The Ottoman empire, but not Japan, joins the global north.

Huh.

But wouldn't the Ottomans be able to do that better, as they where literally in Europe?
The Japanese did well against the Russian because they were not in Europe! Supporting a war effort 8000km away down a single track rail line that was uneconomic to bring back empty trucks is not a winning hand.
 
The Japanese did well against the Russian because they were not in Europe! Supporting a war effort 8000km away down a single track rail line that was uneconomic to bring back empty trucks is not a winning hand.
Arent European countries good at beating up countries super far from them? Russia itself even beat up China multiple times while expanding east.
 
Why does the middle east have a lot more illiteracy than Europe? Even Turkey is less literate than the Balkan countries.

Well, the heartland of the Ottoman Empire was in the Balkans. It's not a surprise that the Asian portions of the empire had lower literacy. Even in a much more equitable society like that of the modern US, the educated people cluster in the most developed parts of the country because that's where the work for them is.

And there's also likely some effect from Turkey instituting an Owellian purge of its own language in the name of nationalism after it gained independence from the Ottoman Empire. The script was changed to one based on the Latin alphabet, which is a pretty big change given that the previous scripts had used the Greek alphabet or the Arabic abjad.

There is something I cannot fathom. Like, I've heard all the reasons the middle east isnt very developed now. But still, the Ottoman empire was literally part of the European socio cultural space where innovations and ideas spread rapidly. Yet they staged behind literally everyone.

Contrast Japan, which was far away and super isolated but still managed to modernize and then beat a European country in a war. Japan was not part of the European region and did not get news of all the latest shit that was happening, but still did super well.

This seems impossible

The Ottomans were leagues ahead of everyone in Europe until the 18th Century when the population crashed. (Perhaps due to cholera moving through the region - we don't know exactly why or how, since this is a neglected period/region of study and past authors didn't tend to write much useful about plagues that hit their countries since plagues were a normal occurrence and germ science was not sufficiently advanced to reliably tell "disease that kills people A" from "disease that kills people B". But it does seem that population densities in the Ottoman Empire and the Persian Empire halved at about the same time. The Persian Empire would never recover, and the Ottomans would enter a slow decline that lasted for just under 200 years.)

Population density is a huge driver of innovation and economic dynamism, high densities are good for human culture, low densities are bad. So the Ottomans were below the density they needed to maintain what they already had at the very time when their Christian neighbours were experiencing an enormous population boom driven first by the arrival of new crops from the Americas and intensified by the industrial revolution.

And Japan's isolation was more of an advantage than a disadvantage. The Ottomans were hampered in their efforts to recover by European pressure on the Balkans - the core territories of the empire where the population was highest and the development the most - which rendered them unable to contain the nationalist movements of their Christian subjects.

Reality is sometimes stranger than fiction!
But I believe it comes down to cultural specifics: Japanese culture supported and even wanted modernization,while Ottoman did not.

Eh, "cultural reasons" are bunk. I remember when people still took serious the idea that Confucianism was the reason why China and both Koreas weren't developed countries. Not only did China and South Korea go on to confound expectations, but the last 30 years have been very productive ones for the people trying to measure different contributors to economic growth, and things like China's falling behind in the 19th Century and Africa's struggle to join the industrial world are explained by more mundane factors like geography, the education levels of the population and disease. Culture appears to have precious little to do with development.

The real reasons are:

1) Japan was highly developed
2) Japan had a dense and (relatively) well educated population
3) Japan was used to being a small fish so European superiority was only a shock insofar as it was Europeans being technologically superior, not Chinese
4) Japan was a long, long way away from Europe and hard for the colonial powers to get at

Ottoman culture, by contrast, is notable for being one of the most open to European innovations. The Ottomans were very willing to buy European technology, hire European advisers and trade openly with Europe (indeed, the Ottomans before 1800 were perhaps the most economically open power in the world). That their culture "didn't support or want modernization" is twaddle.

Indeed, compared to most great powers in decline, I would say the Ottomans were unusually dynamic and quick to adopt outside ideas. Yes, the Janissaries and the student mobs of Constantinople were serious roadblocks to modernizing the empire. But as bad as they were, they were only elements of Ottoman culture.

fasquardon
 
Well, the heartland of the Ottoman Empire was in the Balkans. It's not a surprise that the Asian portions of the empire had lower literacy. Even in a much more equitable society like that of the modern US, the educated people cluster in the most developed parts of the country because that's where the work for them is.

heartland of Ottoman empire was in Anatolia not in the Balkans!
Please give/list your source?
 
For Japan getting a litany of global south internal problems is pretty hard (as others note), often because the required changes are already complete by 1900 and hard to reverse, but keeping Japan a second-tier nation is not too hard I don't think.

In OTL all the East Asian "late" industrializers benefited from fortunate circumstances where boons in favorable demographics, wages and land reform combined with relatively favorable education outcomes, gave them a skilled low wage workforce which allowed them to pursue export-oriented industrialization that could lead to lots of growth through copying, foreign profits, innovating to compete in foreign markets, etc. Despite limited domestic funds and markets, and high savings rates relative to income (savings rates are always high at the lower bound, because savings serve as a buffer when people have little income and there is not much credit about, but more so in East Asia).

That's really a lucky and contingent circumstance of the first era of deglobalization being disrupted by world war followed by cold war and the occupation of Japan that ultimately drew it back into the sphere of a US that was relatively friendly to Japan pursuing export oriented asymmetric industrialization under a guided program, to get the country on side in the global struggle of armed Communist and Capitalist camps, and then the repetition of this cycle across East Asia (including up to China!).

It's not too hard to think of a world where that doesn't happen, and Japan and others become disfavorable in the mix of demographics, wages and education advantages before any opportunity for export oriented industrialization can take place, and catch up growth is thereby relatively slow.
 
Turkey is already considered a part of the Global North. Might need to shear off some parts of the periphery of the empire and get Turkish nationalists in charge. Still would be an issue with Arabs due to linguistic and geographic reasons.
 

Germaniac

Donor
heartland of Ottoman empire was in Anatolia not in the Balkans!
Please give/list your source?

Sorry but no, the Balkans was the heartland of the Empire. Anatolia was just where most turkish peasants lived, aka military recruitment areas. The Balkans was the economic, political, and industrial core of the Ottoman state. Salonika and Istanbul being the two most important cities in the empire, and the vast majority of tax revenues coming from the Balkans as well.

On vacation but if you really want sources ill update tomorrow
 
Sorry but no, the Balkans was the heartland of the Empire. Anatolia was just where most turkish peasants lived, aka military recruitment areas. The Balkans was the economic, political, and industrial core of the Ottoman state. Salonika and Istanbul being the two most important cities in the empire, and the vast majority of tax revenues coming from the Balkans as well.

On vacation but if you really want sources ill update tomorrow
I have read before that the people of the Balkans were referred to a state sheep at times, as the Ottomans had no desire to convert them when they could instead charge them extra taxes and take their children as slaves. If perhaps there had been more of a Muslim population in the region there would have been a greater chance to... I want to say make a more unified state, keeping the Ottomans to the Balkans and Anatolia as they originally were, but then that might mean they didn't have the trade wealth from spices further south or the grain of Egypt. To be in the Global North they would need a non-slave based economy and military. Not excluding Turks from being Jannisaries might help. Or potentially having Turks and other groups move to Ukraine, which had been so depopulated by the Crimean Tartars on their slave raids.

Are we going to have a minimum size we need for the Ottomans to still be considered Ottomans? And do they need to have the Ottomans?
 

JSchafer

Banned
Step 1, institute local rulership in European areas, promise autonomy in 5 years and independence 5 years after that. Try to give more political and religious freedoms while trying to get the states there dependent on you and getting as much money out as possible.
2. Set up Albania, Bosnia and Macedonia as independent to serve as a bone of contention between Austria, Italy, Bulgaria and newly created states. Anger between them is not anger directed at yourself.
3. Meanwhile start trying to bind the rest of the empire trough religion. Turks, Kurds, Arabs and others don't share much except it. Constantly point out to the fate of various independent muslim countries that ended up as colonies. Fear and faith.
 

Germaniac

Donor
Step 1, institute local rulership in European areas, promise autonomy in 5 years and independence 5 years after that. Try to give more political and religious freedoms while trying to get the states there dependent on you and getting as much money out as possible.
Autonomy and independence leads to collapse as OTL shows. Losing the Balkans will inevitably lead to the adoption of Turkish Nationalism as a return to Abdul Hamids Islamism isn't going sit well with the military which had already adopted pro-constitutionalist tendencies.
2. Set up Albania, Bosnia and Macedonia as independent to serve as a bone of contention between Austria, Italy, Bulgaria and newly created states. Anger between them is not anger directed at yourself.
Bosnia is already lost, Macedonia would be eaten by the Balkan powers as soon as the Turks leave (surrendering large turkish populations in the process), and Albania will be the center of a likely conflict between Italy and Austria, something europe wants to prevent.
3. Meanwhile start trying to bind the rest of the empire trough religion. Turks, Kurds, Arabs and others don't share much except it. Constantly point out to the fate of various independent muslim countries that ended up as colonies. Fear and faith. See above, an Ottoman Sultan who has willingly given up muslim subject to european subjugation is going to lose support. Arabs had already begun to question the Caliph in response to losing the arab province of Libya. Losing the Balkans without a fight will cause the dissolution of everything but Anatolia.
 
The CUP started small. So getting Mehmed Talaat Pasha and a few other OTL key figures out of the way will steer the anti-Hamidian conspiracies to different direction. If the assassination attempt of 1905 succeeds, the Haliskar Zabitan movement is thus in a position to take control of the state, but especially the Army and purge it, while also keeping it henceforth out from politics, unlike OTL. This type of arrangement stabilized things for Hapsburgs, and would help the Ottomans as well.

Now, with a figurehead HALİFE from the eldest son of Abdülhamid II serving as a legal pretext of a Kemalist Turkey-style reformist parliamentarism "with a military backstop", the Ottoman regime has a chance to retain enough loyalty among the provincial middle classes to avoid the worst revolts. This is critical, because democratic facade and internal stability take away pretexts for foreign interference.

The actual governing could be taken care by a OTL-model restored parliament with two-stage balloting, in which every tax-paying male Ottoman citizen above the age twenty-five was entitled to vote in a primary election to select secondary voters. Secondary voters, each elected by 500 to 750 primary voters, then voted to determine the member(s) of the Chamber in the numbers specified for a particular electoral district, the sancak, without special quota arrangements for the religious or sectarian communities. Each voter votes as an Ottoman citizen for deputies representing not a particular community, but all Ottomans. Without coups, this voting system will steer the system towards wider parties, once again mimicking the Hapsburg example.

This is all just window dressing, though - the key goal here is to survive until the oil revenue comes available. Paradoxically increased Great Power interference to Ottoman affairs in Macedonia combined with Ottoman parliamentarism would most likely butterfly away the Italo-Ottoman War and the Balkan War, giving the state enough time for military reforms that would enable the Ottomans to remain intact and utilize their new-found wealth to modernize later on. So suck it up, allow the Powers to built the Baghdad Railway as joint project like very nearly happened in OTL, while reforming the military and stabilizing the internal situation.
 
Huh.

But wouldn't the Ottomans be able to do that better, as they where literally in Europe?

Japan was protected from Europe by bring on the other side of the planet.

Also the Ottomans wasn’t really integrated into the European intelligentsia, some Ottoman citizens was, but these also happened to be second class citizens. Try to compare the cultural output from the Ottomans and Russians in 18-19th century which are widely known in the West today. The Russians produced work of literature still admired today, they was famous for their ballets. The Ottomans...
 

Germaniac

Donor
The CUP started small. So getting Mehmed Talaat Pasha and a few other OTL key figures out of the way will steer the anti-Hamidian conspiracies to different direction. If the assassination attempt of 1905 succeeds, the Haliskar Zabitan movement is thus in a position to take control of the state, but especially the Army and purge it, while also keeping it henceforth out from politics, unlike OTL. This type of arrangement stabilized things for Hapsburgs, and would help the Ottomans as well.

Now, with a figurehead HALİFE from the eldest son of Abdülhamid II serving as a legal pretext of a Kemalist Turkey-style reformist parliamentarism "with a military backstop", the Ottoman regime has a chance to retain enough loyalty among the provincial middle classes to avoid the worst revolts. This is critical, because democratic facade and internal stability take away pretexts for foreign interference.

The actual governing could be taken care by a OTL-model restored parliament with two-stage balloting, in which every tax-paying male Ottoman citizen above the age twenty-five was entitled to vote in a primary election to select secondary voters. Secondary voters, each elected by 500 to 750 primary voters, then voted to determine the member(s) of the Chamber in the numbers specified for a particular electoral district, the sancak, without special quota arrangements for the religious or sectarian communities. Each voter votes as an Ottoman citizen for deputies representing not a particular community, but all Ottomans. Without coups, this voting system will steer the system towards wider parties, once again mimicking the Hapsburg example.

This is all just window dressing, though - the key goal here is to survive until the oil revenue comes available. Paradoxically increased Great Power interference to Ottoman affairs in Macedonia combined with Ottoman parliamentarism would most likely butterfly away the Italo-Ottoman War and the Balkan War, giving the state enough time for military reforms that would enable the Ottomans to remain intact and utilize their new-found wealth to modernize later on. So suck it up, allow the Powers to built the Baghdad Railway as joint project like very nearly happened in OTL, while reforming the military and stabilizing the internal situation.

I generally agree with you outside the first part. While the central committee of "CUP" was small, but the party itself was the largest political organization in the country. They had a widespread network throughout Europe and the party consisted of an array of factions apart from Taalats brand.

Im not sure which movement you are talking about, but i assume it's the liberal entente. If you wanted to find a more scattered and fractured political alliance it would be difficult. The only defining theory was being opposed to the CUP. I'd suggest a Unionist CUP led by the Cavit Bey Faction (pro-british) being the most optimal sistuation. The main issue being reconciling Shevket Pasha and Cavid Bey's relationship.
 
I generally agree with you outside the first part. While the central committee of "CUP" was small, but the party itself was the largest political organization in the country. They had a widespread network throughout Europe and the party consisted of an array of factions apart from Taalats brand.

Im not sure which movement you are talking about, but i assume it's the liberal entente. If you wanted to find a more scattered and fractured political alliance it would be difficult. The only defining theory was being opposed to the CUP. I'd suggest a Unionist CUP led by the Cavit Bey Faction (pro-british) being the most optimal sistuation. The main issue being reconciling Shevket Pasha and Cavid Bey's relationship.

No,I am talking about Haliskar Zabitan, the Saviour Officers:
8yksWq6.png
edit: I used this faction, a more sidelined CUP with different key leaders than OTL and various opposition forces in my TL (see signature) to get the Ottomans to a different position than OTL. Another key change here was getting Albanian-born Ottoman officials to positions where they could co-opt the local Albanian elites and turning them to local auxiliaries instead of the troublespot they were in OTL.
 
Well, the heartland of the Ottoman Empire was in the Balkans. It's not a surprise that the Asian portions of the empire had lower literacy. Even in a much more equitable society like that of the modern US, the educated people cluster in the most developed parts of the country because that's where the work for them is.
Why was the Balkans the heartland? Aren't the western Levant and Mesopotamia also densely populated?

And if keeping the Balkans is nessecary, would it have been possible to Islamize the Balkans more? Like, set up certain industries in Rumelia and subsidize muslims to go live and work there?

1) Japan was highly developed
2) Japan had a dense and (relatively) well educated population

How did Japan become so developed even before the industrialization?
Also the Ottomans wasn’t really integrated into the European intelligentsia, some Ottoman citizens was, but these also happened to be second class citizens.
Would there be a way to integrate Ottoman Muslims into the general European intelligentsia?
 
Also the Ottomans wasn’t really integrated into the European intelligentsia, some Ottoman citizens was, but these also happened to be second class citizens. Try to compare the cultural output from the Ottomans and Russians in 18-19th century which are widely known in the West today. The Russians produced work of literature still admired today, they was famous for their ballets. The Ottomans...
The fact that the Western view to the Ottoman intelligentsia was prejudiced and generally disinterested does not mean that people like Said Nursî, Muḥammad 'Abduh, 'Abd al-Rahman al-Kawakibi, Nigâr Hanım, Muhammad Rashid Rida and many others did not exist, or that they did not contribute "cultural output."
 

Germaniac

Donor
No,I am talking about Haliskar Zabitan, the Saviour Officers:

Got it. The only major issue i have with the Savior Officers was their removal of Shevket Pasha as minister of war and replacing him with possibly the single most incompetent commander in military history, Nazim Pasha.
 
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