I have a hard time seeing Dogra's as a dynasty, surviving. Not even as figureheads.
Osman Reborn; The Survival of Ottoman Democracy [An Ottoman TL set in the 1900s]
- Thread starter Sarthak
- Start date
ahmedali
Banned
Literally because he is the most hated prince among all the princes of the princely states
Where the Dogra's the one's who tried taxing everything but to the point of almost depopulating areas ? It's hard to think of their supporters except the very elite of the state and bits of their army.
Yes. To the point it is said that the only thing not taxed under Dogra's was air. (death, marriage, even the taxes themselves everything was taxed)
2/5th of Kashmiris died under their reign.
the reason why I am saying I have a hard time seeing them continue being rulers of Kashmir even as a figurehead.
I would rather have democracy.
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Not familiar with either of these cases.
All I know that Indonesia is a democracy? And south Africa had apartheid and is a democracy.
I think he means subnational monarchies (like Zulus in SA and Yogjakarta in Indonesia).
ahmedali
Banned
Indonesia has maintained a monarchy, Yogyakarta, because it is the sultanate that supported independence from the Netherlands and became an autonomous kingdom within the Republic of Indonesia.
South Africa has monarchies where there are kings crowned by tribes and historical regions such as Zulu and others
It can be done with the princely states
Ok.
But in the case of Kashmir. Dogra's as a dynasty won't survive and neither do I see anybody replacing Dogra's as the monarchs of Kashmir. So I don't think there can be an autonomous kingdom when there is no king. (An autonomous region may happen but I am disputing the king part).
Nizams of Hyderabad have no relationship with Kashmir. Kashmir and Hyderabad are distant lands seperated by a great gulf of identity, culture, language and whatever you can name. They are located at opposite ends of the subcontinent. It's like saying some dynasty in Moldova would have inherited rule of Finnish people. It makes little sense.
By late 1940s Kashmiri political scene was dominated by socialist-secular party known as National Conference with its roots going back to political activism of 1920's. So, political consciousness of Kashmir had matured enough that there would have been no place for anachronistic government like monarchy. Kashmir was a socialist state in OTL and It would have in all probabilities and Timelines formed a socialist state. There is no monarchial future for kashmir.
Chapter 57: Negotiation and Compromise
Chapter 57: Negotiation and Compromise
“The occupation of Prussia and the Ruhr by Russia and Belgium respectively had gone on for more than a year by April 1924, and the people living in those areas were starting to tire of it by the turn of 1924. They were angry at having to live under foreign boots, with every facet of their lives controlled by St. Petersburg and Brussels. This often led to a passive resistance movement within Germany advocating for the withdrawal of Russo-Belgian troops. By this point, even Danubia, which had remained neutral on the issue of Russian occupation, began to hiss out warnings to St. Petersburg regarding their rather overhanded methods of gaining the reparations that they wanted. Even America, which normally stayed out of European politics and affairs began to make diplomatic protests in Russia and Belgium, for their trade was also being adversely affected due to the occupation. France and Britain were also normal adversaries against the occupation and continued to lodge continual protests against the occupation.
Russian troops in Konigsberg
Belgium became the first to fold, and the Belgian ambassador to Paris informed the French government that should they provide a proper loaning or bond service to Berlin which would ensure the steady flow of reparations, then the Belgian army would withdraw from the Ruhr post-haste. The upkeep of so many troops was draining the Belgians dry after all, and they wouldn’t want their economy to suffer for reparations. France and Britain were ecstatic at this diplomatic chink that arose in the Russo-Belgian occupation and jumped on it. The British government also contacted the Russian government and asked for the Russian government to agree to the same points. The Russians refused initially. Nicholas II was adamant that he was going to get the reparations that he believed that Russia rightfully earned. Prussia had been basically deindustrialized under the Russian occupation, and that had gone ahead due to his orders. Tensions started to rise again, but this time, the Habsburgs intervened and Prince Louis of Lichtenstein, the Minister-President of the Danubian Empire decided that a meeting in Vienna was necessary for the great powers to negotiate an end to the occupation once and for all. Britain, Belgium, and France agreed, and so did Germany but Russia remained obstinate, at least until the Russian Duma voted in favor of joining the meeting. Even the Russian economy was having troubles maintaining over 150,000 troops being active in foreign soil during peacetime and if a diplomatic solution could be made, the Duma urged Nicholas II to accept. Nicholas II was furious and nearly vetoed the resolution that had passed in the Duma, but in the end, with some cajoling and influence from his wife, he finally agreed and sent delegations to Vienna.
Milan Hodza, the Danubian Minister of Foreign Affairs
German Chancellor Rudolf Heinze sent Alfred Hugenberg, his Foreign Minister to Vienna, whilst William Adamson of the UK, Edmond Lefebvre du Prey of France and Mikhail Tereshchenko of the Russian Empire met with one another with the Danubian Foreign Minister Milan Hodza playing host to all of them. Tensions in the Vienna Conference were high, and all sides were intent on getting the best out of the meeting. The Germans demanded that the Russians and Belgians withdraw their troops, whilst Belgium and Russia reiterated their position that they would do so only if the full reparations were paid by the German government. This went on back and forth for some time until the British delegation led by William Adamson and the Danubian Delegation led by Milan Hodza decided to come up with a compromise that would suit both sides. The end result was the Anglo-Austrian Adamson-Hodza plan which stipulated that the Russians and Belgians would withdraw whilst reparations would begin at around ~750 million marks during the first year whilst the number would gradually grow to around ~1.5 billion marks after five years after which the reparations would be fully paid to the parties involved. The Reichsbank was also going to be reorganized under Anglo-French-Russian supervision and the sources of the reparation money was allowed to include transportation, excise, and custom taxes. Finally, the German government was also loaned around 148 million pounds primarily through the London Stock Exchange and Vienna Stock Exchange bond issues. [1]
The Russians – hesitantly or not – agreed to the plan and so did the Belgians, and the first troops began to withdraw by the end of April 1924, thus signaling an end to the Occupation of Prussia and the Ruhr, and bringing full military control of their borders back in German hands.
In the end, this had been a great victory for Heinze personally. He had successfully delivered the German people a stable government for the first time since 1918, and the economy was slowly being restructured to provide for a proper economic reconstruction. And finally, the withdrawal of Belgian and Russian troops proved to be his coup de grace for the German populace. Seeing the opportunity unfold before his eyes he went to his ally and President Ernst Schorst asking for the dissolution of the Reichstag and for new federal elections to be called.
Heinze’s position as Chancellor was a somewhat anomaly considering his party only had the third largest seats in the Reichstag, but the slow death of the Communist Party after Luxemburg’s disastrous Premiership now meant that the Deutsche Und Soziale Partei (DUSP), Heinze’s party was in prime position to become the primary benefactor of the dissolution of the German Communist Party. Schorst, ever the ally of Heinze, agreed to the idea and new federal elections were called. The primary benefactor of the elections remained as Heinze predicted it to be, his own party. But two other contenders also arose in the face of the new elections.
Zentrum grew under the command and leadership of Wilhelm Marx. A liberal centrist political party, the civilian stability that had been achieved by Heinze had managed to propel voters towards Zentrum, which in propelled the party to become the second largest political party within the German Reichstag. The second and far more dangerous contender was the rise of the German Guildist Party. The Guildists used the growing nationalism in the country against its neighbors to its advantage and coalesced around the nationalist vote. The Guildists had won several seats in local elections from the moment they were organized as a political body, but the 1924 Federal Elections became the first federal elections that they contested. The recently liberated Ruhr and Prussian population voted overwhelmingly in favor of the Guildist Party, having become bitter after a year of foreign occupation. But in overall terms, the Guildist Party, whilst doing extremely good for a new party in the elections, still controlled only a fraction of the total seats in the country, and the DUSP and Zentrum parties came to an agreement with Zentrum providing confidence and supply to the DUSP government, allowing Heinze to gain an overwhelming majority in the Reichstag, allowing him to retain his position as Chancellor of Germany.
For the next few years, the German nation would rebuild and prosper, having achieved economic stability and social stability under the good chancellorship of Heinze, however, subsequent events in 1927 and 1928 would force the hand of the German populace, as the specter of Guidlism continued to grow.” 1924 – 1928: The German Republican Rise and Fall © 2016
“The Democratic Italian Worker’s Republic or the DIWR was a slowly evolving nation in 1924. Antonio Gramsci, despite his young age proved to be a competent chairman, despite the various challenges to his reign. When the Italian Civil War ended, the DIWR came across a great problem as it tried to transition from a war communist economy to a peaceful communist economy. No one had any sort of idea on what needed to be done for a peaceful transition of the economy and peasant disturbances became commonplace due to this line of questioning on part of the Italian government.
Antonio Gramsci
As the outside world embargoed the Italians, a dangerous fuel, transport, and food crisis enveloped Italy in 1920 which forced the All-Italian Socialist Congress (AISC) to requisition food by applying a food tax to the Italian agricultural produce, which was then fixed in advance at a lower level than the previous grain quotas, allowing the peasants to retain any surplus, and this ingenious system of food requisitioning eventually made the food crisis seep away whilst also restoring confidence in the Italian agrarian economy.
Gramsci also recognized that full communism as it were being quite impossible for a country like Italy, so stepped in capitalism for quite some time and that a middle step towards full communism was required. This was economically found in the form of the Central Italian Economic Policy (CIEP). The central feature of the CIEP was the right of the individual peasants to sell their products freely, locally and nationally to private traders, direct to other individuals or to state agencies. Trade was soon resumed on a nation scale with most retail trade in private ownership, though under heavy state supervision and guidance. However, despite the perceived retreat to capitalism, all of the large scale industries remained in state ownership, and their services were controlled and streamlined by the government in Rome directly. Gramsci made it clear that what he was doing, was only because it was pragmatic. With the aid of the CIEP, the economy of Italy stabilized and grew back up, even if trade was embargoed with France, Spain, Danubia, Germany, Britain and Russia. The only foreign countries that had limited trade with the Italians remained to be Portugal, the Nordic nations, Switzerland and to an extent, Egypt and the Ottoman Empire. [2]
Gramsci was paranoid however, and he saw the population discrepancies of his nation against his enemies – France and Danubia – with great distrust. The French had a population of around ~41 million, whilst the Danubians had around ~51 million. In contrast, the Italians only had a population of around ~38 million people. The Chairman as a result began to encourage a heavy handed pro-natal policy that basically forced Italian couples to have at least two or three children during his years. This was a paranoia that would later catch up to him in the form of his political enemies.
The industrialization of Italy under Gramsci
Whatever his faults, Gramsci kept his connection with Communist Democracy and the 1924 All-Italian Socialist Congress Elections allowed Gramsci to retain his position as his faction managed to retain its general majority in the Italian Congress. But enemies were starting to form in the image of Amadeo Bordiga, a rising star within the Italian Communist Party and known for his left communism views and anti-democratic views. He was an Italian irredentist as well, and was known for nationalistic views against both France and the Austrians too. For Bordiga, the party was the very social brain of the proletariat whose task was not to seek majority support and take part in bourgeoisie elections, but to concentrate working for a revolution in which course it would take full control and abolish all figments of capitalism. Bordiga himself identified with the dictatorship of the proletariat and fought hard against the Italian Congress’s decision to continue holding elections. [3]
Bordiga was supported in his ‘Bordigan Faction’ by other rising stars within the Italian Congress such as Umberto Terracini and Bruno Fortichiari, who also shared his rather hardline attitudes towards the general Italian Congress. More worrying however, to Gramsci, was that the three men were vocal about their goals, which included the abolition of the Papacy and the Holy See in Italy. This was a dangerous move that Gramsci recognized immediately. The country was still overwhelmingly Catholic and any removal of the Holy See would have a huge domestic and international backlash that would make the entire regime untenable. The Papacy had been happy to stay within Italy with the new treaty they had signed in 1919, and had been instrumental in keeping the domestic peace in Italy. Gramsci quickly fought down these public statements by making public statements of his own in which he shared his views of peaceful coexistence with the Papacy and the Holy See, whilst he also quietly reassured the Christian Communists within the Italian Congress.
Amadeo Bordiga
Antonio Gramsci quickly recognized that he would have to gain new allies to make sure that his hold over the Italian Congress was secure and that the Bordigan Faction was kept at bay. This saw Gramsci ally with other influential Italian communists such as Palmiro Togliatti and Ruggero Grieco. Both Togliatti and Ruggero were also quite understandably displeased with the rather radical and hardline attitudes of the Bordigan faction, which they deemed to be extremely dangerous for the development of the Italian state and both of them vowed to fight against it with all the influence that they wielded in the Italian Congress. This growing fractionalization of the Italian Congress would lay the stage for the Italian Great Terror of 1930 – 34 as the Bordigan and Gramscan Factions faced each other in a true political game of tug of war.” The Rise of Bordigan Italy 1932 – 1946 © 2011
“As a result of the Ottoman Policy of expansion into the Middle East, Yemen was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire following their conquest of the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt in 1538. However, many areas of Yemen remained under the control of the Imams of Yemen, known as the Zayidi Imams or the Rassid Imams. The Ottomans and the Yemenis fought with one another in a low level war for over a century before the Rassids ousted the Ottomans in 1630 and expanded their control to cover all of what is today considered to be Greater Yemen. But in the early 19th century, the Ottomans regained control over Yemen after a deal was struck with the declining Rassids which allowed them to keep their position as Imam of Yemen.
The idea of Greater Yemen extended in those green lands.
In spite of this deal, Ottoman Yemen remained an unstable region within the Ottoman Empire, that was only controlled through the brute strength of the sword, and eventually the gun. The assassination of Sultan Mehmed VI was a high point for Yemenite nationalistic affairs and nationalistic movements, but the subsequent attack by the Ottomans devastated Yemen, with most of its tribal structure destroyed, and the surrounding hills and mountains becoming smoldering ruins as the Ottomans unleashed their pent up wrath on the far flung vilayet.
During the Attack of 1915 as it came to be known in Yemen, the Yemeni Imams, led by Imam Yahya Muhammad Hamid ed-Din supported the Ottoman invasion, for he himself was shocked at the assassination of the Islamic Caliph, but the over handedness of the Ottoman attack and revenge did not sit well with the Yemeni Imam. The Ottomans for their part began to see that the Yemenite Imam was wavering in his newfound loyalty to the Ottoman state and the 1911 Ottoman-Yemeni treaty was amended so that the Imams of Yemen had their Ottoman subsidy increased from 25,000 Lira a year to 32,000 Lira a year. But the Ottomans also broke several provisions of the 1911 Treaty. The treaty had stipulated that the Ottoman Civil Law was not implementable and enforceable in Yemen with the local Islamic Law being put in place for Amran, Kawkaban, Dhamar, Yarim, Ibb, Hajjah and Hajjur. The Ottomans abrogated this in 1919 and had the entirety of the province placed under Ottoman Civil Law instead of the local Islamic Law, angering Imam Yahya. Yahya then lodged a diplomatic protest against this course of action with the Ottoman government, but this protest went unheard of.
Imam Yahya
Despite these hiccups, the Ottoman government did try to their full efforts to stabilize Yemen after the brutal attacks. Though the tribal autonomy enjoyed by many was destroyed, former tribal leaders were allowed to regain political prominence by giving them administrative positions, the administration of the vilayet was streamlined, and fair taxes were levied. Several public construction projects to facilitate the improvement of health, economic and educational standards of the Vilayet took place. But the very situation in Yemen was such that pleasing one influential political worker in Yemen meant alienating other and this created massive political instability in Yemen.
The Ottomans feared that the idea of Arab nationalism, being propagated by the Arab Republic would soon catch influence within Yemen, like what was happening in some minor sectors of Iraq, but unlike Iraq, the Yemenites rejected the idea and notion of Arab Nationalism, for they had fought against Ottoman authority for centuries, and the dissidents against Ottoman rule in Yemen instead embraced the ideology of Yemeni Nationalism, instead calling for a return to the days of Great Yemen. This was a problem for the Ottomans, as unlike Arab nationalism, which while taken up by some influential intellectuals in Iraq and Syria had no popular support in the Ottoman Arab regions, but the idea of Greater Yemen remained popular with the Yemenite populace, who had a long history of fighting against Ottoman rule.
Furthermore, Yemen was one of the largest producers of Coffee in the world. The Yemeni Qishr was one of the Ottoman Empire’s staple exports to the rest of the world. The Qishr was in general a sweet tasting coffee drink with a distinct Yemeni and Hejazi tinge to it, with local ingredients being mashed together for the drink. It was in wide demand within Europe, as the middle eastern tinge to the drink was considered exotic at the time. Losing this large source of money for the Ottomans could not be tolerated.
Qishr
Mustafa Kemal Pasha and the Ottoman cabinet at the time decided to pre-empt any sort of nationalistic rebellion and sent word to Imam Yahya asking for a renewed pledge of loyalty to the Ottoman Empire. This was taken by Yahya as the final insult (even if it wasn’t in fact an insult), and rebelled. He raised his personal Imam retinues, and the remnants of the anti-Ottoman tribes and withdrew into the highlands of Yemen, deciding to fight a major war against the Ottomans for Yemeni independence. The Yemeni Revolt of 1924 – 1926 had started.
The local Ottoman garrison under the command of Sinan Mustafa Pasha was ordered by the Ottoman government to use only the bare minimum necessary to make sure that the general populace did not turn completely against the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans were undergoing a renaissance of the Ottomanism ideology and having a revolt become successful would be a failure of the Ottomanism ideology that subsequent Ottoman governments had managed to cultivate.
Imam Yahya immediately made a mistake however, when he crossed the infamous Purple Line that demarcated the border between Ottoman Yemen and the British Aden Protectorate. The rather depopulated border in northern Aden Protectorate made Yahya believe that any sort of tactical retreat in the region would not be seen by the British, but the growing threat that the Arab republic posed on the British control of the middle east had forced the British to increase their patrols and garrison in the region, and a British garrison caught Yahya and his rebels near Al-Wadeeah. The rebels managed to go away but not before fire was exchanged by the British garrison and the rebels. This forced the British government to increase their garrison in the Aden Protectorate and provide the Ottomans with the much needed logistical support in the isolated hills and mountains of Yemen. As the Vilayet of Yemen descended in violence for the next two years, the Ottoman government was now desperately moving against Yemeni nationalism.
Though the revolt would be the last Yemeni revolt against Ottoman rule and full ottoman rule was restored in 1926, Yemeni nationalism would perhaps become the most troublesome nationalism for the Ottoman Empire in the modern era. Arab Nationalism was discredited in 1946, and the European minorities of the empire had slowly been fine with regionalist politics. But Yemeni nationalism continued to fester within Yemen so much so that the 2012 Yemeni Independence Referendum would result in 44.67% of the population voting in favor of independence. Yemen remains to this day a very disquiet part of the Ottoman Empire, mainly tracing its identity politics from the 1924 revolt.” The Zaidi Revolt of 1924 – 1926: Its Background, Its Course and Its Aftermath © 2019 [4]
“The Elections of 1924 in the British Raj made it certain that India would become a dominion. Even the warring political parties in India all agreed on that basic principle. The Indian people had shown great loyalty to London in the Great War, allowing the total withdrawal of around 72,000 of the 75,000 British troops in India, far higher than the 30,000 estimated by the British War Ministry, and the subsequent political support had resulted in the British Raj becoming a dominion in all but name. The executive was handled exclusively by Britain but the judiciary and legislative powers of the Raj had been devolved after the war to be completely in the hands of the indian people itself.
Secretary of the Assembly James Grigg, though a British loyalist despite having been one of the rare Anglo immigrants to India at the time, decided that he would go ahead with negotiations and with support from Jinnah and Sastri, broached the topic with the British government. The British Secretary of State for India, Graham White, a Liberal, was sympathetic to Indian plights, and did open the topic in the British cabinet and subsequently the British Parliament, but the issue quickly became a divisive topic in the British Parliament. Other than the Liberals and to an extent Labour, no party in the British Parliament supported the idea of an Indian Dominion. Many believed that too much power had been given to the Indians already. The Conservatives, now led by Neville Chamberlain after Austen Chamberlain decided to give up the leadership after the conservative failure that was the elections of 1923, refused on behalf of the Conservatives to entertain the idea. The British Constitutionalist Party, controlling 21 seats and the Irish Parliamentary Party, controlling 40 seats also emphatically disagreed on the notion. The Constitutionalists Were Center-Right Christian Democrats, so their disapproval of the idea was foregone, but the IPP’s disapproval came as a surprise. Bernard Forbes, and the 8th Earl of Granard, now leading the IPP after John Dillion’s death in early 1924, was staunchly opposed to the idea, deeming that Ireland’s development had to take first priority over a colony.
Within the Liberals themselves, the idea had a lot of opposition. Liberal MP Winston Churchill and First Lord of the Admiralty resigned his cabinet position in protest and crossed the hall to join the Conservative Benches. Similarly, 8 other Liberal politicians stated that they would not vote in favor of any sort of Indian Dominions. Whilst it is easy to forget today, believing that the Conservatives were once the British Imperialist Party, the Liberals were just as imperialist as their conservative opponents. But the Liberals were more of a ‘White Man’s Burden’ kind of imperialist rather than the conquer and take attitude of the Conservative during the era of colonial empires.
Out of the 259 MPs that the Liberals had in parliament, only 227 stated that they would vote in favor of a resolution favoring an Indian dominion. Out of the 131 Labour MPs in coalition with the Liberals, only 112 stated that they would vote in favor of an indian dominion bill. This meant that only 339 MPs would vote in favor, and the general majority in Parliament was 354, creating a problem for the British government. Finally, a compromise was called for by Prime Minister McKenna who retracted his position on the Indian Dominion, stating that a commission that would last 6 years would be created on the issue of an Indian Dominion, to find if an Indian Dominion was possible or not.
This returned a small majority to the Liberal-Labour Coalition as 356 MPs voted in favor of this compromise and as a result, the Royal Commission of Indian Repatriation (RCIR) was founded with hesitant British government support. The first Royal Commissioner of the RCIR was chosen to be Shapurji Saklatvala. Saklatvala was renowned for being the first Labour politician of Indian heritage to become a Labour MP. He was also known to be a supporter of Indian Dominionship, though he promised to be a fair commissioner, looking out for British interests as well when he took up the position. The Commission’s work was going to be simple – (1) hash out a suitable compromise between the INC and AIML along either partition or unification lines, (2) prepare a proper constitutional body to write up a constitution for India, (3) conduct economic and socio-political surveys to find whether or not India was capable of dominionship, and (4) find a proper compromise with all of the political forces in India in regards to the issue.
Shapurji Saklatvala
There was fears that this long-term policy would be met with anger by Indian nationalists, who wanted something to happen immediately, and in the short term. As a result, to placate the Indian nationalist opinion for the short-term, Sir William Birdwood, the Governor-General of India and Marshal of the British Army announced the official policy of Indianization of the British Raj Armies. Out of the 200 annual seats opened in Dehradun Military Academy and the 400 annual seats opened in Bombay Military Academy, 120 and 240 seats respectively were reserved by the British Raj’s government for prospective Indian officers who wished to be commissioned as VCO’s in the British Indian Army.
Though the topic had been tenuous and polarized, Britain had unwittingly made the first step towards the creation of the Dominion of India, Dominion of Pakistan and Dominion of Bengal.” The Indian Dominions © 2013
[1] – Based on the Dawes plan of otl.
[2] – CIEP information from The Economic Transformation of the Soviet Union 1913 – 1945
[3] – Information from Bordiga’s Wikipedia page
[4] – Some information in this section of the chapter is from Yemeni Opposition to Ottoman Rule: An Overview by Abdol Rauh Yaccob
“The occupation of Prussia and the Ruhr by Russia and Belgium respectively had gone on for more than a year by April 1924, and the people living in those areas were starting to tire of it by the turn of 1924. They were angry at having to live under foreign boots, with every facet of their lives controlled by St. Petersburg and Brussels. This often led to a passive resistance movement within Germany advocating for the withdrawal of Russo-Belgian troops. By this point, even Danubia, which had remained neutral on the issue of Russian occupation, began to hiss out warnings to St. Petersburg regarding their rather overhanded methods of gaining the reparations that they wanted. Even America, which normally stayed out of European politics and affairs began to make diplomatic protests in Russia and Belgium, for their trade was also being adversely affected due to the occupation. France and Britain were also normal adversaries against the occupation and continued to lodge continual protests against the occupation.
Russian troops in Konigsberg
Belgium became the first to fold, and the Belgian ambassador to Paris informed the French government that should they provide a proper loaning or bond service to Berlin which would ensure the steady flow of reparations, then the Belgian army would withdraw from the Ruhr post-haste. The upkeep of so many troops was draining the Belgians dry after all, and they wouldn’t want their economy to suffer for reparations. France and Britain were ecstatic at this diplomatic chink that arose in the Russo-Belgian occupation and jumped on it. The British government also contacted the Russian government and asked for the Russian government to agree to the same points. The Russians refused initially. Nicholas II was adamant that he was going to get the reparations that he believed that Russia rightfully earned. Prussia had been basically deindustrialized under the Russian occupation, and that had gone ahead due to his orders. Tensions started to rise again, but this time, the Habsburgs intervened and Prince Louis of Lichtenstein, the Minister-President of the Danubian Empire decided that a meeting in Vienna was necessary for the great powers to negotiate an end to the occupation once and for all. Britain, Belgium, and France agreed, and so did Germany but Russia remained obstinate, at least until the Russian Duma voted in favor of joining the meeting. Even the Russian economy was having troubles maintaining over 150,000 troops being active in foreign soil during peacetime and if a diplomatic solution could be made, the Duma urged Nicholas II to accept. Nicholas II was furious and nearly vetoed the resolution that had passed in the Duma, but in the end, with some cajoling and influence from his wife, he finally agreed and sent delegations to Vienna.
Milan Hodza, the Danubian Minister of Foreign Affairs
German Chancellor Rudolf Heinze sent Alfred Hugenberg, his Foreign Minister to Vienna, whilst William Adamson of the UK, Edmond Lefebvre du Prey of France and Mikhail Tereshchenko of the Russian Empire met with one another with the Danubian Foreign Minister Milan Hodza playing host to all of them. Tensions in the Vienna Conference were high, and all sides were intent on getting the best out of the meeting. The Germans demanded that the Russians and Belgians withdraw their troops, whilst Belgium and Russia reiterated their position that they would do so only if the full reparations were paid by the German government. This went on back and forth for some time until the British delegation led by William Adamson and the Danubian Delegation led by Milan Hodza decided to come up with a compromise that would suit both sides. The end result was the Anglo-Austrian Adamson-Hodza plan which stipulated that the Russians and Belgians would withdraw whilst reparations would begin at around ~750 million marks during the first year whilst the number would gradually grow to around ~1.5 billion marks after five years after which the reparations would be fully paid to the parties involved. The Reichsbank was also going to be reorganized under Anglo-French-Russian supervision and the sources of the reparation money was allowed to include transportation, excise, and custom taxes. Finally, the German government was also loaned around 148 million pounds primarily through the London Stock Exchange and Vienna Stock Exchange bond issues. [1]
The Russians – hesitantly or not – agreed to the plan and so did the Belgians, and the first troops began to withdraw by the end of April 1924, thus signaling an end to the Occupation of Prussia and the Ruhr, and bringing full military control of their borders back in German hands.
In the end, this had been a great victory for Heinze personally. He had successfully delivered the German people a stable government for the first time since 1918, and the economy was slowly being restructured to provide for a proper economic reconstruction. And finally, the withdrawal of Belgian and Russian troops proved to be his coup de grace for the German populace. Seeing the opportunity unfold before his eyes he went to his ally and President Ernst Schorst asking for the dissolution of the Reichstag and for new federal elections to be called.
Zentrum grew under the command and leadership of Wilhelm Marx. A liberal centrist political party, the civilian stability that had been achieved by Heinze had managed to propel voters towards Zentrum, which in propelled the party to become the second largest political party within the German Reichstag. The second and far more dangerous contender was the rise of the German Guildist Party. The Guildists used the growing nationalism in the country against its neighbors to its advantage and coalesced around the nationalist vote. The Guildists had won several seats in local elections from the moment they were organized as a political body, but the 1924 Federal Elections became the first federal elections that they contested. The recently liberated Ruhr and Prussian population voted overwhelmingly in favor of the Guildist Party, having become bitter after a year of foreign occupation. But in overall terms, the Guildist Party, whilst doing extremely good for a new party in the elections, still controlled only a fraction of the total seats in the country, and the DUSP and Zentrum parties came to an agreement with Zentrum providing confidence and supply to the DUSP government, allowing Heinze to gain an overwhelming majority in the Reichstag, allowing him to retain his position as Chancellor of Germany.
For the next few years, the German nation would rebuild and prosper, having achieved economic stability and social stability under the good chancellorship of Heinze, however, subsequent events in 1927 and 1928 would force the hand of the German populace, as the specter of Guidlism continued to grow.” 1924 – 1928: The German Republican Rise and Fall © 2016
“The Democratic Italian Worker’s Republic or the DIWR was a slowly evolving nation in 1924. Antonio Gramsci, despite his young age proved to be a competent chairman, despite the various challenges to his reign. When the Italian Civil War ended, the DIWR came across a great problem as it tried to transition from a war communist economy to a peaceful communist economy. No one had any sort of idea on what needed to be done for a peaceful transition of the economy and peasant disturbances became commonplace due to this line of questioning on part of the Italian government.
Antonio Gramsci
As the outside world embargoed the Italians, a dangerous fuel, transport, and food crisis enveloped Italy in 1920 which forced the All-Italian Socialist Congress (AISC) to requisition food by applying a food tax to the Italian agricultural produce, which was then fixed in advance at a lower level than the previous grain quotas, allowing the peasants to retain any surplus, and this ingenious system of food requisitioning eventually made the food crisis seep away whilst also restoring confidence in the Italian agrarian economy.
Gramsci also recognized that full communism as it were being quite impossible for a country like Italy, so stepped in capitalism for quite some time and that a middle step towards full communism was required. This was economically found in the form of the Central Italian Economic Policy (CIEP). The central feature of the CIEP was the right of the individual peasants to sell their products freely, locally and nationally to private traders, direct to other individuals or to state agencies. Trade was soon resumed on a nation scale with most retail trade in private ownership, though under heavy state supervision and guidance. However, despite the perceived retreat to capitalism, all of the large scale industries remained in state ownership, and their services were controlled and streamlined by the government in Rome directly. Gramsci made it clear that what he was doing, was only because it was pragmatic. With the aid of the CIEP, the economy of Italy stabilized and grew back up, even if trade was embargoed with France, Spain, Danubia, Germany, Britain and Russia. The only foreign countries that had limited trade with the Italians remained to be Portugal, the Nordic nations, Switzerland and to an extent, Egypt and the Ottoman Empire. [2]
Gramsci was paranoid however, and he saw the population discrepancies of his nation against his enemies – France and Danubia – with great distrust. The French had a population of around ~41 million, whilst the Danubians had around ~51 million. In contrast, the Italians only had a population of around ~38 million people. The Chairman as a result began to encourage a heavy handed pro-natal policy that basically forced Italian couples to have at least two or three children during his years. This was a paranoia that would later catch up to him in the form of his political enemies.
The industrialization of Italy under Gramsci
Whatever his faults, Gramsci kept his connection with Communist Democracy and the 1924 All-Italian Socialist Congress Elections allowed Gramsci to retain his position as his faction managed to retain its general majority in the Italian Congress. But enemies were starting to form in the image of Amadeo Bordiga, a rising star within the Italian Communist Party and known for his left communism views and anti-democratic views. He was an Italian irredentist as well, and was known for nationalistic views against both France and the Austrians too. For Bordiga, the party was the very social brain of the proletariat whose task was not to seek majority support and take part in bourgeoisie elections, but to concentrate working for a revolution in which course it would take full control and abolish all figments of capitalism. Bordiga himself identified with the dictatorship of the proletariat and fought hard against the Italian Congress’s decision to continue holding elections. [3]
Bordiga was supported in his ‘Bordigan Faction’ by other rising stars within the Italian Congress such as Umberto Terracini and Bruno Fortichiari, who also shared his rather hardline attitudes towards the general Italian Congress. More worrying however, to Gramsci, was that the three men were vocal about their goals, which included the abolition of the Papacy and the Holy See in Italy. This was a dangerous move that Gramsci recognized immediately. The country was still overwhelmingly Catholic and any removal of the Holy See would have a huge domestic and international backlash that would make the entire regime untenable. The Papacy had been happy to stay within Italy with the new treaty they had signed in 1919, and had been instrumental in keeping the domestic peace in Italy. Gramsci quickly fought down these public statements by making public statements of his own in which he shared his views of peaceful coexistence with the Papacy and the Holy See, whilst he also quietly reassured the Christian Communists within the Italian Congress.
Amadeo Bordiga
Antonio Gramsci quickly recognized that he would have to gain new allies to make sure that his hold over the Italian Congress was secure and that the Bordigan Faction was kept at bay. This saw Gramsci ally with other influential Italian communists such as Palmiro Togliatti and Ruggero Grieco. Both Togliatti and Ruggero were also quite understandably displeased with the rather radical and hardline attitudes of the Bordigan faction, which they deemed to be extremely dangerous for the development of the Italian state and both of them vowed to fight against it with all the influence that they wielded in the Italian Congress. This growing fractionalization of the Italian Congress would lay the stage for the Italian Great Terror of 1930 – 34 as the Bordigan and Gramscan Factions faced each other in a true political game of tug of war.” The Rise of Bordigan Italy 1932 – 1946 © 2011
“As a result of the Ottoman Policy of expansion into the Middle East, Yemen was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire following their conquest of the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt in 1538. However, many areas of Yemen remained under the control of the Imams of Yemen, known as the Zayidi Imams or the Rassid Imams. The Ottomans and the Yemenis fought with one another in a low level war for over a century before the Rassids ousted the Ottomans in 1630 and expanded their control to cover all of what is today considered to be Greater Yemen. But in the early 19th century, the Ottomans regained control over Yemen after a deal was struck with the declining Rassids which allowed them to keep their position as Imam of Yemen.
The idea of Greater Yemen extended in those green lands.
In spite of this deal, Ottoman Yemen remained an unstable region within the Ottoman Empire, that was only controlled through the brute strength of the sword, and eventually the gun. The assassination of Sultan Mehmed VI was a high point for Yemenite nationalistic affairs and nationalistic movements, but the subsequent attack by the Ottomans devastated Yemen, with most of its tribal structure destroyed, and the surrounding hills and mountains becoming smoldering ruins as the Ottomans unleashed their pent up wrath on the far flung vilayet.
During the Attack of 1915 as it came to be known in Yemen, the Yemeni Imams, led by Imam Yahya Muhammad Hamid ed-Din supported the Ottoman invasion, for he himself was shocked at the assassination of the Islamic Caliph, but the over handedness of the Ottoman attack and revenge did not sit well with the Yemeni Imam. The Ottomans for their part began to see that the Yemenite Imam was wavering in his newfound loyalty to the Ottoman state and the 1911 Ottoman-Yemeni treaty was amended so that the Imams of Yemen had their Ottoman subsidy increased from 25,000 Lira a year to 32,000 Lira a year. But the Ottomans also broke several provisions of the 1911 Treaty. The treaty had stipulated that the Ottoman Civil Law was not implementable and enforceable in Yemen with the local Islamic Law being put in place for Amran, Kawkaban, Dhamar, Yarim, Ibb, Hajjah and Hajjur. The Ottomans abrogated this in 1919 and had the entirety of the province placed under Ottoman Civil Law instead of the local Islamic Law, angering Imam Yahya. Yahya then lodged a diplomatic protest against this course of action with the Ottoman government, but this protest went unheard of.
Imam Yahya
Despite these hiccups, the Ottoman government did try to their full efforts to stabilize Yemen after the brutal attacks. Though the tribal autonomy enjoyed by many was destroyed, former tribal leaders were allowed to regain political prominence by giving them administrative positions, the administration of the vilayet was streamlined, and fair taxes were levied. Several public construction projects to facilitate the improvement of health, economic and educational standards of the Vilayet took place. But the very situation in Yemen was such that pleasing one influential political worker in Yemen meant alienating other and this created massive political instability in Yemen.
The Ottomans feared that the idea of Arab nationalism, being propagated by the Arab Republic would soon catch influence within Yemen, like what was happening in some minor sectors of Iraq, but unlike Iraq, the Yemenites rejected the idea and notion of Arab Nationalism, for they had fought against Ottoman authority for centuries, and the dissidents against Ottoman rule in Yemen instead embraced the ideology of Yemeni Nationalism, instead calling for a return to the days of Great Yemen. This was a problem for the Ottomans, as unlike Arab nationalism, which while taken up by some influential intellectuals in Iraq and Syria had no popular support in the Ottoman Arab regions, but the idea of Greater Yemen remained popular with the Yemenite populace, who had a long history of fighting against Ottoman rule.
Furthermore, Yemen was one of the largest producers of Coffee in the world. The Yemeni Qishr was one of the Ottoman Empire’s staple exports to the rest of the world. The Qishr was in general a sweet tasting coffee drink with a distinct Yemeni and Hejazi tinge to it, with local ingredients being mashed together for the drink. It was in wide demand within Europe, as the middle eastern tinge to the drink was considered exotic at the time. Losing this large source of money for the Ottomans could not be tolerated.
Qishr
Mustafa Kemal Pasha and the Ottoman cabinet at the time decided to pre-empt any sort of nationalistic rebellion and sent word to Imam Yahya asking for a renewed pledge of loyalty to the Ottoman Empire. This was taken by Yahya as the final insult (even if it wasn’t in fact an insult), and rebelled. He raised his personal Imam retinues, and the remnants of the anti-Ottoman tribes and withdrew into the highlands of Yemen, deciding to fight a major war against the Ottomans for Yemeni independence. The Yemeni Revolt of 1924 – 1926 had started.
The local Ottoman garrison under the command of Sinan Mustafa Pasha was ordered by the Ottoman government to use only the bare minimum necessary to make sure that the general populace did not turn completely against the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans were undergoing a renaissance of the Ottomanism ideology and having a revolt become successful would be a failure of the Ottomanism ideology that subsequent Ottoman governments had managed to cultivate.
Imam Yahya immediately made a mistake however, when he crossed the infamous Purple Line that demarcated the border between Ottoman Yemen and the British Aden Protectorate. The rather depopulated border in northern Aden Protectorate made Yahya believe that any sort of tactical retreat in the region would not be seen by the British, but the growing threat that the Arab republic posed on the British control of the middle east had forced the British to increase their patrols and garrison in the region, and a British garrison caught Yahya and his rebels near Al-Wadeeah. The rebels managed to go away but not before fire was exchanged by the British garrison and the rebels. This forced the British government to increase their garrison in the Aden Protectorate and provide the Ottomans with the much needed logistical support in the isolated hills and mountains of Yemen. As the Vilayet of Yemen descended in violence for the next two years, the Ottoman government was now desperately moving against Yemeni nationalism.
Though the revolt would be the last Yemeni revolt against Ottoman rule and full ottoman rule was restored in 1926, Yemeni nationalism would perhaps become the most troublesome nationalism for the Ottoman Empire in the modern era. Arab Nationalism was discredited in 1946, and the European minorities of the empire had slowly been fine with regionalist politics. But Yemeni nationalism continued to fester within Yemen so much so that the 2012 Yemeni Independence Referendum would result in 44.67% of the population voting in favor of independence. Yemen remains to this day a very disquiet part of the Ottoman Empire, mainly tracing its identity politics from the 1924 revolt.” The Zaidi Revolt of 1924 – 1926: Its Background, Its Course and Its Aftermath © 2019 [4]
“The Elections of 1924 in the British Raj made it certain that India would become a dominion. Even the warring political parties in India all agreed on that basic principle. The Indian people had shown great loyalty to London in the Great War, allowing the total withdrawal of around 72,000 of the 75,000 British troops in India, far higher than the 30,000 estimated by the British War Ministry, and the subsequent political support had resulted in the British Raj becoming a dominion in all but name. The executive was handled exclusively by Britain but the judiciary and legislative powers of the Raj had been devolved after the war to be completely in the hands of the indian people itself.
Secretary of the Assembly James Grigg, though a British loyalist despite having been one of the rare Anglo immigrants to India at the time, decided that he would go ahead with negotiations and with support from Jinnah and Sastri, broached the topic with the British government. The British Secretary of State for India, Graham White, a Liberal, was sympathetic to Indian plights, and did open the topic in the British cabinet and subsequently the British Parliament, but the issue quickly became a divisive topic in the British Parliament. Other than the Liberals and to an extent Labour, no party in the British Parliament supported the idea of an Indian Dominion. Many believed that too much power had been given to the Indians already. The Conservatives, now led by Neville Chamberlain after Austen Chamberlain decided to give up the leadership after the conservative failure that was the elections of 1923, refused on behalf of the Conservatives to entertain the idea. The British Constitutionalist Party, controlling 21 seats and the Irish Parliamentary Party, controlling 40 seats also emphatically disagreed on the notion. The Constitutionalists Were Center-Right Christian Democrats, so their disapproval of the idea was foregone, but the IPP’s disapproval came as a surprise. Bernard Forbes, and the 8th Earl of Granard, now leading the IPP after John Dillion’s death in early 1924, was staunchly opposed to the idea, deeming that Ireland’s development had to take first priority over a colony.
Within the Liberals themselves, the idea had a lot of opposition. Liberal MP Winston Churchill and First Lord of the Admiralty resigned his cabinet position in protest and crossed the hall to join the Conservative Benches. Similarly, 8 other Liberal politicians stated that they would not vote in favor of any sort of Indian Dominions. Whilst it is easy to forget today, believing that the Conservatives were once the British Imperialist Party, the Liberals were just as imperialist as their conservative opponents. But the Liberals were more of a ‘White Man’s Burden’ kind of imperialist rather than the conquer and take attitude of the Conservative during the era of colonial empires.
Out of the 259 MPs that the Liberals had in parliament, only 227 stated that they would vote in favor of a resolution favoring an Indian dominion. Out of the 131 Labour MPs in coalition with the Liberals, only 112 stated that they would vote in favor of an indian dominion bill. This meant that only 339 MPs would vote in favor, and the general majority in Parliament was 354, creating a problem for the British government. Finally, a compromise was called for by Prime Minister McKenna who retracted his position on the Indian Dominion, stating that a commission that would last 6 years would be created on the issue of an Indian Dominion, to find if an Indian Dominion was possible or not.
This returned a small majority to the Liberal-Labour Coalition as 356 MPs voted in favor of this compromise and as a result, the Royal Commission of Indian Repatriation (RCIR) was founded with hesitant British government support. The first Royal Commissioner of the RCIR was chosen to be Shapurji Saklatvala. Saklatvala was renowned for being the first Labour politician of Indian heritage to become a Labour MP. He was also known to be a supporter of Indian Dominionship, though he promised to be a fair commissioner, looking out for British interests as well when he took up the position. The Commission’s work was going to be simple – (1) hash out a suitable compromise between the INC and AIML along either partition or unification lines, (2) prepare a proper constitutional body to write up a constitution for India, (3) conduct economic and socio-political surveys to find whether or not India was capable of dominionship, and (4) find a proper compromise with all of the political forces in India in regards to the issue.
Shapurji Saklatvala
There was fears that this long-term policy would be met with anger by Indian nationalists, who wanted something to happen immediately, and in the short term. As a result, to placate the Indian nationalist opinion for the short-term, Sir William Birdwood, the Governor-General of India and Marshal of the British Army announced the official policy of Indianization of the British Raj Armies. Out of the 200 annual seats opened in Dehradun Military Academy and the 400 annual seats opened in Bombay Military Academy, 120 and 240 seats respectively were reserved by the British Raj’s government for prospective Indian officers who wished to be commissioned as VCO’s in the British Indian Army.
Though the topic had been tenuous and polarized, Britain had unwittingly made the first step towards the creation of the Dominion of India, Dominion of Pakistan and Dominion of Bengal.” The Indian Dominions © 2013
[1] – Based on the Dawes plan of otl.
[2] – CIEP information from The Economic Transformation of the Soviet Union 1913 – 1945
[3] – Information from Bordiga’s Wikipedia page
[4] – Some information in this section of the chapter is from Yemeni Opposition to Ottoman Rule: An Overview by Abdol Rauh Yaccob
Imperial 1914
Banned
Would the modern ottoman empire had major issues with Yemen becoming independent if the people in Yemen voted for independence?
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not really. Put out sure, but it was a government sanctioned referendum
I'd imagine it comes down to ka-ching.
In 1920s, Ottoman Empire needs that sweet coffee money. Post-oil money Ottoman Empire? Yemen is free to saw off their country and go swimming away in the Indian Ocean for all they care.
In 1920s, Ottoman Empire needs that sweet coffee money. Post-oil money Ottoman Empire? Yemen is free to saw off their country and go swimming away in the Indian Ocean for all they care.