I'm not sure if this is the right place to post youtube discussions for videos, but I wandered what agreements or disagreements people here may have regarding the topic of the Ottomans winning at Vienna. I do like this Youtubers discussions, though I think he is too definitive at times, and often doesn't take into account chaos theory as much as I would like. But what do you think about his conclusions?
Would you say this video about Ottomans in Vienna is reasonable?
- Thread starter Forbiddenparadise64
- Start date
I'm not sure if this is the right place to post youtube discussions for videos, but I wandered what agreements or disagreements people here may have regarding the topic of the Ottomans winning at Vienna. I do like this Youtubers discussions, though I think he is too definitive at times, and often doesn't take into account chaos theory as much as I would like. But what do you think about his conclusions?
I stopped after I heard the Ottomans take over the Austrian domain.
A victory in Vienna will not result in an Ottoman conquest. Too hard and too risky. The best you can get is Royal Hungary as a puppet under Thokoly. That, if you make peace with the Habsburgs. Without peace you have Vienna with damaged walls but with an army on its way to relief/reconquer the city.
It however weakens Austria. The French might even use the opportunity to invade the Rhineland.
@Koprulu Mustafa Pasha is correct.
The video gets everything wrong about what the Ottomans wanted in the 1683 campaign. For decades there had been a frustrating stalemate between the Habsburgs and the Ottomans in Hungary. Then Imre Thököly suddenly showed up. To Constantinople, Thököly provided the one thing they had needed to finally conquer Royal Hungary, local support. The Ottoman campaign into Austria was an attempt to crush the Habsburgs in one quick war while they still had the advantage provided by Thököly, then convince the ruined Habsburgs to give up all claims to Hungary for once and for all.
Of course, the Kadizadeli preachers urged for the conquest of Vienna. But just taking the city alone would have been a huge feat enough to appease all but the most zealous of the Kadizadeli.
The Ottomans had no interest in Bohemia whatsoever and an ideological interest in Vienna as a city (not all of Austria).
The video's description of the Ottomans is full of Orientalist cliches:
The video gets everything wrong about what the Ottomans wanted in the 1683 campaign. For decades there had been a frustrating stalemate between the Habsburgs and the Ottomans in Hungary. Then Imre Thököly suddenly showed up. To Constantinople, Thököly provided the one thing they had needed to finally conquer Royal Hungary, local support. The Ottoman campaign into Austria was an attempt to crush the Habsburgs in one quick war while they still had the advantage provided by Thököly, then convince the ruined Habsburgs to give up all claims to Hungary for once and for all.
Of course, the Kadizadeli preachers urged for the conquest of Vienna. But just taking the city alone would have been a huge feat enough to appease all but the most zealous of the Kadizadeli.
The Ottomans had no interest in Bohemia whatsoever and an ideological interest in Vienna as a city (not all of Austria).
The video's description of the Ottomans is full of Orientalist cliches:
- A big reason the Ottomans can't advance further into Germany is apparently because "they are in decline" and this decline is permanent and inevitable and all-encompassing in both reality and every possible timeline, neither of which are the case.
- The harem was not the club for daily decadent orgies many Europeans thought it was, and the influence of court women in Ottoman politics was, if anything, a stabilizing force.
- The Ottoman army remained competitive in Europe until the mid-eighteenth century, and technological inferiority was not a big factor in the crushing defeat of 1699. Certainly, if the Ottomans kept fighting regular wars with Prussia, it's rather unlikely their army would fall back as it did IRL.
- The Ottoman economy expanded enormously in the eighteenth century, it was not anything like permanently "crippled" by "guilds controlling its economy."
- The ulema were not uniformly, or even mostly, against Western technology. Actually they quite liked European technology as a rule (while not Ottoman per se, I'm reminded of a Moroccan cleric who quipped about his country compared to France, "our religion is as advanced as their country; our country is as devolved as their religion.")
Obviously Prussia would conquer the Ottoman German territory back with ease given they are OBVIOUSLY going to decline in the 18th century and Prussia is going to have space marines, why are alt-history channels so off track in terms of even the basic of basics of not only history but alt-history if they obviously care about the subject?
I wouldn't totally eliminate the harem as a factor(in any case I don't think he meant to "blame" the women particularly, that would be a weirder argument even), although at the very least if you really want to make that argument put some nuance and depth to it.
Last edited: