[Doomhammer]

Yes.

The most interesting thing I (well, my dad) purchased was from the antique bazaar at Naschmarkt: a periscope from a 1950's Soviet tank. True story.

[Potemkin]

The most interesting thing I (well, my dad) purchased was from the antique bazaar at Naschmarkt: a periscope from a 1950's Soviet tank. True story.

Thereby instantly doubling Turkey's military capability.

[Cookie Monster]

Yes.

Well, me too.
Habsburgs sure did have a great taste of art.

Thereby instantly doubling Turkey's military capability.

Ouch, Potemky kicks down Doomhammer:

[Doomhammer]

Thereby instantly doubling Turkey's military capability.

:lol: Well, me too.
Habsburgs sure did have a great taste of art.

They're purdy.

[MB.]

Tanzimat period

[Unperson-K]

The weird thing is though that I get the same feeling when studying the Austrian-Hungarian Empire.

I love reading fiction from the late Austro-Hungarian Empire because it gives that sense of a world that has completely and utterly vanished beneath the seas of time. Stefan Zweig's autobiography gives you a real sense of this pre-20th century world of 'golden security' (as he calls it) where the progress of humanity was never doubted and everyone knew their place within a great social hierarchy that seemed to be eternal. In a way, I don't think Zweig was ever able to survive the loss of that security, hence his eventual suicide in 1942.

[Igor Antunov]

Nationalist movements were rife all over the world during the turn of the 20th century, weakened by massive war all the empires fell eventually, and fairly close to one another on the historical time-scale. I attribute nationalism as the most significant factor.

[Doomhammer]

I recently read an MA dissertation on the Ottoman "capitulations" and how the Ottoman Empire became a part of the Great War in order to force a settlement whereby capitulations would be removed. Granting so many privileges to foreigners is not a sustainable economic policy.

[Potemkin]

I attribute nationalism as the most significant factor.

True, but it was the First World War which gave the nationalists their chance.

[Umibozu]

Nice, Kirillov, you hit the nail on the head with that. It's a different world back there, man.

[Mehmet]

It will come back in a different form.

Iran, Iraqi and Syrian Shias/Nusayris, Lebanese Shia Hezbolla try to prevent it.
By doing so, they all signed their own death decree.

Ottoman Empire was a superior form of civilization.

[Atlantis]

- If the Ottoman Empire had decided to go the way of its peers before World War One and super-reform itself to the point of self-supporting stability, and if it had somehow survived The Great War without TE Lawrence's meddling interference or an Arab revolt, and if it had somehow lived through World War Two without being repartitioned into small tidbits, -

Where would be the Great Ottoman Empire's place in our modern society?

(This is all assuming they had taken a logical pace advancing technologically and socially, considering all their circumstances)

Japan is the only example of a country developing within a short period of time from a backward feudalistic realm to a modern state with a performing industry and military on a par with the West. If the Ottomans had had the determination of the Japanese to modernize, the Ottoman empire would be the unchallenged global superpower today. Given all the fossil fuel under their control, they would virtually be unbeatable.

We probably would have been spared Anglo imperialism and we most certainly would have been spared Islamist extremism. It's of course anybody's guess as to how enlightened such an empire would have been, but in order to attract the best brains and in order to rule over a multi-ethnic multi-religion empire, they would have to be rather tolerant and open-minded. Perhaps they would have had to defend themselves against Christian jihadis, though ;-)

[Lexington]

If the Ottomans had had the determination of the Japanese to modernize, the Ottoman empire would be the unchallenged global superpower today. Given all the fossil fuel under their control, they would virtually be unbeatable.

If we look at this we see this about oil production:

Code: Select allSaudi Arabia    11,726
United States   11,117
Russia          10,397
China            4,372
Canada           3,856
Iran             3,518
UAE              3,213
Iraq             2,987
Mexico           2,936
Kuwait           2,797
Brazil           2,652
Nigeria          2,524
Venezuela        2,489
Qatar            2,033
Norway           1,902

It is interesting to see how oil production does not necessarily translate into strength on this list. Saudi Arabia is the world's largest oil producer, followed by the United States (edit: the US may have overtaken Saudi Arabia this year) and Russia - one of them is vastly more powerful than the other two, and the fourth, China, produces vastly less oil than the top three and yet is widely regarded as far more powerful than Saudi Arabia or Russia or anyone else on the list.

Economic and military power is based on industry which requires population and trade. Resources are helpful but a lot of countries like Japan have few resources and rely on industry for their strength.

[layman]

I actually only recently learned the extent the western powers wanted to destroy the ottomans after ww1.

THey promised bits of turkey itself to italy, greece etc. Pretty harsh.

[Atlantis]

Resources are helpful but a lot of countries like Japan have few resources and rely on industry for their strength.

If you had actually read my post, you would find that it is exactly that what I said. In fact, as far as I'm aware of, I'm the only Pofoer to have made that point consistently.

Economic and military power is based on industry which requires population and trade.

Military power depends of economic power which is based on industry, which in turn depends, first and foremost, on technology. Trade is helpful, but population is secondary. Otherwise, why would India be an impoverished backwater with its huge population, while China is set to become the first economic superpower? According to the WIPO 2012 yearbook, patent applications by residents of China: 415,829, India: 8,841. This clearly shows that technology is far more important than population. The problem is that economists don't understand technology.

In conclusion, if the Ottomans had modernized like the Japanese, they would have had a strong industry and a performing military. From this base, they could have easily conquered most of the oil fields in the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia, just like Japan first beat the Russians and then went on to conquer Korea and Mongolia. Moreover, the Ottomans could have cut British trade with the East and pretty much controlled most of the trade between the East and the West, as had Arab traders had done for centuries. This would have put the Ottoman Empire into a position of unchallenged World leader.

It all depended on their failure to modernize and create a strong industry based on state of the art technology. This is so basic that every kid could understand it; yet even today, 1.6 billion Muslims the World over keep on adhering to a backward ideology that prevents modernization.


PS: Lexington, you need to differentiate between the role of resources at the time we are talking about, i.e. the 19th century, when both Japan and Germany needed to control their own resources to get their industry going, and the role of resources today, when you can buy them on the open market. Still, the fact that most wars are a fight for resources hasn't changed even today. Industry in post-war Germany and Japan prospered because access of resources was guaranteed by the pax-Americana. That wasn't the case in the 19th century. Thus, it would have been important for an industrial Ottoman Empire to control resources and trade.

[Thunderhawk]

Japan is the only example of a country developing within a short period of time from a backward feudalistic realm to a modern state with a performing industry and military on a par with the West. If the Ottomans had had the determination of the Japanese to modernize, the Ottoman empire would be the unchallenged global superpower today. Given all the fossil fuel under their control, they would virtually be unbeatable.

I suppose it would matter when this reform would have happened. In The year 1800 the Ottomans were a large empire with plenty of internal strife. By 1900 they were a remnants of their former empire, having lost almost all of their Balkan possessions and North Africa. And during that century, they did try to reform.

The Ottoman empire did not have secure borders from both foreign and internal threats, nor was it homogeneous enough or had enough power over its own citizenry to chart a new direction for its people. Japan is an interesting contemporary for comparison, but its environment and internal politics/culture was quite different. The Russian and French revolutions, I think, would have been better comparisons, but they too had strong differences.



ARRRG!
I participated in a necro..

[Atlantis]

I suppose it would matter when this reform would have happened. In The year 1800 the Ottomans were a large empire with plenty of internal strife. By 1900 they were a remnants of their former empire, having lost almost all of their Balkan possessions and North Africa. And during that century, they did try to reform.

The Ottoman empire did not have secure borders from both foreign and internal threats, nor was it homogeneous enough or had enough power over its own citizenry to chart a new direction for its people. Japan is an interesting contemporary for comparison, but its environment and internal politics/culture was quite different. The Russian and French revolutions, I think, would have been better comparisons, but they too had strong differences.

Of course, timing is all important. My assumption is based on the Ottomans modernizing at the same time (Meiji restoration: 1868) and in the same way as the Japanese. From a technical point of view, that would have been very feasible because the Ottomans had been much closer to Western technological development than Japan under the sakoku regime (closed country). The Japanese had to start by compiling bilingual dictionaries, first Dutch, then English, French and German to painstakingly translate every bit of Western learning into Japanese.

Japan isn't such a homogeneous country as is often supposed and even though the Shogun did have considerable powers there where different factions and fiefdoms each pulling in a different direction. It took the shock of British gunships firing off their guns at Nagasaki and American gunships doing the same in Tokyo bay to wake up the conservative establishment for the progressive faction to be allowed to open the country to Western science and technology. But when they did, they all pulled in the same direction with single-mindedness.

A better example would be Germany. Germany (and Austria) started modernizing even before the Japanese and had caught up with UK industry by the end of the 19th century. Vienna at the time was one of the foremost centers of learning just next door to the Ottomans. Istanbul could easily have followed suit. Why didn't they? Most Mediterranean countries seem to have a parasitic and useless political elite that isn't interested in entrepreneurship, even today.

[Istanbuller]

THey promised bits of turkey itself to italy, greece etc. Pretty harsh.

It is because a significant number of Greek people were living in those parts of the region. They even had a chance to get back western and northern parts of the region but they failed. Turkey was like today's Lebanon or Bosnia at that time.