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

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
On the contrary their geographic isolation from other developed nations was a huge boon. They were able to throw their full (and far more meagre than often assumed) weight around in an area where all their peers would be at the far end of their supply lines. Rather than being in the European mosh pit where falling behind a little was a death sentence they were able to kick other asians around with relative impunity.
 
So, with the most realistic means, what is the largest chunk of the Balkans the Ottomans can keep? I'm thinking all of thrace, Macedonia and Albania.
A grim and horrible way to achieve more lasting situation with these borders would be a Lausanne Convention-style population transfer after a major regional war where Ottomans manage to fight out a draw against a league of neighbouring Balkan states.
Get all possible Turks, Bosniaks, Pomaks and Torbeši in from the territories no longer under their control, and once the dust gradually settles the demographics are now such that the internal separatism ceases to be a constant source of conflict. It's a really bad solution, but the one that Eastern Europe underwent historically anyhow.
 
On the contrary their geographic isolation from other developed nations was a huge boon. They were able to throw their full (and far more meagre than often assumed) weight around in an area where all their peers would be at the far end of their supply lines. Rather than being in the European mosh pit where falling behind a little was a death sentence they were able to kick other asians around with relative impunity.
But didnt all the other European countries being squished up against each other encourage competition and innovation.
 
So are the high population densities of eastern Iraq and western syria/Lebanon recent developments? If so, could similar developments happen under the Ottomans which cause a boom in population in these areas and maybe could provide a source of people to settle the Balkans? Or maybe make Russia go MUCH harsher on its Muslim population causing more Muslim emigration from Russia into the Ottoman empire?

I wouldn't say that Syria/Lebanon and Iraq had particularly high population densities. But yes, those are recent developments and they happened in the context of a general boom in population across the Arab world, which in turn has happened because there's been a boom across the whole of the "global south" as those regions have moved into equilibrium with Europe.

Those regions could grow more in the 19th Century say, with an earlier restoration of security and central control and a driving back of tribal domination and local warlordism.

Well, European countries developed fine while beating the shit out of each other.

The European countries that were too small and weak died like flies in the period between 1600 and 1900. Japan and the Ottomans in 1900 aren't going to be able to play the role of England, France or Russia - they were obliged to play the role of Burgundy, Venice or Poland. Meat for the wolves if they ever got too close to the fight. And the Ottomans were right next to the fight, so surprise surprise, they got partitioned by more successful states. Japan, by contrast, was a pygmy, but was far enough away that they were too expensive to fight. In 1905, Japan was no-where near to totally defeating Russia, but it was terribly expensive for the Russians to bring their power to bear on Japan. So Japan defeated the Russians in detail every time the Russians realized they'd underestimated Japan and sent more resources and eventually Russia was humiliated and couldn't pay for the war much longer (and didn't know the Japanese were even closer to financial collapse than they).

Also, Europe is weird. Regular transatlantic shipping put Europe at the centre of the world, where before it had been a poor periphery. So economic growth from explosion of trade and agriculture (from the arrival of American crops in Europe) and from looting other regions of the world resulted in economic growth that far outstripped the destruction caused by the wars (and there were deeply destructive wars in Europe, the 30 years war and the Napoleonic wars would have left the continent devastated for much longer without the continual inflow of a relatively small but significant surplus of wealth).

In this case, Europe's division seems to be an advantage, since foolish acts by one state would not be shared by its neighbours and the foolishness made evident in the next war, resulting in a darwinian ratchet that lead to a rapid development in military technology which allowed Europe to eventually loot big targets like the mighty empires of India and China and pull in the surplus wealth to fuel the rapid development of a broad suite of technologies in what we call the industrial and scientific revolutions.

But if you look at the case of world regions that went through stages of being united by large empires and broken up into smaller states like the Middle East, China and India, the technology and science tended to be developed in the periods of large empires, where trade, crop varieties, people and ideas could move more freely. The times of division and competition between the big empires tend to be much more miserable times, though they do tend to produce more moral philosphers - Confucius, Lao Tzu, Zuangzi, most of the great thinkers of Hinduism, all tend to have lived during the times of division and conflict.

fasquardon
 
But didnt all the other European countries being squished up against each other encourage competition and innovation.
Competition requires that there be winners and losers. That's great for those who could make the cut, less so for those who couldn't, and the Ottomans (much like the Austrians and the Polish) ultimately couldn't.

Japan meanwhile still faced a healthy amount of peer competition from Europe, but due to the limits of European power projection the consequences for being a bit behind tended to only be colonial set backs rather than the dismantling of their nation
 
In this case, Europe's division seems to be an advantage, since foolish acts by one state would not be shared by its neighbours and the foolishness made evident in the next war, resulting in a darwinian ratchet that lead to a rapid development in military technology which allowed Europe to eventually loot big targets like the mighty empires of India and China and pull in the surplus wealth to fuel the rapid development of a broad suite of technologies in what we call the industrial and scientific revolutions.
So how come the Ottoman Empire didnt follow the general trends of Europe seeing as it was in the same neighborhood? How come they where not "part of the system" if that makes any sense?
 
Competition requires that there be winners and losers. That's great for those who could make the cut, less so for those who couldn't, and the Ottomans (much like the Austrians and the Polish) ultimately couldn't.
But ultimately Poland and Austria turned out to be much more developed and over all better off than Turkey. If you look at today, Turkey scores lower than almost every single European country in most development metrics like hdi or whatever.

(Sorry for the double post)
 
So how come the Ottoman Empire didnt follow the general trends of Europe seeing as it was in the same neighborhood? How come they where not "part of the system" if that makes any sense?

Because they was Muslims, Russia was able to integrate into Europe by the fact that the elite including the imperial family could intermarry with Western Europeans. But the Ottomans couldn’t send a Ottoman princess to Germany to marry, and the polygamy of Ottoman dynasty made marriage the other way mostly worthless for the Europeans. If the Ottomans had moved to monogamy and had been willing to let their princesses marry Christian princes, the Ottomans would have developed familiar relationship with the rest of Europe like the Russians did. A Christian prince whose mother or grandmother was a Ottoman princess would also have been willing to send a daughter the other way. These marriage often served to transfer know how, culture and technology between different states, as the princesses want luxuries from home, and often they also brought brothers, who ended up going into their brother-in-laws service as general and governors, and as a relative without connections or a base in the state and somewhat protected by their princely status, they tended to very loyal, and as princes they had the best education in statesmanship and warfare you could get, and if they was incompetents, they could be put in harmless positions.
 
But ultimately Poland and Austria turned out to be much more developed and over all better off than Turkey. If you look at today, Turkey scores lower than almost every single European country in most development metrics like hdi or whatever.
Actually HDI is quite revealing. Against Europe as a whole Turkey does indeed look bad. Compared with the Balkans and Black Sea region (ie their European neighbourhood) they fit in just fine (and of course they compare even better against their Middle Eastern neighbourhood).

Polands score is inline with that of Eastern Europe, Austria's score is inline with Central Europe.
 
Actually HDI is quite revealing. Against Europe as a whole Turkey does indeed look bad. Compared with the Balkans and Black Sea region (ie their European neighbourhood) they fit in just fine (and of course they compare even better against their Middle Eastern neighbourhood).

Polands score is inline with that of Eastern Europe, Austria's score is inline with Central Europe.
I thought all the Balkan countries where better than Turkey?
 
Actually HDI is quite revealing. Against Europe as a whole Turkey does indeed look bad. Compared with the Balkans and Black Sea region (ie their European neighbourhood) they fit in just fine (and of course they compare even better against their Middle Eastern neighbourhood).

You mean that Turkey have done just as well as countries, which ran a communist planned economy for 45 years?
 
You mean that Turkey have done just as well as countries, which ran a communist planned economy for 45 years?
Yeah I'd say that's a fair appraisal of coup-land, especially given that the Kemalists were no strangers to economic central planning (they even used five year plans).
 
In 1914, the Ottomans wanted to emulate Japan's success by starting down the road of naval self sufficiency. They had signed up for large foreign warship orders and engaged a British consortium to manage the main shipyard for 30 years. This was a model that Italy and Japan had completed while Spain was a decade in.

The Ottomans had a soft spot for things naval. In addition to a fearsome nautical tradition and seeing the rebuilding of the navy as a form of national renewal, the Ottoman navy had boasted the worlds largest warship for many decades in the 1800's before decay by the end of the century. Greek naval dominance of the Aegean was why they lost Rumelia in 1912-13.
 
In 1914, the Ottomans wanted to emulate Japan's success by starting down the road of naval self sufficiency. They had signed up for large foreign warship orders and engaged a British consortium to manage the main shipyard for 30 years. This was a model that Italy and Japan had completed while Spain was a decade in.

The Ottomans had a soft spot for things naval. In addition to a fearsome nautical tradition and seeing the rebuilding of the navy as a form of national renewal, the Ottoman navy had boasted the worlds largest warship for many decades in the 1800's before decay by the end of the century. Greek naval dominance of the Aegean was why they lost Rumelia in 1912-13.

The Ottomans were a naval empire. The sea-roads of the Eastern Med. were what tied it all together. It was just a shame that after Abdul Hamid II had spent jaw dropping sums updating the Ottoman navy with the very best technology, that advances in Britain and France rendered that investment obsolete twice or three times over.

It is interesting to speculate on what if AH II had delayed his naval program to 1900 or so, and the Ottomans had a fair fleet of pre-dreads and armoured cruisers when war with Italy came.

So how come the Ottoman Empire didnt follow the general trends of Europe seeing as it was in the same neighborhood? How come they where not "part of the system" if that makes any sense?

The Ottomans did follow the general trends of Europe in most respects. If you look at the diffusion of new world crops from Spain and the Netherlands and the wave of industrialization that rippled out from the English Channel, the Ottomans started their agricultural revolution and industrial revolution just behind the Austrians and Russians - just as one would expect. But with a smaller population than the main Christian empires on their borders, they followed the fate of the less fortunate states in Europe, rather than the fate of the more fortunate ones so the 19th Century was pretty much a period of being torn down as fast as they built up while their neighbours were able to build and build.

Being Muslim also didn't help, but mostly that was just the icing on a cake made of "Russia stronk, Ottos veak".

fasquardon
 
Less known POD could be about Yemen. Between 1869-1911 at least 300k Ottoman soldiers died in Ottoman-Yemen conflicts. Little known that Yemen is a huge Ottoman graveyard. It was like Vietnam x 10.
Just in 1905 Yemenî revolt, 30k Ottoman soldiers died out of 55k. Also because of Yemenî revolt of 1910-11, Ottomans diverted at least 30k soldiers from Libya to Yemen. This encouraged Italians to attack. Unfortunatelly, Ottomans only recognized Yemen's autonomy after Tripolitanian War.
If Ottomans would made a deal with Yemen before 1904 similar to OTL Treaty of Daan. Ottomans both could saved at least 50k soldiers and probably millions of sterling and avoided Italian aggression.
 
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Less known POD could be about Yemen. Between 1869-1911 at least 300k Ottoman soldiers died in Ottoman-Yemen conflicts. Little known that Yemen is a huge Ottoman graveyard. It was like Vietnam x 10.
Just in 1905 Yemenî revolt, 30k Ottoman soldiers died out of 55k. Also because of Yemenî revolt of 1910-11, Ottomans diverted at least 30k soldiers from Libya to Yemen. This encouraged Italians to attack. Unfortunatelly, Ottomans only recognized Yemen's autonomy after Tripolitanian War.
If Ottomans would made a deal with Yemen before 1904 similar to OTL Treaty of Daan. Ottomans both could saved at least 50k soldiers and probably millions of sterling and avoided Italian aggression.

Ohhh. Bonus points for an obscure PoD! Do you have any good sources on Ottoman-era Yemen? I'd heard of the Yemeni revolt, but your post just here is the most detail I've ever seen on it.

fasquardon
 
Since 1904 it had been costing the Ottoman Empire about £500,000 per year to suppress the uprising in Yemen.

The 1st Balkan war broke out on 18 Oct 1912 just after the Ottoman Empire had disbanded 120,000 troops station in Rumelia (Ottoman Europe) and redeployed 35,000 troops to Yemen.
 

Germaniac

Donor
Since 1904 it had been costing the Ottoman Empire about £500,000 per year to suppress the uprising in Yemen.

The 1st Balkan war broke out on 18 Oct 1912 just after the Ottoman Empire had disbanded 120,000 troops station in Rumelia (Ottoman Europe) and redeployed 35,000 troops to Yemen.

I've heard this quoted, and I am aware that Shevket Pasha did demobilize forces after the Italo-Turkish war, but I have no idea where the numbers come from. Do you have a source for that because I would really love to find that.
 
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