abdulhamid II had planned to come to a halt, and subsequent governments under the Second Constitutional Era had neglected justice and criminal reforms, leading to the degradation of the quality of Ottoman prisons and the quality of Ottoman justice. [1]
The new liberal government intended to change that salutary neglect. The Imperial Ottoman Penal Code was updated on the 3rd of October, 1922 to include new offenses and standardized punishments as well. Far more importantly however, the Prison Office within the Ministry of the Interior was made more centralized, with the authority given to the local vilayets stripped, and handed to the Ministry to make it more centralized, and thus easier for the government to implement justice and criminal reforms.
In step with the continuing Ottoman educational reforms (will be expanded down below), the Ottoman Empire introduced the Prisoner’s Curriculum on the 18th of December, 1922, which provided vocational education for technical subjects to prisoners who wanted to take these courses for prisoner rehabilitation. This was then combined together with a semi-labor regime to aid the rehabilitation program that the Ottomans had built. The Ministry of the Interior also announced that it would conduct random checks of several prisons throughout the empire on a random basis to check whether or not prisons met the standards made by the government. This policy of random checks saw around ~80 prison directors fired from their positions throughout the empire, as several rural prisons showed that they did not meet imperial governmental standards. This forced the local vilayet’s and their governors to take the prison reform seriously, and the local governments began to funnel their budgets into prison reform as much as they could.
Ottoman forts such as this one in Hejaz which did not meet governmental standards were shut down
After prison reforms were met, the Ottoman government abolished the two court system of the Ottoman empire entirely. Having separate courts for muslims and non-muslims had been decried a lot of times previously as religiously discriminating and the new government agreed. Religious Courts for Muslims and Christians were allowed to stay and were allowed to have jurisdiction over religious affairs and religious cases in the empire. The new three tiered court system, based on the global example (District Court –State Court-Supreme Court) was adopted for the empire (Sanjak Court – Vilayet Court – Supreme Court). Furthermore, the system of the Serasker, the rough equivalent of police in the Ottoman Empire established by Sultan Mahmud II in 1839 was abolished, and on December 28, 1922, the Imperial Ottoman Gendarmerie was officially established as the police force of the empire and the Imperial Ottoman Firefighter Corps was also established. Previously, the Serasker had taken both duties, which had negated their effectiveness.
The controversial 1922 Education Act made radical changes to the education system of the Ottoman Empire under the command of the new liberal government. The Ottoman Empire till this day is a semi-religious country, where religion plays a very important role in the day to day governance of the empire. As such, creating a secular, yet religious education for the country was a task that required all of the empire’s intellectuals to create.
The Act removed the legal authority of the Ulema, Orthodox and Coptic Churches from the instituted educational system of the empire, in an attempt to create a secular system of education, yet education of the student’s local religion was taken into deep account, and was made compulsory. This policy outraged the conservative elements of society, muslim and non-muslim alike, and many argued that this portion of the act had to be repealed. However, the government was adamant and stood their ground. The authority of the Ulema, and Churches had made schools subject to high local tax rates, and the school boards had become endemic with corruption. That had stunted the growth of educational expansion throughout the empire. Removing the control meant that the high tax rates could be lowered, which would facilitate extra expansion for education in the empire.
The act also made secondary education, which had been optional for students until then, compulsory. The Empire’s literacy rate was still quite low on average compared to the rest of Europe, and the country intended to increase said rates by making education compulsory. Secondary education was made compulsory, at least on a part-time basis. This meant that students aged 14-18 received much better education than before. [2]
Semi-free education was passed through this act as well. Imitating the Islamic Golden Age, in which free education was allowed by madrasas, the Ottoman Empire created the Imperial Education Trust Fund. Families whose children needed the money to fund their education could submit requests in the Ministry of Education. The Ministry of Education would then review the income of the family and the costs of the schools they were trying to enroll in. On that basis the Trust Fund granted a monthly stipend for families to fund their children’s education. This trust fund was largely stimulated and operated by the Education Ministry collecting leftover funds, loans and charities from various religious organizations. The Trust Fund is still in effect to this day.
Students in the Ottoman Empire
The act also initiated the 1922 Ottoman Scholarship program. Students receiving above 85% in the Primary School Exams when they were 13, received at least a 75% scholarship to study in secondary schools. The higher the percentile, the higher the scholarship. This incentivized education for many students who were unwilling to progress into secondary education due to a lack of proper funding. And as such, this was a great success of the 1922 Educational Act.
After the act was passed in October, the government also ordered the Ministry of Education to convene a commission that would be able to compile information on foreign curriculum and compare them with the Ottoman one. The Ottomans wanted the best curriculum that they could formulate to be presented to their students. The countries that were listed to come into supervision for their curriculums were the UK, France, Germany, Austria/Danubia, America and Russia.” The Ottoman Welfare State © 2015
“Discontent was spreading in Greece. Venizelos had been a wildly popular Prime Minister, and his successes were far from small. He had regained the lost territory of 1897, the Cretan Question had been solved, he had managed to unite Cyprus with Greece (Though the island was still technically under Ottoman suzerainty), and the economy of the nation was growing. Perhaps the most discontent of the Greek people were the nationalists. The Enosis of Cyprus meant that nationalists were all the more eager to try and fulfill the irredentist Greek claims of the Megali Idea. The Ottomans, obviously weren’t in favor of such plans. Venizelos, who had cultivated extremely lucrative relations between Athens and Constantinople, was also rather hesitant about endorsing any idea of war with the Ottoman Empire. He was also adamant in his belief that Greek Territories in the Ottoman Empire should not hinder better relations between the two powers.
Cypriots celebrating Enosis
Other political and ideological reasons were also hindering the ruling Liberal Party. Despite the moderation of Venizelos himself, and the mild popularity that the young king George II enjoyed in Greece, many supporters of the Liberal Party were in favor of a republic and the abolition of the monarchy, though not a majority. This alienated the traditional conservatives of Greece. The man had also reigned as Prime Minister for 12 years, and political fatigue was starting to show in the Greek Kingdom. Furthermore, the political question of Cyprus remained. Cyprus was still only a protectorate of Greece, which had been transferred by Britain to the authority of Athens, and technically the island was still under the suzerainty of Abdulmejid II. Greek nationalists wanted the island to take part in the elections directly. However, after the early 1922 Greek Electoral Reform, which re-arranged some seats, and abolished some of the more unnecessary seats in the government and expanded the Hellenic Parliament for more political integration, the island did not receive political representation in the Hellenic Government, and instead the Cyprus Act of 1920 allowed the island to have their own local legislature on the authority of the Hellenic Parliament. Nationalists wanted a re-negotiation of the transfer and to integrate Cyprus directly into Greece, however Venizelos, who did not wish to anger the Ottomans, who had already been distrustful of the transfer of protectorate authority.
Venizelos, was as they say, kicking the problem of the Cypriot integration down the road. In light of this situation, anti-Venizelist parties were starting to grow. Demetrios Gounaris was the most ardent supporter of anti-Venizelism and was a mildly popular politician in Greece at the time. His political party, the Patriotic Party also had a powerful base of operations in the Peloponnese. But the main opposition to Venizelism came from Alexandros Papanastasiou and his newly formed Agricultural Labor Party. The establishment of this party was of great political importance, as the nascent agrarian movement in Greece found a political party willing to support and represent them.
Alexandros Papanastasiou
All of these opposition parties had, despite their secure bases of power, failed to defeat Venizelos and the Liberal Party during the 1918 Greek Legislative Elections. This was because the disunity of the anti-Venizelist tickets made it extremely easy for the Liberal Party to exploit, and the 1918 Elections saw a landslide victory for the Liberals, winning a vast majority of the seats present in the Hellenic Parliament.
The parties had learned from their mistakes. As the 1922 Legislative Elections beckoned forward, these parties, all united by their opposition to the incumbent prime minister and his political party, formed an electoral alliance called the United Opposition. They were of varying political groups, social democrats, conservatives, centrists, socialists, agrarians etc, but they were united by their opposition to venizelism. Papanastasiou, despite Gounaris’s personal distrust of the man, became the face of the United Opposition politically.
When the electoral campaign for the 1922 elections started, they quickly became fierce in nature. The Liberals emphasized their position, riding the populist tide by pointing out their territorial expansion in Cyprus, Crete, and the Tymfala Corridor and Preveza. Economically, the Liberals had better success, as under the Venizelist government, the economy of Greece had boomed. The economic arrangement that the Balkan kingdom enjoyed with both the United Kingdom and the Ottoman Empire had allowed the country to fill its coffers, and service industries in the kingdom had grown due to extra ottoman investment as well.
The united opposition ran on a populist platform, and tried to exploit the political fatigue in the country. They appealed to conservatives about the republicans within the Liberal Party, and they appealed to the socialists and communists by pointing towards Venizelos’s moderation towards the monarchy. Greek republicans, most of whom were in the Liberal camp, found themselves under fire from the conservative and monarchist sections of society when the marriage of George II to Elizabeth of Romania took place with great pomp in Athens, attracting many thousands.
Despite this concerted effort by the opposition, the Liberal Party managed to win a majority in the newly expanded Hellenic Parliament, winning 203 out of 362 seats. This was a much smaller majority than the one that they had commanded in 1918, and the Opposition parties did increase their portion of the parliament.
After his victory, Venizelos recognized the political danger in front of him, as the elections were much closer than what he had assumed it had been. His new cabinet announced a week after the elections that the government would be corresponding with the government in Constantinople about the Cypriot Question and to end its ambiguity once and for all, allowing it to be directly integrated in the Greek state. On the 16th of December, 1922, George Roussos, the new Minister of Foreign Affairs of Greece, traveled to Constantinople and met with Grand Vizier Mustafa Kemal Pasha and Abdulmejid II asking for dialogue on the Cypriot Question. Whilst Abdulmejid II was in favor of allowing Cyprus to go, considering the Greek protectorate as fait accompli, Mustafa Kemal Pasha was more hesitant, and told the Greek Foreign Minister that a series of round table talks between Athens and Constantinople would be required to solve the issue, as Muslim Cypriots still commanded a significant portion of the Cypriot populace.
Roussos had no other choice but to accept that decision from the Ottoman Government and asked Constantinople to inform him and Greece of any date that would be convenient for both sides. After this formal arrangement was finished, George II and his newlywed wife, Elizabeth of Romania arrived in the Ottoman Empire in a small state visit designed by Constantinople and Athens to increase bilateral relations. The royal couple was greeted by the Ottoman Imperial Family and welcomed to the empire by the cabinet. The two would go on for a small tour of the Empire through Constantinople, Smyrna, Angora, Beirut, and Jerusalem before returning to Greece.” A Political History of Greco-Ottoman Relations © 2018
***
[1] – Information from Prison Reform in the Late Ottoman Empire: The State’s Perspectives by Kent. F. Schull.
[2] - based on the 1918 Education Act UK.
Chapter 51: Societal Changes
***
“The Chinese Civil War became much more serious after the Warlords of China began to concentrate their forces against the Imperial Chinese Army. The Battle of Dingxi led by Prince De in Ningxia made sure that the Chinese Mongols managed to create a pincer movement against the Imperial troops in Central China, thus bypassing much of their defenses. Similarly, the Warlords in Sichuan were also starting to invade the northern tracts of lands to group up with Prince De, with the intention of splitting Imperial China into two.
This move from Prince De was however thwarted when Deng Yanda, a young colonel of the Imperial Chinese Army managed to rally the Central Chinese armies and managed to defeat Prince De at the Battle of Tianshui, thus allowing the creation of the Tianshui corridor, which would allow Imperial China to remain connected via land to its western provinces.
Deng Yanda, the hero of the Tianshui Corridor
The Warlords enjoyed greater success in the south, where Republican and anti-monarchical sentiment was most powerful. The warlords managed to invade these territories pretty quickly and were sweeping through the lands. In the north however, the Warlords were not having as much of a good time in the Chinese Civil War. The most modern and most experienced armies of the Imperial Chinese Army were based in Zhili to defend Beijing from attacks from Manchuria, Inner Mongolia and Shanxi. The Warlords had only managed to bloody themselves with no gain as these veteran units of the Chinese army managed to stop any sort of warlord advance on Beijing in several hotly contested battles in the Zhili Campaign.
In Anhui, the military situation was much worse for the Warlords. Without a land connecting with the rest of the Warlords, the Anhui Clique was being pressured by the Imperial Chinese and Provisional Republic, as both sides squeezed into Anhui, with the Anhui Clique being unable to contest both of the powers attacking them. By the end of the year 1922, around half of Anhui was occupied. Of course, the fact that Imperial China and the Provisional Republic were not allied and were enemies made things all the more complicated in Anhui, as the troops devolved into three way battles that left hundreds of thousands killed and wounded, only for the battles to remain inconclusive.
Politically, the 13th Dalai Lama, who was also the Governor of Tibet for the Imperial Chinese Government, had warned Beijing that he would not be able to defend Tibet from any incursion from Sichuan if the vital land connection was lost. The Dalai Lama could raise a lot of troops, but said troops would be useless if the equipment being sent over from Beijing through the railway system did not arrive. Losing the land connection would have had disastrous consequences domestically in Tibet as well. Several monks and higher officials in Tibet were already questioning why they couldn’t just become an independent nation and were plotting against the Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama for his part had come to accept Chinese rule, on the condition that a special autonomy for the region was guaranteed. The position of Governor of Tibet being synonymous with the Dalai Lama was just one of these regional powers given to Tibet. The Lama knew that if the Tianshui corridor was lost, then the internal conspirators within Lhasa and Shigatse would erupt into a general rebellion against the Chinese government. For the Lama, this was bad news, as he also knew that the warlords would sweep in and conquer Tibet, removing all of its autonomous powers. As such, after reinforcing the frontlines in the Tibetan Plateau, all of the remainder troops that the Lama could muster were sent to Tianshui to aid the defense of the corridor. He also used the Tibetan diaspora in Nepal and Bhutan to seek foreign aid for the Imperial Chinese. Nepalese Tibetans and Bhutanese Tibetans came to Tibet as volunteers and aided the Tibetan manpower situation as well.
Tibetan troops being mobilized for the Chinese Civil War.
However other than internal problems, China had more grievous problems to face. That of Russia and Japan. Russia had not signed the Five Power Treaty and for good reason. The Russians saw the Chinese Civil War as a means of trying to increase their lost power in the Far East. The Russian Ambassador to the Chinese, Nikolai Kudashev was ordered by Tsar Nicholas II to use all delaying means that was considered necessary to delay any sort of diplomatic arrangement between Beijing and St. Petersburg. The Russians in particular were worried about the Chinese Eastern Railway, which was still under the jurisdiction of the Russian government. The Railway ran right inside of Manchuria’s territory and would become involved in the fighting. In fact, the few bombers that Imperial China was in ownership of, had already started to bomb some strategic sites in Manchuria, including a few stations of the Chinese Imperial Railway.
On the 15th of October, 1922, the Russian government rejected an offer from the Hongxian Emperor asking for a diplomatic treaty that would allow the Chinese to fight the civil war without foreign distractions such as Russia. The continued aerial attacks on the Chinese Eastern Railway had alienated the Russians and the Russian government was also quite unhappy with the reported friendly relations between the Ottoman Empire and the Chinese Empire. Considering the Ottoman Empire was a British ally, the Chinese Empire was a de-facto British ally as well, something that was in direct challenge to Russia’s geopolitical interests. This resulted in Russia starting to intrigue with the Warlord of Manchuria, Guo Songling. Guo was all the happier to accept Russian aid, and after giving promises to increase the railway lease, and the to allow a Russian base after the war in one of Manchuria’s ports, the Manchurian warlord was soon swamped with Russian aid in the form of weapons, ammunitions, and food. When the Chinese government found out that there were Russian weapons found in the hands of Manchurian rebels, the government cut off all diplomatic relations in a fit of anger.
Japan on the other hand, had signed the Five Power Treaty. This was almost immediately undermined by the fact that the once lucrative South Manchuria Railway, which had an excess of 140 million dollars in investment from Japan, had fallen by 70% after the Chinese Civil War broke out. The Japanese government was not happy with this massive loss of economic commodities in Manchuria, and on the 29th of October, 1922, demanded that the Chinese government do something to protect Japanese commercial interests in Manchuria. The Chinese government wanted to give false hopes, however the Hongxian Emperor was blunt, and told Japan that as Manchuria was in rebel hands, the protection of the South Manchuria Railway could not be guaranteed. He did offer to compensate Japan, however the sheer amount of money that was being lost for Japan was nearly impossible for the Chinese to compensate in their financial situation.
The Japanese Foreign Minister, Kato Takaaki was not in favor of an intervention in China, stating that it would alienate Britain and the United States of America, both of whom had huge stakes in the region. However, led by Minister of the Interior, Kanetake Oura, who was also a military official, the cabinet voted upon intervention in mainland china in the Chinese Civil War. The decision was met with incredulity in China, and a diplomatic note asking for clarification of the ‘intervention’ was asked.
Frontlines of the Chinese Civil War by the end of 1922
Red - Warlords Alliance
Green - Imperial China
Purple - Provisional Republic of China
No such clarification was forthcoming for the Chinese. Military preparations for an intervention had already commenced, but thankfully for China, it was the death of Prime Minister Okuma Shigenobu and his replacement by Foreign Minister Kato Takaaki that ended any ideas of a full scale Japanese intervention. Kato repealed the order, however in order to placate the Military and the Ministry of Finance, Japanese troops were dispatched to key tactical railway stations of the South Manchurian Railway, whilst he reiterated to China that the Japanese Empire would remain neutral whilst armed. The seeds for the Second Sino-Japanese War were already sown.” The Chinese Civil War: Domestic and Foreign Politics in Perspective © 2005
“One of the key foundations of Mustafa Kemal Pasha and the Liberal Party’s victory in the 1922 General Elections was their promise that they would reform the Ottoman Empire into a general welfare state. And the July Reforms that had been implemented were supposed to be the starter of the economic and social reform plan. However, after said bills had passed through the Ottoman Chamber of Deputies, the Ottoman Government was stuck with the costs and problems of implementation. This meant that the government for the time being had to stall any other reformist ideas that they wished to implement politically, whilst allowing the executive to enforce the new reforms. The Ottoman government could not afford to commit the same mistakes that the Qing Dynasty had committed; rushing into reforms that exploded right in their faces. The ruling political apparatus in the Ottoman Empire, whether they be from the center, right, or left, all recognized this fact, and were all cautious about implementing reforms all over the place.
As the other bills came into implementation, the earlier concerns about too many reforms were taken into account, and softer, yet still significant reforms were undertaken by the Ottoman Empire. After the July Reforms, the Ottoman Empire decided that it would be much better served if they turned their attention to justice and educational reforms, which were softer, and subtler subjects for reform.
Prison and Justice Reform in the Ottoman Empire under Mustafa Kemal and the Liberal Government of 1922
True prison reform in the Ottoman Empire was first promulgated by Sultan Abdulmejid II in 1850, when the Imperial Ottoman Penal Code was established as a part of the Ottoman Tanzimat Reforms. Before the Penal Code was adopted, the state of Ottoman prisons was dire. People starved to death inside of the prisons, and the lucky ones that survived clung on to life with desperation only seen in the most anguished of men. Practical reasons aside, the Ottomans also engaged in justice and prison reforms for ideological purposes, as in the late 19th century, a notion that prisons and punishments demonstrated the level of civilization of a country was adopted worldwide.
Charles George Gordon, 'Major Gordon' in Ottoman garbs
In 1858, the first Ottoman prison reform took place under the command of Abdulmejid II and Major Gordon, a British military officer who specialized in the treatment and care of prisoners of war. Gordon had been acquainted with the Ottoman Government due to the Crimean War, and was happy to give his services to the empire, though he complained profusely to his British colleagues about ‘the hellish Turkoman’ prisons. Though Gordon unsuccessfully tried to imitate the British and American system to labor prisons in the Ottoman Empire, he successfully managed to reform the Ottoman criminal system by introducing the four-part classification of criminal behavior into the Ottoman Empire – Accused (Zanli), Misdemeanor (Kabahat Sahiplerine), Petty Offence (Erbab-I cunhaya), and Serious Offense (Murtekib-I cinayet).
Despite these criminal and judicial reforms, the Ottoman Empire during the Tanzimat and Hamidian Era continued to enjoy western level of prisons only in Constantinople. Criminals who were caught by the government often begged to be incarcerated into the Istanbul prisons, which were more like luxurious house arrests compared to the dreadful conditions of other Ottoman prisons throughout the Empire.
The cover of the Imperial Ottoman Penal Code
For all that Abdulhamid II was a cruel despot, one of the more major reforms that he had conducted was the 1880 Prison Regulation. The 1880 law forbid prison guards from torturing the prisoners, and had demanded that each district have at least one jail with the standards meeting the nationwide consensus. This system was implemented by 1889, and though other than Constantinople, prisons were still lacking in quality throughout the empire, the situation became much better after the implementation of the 1880 Code. The 1908-09 Revolution had put further prison and criminal reforms that Abdulhamid II had planned to come to a halt, and subsequent governments under the Second Constitutional Era had neglected justice and criminal reforms, leading to the degradation of the quality of Ottoman prisons and the quality of Ottoman justice. [1]
The new liberal government intended to change that salutary neglect. The Imperial Ottoman Penal Code was updated on the 3rd of October, 1922 to include new offenses and standardized punishments as well. Far more importantly however, the Prison Office within the Ministry of the Interior was made more centralized, with the authority given to the local vilayets stripped, and handed to the Ministry to make it more centralized, and thus easier for the government to implement justice and criminal reforms.
In step with the continuing Ottoman educational reforms (will be expanded down below), the Ottoman Empire introduced the Prisoner’s Curriculum on the 18th of December, 1922, which provided vocational education for technical subjects to prisoners who wanted to take these courses for prisoner rehabilitation. This was then combined together with a semi-labor regime to aid the rehabilitation program that the Ottomans had built. The Ministry of the Interior also announced that it would conduct random checks of several prisons throughout the empire on a random basis to check whether or not prisons met the standards made by the government. This policy of random checks saw around ~80 prison directors fired from their positions throughout the empire, as several rural prisons showed that they did not meet imperial governmental standards. This forced the local vilayet’s and their governors to take the prison reform seriously, and the local governments began to funnel their budgets into prison reform as much as they could.
Ottoman forts such as this one in Hejaz which did not meet governmental standards were shut down
After prison reforms were met, the Ottoman government abolished the two court system of the Ottoman empire entirely. Having separate courts for muslims and non-muslims had been decried a lot of times previously as religiously discriminating and the new government agreed. Religious Courts for Muslims and Christians were allowed to stay and were allowed to have jurisdiction over religious affairs and religious cases in the empire. The new three tiered court system, based on the global example (District Court –State Court-Supreme Court) was adopted for the empire (Sanjak Court – Vilayet Court – Supreme Court). Furthermore, the system of the Serasker, the rough equivalent of police in the Ottoman Empire established by Sultan Mahmud II in 1839 was abolished, and on December 28, 1922, the Imperial Ottoman Gendarmerie was officially established as the police force of the empire and the Imperial Ottoman Firefighter Corps was also established. Previously, the Serasker had taken both duties, which had negated their effectiveness.
Ottoman Education Reform under Mustafa Kemal and the Liberal Government of 1922.
The controversial 1922 Education Act made radical changes to the education system of the Ottoman Empire under the command of the new liberal government. The Ottoman Empire till this day is a semi-religious country, where religion plays a very important role in the day to day governance of the empire. As such, creating a secular, yet religious education for the country was a task that required all of the empire’s intellectuals to create.
The Act removed the legal authority of the Ulema, Orthodox and Coptic Churches from the instituted educational system of the empire, in an attempt to create a secular system of education, yet education of the student’s local religion was taken into deep account, and was made compulsory. This policy outraged the conservative elements of society, muslim and non-muslim alike, and many argued that this portion of the act had to be repealed. However, the government was adamant and stood their ground. The authority of the Ulema, and Churches had made schools subject to high local tax rates, and the school boards had become endemic with corruption. That had stunted the growth of educational expansion throughout the empire. Removing the control meant that the high tax rates could be lowered, which would facilitate extra expansion for education in the empire.
The act also made secondary education, which had been optional for students until then, compulsory. The Empire’s literacy rate was still quite low on average compared to the rest of Europe, and the country intended to increase said rates by making education compulsory. Secondary education was made compulsory, at least on a part-time basis. This meant that students aged 14-18 received much better education than before. [2]
Semi-free education was passed through this act as well. Imitating the Islamic Golden Age, in which free education was allowed by madrasas, the Ottoman Empire created the Imperial Education Trust Fund. Families whose children needed the money to fund their education could submit requests in the Ministry of Education. The Ministry of Education would then review the income of the family and the costs of the schools they were trying to enroll in. On that basis the Trust Fund granted a monthly stipend for families to fund their children’s education. This trust fund was largely stimulated and operated by the Education Ministry collecting leftover funds, loans and charities from various religious organizations. The Trust Fund is still in effect to this day.
Students in the Ottoman Empire
After the act was passed in October, the government also ordered the Ministry of Education to convene a commission that would be able to compile information on foreign curriculum and compare them with the Ottoman one. The Ottomans wanted the best curriculum that they could formulate to be presented to their students. The countries that were listed to come into supervision for their curriculums were the UK, France, Germany, Austria/Danubia, America and Russia.” The Ottoman Welfare State © 2015
“Discontent was spreading in Greece. Venizelos had been a wildly popular Prime Minister, and his successes were far from small. He had regained the lost territory of 1897, the Cretan Question had been solved, he had managed to unite Cyprus with Greece (Though the island was still technically under Ottoman suzerainty), and the economy of the nation was growing. Perhaps the most discontent of the Greek people were the nationalists. The Enosis of Cyprus meant that nationalists were all the more eager to try and fulfill the irredentist Greek claims of the Megali Idea. The Ottomans, obviously weren’t in favor of such plans. Venizelos, who had cultivated extremely lucrative relations between Athens and Constantinople, was also rather hesitant about endorsing any idea of war with the Ottoman Empire. He was also adamant in his belief that Greek Territories in the Ottoman Empire should not hinder better relations between the two powers.
Cypriots celebrating Enosis
Other political and ideological reasons were also hindering the ruling Liberal Party. Despite the moderation of Venizelos himself, and the mild popularity that the young king George II enjoyed in Greece, many supporters of the Liberal Party were in favor of a republic and the abolition of the monarchy, though not a majority. This alienated the traditional conservatives of Greece. The man had also reigned as Prime Minister for 12 years, and political fatigue was starting to show in the Greek Kingdom. Furthermore, the political question of Cyprus remained. Cyprus was still only a protectorate of Greece, which had been transferred by Britain to the authority of Athens, and technically the island was still under the suzerainty of Abdulmejid II. Greek nationalists wanted the island to take part in the elections directly. However, after the early 1922 Greek Electoral Reform, which re-arranged some seats, and abolished some of the more unnecessary seats in the government and expanded the Hellenic Parliament for more political integration, the island did not receive political representation in the Hellenic Government, and instead the Cyprus Act of 1920 allowed the island to have their own local legislature on the authority of the Hellenic Parliament. Nationalists wanted a re-negotiation of the transfer and to integrate Cyprus directly into Greece, however Venizelos, who did not wish to anger the Ottomans, who had already been distrustful of the transfer of protectorate authority.
Venizelos, was as they say, kicking the problem of the Cypriot integration down the road. In light of this situation, anti-Venizelist parties were starting to grow. Demetrios Gounaris was the most ardent supporter of anti-Venizelism and was a mildly popular politician in Greece at the time. His political party, the Patriotic Party also had a powerful base of operations in the Peloponnese. But the main opposition to Venizelism came from Alexandros Papanastasiou and his newly formed Agricultural Labor Party. The establishment of this party was of great political importance, as the nascent agrarian movement in Greece found a political party willing to support and represent them.
Alexandros Papanastasiou
All of these opposition parties had, despite their secure bases of power, failed to defeat Venizelos and the Liberal Party during the 1918 Greek Legislative Elections. This was because the disunity of the anti-Venizelist tickets made it extremely easy for the Liberal Party to exploit, and the 1918 Elections saw a landslide victory for the Liberals, winning a vast majority of the seats present in the Hellenic Parliament.
The parties had learned from their mistakes. As the 1922 Legislative Elections beckoned forward, these parties, all united by their opposition to the incumbent prime minister and his political party, formed an electoral alliance called the United Opposition. They were of varying political groups, social democrats, conservatives, centrists, socialists, agrarians etc, but they were united by their opposition to venizelism. Papanastasiou, despite Gounaris’s personal distrust of the man, became the face of the United Opposition politically.
When the electoral campaign for the 1922 elections started, they quickly became fierce in nature. The Liberals emphasized their position, riding the populist tide by pointing out their territorial expansion in Cyprus, Crete, and the Tymfala Corridor and Preveza. Economically, the Liberals had better success, as under the Venizelist government, the economy of Greece had boomed. The economic arrangement that the Balkan kingdom enjoyed with both the United Kingdom and the Ottoman Empire had allowed the country to fill its coffers, and service industries in the kingdom had grown due to extra ottoman investment as well.
The united opposition ran on a populist platform, and tried to exploit the political fatigue in the country. They appealed to conservatives about the republicans within the Liberal Party, and they appealed to the socialists and communists by pointing towards Venizelos’s moderation towards the monarchy. Greek republicans, most of whom were in the Liberal camp, found themselves under fire from the conservative and monarchist sections of society when the marriage of George II to Elizabeth of Romania took place with great pomp in Athens, attracting many thousands.
Despite this concerted effort by the opposition, the Liberal Party managed to win a majority in the newly expanded Hellenic Parliament, winning 203 out of 362 seats. This was a much smaller majority than the one that they had commanded in 1918, and the Opposition parties did increase their portion of the parliament.
After his victory, Venizelos recognized the political danger in front of him, as the elections were much closer than what he had assumed it had been. His new cabinet announced a week after the elections that the government would be corresponding with the government in Constantinople about the Cypriot Question and to end its ambiguity once and for all, allowing it to be directly integrated in the Greek state. On the 16th of December, 1922, George Roussos, the new Minister of Foreign Affairs of Greece, traveled to Constantinople and met with Grand Vizier Mustafa Kemal Pasha and Abdulmejid II asking for dialogue on the Cypriot Question. Whilst Abdulmejid II was in favor of allowing Cyprus to go, considering the Greek protectorate as fait accompli, Mustafa Kemal Pasha was more hesitant, and told the Greek Foreign Minister that a series of round table talks between Athens and Constantinople would be required to solve the issue, as Muslim Cypriots still commanded a significant portion of the Cypriot populace.
Roussos had no other choice but to accept that decision from the Ottoman Government and asked Constantinople to inform him and Greece of any date that would be convenient for both sides. After this formal arrangement was finished, George II and his newlywed wife, Elizabeth of Romania arrived in the Ottoman Empire in a small state visit designed by Constantinople and Athens to increase bilateral relations. The royal couple was greeted by the Ottoman Imperial Family and welcomed to the empire by the cabinet. The two would go on for a small tour of the Empire through Constantinople, Smyrna, Angora, Beirut, and Jerusalem before returning to Greece.” A Political History of Greco-Ottoman Relations © 2018
***
[1] – Information from Prison Reform in the Late Ottoman Empire: The State’s Perspectives by Kent. F. Schull.
[2] - based on the 1918 Education Act UK.
These reforms are good. Though I don’t like the developments happening in China, Russia’s meddling is never good and the inevitable Second Sino-Japanese War is horrifying to think about.
The Chinese civil war is going to be interesting for future events that's for sure.
I think the Greek political parties will be facing some big shack-ups
Also Some questions
1: will there be any diplomatic talks about the Ottoman British and French borders around Libya (perhaps the British and French will give away some sand only to kick themselves later when oil is discovered)
2: if Greece unites the Cyprus Crete territories, what party will these regions and people vote for
by the time of this second war China should be United if a bit war torn, so generally in a batter position to resist Japan
not really. Most of the oil fields are in ottoman hands in libya anyway. Only the southwestern fields in French Algeria which were handed to Italian libya otl have the extra oil fields and represent around 9% of the oil production of libya today. A big proportion, but one that can be lost.
conservatives mostly.
Imperial 1914
Banned
What the situation in Libya and what's the situation in Germany specialty it's military modernization/reforms?
Libya's situation has already been detailed in one of the chapters. Germany is amidst an economic crisis and political crisis.
Surely the ottoman government cant take another loss of territory hit (all be it just confirmation) Liberals used that to attack the CUP to only continue it?
Well technically the ottomans don't really control Cyprus. The only part of the OE that has a say in Cyprus is the Sultan.
Imperial 1914
Banned
Are the Ottomans capable of defending their borders if Russia or a Balkan league or other major power declared wat on them?
the balkan league was defeated in 1915 so.........
Russia is a more difficult proposition. If it is against the Russian Caucasian Army only then yes. If the entire Russian Southern Military districts reinforces, then no. Which is why the Ottomans allied with the British Empire.
