The first section of the Hejaz Railway was completed. The section ran from Muzayrib to Daraa in Syria.
The Philippine Commission added its first Filipinos.
Last edition:
Showing posts with label Ottoman Empire. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ottoman Empire. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 1, 2026
Sunday, August 30, 2026
Wednesday, August 30, 1876. Murad V deposed.
Ottoman Emperor Murad V was deposed after a mere 93-day reign, which was derailed due to mental health issues.
Abdul Hamid II took power and promised to introduce a parliament.
On this, once again, I just saw the other day some dimwit use the "we're a republic, not a democracy" line in something. People who spout that should have their citizenship revoked and be deported to Dumbassistan. We're a democratic republic. We are a democracy.
Congressman James A. Garfield, took his family on a sightseeing trip in Philadelphia.
Last edition:
Monday, August 28, 1876. Creating Ft. Keogh.
Thursday, June 18, 2026
Sunday, June 18, 1876. Montenegrin-Ottoman War commences.
The Montenegrin–Ottoman War commenced when Montenegro and Serbia determined to join a Herzegovinian rebellion against the Ottoman Empire.
Last edition:
Saturday, June 17, 1876. Battle of the Rosebud Battlefield, Montana.
Saturday, May 30, 2026
Tuesday, May 30, 1876. Coup in Constantinople, Ems Ukaz in the Russian Empire.
A bloodless military coup d'état deposed Ottoman Sultan Abdulaziz, and resulted in the the appointment of Murad V as the Sultan. Midhat Pasha would preside over a constitutional committee for the next two years, a period known as the First Constitutional Era.
Czar Alexander IIsigned the Ems Ukaz to eliminate the Ukrainian language from the cultural sphere and limited it with domestic use.
Last edition:
Monday, May 29, 1876. Start of the Yellowstone Expedition.
Monday, March 9, 2026
Thursday, March 9, 1916. Germany declares war on Portugal,
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Germany declared war on Portugal.
The Germans attacked the commune of Cumières-le-Mort-Homme from Béthincourt, France.
The Italians launched an offensive around Gorizia and Tolmin.
The Western Frontier Force left Sidi Barrani and marched to capture Sollum, Egypt from the Ottoman Empire and their Senussi allies.
Arnold Spencer-Smith of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition died while en route to Hut Point for medical treatment for exhaustion and scurvy.
And peace was about to end for the United States:
Thursday, March 9, 1916. The Raid On Columbus New Mexico.
And with this entry, the day to day tracking of events from January 1, 1914, up to the this date in 1926, is complete. There won't be any daily updates for 1916 hereafter, as we've already done that.
Anyone tracking this in the future will note that our styles changed over time. Indeed, considerably. For one thing, on later posts you can always look back and see the post right before it in a link. When we started these daily entries in 2016, that wasn't the case. In some instances, however, that feature has been later added.
Additionally, as with the entries from March 9, 2016, we often did more than one, if there was more than one thing to feature for the day. At some point we stopped doing that.
You'll still find, for the time being, daily updates, when there's something worth noting, for 1876. We're unlikely to carry that past the summer, however, as the 1870sn are really outside the focus of the blog. I've thought about stopping it earlier, and may do that.
You will likely still see events carrying forward from 1901, which started with 1900. This is backfill, frankly, for the 1910 to 1920 period that is the focus of the blog. The same is true for the 1911 entries, which are backfilling up to 1914. As 1911 is already within the Mexican Revolution period, that will carry on, even though the first decade of the 20th Century may very well not.
We don't post many entries from the 1920s now that we're up to 1926, although we do occasionally. This is really outside the focus period of the blog and by 1926 the country was on to a new era. The same is true for the 1940s, now that we're past the Second World War, although we still post a few. The fifty years ago entries, now into 1976, are few and far between as well as there just aren't that many things I find interesting from that period, historically, which of course I have a personal memory of.
Anyhow, I hope the readers enjoyed reading the daily entries from March 9, 1916 up to March 9, 1926, and enjoyed the backfill that brought in the rest of World War One and the daily happenings as it was going on. The immediate prewar era, 1910 to the end of 1913, will still be getting backfilled, which we hope you also enjoy.
Last edition:
Sunday, February 15, 2026
Monday, February 15, 1926. King wins a by-election.
Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King won a by-election for the representative for Prince Albert, Saskatchewan district, ending the situation of a Prime Minister governing without his own seat in the Parliament
Air mail through a commercial air carrier was accomplished in the U.S. for the firs time.
Ford Motors was the contracted carrier.
Mehmet Celal Bey, Turkish Ottoman administrator who declined to carry out orders during the Armenian genocide, died at age 62. He paid for his refusal with his official position.'
He compared himself to "a person sitting by the side of a river, with absolute no means of saving anyone. Blood was flowing in the river and thousands of innocent children, irreproachable old people, helpless women, strong young men, were streaming down this river towards oblivion. Anyone I could save with my bare hands I saved, and the others, I think they streamed down the river never to return."
In another context, he'd be regarded as a "righteous amongst the nations"
Last edition:
Sunday, February 14, 1926. The Bamberg Conference.
Friday, August 22, 2025
Sunday, August 22, 1915. Hill 60.
The Australian 2nd Division launched a dawn attack in the Battle of Hill 60. It was unsuccessful.
And. well. . .
Last edition:
Friday, August 20, 1915. Nicholas II takes command of the Russian Army.
Tuesday, July 15, 2025
Wednesday, July 14, 1915. Men of letters.
Hussein bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca, and Henry McMahon, British High Commissioner in Egypt, began correspondence on steps to achieve Arab independence from the Ottoman Empire.
Last edition:
Tuesday, July 13, 1915. Internment.
Monday, June 30, 2025
Wednesday, June 30, 1915. Armenian massacre.
Facing a lack of ammunition, Aremenial militiamen engaged Ottoman troops hand to hand.
They lost, and the Ottomans entered the fort and killed the women and children inside.
The HMS Lightning struck a mine in the Thames Estuary of England and sank. The German submarine SM UC-2 struck a mine in the North Sea and sank.
French commander Henri Gouraud was wounded at Gallipoli and replaced by his divisional commander, Maurice Bailloud.
A telegram was sent to the Secretary of State from El Paso.
Collector Cobb to the Secretary of State.
[Telegram.]
El Paso, June 30, 1915.
Trial Huerta and others postponed until July 12. When Huerta left Federal building there was repetition of scene of June 27; he was given an ovation by his partisans who are assembled in El Paso.
Cobb.
Last edition:
Tuesday, June 29, 1915. Airpower comes to the forests.
Friday, March 14, 2025
Sunday, March 14, 1915. Planning on the future of Constantinople.
The Royal Navy forced the German light cruiser SMS Dresden to scuttle, ending the German East Asia Squadron.
The UK, France and the Russian Empire agreed to give Constantinople and the Bosporus to Russia in the event of victory.
Last edition:
Saturday, March 13, 1915. Worries over Japan.
Thursday, August 29, 2024
Sunday, August 29, 1824. Battle of Gerontas (Ναυμαχία του Γέροντα).
The Battle of Gerontas (Ναυμαχία του Γέροντα) was fought in the southeast Aegean, seeing 75 small Greek vessels defeat an Ottoman armada of 100 vessels contributed by various parts of the Ottoman Empire. The engagement was one of the most significant of the Greek War of Independence, fought from 1821 to 1829, which freed Greece from Ottoman rule.
Last edition:
Tuesday, August 24, 1824. Shipping Up To Boston with Lafayette.
Wednesday, August 14, 2024
Wednesday, August 14, 1974. Second Turkish invasion of Cyprus.
Turkey invaded Cyprus again, taking 37% of the country, establishing a republic recognized only by it, and dividing the capital Nicosia.
Greece withdrew from NATO"s military command structure as a result of the invasion. The Greek Cypriot paramilitary group EOKAB took Tochni and by the end of the day had murdered numerous people.
The Greek culture on Cyprus goes back to antiquity, although the island was never ruled by Greece. The Turkish presence to 1571 when the Ottomans took the island and began to partially settle it. The troubles of the 1970s, which have lasted to this day, were started by the Greek nationalist military junta, giving another example of the disastrous effects of Greek overreach in regard to Turkey.
The East Asia Anti-Japan Armed Front (EAAJAF) attempted to assassinate the Emperor Hirohito with a railroad bomb, but was the plot was discovered and disrupted. The terrorist group was Japanese, in spite of its name, but was in reaction to the Japanese history of aggression, as well as having a far left ideology.
Last edition
Friday, August 9, 1974. President Nixon Resigns.
Sunday, July 21, 2024
Thursday, July 21, 1774. The Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca
The Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca was signed in Bulgaria bringing about the end of the Russo-Turkish War of 1768–74 on a favorable basis to Russia.
Last edition:
Wednesday, July 20, 1774. A vote.
Monday, May 6, 2024
An uncomfortable truth.*
The US has been rocked in recent weeks by student protests over the war between Hamas and Israel. The striking thing about it for me is how much this has turned, in terms of public opinion.
Even my own opinion has changed, but in the other direction. When I was young, I had quite a bit of sympathy with the Palestinian cause. My views on it developed when I was old enough to not have any really good recollection of the Palestinian terrorist activities of the 1970s. The problem to me seemed clear enough. Israel had been established on British occupied territory without the clear input of all of the residents of that territory, and since then war had precluded the Arab residents from having a voice.
I don't really hold that view anymore.
Unfortunately, much of the world seems to.
"Palestine", as a political entity, has not been free, in a self-governing sense, since sometime . . . well It's hard to say if it ever was. The word itself refers to the Roman administrative province that was imposed on the Kingdom of Israel. Romes grip weakened in the 600s, with a Persian invasion taking Jerusalem in 614 and the Muslims invading and conquering all of the Levant in 634-638.
Note those words. . .Levant and conquering.
That's what the Islamic invaders did, they invaded and conquered. Islam was spread by the sword.
We'll also note that this was a long time ago.
In the Levant, which is what we're dealing with, there were multiple religious groups and Christianity and Judaism remained strong. Much of what Islam conquered were Christian lands. Islam did not spring up there from fertile soil, it was imposed, but the other religions remained.
By the 1090s the Muslim principalities of the Levant were themselves coming under attack from other Islamic forces, the net result, without getting into all of the details, were the Crusades. In 1260, in an odd event, the Mongols briefly conquered the entire region before they retreated due to a succession crisis at home. The Ottoman's conquered the entire region in 1516-1517 and ruled it, in an increasingly weak manner, until the British Mandate was imposed at the end of World War One.
At the end of the 19th Century and the beginning of the 20th Century, the Zionist movement sought to reclaim the region that had been Israel up until AD 70. The Ottomans both facilitated and opposed the movement. It was gaining strength by World War One and took on a life of its own. By World War Two (this is the 80th anniversary of the Biltmore Conference) it was becoming a mass Jewish movement of sorts, as Jews around the world reacted to the horror of the Holocaust.
At the same time, Levantines in the region became increasingly hostile to Jewish settlers, fearing what was to become. This turned violent on at least one major occasion before World War Two, causing the British to have to put a Palestinian Revolution that lasted from 1936 to 1939. That movement sought independence, but it did so in part as Levantines feared that the growing strength of Jewish settlement movements meant that they'd be displaced on their own territory.
When the British ducked out in 1948 the Arabs and Israelis went right to war with each other, resulting in the fleeing of 700,000 Levantine's from the region, half of pre-1948 Mandatory Palestine's Levantine population. That population, now enormously increased, sets up the current situation. Some fled because fleeing fighting armies is the rational thing to do. Some fled as they feared being killed by Jewish militias. Some fled as, after Israel established themselves, they were expelled.
The overall problem is that 70 to 80 years ago is a long time.
In the past 70+ years, those tragically expelled should have been productively resettled. Some were, of course, but many were not. Instead, the results of the 1948 war were rejected across the Middle East, which in turn made it worse by repeated incompetent efforts to militarily reverse the situation. The West Bank, for example, was lost in the 1968 war. Movements supporting the Levantine cause, moreover, have been attracted not only to violence, but to extremism.
At the present time, Hamas wants to expel Jews from the borders of what had been Mandatory Palestine, a region that has existed as a politically independent area for, well, ever. Hamas would impose radical Islam on the region to the detriment of not only the Jews, but to Christians, who remain in the region, and even to other Muslims.
There is, unfortunately, no reason to believe that there's any Levantine entity any less radical than Hamas.
A two-state solution for the problem is absurd. Part of the ongoing problem is that the Levantines have been kept in postage stamp sized settlements not only by the Israelis, but by the non-Levantine Arabs, who don't want to take them in. An independent Levantine state based on the West Bank would be dirt poor, radical, and a menace to the region's political stability.
And that's not what so many of them want. They want the borders of Mandatory Palestine, with its current Jewish residents expelled from the region for from life.
And that's what student protesters are actually advocating in some circumstances. Both the Atlantic and the Guardian have interviews with a narrow selection of them who are basically comfortable advocating that murderous solution. Levantine protesters in the US seem pretty comfortable with it as well, or at least not uncomfortable with noting that those they are supporting by implication are murderous rapists.
One of the uncomfortable truths of history is that wrongs of the past can't be righted, really. Nobody can go back to 70 and keep the Romans from expelling the Jews. Nobody can go to all the numerous localities where they were thereafter oppressed and murdered and keep that from happening. Germans today seem remorseful for what they did from 1932 to 1945, but that can't keep the horror from happening. The British today would not take Palestine as a mandate, but they did, and that's done. And the expulsions and fleeing of the Levantines in the late 40s has already occured.
Like so many other things that humans imagine, trying to restore a status quo ante, long after that status quo has fled, only results in new horrors. The Jewish desire for a homeland was rational. That they'd desire a portion of what had been Israel (modern Israel is smaller than Biblical Israel) was also rational, It's already happened. A solution for the plight of the Palestinian Levantines needs to be found, and frankly isn't all that difficult to work, but neither a two-state solution nor setting an army of rapist and murderous lose in Israel is a solution that's either workable or tolerable.
Nor is it rational or tolerable to put up with people protesting for it.** Students form the protesting base in any country in part, quite frankly, as a large percentage of them are essentially idle while not knowing it. As a student, I imagined what I'd do once I was out of school, with a job, and finally "free". It turned out that what I did was worked and took on the responsibilities of adult life. Freedom, in a certain sense, isn't what Janis Joplin claimed it to be, that being "nothing else to lose", but it is, in another sense, "nothing else to do".
In the 1930s, when Spain was in a violent crisis, a tiny number of people went there and fought in its civil war. I don't admire the foreign volunteers to Republican Spain, who misjudged their cause and blinded themselves to what it was really for, but at least they did more than gum up classes. Students yelling bear, ultimately, no real burden for their efforts. They're not Freedom Riders or the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.
And here, ironically, should they really have an impact, it'll be to bring to power in "Palestine" a group of murderous perverts, and to help bring to power in the US somebody whom they don't agree with on anything.
Footnotes
*Because I'm not a professional blogger, nor retired, I have a lot of posts, well over 100 in fact, that are in the hopper, some of which related to this. I note that, as there's more coming, maybe, if I ever get around to it, on the crisis in the Middle East.
**Protesting against Israeli military overreach is something else entirely. Israeli's are doing that.
This is a common feature, oddly, of protests. It's perfectly rational, for example, to have been against bombing Hanoi during the Vietnam War, but that doesn't mean you need to appear on an anti-aircraft gun belonging to a communist army. Here being opposed to Israel leveling Gaza is rational, pretending that Hamas is on the side of virtue is not.
Related threads:
The Palestinian Problem and its Wilsonian Solution.
Sunday, March 3, 2024
Monday, March 3, 1924. End of the Caliphate.
The Turkish National Assembly ended the Ottoman Caliphate. It had been in existence for 407 years and claimed religious sovereignty over Islam. The Assembly also ordered that Abdulmejid II and his harem were to be deported by March 15. The official deposing of Abdulmejid would come at 2:00 a.m. on March 4.
He did not welcome the news and warned that the ending of the caliphate would cause the rise of extremism in Islam, which his role as the religion's leader of Muslims tempered. He proved to be correct. He lived the rest of his life in Europe, at first in Switzerland, and then in Paris, where he died in 1944. His exile was not an easy one at first, and he was disappointed that Muslims did not demand the restoration of his office.
The Teapot Dome investigation continued.
And the local Piggly Wiggly was robbed. That location is now a tattoo parlor.
Last prior:
Saturday, March 1, 1924. The Nixon Nitration Works Disaster.
Saturday, October 14, 2023
The Palestinian Problem and its Wilsonian Solution.
Lex Anteinternet: Wars and Rumors of War, 2023, Part X, Declarations:
October 15, 2023
Hamas v. Israel
Egypt has completed a concrete barrier to block Palestinian entrants from Gaza. Their border is very small, so they will be able to enforce it.
Qatar has refused to take Palestinian refugees.
Why have I linked this in, well to demonstrate part of the problem.
Bernie "I knew Lenin when he was just a baby" Sanders has called Gaza an "open air prison".
It isn't, but if it is, the guards aren't just Israeli, they're also Egyptian, and quite frankly, the Arabs in general.
Nobody wants the Palestinians, as by this point, to put it charitably, they're acclimated to living off the dole and are inclined to violence. They're like the residents of Northern Ireland at one time, on spades.
We went into the complicated history of what is now Israel the other day, but to unfairly summarize it, the problem was created by this.
Ottoman Palestine.
Jewish immigrants legally started migrating to the region when it was an Ottoman province, and then when it was a British League of Nations Mandate. When the Jewish population became noticeable, in a region we might note that not only had an Arab population, but an Armenian population and a Greek population, the Palestinians began to worry and demanded that it stop. They turned to violence in the 1930s/
Prior to this time, it isn't as if it was an independent country and indeed, as the map above shows, is borders weren't really what they are now. Israel had been an independent kingdom in ancient times, but it had been conquered by numerous ancient empires and kingdoms during its history. Rome put an end to Israel, as we discussed the other day, until 1948. Like much of the pre World War One Arabic Middle East, it was ruled under Ottoman rule by various tribal families.
The period after the Great War was transformational due to the high levels of Jewish immigration, and World War Two made a push towards a restoration of Jewish Israel inevitable. After over a millennium of being murdered for no reason whatsoever, the Jewish people wanted a homeland of their own. And, by that time, they had the population base in Palestine to demand it.
The Palestinian Arabs simply couldn't accommodate themselves to the thought, and the non-Palestinian Arabs couldn't either. They made a bad bet. Had the Palestinians imply gone along with it, quite frankly, by now the demographic impact of their higher birth rate would mean that Israel would have a majority Palestinian population. But they didn't, and in becoming refugees they became wards of the world.
Today, inside the Palestinian Authority, they suffer high unemployment, particularly in Gaza, which is an unnatural economic unit. The Arabs, and Iran, support them, but they've largely gotten over Israel by now and they don't want the Palestinians in their country. They'd rather back them economically than let them in.
But, if there's a solution to this, they probably need to.
Following World War One, largely due to Woodrow Wilson's view of how the world should work, everything pushed towards nation states. Due to the Great War, Germany and Russia were pushed out of Poland. Finland, the Baltics States, and the various Slavic states that hadn't been independent, became independent. Ireland became independent. Colonialism started to become a dirty word.
The Ottoman Empire collapsed and Middle Eastern kingdoms, imperfectly drawn, sprang up.
And populations were somewhat moved.
After World War Two, this was very much the case again, although mostly due to the Soviet Union seeking to redraw is territory on ethnic grounds.
None of this is pleasant, but the solution to this may be here.
Israel isn't going to go away, and is not going to let itself become an Arab dominated state.
The Palestinians aren't going away either, but their territory, and they aren't getting Palestine back, isn't viable. They've never, moreover, really had any sort of independent state in the first place.
They are also a Mediterranean people, which means that they are largely a Sunni Muslim (some are Christians, but they're disappearing as a demographic as Islam is hostile to them and for that matter the Israelis aren't keen on them either) Arab coastal people.
Qatar is a coastal, Sunni Bedouin Arab nation. So is Saudi Arabia. So is Kuwait. So is Dubai.
All of these countries have a labor shortage.
A solution, and perhaps the only one, is to resettle the Palestinians in those countries. Not in one country, which will create all kinds of problems, but across them.
They will not mix in immediately, but they would in fairly short order.
Jews whose ancestors emigrated from Ukraine, Poland, etc., 75 years ago do not look back and wish romantically that they could reclaim lost occupations and lands. Frankly, in 75 years, if this was done, Palestinians wouldn't either. For that matter, in a fairly short period, they'd be fairly mixed with the local Arab population in any event, their identify less of a thing, and their futures better.
Of course, nobody is proposing this, even though many are secretly thinking about it. Simply pushing the Palestinians out of Gaza has come up as an Israeli solution before. The Egyptians fear a lot of Palestinians heading their way, and they cannot accommodate them. That Qatar would reject their entry at this point shows that a lot of Arab states have this on their minds.
And the Palestinians, clinging to a pipe dream, probably wouldn't want to do it either.
Related threads:
Hamas v. Israel. Some observations, and How did we get here?
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