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

ObWI: The Ottomans do decide to acquire the Pisa class AC. What does this mean for the Ottoman/Greek naval balance?

More generally, I am wondering how early Abdul Hamid II could have been overthrown and the Ottomans still built a modern navy (or at least, more modern than Greece). From the sound of it, starting a couple years earlier would have meant a much stronger Ottoman navy at the time of an alt-1st Balkan War. Of course, if the Ottoman navy is stronger, do the Greeks even join the Balkan league? If the Greeks don't join, does the league go anywhere?

fasquardon
The Georges Averoff is probably the most significant individual ship of the 20th century and its subsequent impact on history. Defeated the Turkish Navy virtually single handed. Loss of the Aegean meant loss of Rumelia and follow on Balkan issues triggering WW1. Place the GA in Ottoman hands rather than Greek and the world is very different.
 

Germaniac

Donor
The Georges Averoff is probably the most significant individual ship of the 20th century and its subsequent impact on history. Defeated the Turkish Navy virtually single handed. Loss of the Aegean meant loss of Rumelia and follow on Balkan issues triggering WW1. Place the GA in Ottoman hands rather than Greek and the world is very different.

Absolutely agree, that one ship changed the course of history in a way few other could have. I'd say just have the Ottomans bite the bullet and purchase the Blucher. The Blucher was more than a match for the Averof.

I'm trying to remember the source, but the Germans were only hesitant to sell the ship due to the stipulations in the Naval Laws which would require the Turks to pay the full purchase price. There was a proposal to sell the ship tied to older cruisers (I believe it was two Gazalle class) and a few destroyers, essentially evening out the cost, but I believe they were hesitant to the still high cost and eventually the admiralty stepped into stop the sale.
 
How come modern medicine didnt reach the area earlier?
Because they lacked funding. Traditional Ottoman medicine system and folk medicine also had strong support among the local population.
The Mekteb-i tıbiyye (Imperial Military School of Medicine) was the first Western-style medical school in the whole Empire, and it begun operations in 1827.

There are several good studies available online about the way Tanzimat era sought to tackle major health issues like fatal complications from botched abortions, epidemic syphilis and frequent outbreaks of smallpox and other fatal diseases.
 
Money.
Ottoman Empire's budget was 24m Ottoman lira(1 pound = 1,1 Ottoman lira) before Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78. In 1882, Ottoman budget revanues was 16m Ottoman lira so Ottoman's lost 1/3 of their revenues but military expenditure remained same. Also at least 4m lira went to debt payments, budget of military was 8m lira. So only 4 million lira could allocated other things like medicine, education, infrastructure.
 
Money.
Ottoman Empire's budget was 24m Ottoman lira(1 pound = 1,1 Ottoman lira) before Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78. In 1882, Ottoman budget revanues was 16m Ottoman lira so Ottoman's lost 1/3 of their revenues but military expenditure remained same. Also at least 4m lira went to debt payments, budget of military was 8m lira. So only 4 million lira could allocated other things like medicine, education, infrastructure.
So a good way to have more money would be for the Ottomans to not get into many wars?
 
Yes. Ottomans could have avoided(or won) Russo-Turkish war of 1877/78.
With war Ottoman Empire lost 1/5 of population, 1/3 of state revenues, 250k civillian muslims in Balkans massacred during war and lost large portion of army. There was 500k muslim refugee came from Russian occupied Bulgaria. Ottomans did spend at least 30m pound during war. Also forced to pay 33m pound war indemnity to Russia. Losing natural borders like Danube, Kars Mountains made empire hardly defendable. So basically Russo-Turkish War mutilated Ottoman Empire and Ottomans lost their position as a major power.
 
Yes. Ottomans could have avoided(or won) Russo-Turkish war of 1877/78.
With war Ottoman Empire lost 1/5 of population, 1/3 of state revenues, 250k civillian muslims in Balkans massacred during war and lost large portion of army. There was 500k muslim refugee came from Russian occupied Bulgaria. Ottomans did spend at least 30m pound during war. Also forced to pay 33m pound war indemnity to Russia. Losing natural borders like Danube, Kars Mountains made empire hardly defendable. So basically Russo-Turkish War mutilated Ottoman Empire and Ottomans lost their position as a major power.
So how come none of the other European countries ever decayed so thoroughly like the Ottomans? Look at Austria for example. The empire was dismembered, but Austria is still a very developed country that scores high on all metrics like hdi or whatever. The same is not true for Turkey or the Arab states.
 
So how come none of the other European countries ever decayed so thoroughly like the Ottomans? Look at Austria for example. The empire was dismembered, but Austria is still a very developed country that scores high on all metrics like hdi or whatever. The same is not true for Turkey or the Arab states.
There are a lot of reasons, some referred in detail here: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/52071559.pdf
In short: in the economic sphere they preferred free markets until it was too late.
Unlike European states where tariffs were high and mercantilism prevailed, allowing domestic industries time to develop, the Ottomans preferred to use their central location in the traditional Eurasian trade route networks for economic gain with rather minimal control to the trade aside from taxation. This gradually led to situation where the local markets were flooded with European goods, and the exports and imports turned to a situation where the Ottomans produced agricultural goods and had to import all modern machinery. Afterwards the WW1 era was absolutely devastating to all local communities of the Empire, and the redrawn borders dismantled the prewar economic structures, forcing the republic of Turkey to start from scratch as far as their foreign trade was concerned. The Arab states deserve their own topic.
 
There are a lot of reasons, some referred in detail here: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/52071559.pdf
In short: in the economic sphere they preferred free markets until it was too late.
Unlike European states where tariffs were high and mercantilism prevailed, allowing domestic industries time to develop, the Ottomans preferred to use their central location in the traditional Eurasian trade route networks for economic gain with rather minimal control to the trade aside from taxation. This gradually led to situation where the local markets were flooded with European goods, and the exports and imports turned to a situation where the Ottomans produced agricultural goods and had to import all modern machinery. Afterwards the WW1 era was absolutely devastating to all local communities of the Empire, and the redrawn borders dismantled the prewar economic structures, forcing the republic of Turkey to start from scratch as far as their foreign trade was concerned. The Arab states deserve their own topic.
So a huge part was over reliance on trade rather than developing domestic industries?

EDIT: Ok, it seems 2 reasons.
1. European countries had a stranglehold on the Ottoman economy with all the investments and debt, making them unable to form domestic industries

2. The populace was very diverse and not united/patriotic. This was worsened by things like the millet system. Lacking standardized secular education also didnt help.

But the thing is, Russia and A-H where also hugely diverse countries and they where still much better off. Anyhow, how could we get the Ottomans to create a more standardized legal code and education system for all citizens of the empire?
 
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Given their oil resources they would be extremely wealthy and if they invest their oil Revenue to develop industry they could become a superpower
 
Yes. Ottomans could have avoided(or won) Russo-Turkish war of 1877/78.
With war Ottoman Empire lost 1/5 of population, 1/3 of state revenues, 250k civillian muslims in Balkans massacred during war and lost large portion of army. There was 500k muslim refugee came from Russian occupied Bulgaria. Ottomans did spend at least 30m pound during war. Also forced to pay 33m pound war indemnity to Russia. Losing natural borders like Danube, Kars Mountains made empire hardly defendable. So basically Russo-Turkish War mutilated Ottoman Empire and Ottomans lost their position as a major power.
These are substantial exaggerations. The real number of refugees was about 130 thousand (for example see Richard Crampton, Bulgaria). The number of Muslim civilians who perished are not exactly known, but are certainly far below this estimate. These numbers are simply incompatible with the demographics of the region.
 
Given their oil resources they would be extremely wealthy and if they invest their oil Revenue to develop industry they could become a superpower
Oil as a huge moneymaker really didn't happen till after WWII. The US was managing the Domestic price of Oil thru the Texas Railroad Commission, to keep prices up, and new fields were discovered.

They didn't want to see the price of the East Texas Oilglut returning, where price of a Barrel of Oil dropped to 25 cents.

And since the US was the largest Oil procucer, that set the Market rate that was acceptable to all major Oil Companies, until OPEC formed in the '50's, and they were not powerful enough in supplying Oil to the World til 1970.

Previous attempts for OPEC to get prices up were blown out by temporary US over production.

Keeping the Ottomans Neutral gets a chance for the 'Seven Sisters' to become 8 with the addition of a Turkish company.
 
What would be a way to get the modern population density of the fertile crescent under the Ottomans in the late 9th/early 20th century?

Iraq needs to be better connected to the rest of the Empire. Keeping Egypt and building the Suez canal themselves would do it, as would an earlier Suez canal. Or an earlier extension of the railroads to Baghdad (though railroads being built in Iraq requires the security situation to be solved earlier, and why build a railroad to a poor backwater province anyway - needs to be a military and economic case for short term benefits, else the Empire won't last long enough to enjoy the payoff).

Solving the security problems in the country also helps (18th and early 19th Century, the Ottoman territories were overrun by warlords and bandit kings - many independence movements would actually start as revolts against these parasites as well, so the central government regaining control of internal security earlier also means much less "push factor" to regions slipping from central control). In OTL, Iraq started to recover once the central government had broken the tribes and the warlords, so if that recovery starts earlier, population should get higher before the Empire runs out of time.

Solving the security problem means you need an earlier crushing of the Janissaries, since the mess that the Janissaries had become (basically, buying a Janissary pay stub was a way for Muslims to become tax immune and collecting pay from fictional Janissaries was a way for someone who owned a few dozen or hundred pay stubs to extract money from the government) was deeply interwoven with the system these provincial warlords existed in.

EDIT: Without a PoD in at least the 16th Century (such as no Safavids), modern population densities for Iraq aren't happening by the time limit you give. The above changes could maybe make Iraq competitive with Syria in terms of per capita productivity and population/acre of farmland.

Because they lacked funding. Traditional Ottoman medicine system and folk medicine also had strong support among the local population.

They lacked funding to support even local best-practice. The state of the charitable foundations that supported public medicine in the Ottoman empire had decayed badly in the 18th Century. Ottoman charities worked by having a pool of assets linked with a charitable cause - so a hospital might have several villages that paid rents to the hospital as their feudal protector, and those rents would pay for the operation of the hospital. However, the managers of these charities were always trying to pass on management to the next generation of their family especially since charitable foundations weren't taxed, so if a family could gain control of a charity's assets they could transform it into a false charity - cut the budget of the hospital, amass tax-free wealth that wasn't technically inherited by the next generation (Ottoman inheritance law was not friendly to generations passing too much wealth on to the next) and voilà! You have an immortal feudal parasite under the control of a powerful family and a severe lack of public infrastructure and a severe lack of a tax base. The struggle between parasites and those trying to keep Muslim charities honest is an old one, and the Ottoman empire went through several ups and downs in this cycle, but the 18th Century had seen an especially long and severe absence of the state restoring sanity and justice to the system.

In short: in the economic sphere they preferred free markets until it was too late.

"An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire" edited by Halil İnalcık differs.

It isn't clear that the Ottoman Empire suffered from having a free market. In the first place, it meant that Western traders didn't have to fight wars to get access to the Ottoman market - which if you remember didn't end well for China. To the contrary, Westerners were given a reason to desire the integrity of the Ottoman economic unit to ensure their trade and investments did well. Nor was this a story of only Western success building on Western success - while foreign trade was quickly out-competed by the French starting in the 17th Century (who in turn were out-competed by the British, who in turn were in the process of being replaced by a number of second-wave industrial powers when the Empire fell) - this doesn't really harm the Empire, or its merchant class, who take advantage of the expanding internal trade driven by the rising external trade. That foreign trade is being sent out in foreign owned ships doesn't lead to a rolling takeover of the rest of the Ottoman economy. Further, while the free market does lead to some industries being pretty well wiped out (yarn spinning on the coasts for example), import of cheap yarn from the UK and synthetic dyes from Germany lead to a great expansion of weaving, dying of plain cloth imported from England and of rug making for export (not an industry the Ottomans had been much involved in before), while artisans on the coasts are on the whole slowly declining in the face of industrial imports, the growing of cash crops for exports is a major driver of peasant prosperity.

Further, had the Ottomans opted for protectionism and invested heavily in building their own factories, they'd have been building them in Trace, Bulgaria and Northern Greece, not in Anatolia and Syria. Not very useful unless they can solve the problem of losing their core territory.

And if they can hold on to their territorial core over the 19th Century, they keep all the places where their first railroads and factories had been built and can build on those early efforts, rather than having to start from scratch after every time they lost part of the Balkans.

Also, the Balkans are also where most of the Empire's decent coal is. Anatolia has some coal, but it's power station coal, not blast furnace coal.

As such, I think secure borders with a free market and we could see an Ottoman industrial revolution in time, with a closed market and insecure border I think they actually do even worse than OTL. With secure borders and a closed market might be better, but I am doubtful. Either way, first thing is for the Ottomans to be militarily strong enough or lucky enough that they aren't slowly being eaten alive for their last century is key to them becoming more developed than OTL.

Add to the territorial security issue that the Ottomans just being a little too slow off the mark to start serious reform (smashing the Janissaries even a decade earlier would have been a great help I think, to say nothing of even earlier), being Muslim and competing against a continent otherwise made up of Christian states, recovering from an extremely bad 17th Century and I think you have a better explanation of Ottoman economic performance.

fasquardon
 
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So it was a combination of insecure borders, feudal lords hoarding wealth, and that? I see.

Also, is it possible that the Ottomans can build factories in places other than the Balkans? The balkans may be the starting point, but I think they would eventually expand their industrial base to other areas as population increases.
 
So it was a combination of insecure borders, feudal lords hoarding wealth, and that? I see.

Even worse, not feudal lords, but feudal parasites. One of the notable problems of the 17th and 18th Century Ottoman Empire was the steady destruction of the feudal lords who were the backbone of the army and their replacement by "notables" who irrespective of their family's background (some notables rose from noble families, others came from other classes and professions) had amassed so much power and tax free wealth (through owning thousands of Janissary pay stubs, controlling charitable foundations and similar such abuses) that the state became dependant on them to act in their regions regardless of the flagrant illegality of their activities.

It's not so different from how the Hungarian upper nobility and the Polish upper nobility turned parasitic, but in the Ottoman case, the "winners" who became "notables" came from a broader range of classes and didn't quite overwhelm the state like happened in Poland and Hungary.

Also, is it possible that the Ottomans can build factories in places other than the Balkans? The balkans may be the starting point, but I think they would eventually expand their industrial base to other areas as population increases.

Maybe Egypt. But no-where else had the population density to provide an industrial workforce (can't build factories in places where there aren't enough workers) and Egypt was such a miserable place that I can't see anyone thinking to build factories there when they could just abuse the peasants harder (Egypt since Ptolomaic times has been notable for its extreme levels of peasant abuse amd people oppressed into bare subsistence are not good factory workers in the making at the same time as their oppressors making even worse entrepreneurs).

Industry absolutely needs a certain degree of population density to be worth while and the Ottomans just didn't have that many places. And again, the Ottomans had a relative poverty of coal and water power outside of the Balkans.

fasquardon
 
The Ottoman Empire and Japan were polar opposites in the 19th century. Japan was a highly educated homogeneous state, making it easy for them to start on the path of industrial development. The Ottoman Empire by contrast was a highly diverse state, with civil unrest lurking behind every corner. Worse than that, the ruling ethnicity (the Turks) was horribly uneducated compared to their peers. In the realm of (non-religious) higher learning and medicine, nearly all positions were held by Greeks and Armenians. If there was to be any industrialization, it would have to be from these groups, not from the Turks.

Therefore, the key to making the Ottoman Empire an industrial nation is to reform education among the Turkish population. This means wresting control away from the clerics. Good luck with that! Separation of [mosque?] and state was an utterly foreign idea, especially when the Sultan is the supreme temporal AND religious authority. In essence, the Sultan would have to create an entirely new class of bureaucrats from scratch and give them all authority after taking it away from the other class that has been in power since time immemorial.

Of course, if the position of Sultan is subsumed by some sort of secular dictator or first secretary, the Ottoman Empire could drastically reinvent itself similar to the Soviet Union. But that would require a particularly calamitous civil war, with wars of independence on all sides, and Stalin-esque purges, all while preventing the great powers from getting involved. Again, good luck with that!
 
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Industry absolutely needs a certain degree of population density to be worth while and the Ottomans just didn't have that many places. And again, the Ottomans had a relative poverty of coal and water power outside of the Balkans.
Maybe as population density increases in Syria, Iraq and Anitolia via railroads, modern medicine, etc they can eventually become factory suitable?

Worse than that, the ruling ethnicity (the Turks) was horribly uneducated compared to their peers. In the realm of (non-religious) higher learning and medicine, nearly all positions were held by Greeks and Armenians. If there was to be any industrialization, it would have to be from these groups, not from the Turks.
Why where Turks (and presumably other muslim ethnic groups) so uneducated compared to their Christian peers?
 
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