WI other Meiji restorations during the XIX Century?

[Faeelin]

Anyway. Japan had silk, which was nice, but so did China and Korea. (And the Ottomans, for that matter. Turkey was a significant silk exporter.) Silver, but most of that got monetized. Otherwise, coal, wood, fish and timber. All good for foreign exchange, but we're not talking silicon chips here.

And copper, of course.

You make silver that's used as hard currency sound like no big deal for Japan, when it's a huge advantage.

(Compare the need for silver in contemporary China).

Of course the literacy rate helped, as did its knowledge of western technology and sheer population density, but Japan's resource base and location gave it an advantage that other states didn't have.

 

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

Again, there is no comparison between the size and capability of the Ottoman army vs the Japanese (and until 1878 same for the navy). That holds true until the end of the empire.

The geographic burden was also much more than just the location - Japan's population in 1880 was about 33M, while the Ottoman's was about 26M - but of this only a small portion could be utilized for military and tax purposes for various reasons - yet the size of the Ottoman Empire was about ten times that of Japan. That makes everything a problem - security, the cost of collecting taxes and providing any government service, building infrastructure, etc. In Japan, you could build a railway at fairly low cost that would be highly profitable due to the concentration of the population - in the Ottoman Empire you have to build a line over horrendous terrain through sparsely populated regions making heavy government subsidy necessary for any rail company.

So even if Japan's defense spending was high, that still leaves a lot of money for other things. In 1880 Ottoman revenue was 16.15M Lira (1.1 Lira to the Br Pound) or which 51.5% was spend on defense, and 24.6% on loan payments, leaving only 4M lira to run everything else. That's after a major financial consolidation - debt servicing in 1875 had been 14.7M Lira, which was out of income of about 24M lira (the difference is the territory lost in 1878). The Japanese war budget in the same year was 12.3 yen, at about .1875 yen to the pound, or one-third the Ottoman defense budget.

To maintain this force the tax burden for the Ottomans was heavier, deficit spending endemic, and there was no weak China next door to rape for funds (the Japanese fleet was built with Chinese reparation money).

You are incorrect, Japan was not self-sufficient in armaments until later than the Russo-Japanese War; it was not until WWI that that was true.

You're not getting my point. The largest constraint on Ottoman efforts to "Meiji" was lack of money. There was simply not enough to invest in schools, industry, and infrastructure after military spending.

The relatively high starting point for Japanese literacy was certainly a large advantage, but that's counterbalanced by the Ottomans already possessing a fairly modern state structure and military by the same period - the greatest advantage Japan had was a concentrated population on an island where they had the luxury of modernizing without immense outside interference.

If the Ottomans had been off the coast of China, they would have done just fine.

I doubt anyone could have done better than "Abdul the Damned" - if we can move away from incredibly biased Victorian Orientalism for a minute, he managed to pull the empire from the brink of total collapse in 1878, kept the empire at peace for 33 years, and modernized at a rate that nobody else had been able to achieve under much, much more difficult circumstances than the Meiji oligarchs.

...see, but that's wrong.

Japan's military budgets were big, not small. You can argue that they didn't "need" such a large military, but obviously they disagreed. In fact, in the 1890s and early 1900s their military spending was bigger, as a proportion of their budget, than that of any major European power.



A cite for that would be nice.

But say you're right. Does that explain why the Ottomans collapsed while Japan soared?

I'm not so sure. Here are a couple of things to consider.

1) On the day that Perry sailed into Yokohama, Japan had a higher literacy rate than the Ottoman Empire. In fact, late Tokugawa Japan had a higher literacy rate than contemporary Russia.

By the late 19th century, this gap had widened. By the 1890s, the literacy rate among Japanese women was higher than that among Ottoman men.

2) The Ottomans were not self-sufficient in armaments. They could not build heavy artillery, capital ships, shells, mines, or a whole host of related products from sapping drills to barbed wire. Before 1914 they had to purchase all this stuff on the international market; afterwards, they had to get it from the other Central Powers.

The Japanese, on the other hand, were almost entirely self-sufficient in armaments by the beginning of the Russo-Japanese War in 1904. They still were buying some ships, but this was convenience rather than necessity -- they had the industrial capacity to build modern ships that could slug it out with the Russians.

What's my point? Just that while the Ottomans were in a difficult position geographically, that's far from the end of the story. They also had internal constraints on development, and they made some bad choices too.

I'm not sure if the Japanese, if placed in the Ottoman's position, would have been able to survive. On the other hand, I'm not sure they wouldn't -- and I think the Meiji oligarchs would have done much better than Abdul the Damned.

And if the Ottoman Empire had been located off the coast of China... well, I think they'd still have been screwed.


Doug M.

 

[RPW@Cy]

Not really.

It's interesting - Egypt, the Ottomans and many other non-European places got occupied or invaded for defaulting on loans once, and both took prompt action to cure their defaults - yet Greece spend most of the 19th c in serious default, the Hapsburgs went bankrupt several times, as did Portugal. Different rules apply to the non-European world. Let's say a British merchant has a contractual dispute in Portugal with a Portuguese merchant. What happens? It gets resolved in court. How would the same situation be resolved in China between a British and a Chinese merchant? A battleship would park off his hometown and bombard it until reparations were paid.

Really? Can you provide a cite for an occasion when the Royal Navy shelled a city to resolve a commercial dispute as distinct from avenging someone killed by a mob, for example? The only example I can think of that even comes close to fitting this description is the Don Pacifico Affair - except for the fact that the country on the receiving end of that one was, ah, Greece. Oops.

Other examples include Britain vs. Portugal in the 1880's (Portugal got gunboated to force it to drop it's claim to all of Africa between Angola and Mozambique), Britain vs. Brazil in the 1850's (Brazil was put under close blockade to force it to drop the slave trade) and perhaps most spectacularly Germany against France. Which one of Germany or France was part of the "non-European world"?

Gunboat diplomacy wasn't about whether the people on the receiving end were Europeans or not - it was about whether they were sufficiently weak that they could be threatened with relative impunity (which is why Rio got shelled to bring about an end to slavery and not forex Charleston). Which in the 19th century tended to mean mainly, but as the above examples show not exclusively, non-European powers.

 

[Empror Mike]

The Ottomans were doomed. They were stuck in an uncomfortable paradox:
if they increase modernization they increase nationalism, even amongst minorities, and if they decrease modernization they increase the power of other empires around them.

Persia, Ethiopia, and Thailand could all pull a Japan. Persia is unlikely, though, since it has no motivation to do so - it's stuck between Afghanistan, Russia, and the Ottomans - all primitive, backwards mofo's.

So you could have Ethiopia and Thailand as superpowers.

I even wrote half a TL once in-which Ethiopia modernizes and becomes a megapower.

I can't see how Siam (Thailand only since the late 1930s IIRC) could do it. They did not have a strong military tradition - sure they could raise an army and fight little wars over Cambodia etc, but I recall that the make-up of the army acted as a barrier to its modernisation as any sort of strong force in the time period in question. Unfortunately I can't remember the details, they were in the relevant Wargames Foundry book

Best Regards
Grey Wolf

Yeah, I think the Wolf here said it. My TL involved an earlier version of what happened in Ethiopia, in which a noble uses British aid to take power in a slowly-uniting Ethiopia.

 

[Riain]

Doug M. I can't cite the book, only that it was from the university library. The thrust of the idea was that some of the powers-that-be in late Edo Japan were moving toward re-integrating with the world after centuries of isolation, and that this was a large factor in the success of the Meiji restoration. It was an idea whose time had come, and that some key powers in Japan were moving in that direction helped with the process. The reason I remebered this was because I had believed that Japan was completely isolated until forced open by Perry.

 

[Iñaki]

Originally posted by Riain
Doug M. I can't cite the book, only that it was from the university library. The thrust of the idea was that some of the powers-that-be in late Edo Japan were moving toward re-integrating with the world after centuries of isolation, and that this was a large factor in the success of the Meiji restoration. It was an idea whose time had come, and that some key powers in Japan were moving in that direction helped with the process. The reason I remebered this was because I had believed that Japan was completely isolated until forced open by Perry.

Atlas of Japan by Collcutt, Jansen and Kumakura Edited by Equinox (Oxford) -I have the spanish edition by Folio Ediciones-:

Under a photo of a samurais is written this text: "Pressioned by the western potences, that promulgated the open of the country, and by the voices pro-imperials, that rises agaisnt the barbarian invasors, the Bakufu Tokugawa would enter with despondency, from 1858, in a phase of disfavourable international treaties. From 1860, the Bakufu send a lot of embassies to West to obtain more favourable terms and technological knowledge. In this photography appear the members of the first embassy to Paris in 1862-63; 38 samurais leaded by Takeuchi Yanusori, were sent with the finality of obtain a prorrogation of the opening of the harbours of Edo, Osaka, Hyogo and Niigata."

 

[Tocomocho]

For something other than the usual suspects, how about Madagascar?

The key figure here is King Radama I ("the Great") who was the first to unify the island and also saw the need to modernise to keep it independent. He expelled the French and allied with the British in 1817, inviting in the London Missionary Society to set up an education system on western lines (amongst other things, the LMS introduced the printing press, devised a written standard for the Malagasy language and produced the first English-Malagasy dictionary - oh, and made half a million converts). By the end of his reign he was even sending students to British universities and army officers to Sandhurst to learn western military practices.

By all accounts, his designated heir, Prince Rakotobe, was of similar temperament and would have continued with the modernisation programme. Unfortunately however when Radama died in mysterious circumstances (depening on whom you believe he either died of disease, overindulgence or was poisoned by his charming wife) a coup was launched by his wife Ranavalona with the support of the traditionalist elements who had been losing power as a result of Radama's reforms. Rakotobe was murdered in the aftermath and Ranavalona quickly revealed herself as a Pol Pot figure - the reforms were cancelled, foreigners were expelled, Christians persecuted, and so on. It's estimated that up to a third of the population of Madagascar were killed in Ranavalona' s reign and the country was left in such a mess that her successors were quite unable to resist when the French came back to try again (obviously she'd also abrogated the friendship treaty with Britain).

So it seems to me that if you can find some way of getting rid of Ranavalona (either Radama lives longer and tires of her - not unreasonable as he was only 35 when he died and she was at least 10 years older than him - or Rakatobe moves faster and is able to defeat Ranavalona's coup) then Madagascar stands an excellent chance of at least modernising enough to stay independent if not becoming a world power. Granted, Madagascar has further to go than Japan - as mentioned, there wasn't even a written standard for the language before Radama - but on the other hand it's starting earlier and like Japan has the advantage of being an island in control of it's borders.

Great example. If you compare the official portrait of Radama I with the one of his father Andrianampoinimerina it only can exclaim African Meiji!

 

[general_tiu]

Sirs, in regards to Korea, could the aristocrats be cowed by a small group of Westernized individuals to see the reality that they should modernize?

 

[Doug M.]

In Japan, you could build a railway at fairly low cost that would be highly profitable due to the concentration of the population - in the Ottoman Empire you have to build a line over horrendous terrain through sparsely populated regions making heavy government subsidy necessary for any rail company.

If you think Japan lacks "horrendous terrain", then you've never visited Japan.

Further: while the Empire included a lot of mountains and desert, it also included densely populated, fertile areas that should have been ripe for railway construction.

Yet Istanbul wasn't connected to the rest of Europe until 1888. Thessaloniki, the Empire's most important port, was not connected to the capital until 1895. And at the outbreak of war in 1914, most of the interior of Anatolia still had no railroads -- the main line east ended at Ankara, and the SE line towards Syria was still incomplete.

From the 1890s onward, Japan, despite being much smaller, had more miles of railroad than the Empire.

So even if Japan's defense spending was high, that still leaves a lot of money for other things. In 1880 Ottoman revenue was 16.15M Lira (1.1 Lira to the Br Pound) or which 51.5% was spend on defense, and 24.6% on loan payments, leaving only 4M lira to run everything else.

Japan had major loans too. But Japan's credit remained good -- in fact, it rose steadily through the Meiji period and beyond.

That's after a major financial consolidation - debt servicing in 1875 had been 14.7M Lira, which was out of income of about 24M lira (the difference is the territory lost in 1878). The Japanese war budget in the same year was 12.3 yen, at about .1875 yen to the pound, or one-third the Ottoman defense budget.

In 1895-6, the war with China cost 225 million yen.

In 1904-5, the war with Russia cost about 1.1 billion yen. That's more than the entire Ottoman government budget. They were able to cover some of this by loans (they borrowed about 30 million pounds sterling during the war) but most of it came straight out of the Japanese fisc.

To maintain this force the tax burden for the Ottomans was heavier, deficit spending endemic, and there was no weak China next door to rape for funds (the Japanese fleet was built with Chinese reparation money).

The war cost 225 million yen; the reparation was 380 million yen, paid over three years. So they turned a profit of about 150 million yen. A nice windfall, but a drop in the bucket compared to the cost of the subsequent war with Russia.

You are incorrect, Japan was not self-sufficient in armaments until later than the Russo-Japanese War; it was not until WWI that that was true.

I said "almost entirely" self sufficient -- everything but the biggest ships and the biggest guns. They could, for instance, mass produce their own shells, and make machine guns and barbed wire and sea mines.

And by WWI they were completely self-sufficient. In battleships, for instance, their last purchase from Britain was in 1910 (the Kongo, later sunk by the Americans in WWII). They reverse-engineered it and built their own battleships starting in 1911.

The relatively high starting point for Japanese literacy was certainly a large advantage, but that's counterbalanced by the Ottomans already possessing a fairly modern state structure and military by the same period.

Umm. By the 1870s the Japanese had a state structure that was fully as modern as the Ottoman one, and by the 1890s their state was far more advanced.

As for literacy, they had a high starting point and they built on it. By the Russo-Japanese War, Japanese literacy was approaching 90% -- comparable to the US or any state in Europe, and much higher than the Ottomans or the Russians.

I doubt anyone could have done better than "Abdul the Damned" - if we can move away from incredibly biased Victorian Orientalism for a minute, he managed to pull the empire from the brink of total collapse in 1878, kept the empire at peace for 33 years, and modernized at a rate that nobody else had been able to achieve under much, much more difficult circumstances than the Meiji oligarchs.

Hm.

The average Turkish citizen in 1900 was illiterate; literacy rates were still under 50%, as compared to ~80% for Japan.

The country had exactly one engineering school, inside the military academy, founded in 1903. Japan had six. (By 1910 Japan was producing over 20,000 university graduates per year.)

By 1900 Istanbul had two newspapers -- Ykdam and Sabah -- with a combined circulation of about 20,000. Tokyo had twelve newspapers with a combined circulation of over a million.

The Ottoman manufacturing sector lagged pathetically; by 1914 it employed only about 75,000 workers. In Japan the comparable figure was over two million.

As to the success of Abdulhamid's reforms generally... well, being beaten in a major war by Italy is a bad sign. Being beaten in a major war by Bulgaria is a very bad sign.


Doug M.

 

[Doug M.]

In this photography appear the members of the first embassy to Paris in 1862-63; 38 samurais leaded by Takeuchi Yanusori, were sent with the finality of obtain a prorrogation of the opening of the harbours of Edo, Osaka, Hyogo and Niigata."

Well, sure. After Perry, the Japanese sent embassies and investigative teams everywhere -- Britain, France, Russia, the US.

But before Perry? Nuh-uh.


Doug M.

 

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

A lot of your Ottoman data is incorrect. There were no areas of the Ottoman Empire that could be considered "densely populated", certainly not by Japanese standards, and very few that were moderately populated, and these generally did have railways.

Ottoman credit after 1881 was actually excellent - better than most European countries. There was no problem obtaining loans at very favorable terms.

Also, I'm not sure why you're comparing the end results between Japan and the Ottomans - I think my point was that Japan had advantages that the Ottomans didn't and thus were more successful.

There were a whole lot more than two newspapers in Istanbul - I'm not sure where you got that.

There were three engineering schools in 1900, the first established 1773.

As for AHII - I'm not sure why the Ottomans being behind Japan means that he wasn't successful - you have to look at the starting point and the ending point. He built the educational infrastructure that did allow rapid development of literacy.

With regard to rail and industry, it wasn't as simple as just building them. First off, the Ottomans were linked to the main European rail system, which was standard gauge - that is several times more expensive to build than Japan's narrow-gauge, especially in mountainous terrain. In a densely populated place like Japan, you are assured of high revenue per km, which covers the cost of building, loans, etc. To build a rail line in, say Anatolia, you had to traverse long stretches of semi-arid or virtually unpopulated regions - so revenue didn't even cover running costs let alone loans required.

But beyond all that were the political problems - Russia viewed building a line past Ankara as casus belli, the British obstructed any building in Mesopotamia, etc. Each line required extensive negotiations to obtain the consent of all interested powers.

Even government reform was hobbled by outside interference. For instance, the Ottomans endeavored to replace the inefficient and downright destructive tax-farming system, but were prevented from doing so by the Powers because it interfered with the system of guarantees to cover rail construction. Industry was impossible to develop because of the Capitulations which prevented the establishment of tariffs. Japan had the double advantage of not having that problem plus being far enough away from Europe for its own production to be competitive with European imports.

As for your argument-free dig about war with Italy and Bulgaria, you are plainly trying, vainly and a little sadly, to be insulting instead of engaging in what could be an interesting discussion on what is, after all a recreational discussion board - so this is going to have to be the last post I write as I'm placing you on ignore, because you insist on being relentlessly unpleasant.

In any case, Abdul Hamid was out of power when these wars occurred, the Italian war was fought in Libya where the Ottomans had no ability to engage them, and it was Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro, and Serbia, which is a little different than just Bulgaria - and the Ottomans went on a year later to repeatedly defeat the British until 1917 - so maybe Abdul Hamid achieved something after all.

If you think Japan lacks "horrendous terrain", then you've never visited Japan.

Further: while the Empire included a lot of mountains and desert, it also included densely populated, fertile areas that should have been ripe for railway construction.

Yet Istanbul wasn't connected to the rest of Europe until 1888. Thessaloniki, the Empire's most important port, was not connected to the capital until 1895. And at the outbreak of war in 1914, most of the interior of Anatolia still had no railroads -- the main line east ended at Ankara, and the SE line towards Syria was still incomplete.

From the 1890s onward, Japan, despite being much smaller, had more miles of railroad than the Empire.



Japan had major loans too. But Japan's credit remained good -- in fact, it rose steadily through the Meiji period and beyond.




In 1895-6, the war with China cost 225 million yen.

In 1904-5, the war with Russia cost about 1.1 billion yen. That's more than the entire Ottoman government budget. They were able to cover some of this by loans (they borrowed about 30 million pounds sterling during the war) but most of it came straight out of the Japanese fisc.




The war cost 225 million yen; the reparation was 380 million yen, paid over three years. So they turned a profit of about 150 million yen. A nice windfall, but a drop in the bucket compared to the cost of the subsequent war with Russia.



I said "almost entirely" self sufficient -- everything but the biggest ships and the biggest guns. They could, for instance, mass produce their own shells, and make machine guns and barbed wire and sea mines.

And by WWI they were completely self-sufficient. In battleships, for instance, their last purchase from Britain was in 1910 (the Kongo, later sunk by the Americans in WWII). They reverse-engineered it and built their own battleships starting in 1911.




Umm. By the 1870s the Japanese had a state structure that was fully as modern as the Ottoman one, and by the 1890s their state was far more advanced.

As for literacy, they had a high starting point and they built on it. By the Russo-Japanese War, Japanese literacy was approaching 90% -- comparable to the US or any state in Europe, and much higher than the Ottomans or the Russians.





Hm.

The average Turkish citizen in 1900 was illiterate; literacy rates were still under 50%, as compared to ~80% for Japan.

The country had exactly one engineering school, inside the military academy, founded in 1903. Japan had six. (By 1910 Japan was producing over 20,000 university graduates per year.)

By 1900 Istanbul had two newspapers -- Ykdam and Sabah -- with a combined circulation of about 20,000. Tokyo had twelve newspapers with a combined circulation of over a million.

The Ottoman manufacturing sector lagged pathetically; by 1914 it employed only about 75,000 workers. In Japan the comparable figure was over two million.

As to the success of Abdulhamid's reforms generally... well, being beaten in a major war by Italy is a bad sign. Being beaten in a major war by Bulgaria is a very bad sign.


Doug M.

 

[Doug M.]

Well, I'm sorry if you take it that way. I don't mean to be offensive. But I am very skeptical of a view that says the Ottoman Empire's problems were largely external. The external problems were real and significant, but other countries had problems just as bad, and did much better.

If my skepticism has made me a little too sharp, then I apologize.

As to (some of) your specific points:

-- Much of the Aegean coast and Turkey-in-Europe was indeed densely populated by European standards. But the Empire was very slow to link up the major cities of this region -- Istanbul, Smyrna/Izmir, Edirne, Thessaloniki -- with railroads.

-- Japanese railroads: true, narrow gauge is easier. But then, the Japanese suffered from a painful lack of iron -- still do; there are no good deposits in the islands, so they have to import.

-- Russians forbidding construction past Ankara: I had not heard that, but it sounds plausible. Is there a cite?

-- If I'm wrong about the engineering school, I welcome correction. Do you have a cite?

-- I don't think I'm wrong about the newspapers. I got that from an article on JSTOR. I no longer have access to JSTOR, but googling finds a copy of the article... translated into Indonesian!

Well, I guess Indonesian is better than nothing. Here goes:

"Suatu lagi usaha penting yang dilakukan ialah dalam bidang akhbar dan penerbitan. Ketika pemerintahan Sultan Mahmud hanya 11 buah buku diterbitkan setiap tahun. Angka ini meningkat sehingga 285 di bawah pemerintahan Sultan Abdul Hamid. Bilangan kilang-kilang percetakan meningkat daripada 59 menjadi 99 buah di bawah pemerintahannya. Penerbitan Ykdam dan Sabah mencapai angka 15,000 dan 12,000 masing-masing iaitu angka yang agak tinggi pada ketika itu."

"Another significant advance was made in the press and publications.
During the reign of Mahmud, 11 books had been published annually. The
figure went up to 285 under Abdülhamid. The number of printing houses
increased from 54 to 99 during his reign, and the circulation of Ykdam
and Sabah reached 15,000 and 12,000 respectively, quite high levels
for that time."

http://members.fortunecity.com/saki...am.or.id/artikel/a-sultan-hameed-bagian2.html

...and if anyone here has JSTOR and can get the original article, that would be great.

-- As for defeating the British "repeatedly", the Ottomans had one major field victory, under a German general, against a British force that was outnumbered and badly overextended. Compare and contrast to their performance against the Russians, and you may well ask what Abdulhamid accomplished.

-- Outcomes: well, where do we draw the line? Japan in 1850 was clearly behind the Ottomans. By 1900, they were clearly ahead. At what point in that period is a comparison meaningful?


Doug M.

 

[dhouse1205]

To an earlier post that mentioned the 'no fact finding in 1800's because the whole forbidden to leave island on penalty of death' thing, when Perry sailed into Edo Bay with his ship, it pretty much was the death knell of the Tokugawa Shogunate. The fact finding missions and modernization didn't start until the downfall of the Tokugawa's and the reestablishment of the direct authority of the Emperor. The Emperor knew that if Japan was to avoid the fate of China, then it must modernize as fast and as quickly as possible.

Also concerning China, instead of concentrating on the demographic and other socio-economic factors, all one has to really look at is the political and social landscape of china at the time. If a few of you can remember that at this time China has already been carved up like a Christmas Turkey by the European powers, opium use and sale was draining the coffers of the Imperial Treasury, the population was to drugged up or on the payroll of the European Powers, and finally the conflicting political battles within the various members of the Imperial court pretty much paralyzed any modernization efforts on the part of the Chinese.

I think the main reason why people discount china at this time period, because Murphey was tap dancing his way across the Chinese landscape for the last 100 years. They tried to modernize, but the factors of the time period was against them.

 

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

That quote doesn't mean that there were only two newspapers - just that those two had their circulations increase greatly. I don't have a source with me to list papers - but there were a very large number in a very large number of languages - several Greek, Armenian, Turkish, Arabic, French, Bulgarian, etc. Papers came and went, but there were generally dozens in circulation in Istanbul at a time. It's possible those two papers were mentioned because they were large and long-lasting.

This article lists a few - including the Hanimlara Mahsus Gazetesi (Women's Own Gazette) which it refers to as part of the "women's press".
http://journals.cambridge.org/downl...51a.pdf&code=92ce9433f86d78b28a9e7b504bdd5319

For engineering schools, again I'm at work so I don't have a source, but I happen to have in a research spreadsheet the following:

Dar ül-Fünun-ü Şâhâne (Imperial House of Sciences) founded 1846, first applied physics course offered 1863

Imperial Naval Engineering College (Mühendishane-i Bahri-i Hümayun) was founded in 1773

Imperial Military Engineering College (Mühendishane-i Berri-i Hümayun) in 1795

Feyz-i Sibyan in Salonika 1885

I forgot the Dar ül-Fünun earlier, so that's actually four.

For the diplomatic obstacles surrounding railways, google russia antolia railway - and unfortunately this book:

Distant Ties: Germany, the Ottoman Empire, and the Construction of the Baghdad Railway
Jonathan S. McMurray

Is improperly scanned on Amazon so you can't do a search - and

Turkey, the great powers, and the Bagdad Railway: A study in Imperialism
Edward Mead Earle

The latter is a better overview, the former concentrates on the German-Ottoman relationship.

The plans for the defense of Gallipoli were drawn up by the General Staff before von Sanders arrived; he adopted them without modification. He did a good job, but the nearly flawless performance of the entire Ottoman command was essential to the success of the defense. The British were not outnumbered - and on the contrary had innumerable advantages in naval gunfire support and logistical infrastructure. The basis of the Ottoman victory was that a well-trained, battle-hardened German-style professional army was up against an essentially untested amateur army. But it wasn't just Gallipoli. The British failed against the Ottomans in every campaign until 1917 - Kut being the most famous example, but also the failure of British offensives in Palestine, where they enormously outnumbered the Ottomans in every category, and greatly so.

With regard to Russia, the Ottomans were always severely outnumbered, and did after all manage to outlast Russia (and Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Bulgaria) - and the Ottomans were almost continuously at war from 1911 to 1923 - yet came out standing; and in WWI fought on up to seven fronts at once (Gallipoli, Caucasus, Palestine/Sinai, Persia, Mesopotamia, Macedonia, Galicia, Rumania), a feat not managed by any power but Britain.

I don't know why you keep making this a comparison with Japan - there is no meaningful comparison, as Japan was successful and the Ottomans weren't. The discussion is about where else could there have been success, and why were the Japanese successful. My response is that the Japanese had serious advantages that nobody else had. It's a contrast, not a comparison.

Nor did I say the Ottomans had only external problems. What I'm saying is that massive external problems made it much harder to deal with internal problems than was the case for Japan.

Also, which countries other than Japan did better than the Ottomans? These are the only two powers that weren't colonized! A couple of Latin American countries? None had anywhere near the obstacles to development that the Ottomans did - especially shielded by the Monroe Doctrine.

With regard to rail lines, you'll have to look at a physical map. Istanbul, Salonika, and Izmir are separated by very difficult terrain and great distance - and these cities all had rail lines linking them to hinterlands very early - Izmir in the 1850s, Istanbul (which by the way had the world's second subway) in the 60s and Salonika in the 70s. If not for the war with Russia the network would have been completed and linked to Europe in the early 80s. A line to Europe had to go through Novi Pazar and Bosnia - a nightmare route, both in terms of engineering and politics.

Istanbul itself is obviously densely popuated, and the Aydin province wasn't too bad, but it was twice the size of Belgium, with a population in 1885 of 1.265M vs 5.8M for Belgium (22.6 inhab. per km vs 190.1).

Overall, the size of the Ottoman Empire in 1885 was 4,155,883 sq km, pop 33.47M vs 38M pop and 377,835 sq km for Japan in Density 8/km vs 100/km. A lot of that is desert, but it does underline the immense distance between population centers, which hugely magnifies the problems of building a rail line, not to mention defense.

Eventually the Istanbul-Salonika junction was built purely for military reasons (and just in time for war with Greece) and was a large money-loser. The original pre-Berlin scheme would have continued the Bulgarian line to Sophia and either from there to Skopje where it would have joined the line to Salonika or up to Nish and thence to the same line but at Pristina, then through Bosnia to join the Hungarian system at Doberlin, which made sense economically, but of course became impossible in 1878.

Nevertheless, Abdul Hamid built about 5,000 km of rail lines, not too shabby.

Essentially, the war with Russia in 1877-78 prevented the Ottomans from successfully "Meiji-ing". Not only were the most productive areas of the empire stripped away, the Ottomans were left with a strategically impossible territory, and while revenue declined by a third, expenses didn't - so not only did the navy have to be abandoned, but most of the development projects. It also destroyed a large portion of the Ottoman elite, lost the empire a lot of RR, the proto-industrial regions of the empire (primarily Bulgaria, to a lesser extent Bosnia), and left the empire in a generally extremely weak and defensive posture.

Well, I'm sorry if you take it that way. I don't mean to be offensive. But I am very skeptical of a view that says the Ottoman Empire's problems were largely external. The external problems were real and significant, but other countries had problems just as bad, and did much better.

If my skepticism has made me a little too sharp, then I apologize.

As to (some of) your specific points:

-- Much of the Aegean coast and Turkey-in-Europe was indeed densely populated by European standards. But the Empire was very slow to link up the major cities of this region -- Istanbul, Smyrna/Izmir, Edirne, Thessaloniki -- with railroads.

-- Japanese railroads: true, narrow gauge is easier. But then, the Japanese suffered from a painful lack of iron -- still do; there are no good deposits in the islands, so they have to import.

-- Russians forbidding construction past Ankara: I had not heard that, but it sounds plausible. Is there a cite?

-- If I'm wrong about the engineering school, I welcome correction. Do you have a cite?

-- I don't think I'm wrong about the newspapers. I got that from an article on JSTOR. I no longer have access to JSTOR, but googling finds a copy of the article... translated into Indonesian!

Well, I guess Indonesian is better than nothing. Here goes:

"Suatu lagi usaha penting yang dilakukan ialah dalam bidang akhbar dan penerbitan. Ketika pemerintahan Sultan Mahmud hanya 11 buah buku diterbitkan setiap tahun. Angka ini meningkat sehingga 285 di bawah pemerintahan Sultan Abdul Hamid. Bilangan kilang-kilang percetakan meningkat daripada 59 menjadi 99 buah di bawah pemerintahannya. Penerbitan Ykdam dan Sabah mencapai angka 15,000 dan 12,000 masing-masing iaitu angka yang agak tinggi pada ketika itu."

"Another significant advance was made in the press and publications.
During the reign of Mahmud, 11 books had been published annually. The
figure went up to 285 under Abdülhamid. The number of printing houses
increased from 54 to 99 during his reign, and the circulation of Ykdam
and Sabah reached 15,000 and 12,000 respectively, quite high levels
for that time."

http://members.fortunecity.com/saki...am.or.id/artikel/a-sultan-hameed-bagian2.html

...and if anyone here has JSTOR and can get the original article, that would be great.

-- As for defeating the British "repeatedly", the Ottomans had one major field victory, under a German general, against a British force that was outnumbered and badly overextended. Compare and contrast to their performance against the Russians, and you may well ask what Abdulhamid accomplished.

-- Outcomes: well, where do we draw the line? Japan in 1850 was clearly behind the Ottomans. By 1900, they were clearly ahead. At what point in that period is a comparison meaningful?


Doug M.

 

[Doug M.]

The Cambridge Journal link gives me a "file not available".

Why comparisons to Japan: well, the thread is about successful modernization. Japan is the poster child for this. When looking at unsuccessful attempts at modernization, why wouldn't we make comparisons to Japan?

And while Japan had some advantages, it also had some serious problems to overcome. For instance, like Russia, Japan had a large mass of landless peasants with little economic or political stake in reform. (The rural landscape of modern Japan, which is dominated by small farmers on their own land, is an artifact of the Occupation. Meiji Japan was a land of large estates worked by landless tenants.) Mobilizing this group -- about 70% of the population -- was probably the single biggest challenge of the Meiji.

Although its military situation was certainly not as parlous as Turkey's, neither were the Japanese "safe". Western powers imposed Chinese-style unequal treaties on Japan in the 1850s and '60s, hit the Shogunate with huge indemnities for attacks on Western property or citizens, and bombarded Japanese towns when those indemnities weren't paid. The treaties weren't renegotiated until the 1880s, so the first generation of reform had to be done under the shadow of Western guns.

Japanese industrialization had to take place in a particularly difficult environment, because the unequal treaties sharply limited the tariffs that could be charged. In the long run this would be a blessing, because it would force Japanese industries to compete directly with western -- especially British -- imports. The result was a mania for efficiency and a drive for exports that has been hardwired into the DNA of Japanese business ever since. But in the first 20 or 30 years, it made things desperately difficult for Japan.

Here a direct comparison with the Ottomans may be relevant. The Ottomans faced much the same problem. As a price of their "support" in 1877-8, the British demanded that tariffs be reduced. The result was a flood of cheap British manufactures, especially textiles, into the Empire. This sharply stunted the growth of Ottoman industry.

What's striking is that the Ottoman elites had no coherent response to this. In fact, some of the steps that they did take were counterproductive -- most notably the tax on exports, which served to finish the job that low tariffs started.

Here a contrast with Japan is illustrative. The Meiji were determined to industrialize. Some of the tricks they used -- such as subisidizing strategic industries -- weren't available to the Ottomans, because of lack of resources. But others -- like keeping the yen low to encourage exports -- were. (The Meiji correctly adduced that a developing economy may sometimes need a weak currency, not a strong one. This is especially striking given that so many developing countries since then have gotten this wrong.)

And while the Meiji oligarchs may have had more resources than Abdulhamid, Japan was still a desperately poor country, so much support for industrialization had to be done on the cheap. Subsidies were the exception; more often, a would-be manufacturer had to be content with an invitation to a trade fair. (Not that this was negligible. The Meiji loved trade fairs, and got a lot of good from them.)

The Meiji were also very good at organizing the private sector to fill in where the government couldn't. The Japanese state grew rapidly through the Meiji period, but in the first generation it was relatively poor and weak, so nonstate actors had to be encouraged to step in. So, for instance, there was an explosion of private schools in the 1870s and 1880s; these educated the first wave of mass-literate Japanese. The public school system took over in the 1890s, but Japan's first large-scale primary schoolss, high schools and universities were all private.

Is it reasonable to ask why the Ottomans couldn't have done this? Low literacy rates, and the general low level of education, were a crippling problem for the Empire. Was this not seen as a problem, or was all possible solutions perceived as too hard?

Finally, a couple of specific points. Looking at a map, I'm not seeing that the terrain between Istanbul/Edirne or Istanbul/Thessaloniki is that difficult. And I wouldn't say they're separated by "great distance" either; Istanbul/Edirne is, what, 150 km?

The sluggishness of Ottoman rail construction does seem striking. Yes, difficult terrain, but other countries had difficult terrain too. Yes, large distances, but the Russians and Americans were building rail lines across whole continents. These were solvable problems.

-- It's interesting to hear that the Istanbul-Thessaloniki line was a money loser. You would think a line connecting two of the Empire's largest cities would be able to turn a profit. What's the story there?

-- Ottoman credit: of course it was good; it was guaranteed by the Public Debt Administration. There's a difference between "my credit is good because I'm reliable" and "my credit is good because you can have my pockets turned out".

-- The navy: I was under the impression that the Ottomany navy declined not (or not only) because of expense, but because Abdulhamid distrusted his admirals as a bunch of liberals.

Who did as well as the Ottomans: well, the Russians, for one. They faced very similar security problems -- surrounded on all sides by hostile neighbors, restive minorities, needed to maintain a huge army -- and staggering problems of distance. Yet they managed to build an industrial base and the beginning of a modern economy; thirty years after Czar Nicholas went to the wall, they'd be the world's other superpower.

Here's another one: the Serbs. Between the death of Alexander Obrenovic (1903) and the First Balkan War, Serbia's economy roughly doubled in size. Their literacy rate jumped from about 25% in the 1870s to around 60% on the eve of WWI, and they started industrializing very rapidly. Fast growth from a very low base, but by 1910 they had clearly overtaken and passed the Ottomans. The Serbs' performance in the Balkan Wars and WWI was a direct consequence of the previous generation of development.

So, I'm not finding Abdulhamid's achievements all that impressive.


Doug M.

 

[Ridwan Asher]

-- I don't think I'm wrong about the newspapers. I got that from an article on JSTOR. I no longer have access to JSTOR, but googling finds a copy of the article... translated into Indonesian!

Well, I guess Indonesian is better than nothing. Here goes:

"Suatu lagi usaha penting yang dilakukan ialah dalam bidang akhbar dan penerbitan. Ketika pemerintahan Sultan Mahmud hanya 11 buah buku diterbitkan setiap tahun. Angka ini meningkat sehingga 285 di bawah pemerintahan Sultan Abdul Hamid. Bilangan kilang-kilang percetakan meningkat daripada 59 menjadi 99 buah di bawah pemerintahannya. Penerbitan Ykdam dan Sabah mencapai angka 15,000 dan 12,000 masing-masing iaitu angka yang agak tinggi pada ketika itu."

I have to be nit picky as the only Indonesian here. Unfortunately that article is in Malaysian, dear Doug.

 

[Doug M.]

Ha -- you're right!

I should have just said "bahasa".


Doug M.

 

[Faeelin]

What's that article called?

 

[Grey Wolf]

To an earlier post that mentioned the 'no fact finding in 1800's because the whole forbidden to leave island on penalty of death' thing, when Perry sailed into Edo Bay with his ship, it pretty much was the death knell of the Tokugawa Shogunate. The fact finding missions and modernization didn't start until the downfall of the Tokugawa's and the reestablishment of the direct authority of the Emperor. The Emperor knew that if Japan was to avoid the fate of China, then it must modernize as fast and as quickly as possible.
.

That's not entirely true - the Bakufu tried to modernise, got itself some steamships for the navy, acted for the army with French help etc

Best Regards
Grey Wolf

 

[Grey Wolf]

Note regarding "Gunboat Diplomacy" and debt - the whole Mexican adventure that ended with Maximilian's death was due to Britain, France, Spain and latterly Austria chasing their debts after the Mexican gov't defaulted

Best Regards
Grey Wolf