Osman Reborn; The Survival of Ottoman Democracy [An Ottoman TL set in the 1900s]
- Thread starter Sarthak
- Start date
Something doesn't quite seem right with the deaths and casualty progression charts when combined. I think it might be that the Ottomans had 250,000 casualties while the Bulgarians lost 1,000,000, but even combining the two segments of the Deaths chart gives the Bulgarians 33.3% of deaths to the Ottomans 35.3, which doesn't seem to match the Bulgarians having 4 times more casualties, even given civilian deaths assuming roughly equal deaths/wounded ratios (I think that ~750,000 civilians being wounded/killed would have been mentioned in the story, which is the figure drawn if all 250,000 Ottomans casualties were military combined with the Ottomans take 35.3% of the deaths which would translate to ~230,000 Bulgarian military deaths with 33.3% of military deaths being Bulgarian, which leaves ~760,000 unaccounted for). Additionally, you'd think a figure like 2 in 20 would be simplified into 1 in 10 on a chart like this.
But it is nice to see it laid out like this, it makes the figures mentioned much more clear.
It's actually all casualty figures which means it includes reported wounds, captives, interned civilians etc which accounts for the extremely high ratio for Bulgaria especially considering their civil war.
Just being pedantic.
2 out of 20 can be simplified to 1 out of 10. 😛😛
Chapter 62: Slow Descent
Chapter 62: Slow Descent
Excerpts from Modern Irish History by R. F. Foster
“……. The Premiership of John Dillon as Premier of Ireland was marked with no little amounts of controversy and problems. William O’Brien’s economic agenda had been a great way to industrialize Ireland, and his reconciliatory policies with the Ulster Unionists had seen some amount of progress made in Northern and Southern Irish relations within the United Kingdom. Prime Minister McKenna was personally in favor of reconciliation, and the unification of both south and north under a single Home Rule government. This want was driven by more than just moralism, but pragmatism. McKenna knew that there was a good amount of Nationalists who wanted to use Home Rule as a stepping stone to Dominionship, which was de-facto Independence from the United Kingdom. The inclusion of Ulster, a fervent Unionist territory would increase the political share of Unionist seats and voters in Ireland, and as such make Dominionship a very hard goal for the Irish Nationalists. McKenna and O’Brien had made some good ground on political reconciliation of the north and south, but Dillon’s agenda broke through most of that.
John Dillon
John Dillon had always been on the fringes of Moderate Irish Nationalism, known for being just as anti-British as he was pro-British on many policies. This contradictions of the man were then involved in his Irish Language Plan. Home Rule had given the Irish Parliament powers over school curricula and education systems as long as they remained within the British Board’s Limitations and jurisdictions. Dillon thus engaged in an aggressive policy of re-Gaelicizing Ireland. As per the 1911 Census, around 11.7% of Ireland could speak Irish and Dillon in particular wanted to re-Irishize Ireland in his own words. His education policy pushed for more and more Irish subjects to be included. Moderate Unionists within Ireland weren’t against the policy per se – as most Unionists believed that they were both Irish and British – but they did not find Dillon’s overt focus on the language to be amenable, as they believed that the man was forgoing economic and political agendas in favor of his language policy. They bemoaned that they man had forgone O’Brien’s policy of political reconciliation with the north and his widespread welfare economic reforms in Ireland. Dillon himself was subject to controversy after the dissatisfaction of the parties became known as his third son, Edward Mathew Dillon (born in 1900) was found to be involved in several illicit smuggling rackets. A raid by the Royal Dublin Constabulary had seen the man arrested, and this tarnished Dillon’s own political record, and embarrassed by his son’s actions, Dillon resigned as Premier for Ireland and was succeeded after a party vote by Joseph Devlin.
Joseph Devlin was himself a popular man, known admirably as Wee Joe by the public. He was a fluent and powerful orator, and he knew how to write catchy articles in political newspapers to further his political agenda within the populace. But Devlin had been forced to deal with the political fallout of Dillon’s rather disastrous premiership, and the political situation was not conductive to a new Premier. Devlin managed to overturn much of Dillon’s radical Re-Irishizing policies. Devlin understood that as an Irishman such a policy needed to be made, but he also attacked the haphazard and impatient manner in which it was conducted. Furthermore, Devlin decided to seek reconciliation with the North under the aid of McKenna once again, but this time he was rebuffed. The Northern Ulster Unionists were becoming more and more wary of the Irish Parliamentary Party. Redmond & O’Brien had been supportive of reconciliation, but Dillon had thrown away all the political capital the two previous Irish Premier had created for the IPP and Devlin was unable to convince the Ulster Unionist Party – which controlled the Northern Irish Parliament – otherwise regarding the fact.
Within this politically divisive atmosphere, another party began to coalesce as a proper fighting party. Sir Horace Curzon Plunkett had formed the Irish Dominion League in 1913, which called for an Irish Dominion, but Plunkett later repealed this position after Home Rule was implemented and formed the Irish Co-Operative Party which was a moderate nationalist & Unionist Party. It supported ‘absolute autonomy’ for Ireland whilst remaining a part of the United Kingdom. This in essentiality was what most moderate Unionists and Nationalists wanted, and many supporters of the Irish Nationalists and Irish Unionists began to slowly and steadily desert their previous political factions in favor of the Cooperative Party. Plunkett was in favor of a United Irish Home Rule Region and in favor of moderate Irish nationalism and unionism. This was exemplified by his economic policies, which was a mixture of leftist and rightist economic policies which later on became distinctly centrist. The Cooperative Party also gained the assistance of several powerful Irish media outlets like the Irish Statesman and the Times, which favored the Cooperative Party’s overall moderate approach on things. Plunkett himself was also a Christian Socialist, and he managed to win a major political victory in 1921, when the Cooperative and Irish Labour Party agreed on an electoral pact allowing for several Irish constituencies to be un-fought between the two parties. Another political victory came in 1922 when by-elections saw three members of his party join the Irish House of Commons. The next three years so another 8 members of the party elected through by-elections.
Sir Horace Plunkett
But Plunkett was of course an old man, and he decided that he would no longer be Party Leader in 1921, and instead he became the Party Chairman instead. This coincided with the first Westminister MP from Ireland being a part of the Cooperative Party as a member of the IPP defected. Plunkett’s leadership was replaced by the leadership of Stephen L. Gwynn. Gwynn was an important figure within the party who had joined up in 1917. He knew how to speak Irish, French & English, whilst he also knew the basics of Scottish Gaelic, and was heavily involved in the Irish Literary Revival. He had been a vocal critic of Dillon’s language policy, as he pointed out that the Irish-Scots and incoming English immigrants had no need to learn Irish and that the government could not impose such demands on them. Indeed, this facet of Dillon’s language policy had irritated Westminster as well. Gwynn was also a man who knew how to create a publicity stunt and he used such stunts to further his own political agendas. His pro-Home Rule stance endeared him to the nationalists whilst his loyal service in the British Army in the 7th Leinster Regiment within the 16th Irish Division during the Great War as a Colonel had endeared him to unionists as well. He was the perfect successor to the moderate Plunkett, as a result.
When the 1925 Irish General Elections rolled around, everyone held their breaths for the result. Both the IPP and Irish Unionists fared poorly as many of their politicians had defected over to the Irish Cooperative Party over the past few years. The Cooperatives had also defanged some of the more radical nationalists and unionists with the support of middling major politicians such as Michael Collins and W.T Cosgrave coming in favor of the Cooperative Party. Nevertheless, Devlin’s personal charm came through with the elections, and the IPP managed to win a plurality of the total seats in the Irish House of Commons, though they lost their majority. This gave Gwynn an opening to use against the IPP and he quickly began to engage in discussions with the Irish Unionist Party under the leadership of the Marquess of Londonderry. Together, if the Cooperatives and Unionists formed a coalition government, they would have an absolute majority. Londonderry agreed to the idea of a coalition government, and a week after the elections were concluded the coalition was publically announced that Gwynn succeeded Devlin as the Premier for Ireland after the elections, allowing the Cooperative and Unionist Parties to break the IPP hold on Irish politics after several decades.
Gwynn’s policy as soon as he came to power was to continue with O’Brien’s old popular economic reforms which was leading the way for an organic industrial development of Ireland, and he soon turned his eyes north to the Northern Irish 5 Counties, so that reconciliation could pave the way to Irish unification. Again, this policy was supported by British Prime Minister McKenna who aided Gwynn in arranging a meeting with the UUP leader Hugh MacDowell Pollock. Pollock had succeeded Craig as the leader of the UUP and the Premier for Northern Ireland in 1924 after Craig’s death. It was fortunate for Gwynn that Pollock was one of the more moderate members of the UUP and the Orange Order as Pollock was willing to see Ulster as a part of the Irish Home Rule government under certain concessions that could be given for the Ulster Unionists. Pollock had also purged the UUP of most of its hardline members which gave Gwynn a lot of room to maneuver when negotiating with the UUP. Gwynn returned to the Irish Commons and much to the displeasure of Sinn Fein and some members of the IPP managed to pass a resolution through the Commons that gave the right to any county in the Home Rule Region of Ireland to return to direct rule under Westminster if the electorate of the county voted for it. This in essentiality was the concession Gwynn was willing to give to the Ulster Unionists, and Pollock agreed to it. With support and backing from McKenna, it was announced on September 29, 1925 that the northern 5 counties would be rejoining with Home Rule Ireland under the concessions granted to it on January 1, 1926, wherein 16 extra seats would be allocated for members from Northern Ireland in the Irish House of Commons. The 10 Year Long Irish Question had come to a solution at last. But unwittingly Gwynn had fallen into McKenna’s political trap without even realizing it. Of the 16 new MPs for the Irish Commons, 15 were Unionists, which brought the Unionists to control a third of the entire Irish Commons……..”
Excerpts from The Ottoman Fleet: A History by Inhalik Bey
“…….The Ottoman Army had long been the branch of the armed force that had received the most attention from the government and the people. It was well balanced and had proven itself in the battle against Serbia and Bulgaria and Italy. On the other side, the Ottoman Navy had grown from an old and depilated force in 1909 to a moderately respectable navy by 1925, with a fleet of 4 Battleships, 10 Light Cruisers, 28 Destroyers, 10 Submarines, 9 Minesweepers and 7 Minelayers. The navy was moderately modern and 4 Heavy Cruisers and 6 Destroyers were designated the join the navy by the end of 1930, swelling the numbers of the navy by quite a bit as well. But increasing the numbers of the navy was not the only problem that the Ottomans had to contend with in the navy. The Ottomans had to make sure that their training regime for the navy remained as intensive as their army to make sure that the crew remained professional in their outlook.
Ottoman Naval College in Beirut
The Imperial Ottoman Naval College was concentrated in Constantinople, Smyrna and Salonika, but beginning in 1925 that began to change as new branch colleges were opened up in Beirut, Basrah, Jeddah, Durres and Sinope to make sure that the amount of naval graduates increased throughout the nation, whilst also allowing for greater career opportunities within the Ottoman Navy. The entire naval college curriculum was overhauled by the government as well. Following a mixture of British and Old Ottoman Naval teaching techniques the 1925 Ottoman Naval Curricula added topics like Fitness Tests, Extra-Team Building Exercises and Language Classes to make sure that the graduates for the navy had more skills underneath their belt. Furthermore, the practice system of the Ottoman Navy changed, as constant up to date training was stressed by Mehmet Ihsan Bey, with gunnery and maneuvering being stressed and emphasized by the Ottoman Naval Ministry. An entire gunnery range was built near Igneada in Thrace on the Black Sea Coast and the Strymonian Gulf on the Aegean Coast to make sure that regular exercises and drills were held to make for more effective crews. Of course for the safety of the crew and ships, the Ottomans used dud shells when practicing in these gunnery and maneuvering drills.
The Ottoman Navy also updated its uniforms to be more cost-effective and not only for just the show. The Plate OIN11 class uniforms were completely abolished by the Ministry of Naval Affairs, and furthermore, the Plate OIN13 class uniforms were made to be the standard uniform for the Ottoman Naval officers. For higher officers, the Ottoman Navy abolished the extremely extravagant OIN12 class uniforms and replaced them with the new version of the OIN12 Class uniform, which proved to be more practical and effective in wartime. These changes to the Ottoman Naval Uniforms made the Ottomans have a more standardized uniform style for the navy, in line with the major powers of the day. The only thing that really distinguished the Ottoman Navy was that the Ottoman Imperial Navy Officers wore a red Fez, as well as a pillbox cap or Shako made in white and black gold top versions.
The OIN12 Uniform in the Ottoman Navy
source
Further reforms saw the establishment of the Ottoman Naval Air Arm (ONAA) as a part of the Ottoman Navy, boasting a total of 48 warplanes for the Navy. The Ottomans, who were considered to be semi-pioneers in aerial warfare during the early era of the warplane, knew more than anyone else how aerial warfare could be a gamechanger in naval warfare as it did in land warfare. While the Ottoman Fleet was not filled with money to see the construction of an aircraft carrier all the way until the middle years of the Second Great War, the Ottoman Naval Air Arm continued to agitate for more investment into it. Around 1 million pounds were allocated into the ONAA which saw the new procuration of around 15 torpedo bombers into the ONAA by the end of 1925.
The Ottomans had other topics to worry about on naval matters. The completion of the Imperator Nikolai I and the Borodino Class Battleships had changed the balance of power in favor of Imperial Russia in the Black Sea most decisively and the Ottomans knew that they needed to have another capital ship against the Russians in the Black Sea. They already employed 2 in the Eastern Mediterranean, 1 in the Black Sea and in 1 in the Aegean, whilst the Russians operated 3 capital ships in the Black Sea. The Ottomans could not afford to build 2 Capital ships for the Black Sea with other fleet commitments, but another one was in order. The Ottomans also had the Italians to contend with. The Italian People’s Navy (IPN) had finally started to recover from the Great War’s naval cut on the Navy and managed to order two new capital ships from their shipyards in Venice and Genoa named the Visconti Class Battleships. In 1925, in order to counter the growing naval prowess in both St. Petersburg and Rome, the Ottoman government decided to purchase two capital ships – one for the Black Sea Fleet and one for the Adriatic Fleet. The Ottomans already had naval loans in place for 1930, so the Ottoman Government created the 1925 Naval Plan intended for completion in 1932, so that the Ottomans could afford payment. The cuts on the extravagant uniforms also allowed for the diversion of monetary resources within the Ottoman Navy. This resulted in the order for the Ottoman Constantinople Class Battlecruisers. The Constantinople Class Battlecruiser was all in all a sane and realistic version of the Kaysar Class Battlecruisers which had to be scrapped by the Ottoman Empire a few years prior. The Constantinople Class would displace a total of ~25,000 tons for an overall length of 215 meters and a beam of 30 meters. Top speed of the battlecruiser was to be kept at 30 knots and she was going to be armed with nine 381 mm guns, twelve 152 mm guns with twelve 100 mm anti-air guns accompanying the main and secondary guns of the battlecruiser. The Constantinople Class also had two quadruple torpedo banks. [1]
The Constantinople Battlecruiser
With the completion of the two Constantinople Class Battlecruisers in 1932, the Ottoman Empire would begin the construction of a moderately powerful navy as the Ottomans eyed the Italians and Russians and their own respective naval buildup with narrowed eyes. The slow descent into the Italo-Ottoman Naval Arms Race of 1932 – 1938 was in the making……”
Excerpts from ‘Occultism in the Ottoman Empire’ by Rose Finray
“……. The Ottoman Empire has been home to occultist studies in the Christian, Islamic, Jewish, and Folk Religions of the territories that it ruled since its very inception. Indeed, many people believe that Osman I himself was involved in occult practices with the more mystic aligned members of the Mevlevi Order. And until the first Tanzimat Reforms of 1838 the Ottoman Government also alluded to esoteric and occult practices as answers to times of natural disasters, like the Hamdan Declaration of 1836 which blamed the Southern Iraqi Floods on a group of occultists among the Ajamic and Turkmen population of Kirkuk. The Ottoman Empire as such had its own fair share of Occultism and Cults like groups, but the Dashing 20s as they are called today to denote the 1920s had a lot of influence and growth in Ottoman Occults and Cultism.
The growing feeling of Ottomanism and Ottoman Nationalism meant that more and more people were being fed into the belief that the historic figures of the Ottoman Empire were almost as great as gods. One Cult in particular that was very active in the 1930s was the Ertugul Nisani which paid homage the belief that many members of the Ottoman Dynasty were akin to that of gods themselves. This cult was particularly active in the mountains and rural populace of eastern Anatolia, where many were known to have been kidnapped and sacrificed by this cult. This cult gained such notoriety that at its height it is said to have influenced entire rural & isolated villages in thoughts and forced the Ottoman Sultan to stamp down on such heretical beliefs himself. The Ottoman government in the modern era had a dim view of the occult and cults, and even if the cults were worshipping their monarch’s dynasty, they didn’t like it, and tried to stamp down on them with all the force they could gather. Another similar cult was the Cult of Order, which believed that order and chaos were natural confines of the universe and sought to deliberately create order and chaos events. This led to deliberately created accidents and destruction in central and northern Arabia much to the frustration of the Ottoman Infrastructural Office. Though this cult, like most cults had a small base of support, their destruction of governmental property for the sake of their cultist ideology was not something that any sane governmental official subscribed to.
A Byzantine impression of Kulshedra
But the Ottomans did not suffer from only Islamic based Occult and Cults like the Order of Ertugul or the Cult of Order. The Albanian Fellowship of Kulshedra (an elemental female demon in Albanian Folklore) plagued the Ottoman authorities within the confines of rural Albania. Whenever storms, droughts or flooding hit the Albanian countryside, people blamed it on the fury of the Kulshedra demon, and this fellowship behind the demon would kidnap innocents to sacrifice to the demon in their efforts to stop the natural disasters. Rural and more taken Albanians also believed that the demon could bring peace and prosperity to villages for a price in blood, and entire legions of cows, lambs and other domesticated animals were sacrificed to her in Southern Albania in hopes of a prosperous agrarian society. Furthermore, several oppressed Hellenistic Cults also propagated their own fair share of trouble for the government. Cults following the main gods and goddesses of the Olympian Pantheon were more or less left as they were for they didn’t create much public troubles, but Cults that followed more violent gods such as Ares, and the Underworld Gods of Greek Mythology proved to be trouble as a few kidnapping and manslaughter cases in the Ottoman Aegean were linked back to these cults.
As a result, it should not be surprising that the Ottoman Government calls the 1920s to be the golden era of the Occult and Cults in the Ottoman Empire. Like most cultic golden eras, the number of their cases never really grew more than 1000 per year, but their high level publicity still made them extremely visible in Ottoman history. So much so that Mustafa Kemal Pasha had to devote his time to the creation of an anti-Cult squad in the Ottoman Police Force which were used to suppress these cults and occultists in the 1930s to the brink of extinction under the ODSP and CUP governments that followed in the 1930s Ottoman Empire…….” [2]
Excerpts from ‘Sweden in Crisis: 1925 – 1936’ by Johann Andersson
“……The Central Asian Revolt of 1924 was like a spark that ignited throughout the Russian Empire. Many ethnicities still looked at the semi-autonomous Realm of Poland with unhidden envy as they asked why they couldn’t be afforded the same rights by the Russian Government. The Finnish population was one such nationality who already had a semi-autonomous government within the Grand Duchy of Finland, but another group within the duchy remained bristling with anger – the Swedish Speaking Finns. They had been immediately maligned after the fall of Swedish Finland in 1809 and had been forced to recreate their power base from ground up. With a population of around ~250,000 people, the Swedish speaking populace of Finland had managed to become the economic power force in Russian Finland. But more and more unacceptable demands from St. Petersburg was starting to change the perceptions of the Finnish Swedes.
Flag of the Finnish Swedes
Nicholas II had responded to the Central Asian Uprising by revoking the rights of certain elite burgher classes throughout the Russian Empire and this unfortunately impacted the vast majority of Finnish Swedes. This was protested against by Ernst von Born, a Swedish speaking Finnish Lawyer and Politician, who was also serving as the Minister of the Interior within the Grand Duchy of Finland, as the leader of the Swedish Party in Finland. This was rejected by the Russian Government, and tensions rose to a fever pitch when more radical members of the Swedish Party decided to ambush some Russian soldiers in Vaasa, Finland. This brought forth another reaction from the Russian Imperial Government which demanded that the Swedish community of Vaasa to hand over the people responsible for the ambush. This was met with violent protests throughout the Swedish community’s in Finland who resisted the Imperial Government’s demands. The Svecoman Movement, which was a pro-Swedish Nationalist movement in the Swedish Speaking Finnish community since the 1870s exploded in popularity as a result. It was already mildly popular among the populace, but this incident which became known as the July 4th 1925 incident, aided the Swedish population in Finland to really embrace the Svecoman Movement. This was furthered by the fact that most in the Diet of Finland was unwilling to aid the Swedish population of Finland, for the old stereotype of the Finnish gentry being Swedish speakers colored the prejudice and bias of the mostly Social Democratic and Agrarian ruling coalition in Finland at the time. This unwillingness boiled over into anger against the general Finnish population as well, and the Swedish & Finnish population of Vaasaland and Turku exploded into furors of ethnic attacks and riots against one another.
Flag of the Swedish Republic of Ostrobothnia
The Swedish populace had been troublesome since 1906 [3] and now this incident was starting to boil over into rage and anger as well. Von Born, by this point having had enough of the Russian Imperial Government decided to do something extremely radical. Calling on the Swedish speaking Finns of Finland he assembled the major Finnish Swedes in what became known as the meeting of Vaasa. Prominent members of the Finnish government such as Carl Gustaf Mannerheim, Pehr Svinhufvud, Theodor Wegelius, Ralf Torngren, Hugo Osterman, Harald Ohquist, Ruben Lagus, Akseli Gallen-Kallela, and Lars Sonck all joined the meeting. The leaders of the meeting knew that without foreign support they wouldn’t even last a day in the fighting with the Imperial Russian Government, but that was not their goal anyways. Their goal was restoring the privileges of the Swedish speaking class in Finland from the Russian Government. The best way they could do that they reasoned was through creating absolute terror in the Russian Government. This was accomplished when in September 8, 1925, the Meeting of Vaasa declared the secession of the ‘Swedish Republic of Ostrobothnia’ (Svenska Republiken Osterbotten), with Ernst von Born as its first President and Carl Gustaf Mannerheim as their Minister for War and the Commander of the Forces. Immediately recruitment began to take place as the militias of the Finnish Swedes began to spread throughout Ostrobothnia to gain territorial jurisdiction.
Mannerheim leading the Swedish Militias in Finland
Almost immediately the Russian Government was embarrassed by defeats. The Finnish Swedes under Mannerheim started to use unconventional warfare tactics. Guerilla tactics including hit and run, ambush and scatter, cordon and search were used by the small militia units under Mannerheim’s command to defeat several Russian military incursions within the Ostrobothnian Republic’s territorial control. Led by Captain Raoul af Hallstrom, the Finnish Swedish bands began to create havoc on any Russian force trying to enter Ostrobothnia. This rebellion soon became a political crisis in Sweden. Prime Minister Rickard Sandler had seen to one of the largest demobilizations in Swedish history with much of the Swedish army being demobilized into a permanent number of 100,000 active professional soldiers. Swedish Nationalists looked at the Swedish rebellion in Finland with appreciative and greedy eyes, and this was only heightened when Aland joined the rebellion, declaring for the Ostrobothnian Republic. Premier Carl Bjorkman of Aland also managed to preempt the Russian forces in the archipelago to enforce his declaration in favor of the republic. King Gustaf V of Sweden also had sympathies towards the rebels.
This was the starting of the Ostrobothnian Crisis in Northern Europe…….”
[1] – Based on Progetto Leghorn Class 1928 of the Regina Marina otl.
[2] – All Cults are from OTL in the Ottoman Empire
[3] – true fact
Excerpts from Modern Irish History by R. F. Foster
“……. The Premiership of John Dillon as Premier of Ireland was marked with no little amounts of controversy and problems. William O’Brien’s economic agenda had been a great way to industrialize Ireland, and his reconciliatory policies with the Ulster Unionists had seen some amount of progress made in Northern and Southern Irish relations within the United Kingdom. Prime Minister McKenna was personally in favor of reconciliation, and the unification of both south and north under a single Home Rule government. This want was driven by more than just moralism, but pragmatism. McKenna knew that there was a good amount of Nationalists who wanted to use Home Rule as a stepping stone to Dominionship, which was de-facto Independence from the United Kingdom. The inclusion of Ulster, a fervent Unionist territory would increase the political share of Unionist seats and voters in Ireland, and as such make Dominionship a very hard goal for the Irish Nationalists. McKenna and O’Brien had made some good ground on political reconciliation of the north and south, but Dillon’s agenda broke through most of that.
John Dillon
John Dillon had always been on the fringes of Moderate Irish Nationalism, known for being just as anti-British as he was pro-British on many policies. This contradictions of the man were then involved in his Irish Language Plan. Home Rule had given the Irish Parliament powers over school curricula and education systems as long as they remained within the British Board’s Limitations and jurisdictions. Dillon thus engaged in an aggressive policy of re-Gaelicizing Ireland. As per the 1911 Census, around 11.7% of Ireland could speak Irish and Dillon in particular wanted to re-Irishize Ireland in his own words. His education policy pushed for more and more Irish subjects to be included. Moderate Unionists within Ireland weren’t against the policy per se – as most Unionists believed that they were both Irish and British – but they did not find Dillon’s overt focus on the language to be amenable, as they believed that the man was forgoing economic and political agendas in favor of his language policy. They bemoaned that they man had forgone O’Brien’s policy of political reconciliation with the north and his widespread welfare economic reforms in Ireland. Dillon himself was subject to controversy after the dissatisfaction of the parties became known as his third son, Edward Mathew Dillon (born in 1900) was found to be involved in several illicit smuggling rackets. A raid by the Royal Dublin Constabulary had seen the man arrested, and this tarnished Dillon’s own political record, and embarrassed by his son’s actions, Dillon resigned as Premier for Ireland and was succeeded after a party vote by Joseph Devlin.
Joseph Devlin was himself a popular man, known admirably as Wee Joe by the public. He was a fluent and powerful orator, and he knew how to write catchy articles in political newspapers to further his political agenda within the populace. But Devlin had been forced to deal with the political fallout of Dillon’s rather disastrous premiership, and the political situation was not conductive to a new Premier. Devlin managed to overturn much of Dillon’s radical Re-Irishizing policies. Devlin understood that as an Irishman such a policy needed to be made, but he also attacked the haphazard and impatient manner in which it was conducted. Furthermore, Devlin decided to seek reconciliation with the North under the aid of McKenna once again, but this time he was rebuffed. The Northern Ulster Unionists were becoming more and more wary of the Irish Parliamentary Party. Redmond & O’Brien had been supportive of reconciliation, but Dillon had thrown away all the political capital the two previous Irish Premier had created for the IPP and Devlin was unable to convince the Ulster Unionist Party – which controlled the Northern Irish Parliament – otherwise regarding the fact.
Within this politically divisive atmosphere, another party began to coalesce as a proper fighting party. Sir Horace Curzon Plunkett had formed the Irish Dominion League in 1913, which called for an Irish Dominion, but Plunkett later repealed this position after Home Rule was implemented and formed the Irish Co-Operative Party which was a moderate nationalist & Unionist Party. It supported ‘absolute autonomy’ for Ireland whilst remaining a part of the United Kingdom. This in essentiality was what most moderate Unionists and Nationalists wanted, and many supporters of the Irish Nationalists and Irish Unionists began to slowly and steadily desert their previous political factions in favor of the Cooperative Party. Plunkett was in favor of a United Irish Home Rule Region and in favor of moderate Irish nationalism and unionism. This was exemplified by his economic policies, which was a mixture of leftist and rightist economic policies which later on became distinctly centrist. The Cooperative Party also gained the assistance of several powerful Irish media outlets like the Irish Statesman and the Times, which favored the Cooperative Party’s overall moderate approach on things. Plunkett himself was also a Christian Socialist, and he managed to win a major political victory in 1921, when the Cooperative and Irish Labour Party agreed on an electoral pact allowing for several Irish constituencies to be un-fought between the two parties. Another political victory came in 1922 when by-elections saw three members of his party join the Irish House of Commons. The next three years so another 8 members of the party elected through by-elections.
Sir Horace Plunkett
But Plunkett was of course an old man, and he decided that he would no longer be Party Leader in 1921, and instead he became the Party Chairman instead. This coincided with the first Westminister MP from Ireland being a part of the Cooperative Party as a member of the IPP defected. Plunkett’s leadership was replaced by the leadership of Stephen L. Gwynn. Gwynn was an important figure within the party who had joined up in 1917. He knew how to speak Irish, French & English, whilst he also knew the basics of Scottish Gaelic, and was heavily involved in the Irish Literary Revival. He had been a vocal critic of Dillon’s language policy, as he pointed out that the Irish-Scots and incoming English immigrants had no need to learn Irish and that the government could not impose such demands on them. Indeed, this facet of Dillon’s language policy had irritated Westminster as well. Gwynn was also a man who knew how to create a publicity stunt and he used such stunts to further his own political agendas. His pro-Home Rule stance endeared him to the nationalists whilst his loyal service in the British Army in the 7th Leinster Regiment within the 16th Irish Division during the Great War as a Colonel had endeared him to unionists as well. He was the perfect successor to the moderate Plunkett, as a result.
When the 1925 Irish General Elections rolled around, everyone held their breaths for the result. Both the IPP and Irish Unionists fared poorly as many of their politicians had defected over to the Irish Cooperative Party over the past few years. The Cooperatives had also defanged some of the more radical nationalists and unionists with the support of middling major politicians such as Michael Collins and W.T Cosgrave coming in favor of the Cooperative Party. Nevertheless, Devlin’s personal charm came through with the elections, and the IPP managed to win a plurality of the total seats in the Irish House of Commons, though they lost their majority. This gave Gwynn an opening to use against the IPP and he quickly began to engage in discussions with the Irish Unionist Party under the leadership of the Marquess of Londonderry. Together, if the Cooperatives and Unionists formed a coalition government, they would have an absolute majority. Londonderry agreed to the idea of a coalition government, and a week after the elections were concluded the coalition was publically announced that Gwynn succeeded Devlin as the Premier for Ireland after the elections, allowing the Cooperative and Unionist Parties to break the IPP hold on Irish politics after several decades.
Gwynn’s policy as soon as he came to power was to continue with O’Brien’s old popular economic reforms which was leading the way for an organic industrial development of Ireland, and he soon turned his eyes north to the Northern Irish 5 Counties, so that reconciliation could pave the way to Irish unification. Again, this policy was supported by British Prime Minister McKenna who aided Gwynn in arranging a meeting with the UUP leader Hugh MacDowell Pollock. Pollock had succeeded Craig as the leader of the UUP and the Premier for Northern Ireland in 1924 after Craig’s death. It was fortunate for Gwynn that Pollock was one of the more moderate members of the UUP and the Orange Order as Pollock was willing to see Ulster as a part of the Irish Home Rule government under certain concessions that could be given for the Ulster Unionists. Pollock had also purged the UUP of most of its hardline members which gave Gwynn a lot of room to maneuver when negotiating with the UUP. Gwynn returned to the Irish Commons and much to the displeasure of Sinn Fein and some members of the IPP managed to pass a resolution through the Commons that gave the right to any county in the Home Rule Region of Ireland to return to direct rule under Westminster if the electorate of the county voted for it. This in essentiality was the concession Gwynn was willing to give to the Ulster Unionists, and Pollock agreed to it. With support and backing from McKenna, it was announced on September 29, 1925 that the northern 5 counties would be rejoining with Home Rule Ireland under the concessions granted to it on January 1, 1926, wherein 16 extra seats would be allocated for members from Northern Ireland in the Irish House of Commons. The 10 Year Long Irish Question had come to a solution at last. But unwittingly Gwynn had fallen into McKenna’s political trap without even realizing it. Of the 16 new MPs for the Irish Commons, 15 were Unionists, which brought the Unionists to control a third of the entire Irish Commons……..”
Excerpts from The Ottoman Fleet: A History by Inhalik Bey
“…….The Ottoman Army had long been the branch of the armed force that had received the most attention from the government and the people. It was well balanced and had proven itself in the battle against Serbia and Bulgaria and Italy. On the other side, the Ottoman Navy had grown from an old and depilated force in 1909 to a moderately respectable navy by 1925, with a fleet of 4 Battleships, 10 Light Cruisers, 28 Destroyers, 10 Submarines, 9 Minesweepers and 7 Minelayers. The navy was moderately modern and 4 Heavy Cruisers and 6 Destroyers were designated the join the navy by the end of 1930, swelling the numbers of the navy by quite a bit as well. But increasing the numbers of the navy was not the only problem that the Ottomans had to contend with in the navy. The Ottomans had to make sure that their training regime for the navy remained as intensive as their army to make sure that the crew remained professional in their outlook.
Ottoman Naval College in Beirut
The Imperial Ottoman Naval College was concentrated in Constantinople, Smyrna and Salonika, but beginning in 1925 that began to change as new branch colleges were opened up in Beirut, Basrah, Jeddah, Durres and Sinope to make sure that the amount of naval graduates increased throughout the nation, whilst also allowing for greater career opportunities within the Ottoman Navy. The entire naval college curriculum was overhauled by the government as well. Following a mixture of British and Old Ottoman Naval teaching techniques the 1925 Ottoman Naval Curricula added topics like Fitness Tests, Extra-Team Building Exercises and Language Classes to make sure that the graduates for the navy had more skills underneath their belt. Furthermore, the practice system of the Ottoman Navy changed, as constant up to date training was stressed by Mehmet Ihsan Bey, with gunnery and maneuvering being stressed and emphasized by the Ottoman Naval Ministry. An entire gunnery range was built near Igneada in Thrace on the Black Sea Coast and the Strymonian Gulf on the Aegean Coast to make sure that regular exercises and drills were held to make for more effective crews. Of course for the safety of the crew and ships, the Ottomans used dud shells when practicing in these gunnery and maneuvering drills.
The Ottoman Navy also updated its uniforms to be more cost-effective and not only for just the show. The Plate OIN11 class uniforms were completely abolished by the Ministry of Naval Affairs, and furthermore, the Plate OIN13 class uniforms were made to be the standard uniform for the Ottoman Naval officers. For higher officers, the Ottoman Navy abolished the extremely extravagant OIN12 class uniforms and replaced them with the new version of the OIN12 Class uniform, which proved to be more practical and effective in wartime. These changes to the Ottoman Naval Uniforms made the Ottomans have a more standardized uniform style for the navy, in line with the major powers of the day. The only thing that really distinguished the Ottoman Navy was that the Ottoman Imperial Navy Officers wore a red Fez, as well as a pillbox cap or Shako made in white and black gold top versions.
The OIN12 Uniform in the Ottoman Navy
source
Further reforms saw the establishment of the Ottoman Naval Air Arm (ONAA) as a part of the Ottoman Navy, boasting a total of 48 warplanes for the Navy. The Ottomans, who were considered to be semi-pioneers in aerial warfare during the early era of the warplane, knew more than anyone else how aerial warfare could be a gamechanger in naval warfare as it did in land warfare. While the Ottoman Fleet was not filled with money to see the construction of an aircraft carrier all the way until the middle years of the Second Great War, the Ottoman Naval Air Arm continued to agitate for more investment into it. Around 1 million pounds were allocated into the ONAA which saw the new procuration of around 15 torpedo bombers into the ONAA by the end of 1925.
The Ottomans had other topics to worry about on naval matters. The completion of the Imperator Nikolai I and the Borodino Class Battleships had changed the balance of power in favor of Imperial Russia in the Black Sea most decisively and the Ottomans knew that they needed to have another capital ship against the Russians in the Black Sea. They already employed 2 in the Eastern Mediterranean, 1 in the Black Sea and in 1 in the Aegean, whilst the Russians operated 3 capital ships in the Black Sea. The Ottomans could not afford to build 2 Capital ships for the Black Sea with other fleet commitments, but another one was in order. The Ottomans also had the Italians to contend with. The Italian People’s Navy (IPN) had finally started to recover from the Great War’s naval cut on the Navy and managed to order two new capital ships from their shipyards in Venice and Genoa named the Visconti Class Battleships. In 1925, in order to counter the growing naval prowess in both St. Petersburg and Rome, the Ottoman government decided to purchase two capital ships – one for the Black Sea Fleet and one for the Adriatic Fleet. The Ottomans already had naval loans in place for 1930, so the Ottoman Government created the 1925 Naval Plan intended for completion in 1932, so that the Ottomans could afford payment. The cuts on the extravagant uniforms also allowed for the diversion of monetary resources within the Ottoman Navy. This resulted in the order for the Ottoman Constantinople Class Battlecruisers. The Constantinople Class Battlecruiser was all in all a sane and realistic version of the Kaysar Class Battlecruisers which had to be scrapped by the Ottoman Empire a few years prior. The Constantinople Class would displace a total of ~25,000 tons for an overall length of 215 meters and a beam of 30 meters. Top speed of the battlecruiser was to be kept at 30 knots and she was going to be armed with nine 381 mm guns, twelve 152 mm guns with twelve 100 mm anti-air guns accompanying the main and secondary guns of the battlecruiser. The Constantinople Class also had two quadruple torpedo banks. [1]
The Constantinople Battlecruiser
With the completion of the two Constantinople Class Battlecruisers in 1932, the Ottoman Empire would begin the construction of a moderately powerful navy as the Ottomans eyed the Italians and Russians and their own respective naval buildup with narrowed eyes. The slow descent into the Italo-Ottoman Naval Arms Race of 1932 – 1938 was in the making……”
Excerpts from ‘Occultism in the Ottoman Empire’ by Rose Finray
“……. The Ottoman Empire has been home to occultist studies in the Christian, Islamic, Jewish, and Folk Religions of the territories that it ruled since its very inception. Indeed, many people believe that Osman I himself was involved in occult practices with the more mystic aligned members of the Mevlevi Order. And until the first Tanzimat Reforms of 1838 the Ottoman Government also alluded to esoteric and occult practices as answers to times of natural disasters, like the Hamdan Declaration of 1836 which blamed the Southern Iraqi Floods on a group of occultists among the Ajamic and Turkmen population of Kirkuk. The Ottoman Empire as such had its own fair share of Occultism and Cults like groups, but the Dashing 20s as they are called today to denote the 1920s had a lot of influence and growth in Ottoman Occults and Cultism.
The growing feeling of Ottomanism and Ottoman Nationalism meant that more and more people were being fed into the belief that the historic figures of the Ottoman Empire were almost as great as gods. One Cult in particular that was very active in the 1930s was the Ertugul Nisani which paid homage the belief that many members of the Ottoman Dynasty were akin to that of gods themselves. This cult was particularly active in the mountains and rural populace of eastern Anatolia, where many were known to have been kidnapped and sacrificed by this cult. This cult gained such notoriety that at its height it is said to have influenced entire rural & isolated villages in thoughts and forced the Ottoman Sultan to stamp down on such heretical beliefs himself. The Ottoman government in the modern era had a dim view of the occult and cults, and even if the cults were worshipping their monarch’s dynasty, they didn’t like it, and tried to stamp down on them with all the force they could gather. Another similar cult was the Cult of Order, which believed that order and chaos were natural confines of the universe and sought to deliberately create order and chaos events. This led to deliberately created accidents and destruction in central and northern Arabia much to the frustration of the Ottoman Infrastructural Office. Though this cult, like most cults had a small base of support, their destruction of governmental property for the sake of their cultist ideology was not something that any sane governmental official subscribed to.
A Byzantine impression of Kulshedra
But the Ottomans did not suffer from only Islamic based Occult and Cults like the Order of Ertugul or the Cult of Order. The Albanian Fellowship of Kulshedra (an elemental female demon in Albanian Folklore) plagued the Ottoman authorities within the confines of rural Albania. Whenever storms, droughts or flooding hit the Albanian countryside, people blamed it on the fury of the Kulshedra demon, and this fellowship behind the demon would kidnap innocents to sacrifice to the demon in their efforts to stop the natural disasters. Rural and more taken Albanians also believed that the demon could bring peace and prosperity to villages for a price in blood, and entire legions of cows, lambs and other domesticated animals were sacrificed to her in Southern Albania in hopes of a prosperous agrarian society. Furthermore, several oppressed Hellenistic Cults also propagated their own fair share of trouble for the government. Cults following the main gods and goddesses of the Olympian Pantheon were more or less left as they were for they didn’t create much public troubles, but Cults that followed more violent gods such as Ares, and the Underworld Gods of Greek Mythology proved to be trouble as a few kidnapping and manslaughter cases in the Ottoman Aegean were linked back to these cults.
As a result, it should not be surprising that the Ottoman Government calls the 1920s to be the golden era of the Occult and Cults in the Ottoman Empire. Like most cultic golden eras, the number of their cases never really grew more than 1000 per year, but their high level publicity still made them extremely visible in Ottoman history. So much so that Mustafa Kemal Pasha had to devote his time to the creation of an anti-Cult squad in the Ottoman Police Force which were used to suppress these cults and occultists in the 1930s to the brink of extinction under the ODSP and CUP governments that followed in the 1930s Ottoman Empire…….” [2]
Excerpts from ‘Sweden in Crisis: 1925 – 1936’ by Johann Andersson
“……The Central Asian Revolt of 1924 was like a spark that ignited throughout the Russian Empire. Many ethnicities still looked at the semi-autonomous Realm of Poland with unhidden envy as they asked why they couldn’t be afforded the same rights by the Russian Government. The Finnish population was one such nationality who already had a semi-autonomous government within the Grand Duchy of Finland, but another group within the duchy remained bristling with anger – the Swedish Speaking Finns. They had been immediately maligned after the fall of Swedish Finland in 1809 and had been forced to recreate their power base from ground up. With a population of around ~250,000 people, the Swedish speaking populace of Finland had managed to become the economic power force in Russian Finland. But more and more unacceptable demands from St. Petersburg was starting to change the perceptions of the Finnish Swedes.
Flag of the Finnish Swedes
Nicholas II had responded to the Central Asian Uprising by revoking the rights of certain elite burgher classes throughout the Russian Empire and this unfortunately impacted the vast majority of Finnish Swedes. This was protested against by Ernst von Born, a Swedish speaking Finnish Lawyer and Politician, who was also serving as the Minister of the Interior within the Grand Duchy of Finland, as the leader of the Swedish Party in Finland. This was rejected by the Russian Government, and tensions rose to a fever pitch when more radical members of the Swedish Party decided to ambush some Russian soldiers in Vaasa, Finland. This brought forth another reaction from the Russian Imperial Government which demanded that the Swedish community of Vaasa to hand over the people responsible for the ambush. This was met with violent protests throughout the Swedish community’s in Finland who resisted the Imperial Government’s demands. The Svecoman Movement, which was a pro-Swedish Nationalist movement in the Swedish Speaking Finnish community since the 1870s exploded in popularity as a result. It was already mildly popular among the populace, but this incident which became known as the July 4th 1925 incident, aided the Swedish population in Finland to really embrace the Svecoman Movement. This was furthered by the fact that most in the Diet of Finland was unwilling to aid the Swedish population of Finland, for the old stereotype of the Finnish gentry being Swedish speakers colored the prejudice and bias of the mostly Social Democratic and Agrarian ruling coalition in Finland at the time. This unwillingness boiled over into anger against the general Finnish population as well, and the Swedish & Finnish population of Vaasaland and Turku exploded into furors of ethnic attacks and riots against one another.
Flag of the Swedish Republic of Ostrobothnia
The Swedish populace had been troublesome since 1906 [3] and now this incident was starting to boil over into rage and anger as well. Von Born, by this point having had enough of the Russian Imperial Government decided to do something extremely radical. Calling on the Swedish speaking Finns of Finland he assembled the major Finnish Swedes in what became known as the meeting of Vaasa. Prominent members of the Finnish government such as Carl Gustaf Mannerheim, Pehr Svinhufvud, Theodor Wegelius, Ralf Torngren, Hugo Osterman, Harald Ohquist, Ruben Lagus, Akseli Gallen-Kallela, and Lars Sonck all joined the meeting. The leaders of the meeting knew that without foreign support they wouldn’t even last a day in the fighting with the Imperial Russian Government, but that was not their goal anyways. Their goal was restoring the privileges of the Swedish speaking class in Finland from the Russian Government. The best way they could do that they reasoned was through creating absolute terror in the Russian Government. This was accomplished when in September 8, 1925, the Meeting of Vaasa declared the secession of the ‘Swedish Republic of Ostrobothnia’ (Svenska Republiken Osterbotten), with Ernst von Born as its first President and Carl Gustaf Mannerheim as their Minister for War and the Commander of the Forces. Immediately recruitment began to take place as the militias of the Finnish Swedes began to spread throughout Ostrobothnia to gain territorial jurisdiction.
Mannerheim leading the Swedish Militias in Finland
Almost immediately the Russian Government was embarrassed by defeats. The Finnish Swedes under Mannerheim started to use unconventional warfare tactics. Guerilla tactics including hit and run, ambush and scatter, cordon and search were used by the small militia units under Mannerheim’s command to defeat several Russian military incursions within the Ostrobothnian Republic’s territorial control. Led by Captain Raoul af Hallstrom, the Finnish Swedish bands began to create havoc on any Russian force trying to enter Ostrobothnia. This rebellion soon became a political crisis in Sweden. Prime Minister Rickard Sandler had seen to one of the largest demobilizations in Swedish history with much of the Swedish army being demobilized into a permanent number of 100,000 active professional soldiers. Swedish Nationalists looked at the Swedish rebellion in Finland with appreciative and greedy eyes, and this was only heightened when Aland joined the rebellion, declaring for the Ostrobothnian Republic. Premier Carl Bjorkman of Aland also managed to preempt the Russian forces in the archipelago to enforce his declaration in favor of the republic. King Gustaf V of Sweden also had sympathies towards the rebels.
This was the starting of the Ostrobothnian Crisis in Northern Europe…….”
[1] – Based on Progetto Leghorn Class 1928 of the Regina Marina otl.
[2] – All Cults are from OTL in the Ottoman Empire
[3] – true fact
Aleister Crowley will be very disappointed at the cult suppressions, in between the mountain climbing and Thelema.
True but if/when they do win or gain independent, I don't know how the non-Swedish speaking Finns will react to it though...
the ethnic finns are going to be in an interesting place due to the revolt ittl
I think Aaland should be like a place where both Sweden and Finland can be cooperative with each other as well as a sort of DMZ place.