The March of Time - 20th Century History

[SultanArda]

So China wins Boxer War

Kind of?
Basically, Qing dynasty is replaced by the dynasty of the descendants of Confucius, some reforms are made with the heavy does of Western aromatics and some Confucian spices, as the revolution’s main supporters are the Confucian middle class, and the treaty, from what I understand, made the whole China an open port, instead of our timeline’s “Grab Yourself a Coastal City” policy of the West.

different Third Anglo Afghan War and Boer war

I think there was no change in that aspect.
Though, Russo-Japanese War did not happen in this timeline, which meant that Russia did not had their somewhat cosmetic reforms they made to stop the 1905 Revolution that happened partly due to the defeat in war.

Abdulmejid II dies in terrorist plot

Abdulhamid II, not Abdulmejid II

What's the Finannce POD?

From what I see, we will just see the economical effects of the PODs you mentioned in these chapters.

 

[Mayukh]

From what I see, we will just see the economical effects of the PODs you mentioned in these chapters.

Hmm.. As a long time reader , how does the tl work?
Is there a single Boxer war POD with rest being Butterfly effects or has @Karelian decided to merge tls involving different PODs into one? Have all the PODs being covered or will we see more PODs going forward(possibliy including WW1 era PODs, Interwar era PODs, WW2 era PODs and Cold War and Post Cold War era PODs? If thats the case will the butterfly effect not be followed strictly?)... Kinda confused reading the tl.

 

[SultanArda]

Is there a single Boxer war POD with rest being Butterfly effects

I think this is the right answer.
The first POD was the Boxer Rebellion one after all.

 

[Karelian]

Hello, and thanks for the feedback!

Hmm.. As a long time reader , how does the tl work?
Is there a single Boxer war POD with rest being Butterfly effects or has @Karelian decided to merge tls involving different PODs into one? Have all the PODs being covered or will we see more PODs going forward(possibliy including WW1 era PODs, Interwar era PODs, WW2 era PODs and Cold War and Post Cold War era PODs? If thats the case will the butterfly effect not be followed strictly?)... Kinda confused reading the tl.

There is a single initial point of divergence, and the rest of the TL keeps diverging further and further away from OTL from that time onwards.
By now the TL has progressed c. to year 1908 or so.
All updates of this TL are part of the same scenario, and are all taking place after the initial POD.

So far the earliest POD in this TL is in fact (after a bit of later retconning done in 2019) on October 31, 1898.
For the sake of consistency the rest of the world is kept under a narrative butterfly net until the key POD, which is still the outcome of the battle of Taku Forts in June 1900.
General outlines of the main PODs and the overall scenario are here: https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...-century-history.272417/page-46#post-23001097

 

[Driftless]

^^^ The proverbial "for want of a nail" premise this site is built on, or the single loose rock that starts an avalanche

 

[Karelian]

Me too!
So, as I guessed, the main change will be that Zionists would move to Palestine, in exchange of money to the Ottoman Empire, and also paying off at least some of the Ottoman Empire’s terrible debts*.
I expect the government to establish some sort of investment bank with as little foreign aid as possible, along with giving the first capital of the whatever entrepreneurs Ottoman Empire has.

During the last time I wrote about this, Herzl and rest of the movement were in correspondence with the Ottoman officials with the following starting proposal:

...For Herzl, the Jerusalem Declaration was far from the panacea he had hoped it to be. The Ottoman authorities who contated him soon after the state visit was over made it adamantly clear from the beginning that while the German Emperor was fully entitled under treaty rights to protect his own subjects, Palestine was not open for widespread Jewish colonization. Instead the Zionists and Ottoman authorities soon started to negotiate about a plan to buy Ottoman bonds and appointing directors to the Public Debt Commission. The idea came forward from Daoud Effendi, an Ottoman Jewish assistant of Nuri Pasha. As the Ottoman Sovereign discussed the matter with Herzl via letters, Herzl adjusted the written plans of the Zionist movement towards an autonomous vassal state under the explicit suzerainty of the Sultan, with all immigrants embracing Ottoman nationality upon arrival and settling in Palestine at the express invitation of the Sultan, paying tribune of one hundred thousand pounds, rising to one million annually, pari passu with the increase of immigration, in return of local autonomy...

 

[SultanArda]

During the last time I wrote about this, Herzl and rest of the movement were in correspondence with the Ottoman officials with the following starting proposal:

So, it seems like something I expected.
Repayment of at least some of the debts and giving a money enough to both start a national industry, even if small, and maybe even repay some of the debts, in exchange of giving autonomy to Palestine and letting Jews to settle there with no limits

 

[Karelian]

Starting as a trickle of few families at the turn of the century, the number of Jewish immigrants fleeing to Britain from various parts of Europe had grown into a massive exodus by June 1902. Since the refugees were desperate and desolate enough to work with practically any wages, British workers in Greater London area felt that they were being pushed out. Once the number of immigrants exceeded 100 000, the British politicians felt obliged to act.

Repatriation was deemed as a potentially suitable solution, but the authorities were also eager to find a land where disparate Jews could settle permanently.
Since the Sinai Peninsula was exempted from land taxes, it was deemed as a suitable location during early discussions about the matter. But whereas Salisbury was cautious and Landsdowne preoccupied with the international Baghdad Railway negotiations, the local British representative, Lord Cromer, was initially at odds with his London masters.

Cromer was not categorically opposed to the idea of Jews moving into Sinai. However, he had strong reservations about the length of the lease of territory, it's size, and whether it would be continous or broken up.[1]

He also had to take the volatile mood of the "Arab street" into account. British rule in Egypt was still diplomatically challenged by the French, and the natives were restless.
Meanwhile Herzl and his associates were desperately seeking a refuge for Jews fleeing from Russia and Eastern Europe, and contacted the Egyptian government on their own. Their hopes were dampened when Boutros Pasha Ghali replied on February 22nd, 1903:

The Government of His Highness has taken note of your propositions for obtaining a charter for a "Jewish National Settlement Company" with a view to establish a Jewish Colony in the Sinai Peninsula. However, the Egyptian Government cannot, according to Imperial Firmans, for any reason or justification dispose of any part of the rights pertaining to sovereignty. Therefore, any idea aimed at obtaining agreements of this kind must be excluded.

The matter returned to political focus a few years later.

As it was, the factually-British-controlled-but-nominally-independent-Ottoman-vassal government of Egypt was involved in multiple border disputes with the Ottomans, both in Libya and in the Suez. As soon as they had secured their own rule, the new Ottoman government that had taken control of the state after the assassination of the previous Sultan reviewed their situation. France, Britain, Germany, Austria and Russia were all pressing in with railroad projects and gradual reduction of Ottoman sovereignty. The leaders of the Saviour Officer's movement, Haliskar Zabitan, met this challenge by attempting to play the foreigners against one another.

At the same time they sought to uphold their historical claims to Egypt.
When the dust had settled after the first free Ottoman elections in a generation in 1906, the Ottoman representatives contacted the Egyptian government.[2]
Their message was clear: there was no international treaty regarding the Ottoman-Egyptian border at the Sinai. The Ottoman view was that the Sinai Peninsula had been given to Egypt only for safe-keeping, and Egypt should now return it. The Sublime Porte wanted to establish the new border from Areesh to Suez and from Suez to Naqab-Aqaba. The Egyptian representatives turned down this proposal, and were also unwilling to split the area from Areesh to Ras Mohamed, with Egypt gaining the western part.
Both sides could only agree on the premise that the Firman of February 1841 had not solved the questions of the Gulf of Aqaba and the Sinai Peninsula.
The Ottoman state was firm on their right to send royal soldiers to Suez. Soon after they had agreed upon to intervene to the Balkans, the Powers were now facing a new challenge poised by the Ottomans further south.

1. As per OTL. Cromer was primarily interested in safeguarding the British control over Egypt, but was not as categorically opposed to Jewish plans to colonize the Sinai as he has been portrayed to be in many sources.
In TTL Herzl and rest of the movement do not squander their chances with the British so hastily, since they already have a better theoretical (but not actual) permission to settle people to Palestine from the Ottoman goverment than in OTL, and these negotiations with the Porte influence their general view of the situation.
2. The Ottomans started this border dispute in 1906 in OTL.

 

[SultanArda]

I feel like this diplomatic fight between Egypt and Ottoman Empire will end with Herzl and his fellow Zionists supporting Ottomans and using every single bit of their influence to ensure it is recognised as Ottoman territory.
Of course, in exchange, the Ottoman Empire would allow Zionists to settle in Sinai, with some autonomy given to the Jewish settler government-sequel structure, as well.

 

[lusitano 1996]

Why not settle the jews in east africa or rhodesia ? that could be super interesting

 

[Pax_Nihil]

Why not settle the jews in east africa or rhodesia ? that could be super interesting

Probably because not a lot of them knew anything about it nor did they want to know since they have no history of living there and they have no reason to significantly change the effort to try resettling in the Holy Land.

 

[TimTurner]

Will be interesting to see how the dispute between Egypt and the Ottomans develops.

 

[Karelian]

What was the Sinai worth?
A Scotland-sized wasteland of desert and high mountains, the administration of the area was of little value to Egypt in economic terms. It was merely the part of the desert where the geographical boundary split the South-Westernmost tip of Western Asia from North Africa. More specifically the region was bordered by the Mediterranean from the North, Negev Desert and the Gulf of Aqaba on the East, Red Sea from the South and the Gulf of Suez and the Suez Canal on the West. Drawing actual borders inside this rather easily defined region was a much harder task.

As mentioned earlier, the vague definition of the eastern borders of Pashalik of Egypt in the original 1841 Inheritance Firman[1] was complicated by the fact that the originally referred map had been "long-lost" by the Egyptians. Before the Ottomans had challenged the older arrangement, Egypt had administered the eastern shores of the Gulf of Aqaba as a part of the traditional hajj route to Mecca.

In the previous challenge to the status of Suez the Ottoman Commissioner in Egypt, Ahmed Mokhtar Pasha, had submitted a report where the Porte stated that it wanted Egypt to reorganise "the internal Ottoman administrative border" in the area. Soon after receiving this demand the Egyptian authorities suddenly "re-discovered" their copy of the original 1841 map.

It showed the dismayed British authorities that the border of the area that was originally intended to remain under direct Ottoman control reached the southern end of the current Suez Canal and even crossed it!

Upon this discovery the British Agent and Consul'general, Lord Cromer, wanted to push the Ottomans as far east as possible from the Suez Canal, the lifeline between India and Britain.

He acted on his own, as he had often done before since his arrival on 1883, and launched a series of military and diplomatic actions aimed to achieve an official separation of the Ottomans from the canal, the Monastery of St Catherine and the town of A-Tur. These actions had little other visible effects than an Ottoman telegram that seemingly accepted the status quo at Sinai. By threatening the Ottomans with military action, Lord Cromer had enforced the status quo. But he had also rubbed the reclusive monarch and his court at the Yıldız Palace the wrong way.

After their British overlords had seemingly solved the border dispute in 1892, the Egyptian government had controlled a number of desert forts and guard posts at Nah’al, Nuweiba and A-Tur. Here permanent garrisons guarded the caravan routes against roaming desert bandits during the annual pilgrimage.

As a face-saving gesture Khedive Abbas Hilmi II had to cede the control of the Arabian coast between the small fishing town of Aqaba and Yanbu’ to the Sultan.

After this first incident both sides begun to pay more attention to the region that had previously been disregarded as a mere wilderness. The next major change in this remote backwater happened in 1899, when the Ottomans had constructed a new city in the northern part of Negev in 1899. Beersheba/Birüsseb’ was established to enforce control over the Bedouin tribes in southern Palestine.

The British were also active in the area. In 1902 the British Palestine Exploration Fund, PEF, sent an expedition led by Wilfred Jennings-Bramly to carry out a thorough survey of the Bedouins in the Rafah region. The end report was extensive, and listed grazing areas, agricultural lands, inter-tribal relationships, water sources and the litany of tribes and sub-tribes of Bedouins in Eastern and North-Eastern Sinai and Western Negev.

Mostly ignored by everyone until now, the local Bedouins found themselves a focus of growing foreign attention. And not everyone approaching them was seeking to impose new borders or further taxation. Others were simply asking for expert advice on the traditional art of shepherding.

1. In this document, Sultan Abdülmecid granted hereditary governorship of Egypt to Muhammad Ali and his decedents.

 

[Karelian]

During the border negotiations of 1906, the British officials were astonished that even the most remote Beduin shayiks could (and did) point out that they were the legal owners of certain parts of Sinai with official documentation to back it up.

In the 1880s the Ottoman state had initiated a major border policy reform. As a part of it the Ottoman government had made a conscious effort to “tame the nomads”, and expand the terms of the Land Code of 1858 to these populations as well. This empire-wide policy change had meant that the rule over the Bedouin communities of Beersheba/Birüsseb’ had also been enhanced. As it was, the “unruly savages” were a source of constant instability. Tax collection from them had required several military campaigns, and still required occasional army enforcement.

And it was not all obvious who really counted as a nomad. The region had a long history of borderland movements where Bedouin could become Fellahin, and Fellahin could become Bedouin. The Bedouin sold dairy products, meat and animal skins to Fellahin, who in turn allowed the Bedouin herds to graze (and fertilise) the fields after harvests.
Many Bedouin groups also periodically spent some time away from the desert, before venturing back to the wilderness from the sedentary village life.

Registering the Gaza Bedouin had thus started as a taxation reform.
Now it was used first and foremost a part of an attempt to establish local alliances in order to present a legal case in their claim for Suez. Bedouin political loyalty was vital to the success of the claims of both sides, since the locals had divided the Egyptian and Beersheba tribal areas by an informal border arrangement since the 1840s. The local shaykhs pointed out that not only were the owners of these territories Beersheba Bedouins as one could see from the names of the local water wells and sites, they were also legally part of the Beersheba sub-district through written contracts (asnad) and land distribution registries in the Ottoman tax records.

The modernity of the Bedouin behavior during the border dispute was still a clear sign of the success of the Ottoman reforms.
As tax-paying subjects of the Sublime Porte, the Bedouins shayiks evoked the Ottoman state to protect their lawful property. They chose to do so despite knowing full well that the growing presence of the Ottoman state would most likely lead to further taxation, border control or even conscription. Nevertheless the local Bedouins were also aware that they simply required patronage from the state to protect their lands from further Anglo-Egyptian expansion.

This sudden perceived loyalty and demand for justice had not been the original Ottoman goal at all.
The indebted state had simply sought to squeeze more tax funds from the locals. In a recent change the new Ottoman Animal Law of 1905 had made annual stock counts compulsory to enforce joint and consistent taxation on goats and beehives.

The old collective and village-based musha' system that had facilitated the job of the tax farmers since times immemorial was now deemed illegitimate.
From now on land ownership was coupled with documentation. Each plot of land had a permanent use now, and each animal had one purpose. This changed Palestine and Sinai, and opened up new prospects for idealistic outsiders.

 

[Karelian]

Sheep herding among Jewish settlers emerged and spread in Ottoman Palestine, until pens existed in the majority of the different moshav and kibbutz communities.
Shepherding and sheep rearing was considered "the crown of tradition", especially by the conservative Orthodox Jewish immigrants. As a part of the growing interest towards animal husbandry, the Jewish community in Palestine established not one, but two organisations to promote their agenda.
Haro'e and Hanoked were shepherding movements determined to "redeem the land of Palestine through shepherding." While in agreement with their goal of promoting the cause of shepherding, they differed in methods. Other herders wanted to create industrial-scale, modern and scientific, European-style agriculture.

Others had different goals. Since shepherding was a traditional way of living, many Jewish settlers earned to become shepherds while lacking almost all practical knowledge of the trade. By following the example of local Palestinian Arab shepherds, the early shepherds attempted to "go native."

While everyone among the Palestinian Jewish settler community was encouraged to tiyul (stroll) and roam the region, some took the goal of "becoming True Hebrews" to new extremes. These families chose to live among the Bedouin tribes for months to an end. They ended up adopting particular practices such as the nomadic style of dressing and knowledge of the local Arab dialects. They genuinely sought to create a new Jewish Bedouin nomadic tribe, since Bedouins were considered the masters of shepherding, and the truest and oldest Hebrew profession.[1]

But as others spent time among the local Bedouins, others focused on mapping, specimens and data collections, planning a determined, modern European-style settlement of the region.

What was equally clear for all cartographers - Ottoman, British and Jewish alike - was the simplest and most obvious fact on the ground.
Except for the southernmost Negev Desert, no location was totally devoid of inhabitants, neither in Palestine nor the Sinai.
Population density, however, was far from uniform. The total population was also growing because of immigrantion, no matter whether the Jews were allowed in in larger numbers or not. The last time there had been a major census in 1871-72, the rural Arab population was estimated as c. 223-267 000 people. This was considered to be a rough estimate, as it was simply the number of households multiplied by five or six.

The Jewish settlers were far from the only groups moving in the region at this time.
The impoverished Egyptian, Bosnian, Circassian and Algerian muhājirs kept also arriving, and the constant stream of new destitute arrivals made rural life a precarious experience.

Not that the life in Palestine peasants and townsfolk would have been easy at the best of times. Cholera and other diseases, droughts and even occasional famines caused by plagues of ground mice and locust swarms claimed a toll to the rural population periodically.

This state of affairs somewhat reduced the supply of potential land available for Jewish rural settlement, and increased tensions between the locals of various sorts. The Qais-Yaman conflicts over crop-land and water sources tended to focus on Bedouin and Fellahin groups more than the various immigrants. They often at least attempted to remain on the sidelines.

For the Jewish communities, access to main Jewish towns was an important consideration for sites and locations.
Jerusalem, Hebron, Safad and Tiberias were settlements that had centuries-old tradition as Jewish holy sites. Jaffa and Haifa were new centres of agriculture, and economy rather than religion became the pulling factor for settling close to them. Fairly high land supply and low population density enabled people to move in to these parts of Palestine.

Large-scale purchases of potentially fertile land had became occasionally available after the Ottoman tax reform of 1905, but their supply was still an exception rather than the rule. Meanwhile the narrow coastal area of Sinai adjacent to al-'Arïsh was a place where groundwater was available. Here new petroleum-powered pumps could tap previously unused sources of groundwater, creating a possibility to buy low-yield wheat and barley fields and replace them by more profitable citrus groves. Meanwhile the area was also deemed suitable for sheep- and goat-herding.

1. This is all OTL. The early Jewish shepherds learned the tricks of the trade by mingling freely among the Palestinian Bedouins.

 

[Belka DNW]

So Palestine can become a new economic hub for the Ottomans, think they can get loans from Rothschild and/or other jewish owned banks to develop the region?

 

[Karelian]

So Palestine can become a new economic hub for the Ottomans, think they can get loans from Rothschild and/or other jewish owned banks to develop the region?

And everyone can live happily ever after. If only, but hardly so. The region is geopolitically too important, especially now when the jointly owned Franco-German-British Baghdad railway company is due to link up the European railroad network to the nascent Ottoman infrastructure.

 

[Belka DNW]

Since we're talking about the penisula already, is there any plans for the rest of Arabia? Like, would the Ottomans get involved in a conflict between Jabbal Shammar and the Sauds?

 

[Thomas Lloyd]

I guess Mt. Sinai has some religious significance to settle there.

 

[nagachate]

I guess Mt. Sinai has some religious significance to settle there.

Though Sinai is explicitly not part of the promised land.