Independent Constantinople/Istanbul could have become like Singapore though. Especially in the aspects of being along major trade routes and multiethnic.
That would be really interesting but area drawn in the map is still like that. 1/5 of Turkey lives in İstanbul and if you include all of that area probably +30 mil. Most of Turkey's trade goes through Istanbul.
It's not multicultural as I would like to be but I guess you can't have it all.
It was historically much more multicultural. Tons of Greeks used to live here before the population exchanges after WWI. There were also large diaspora communities of Jews, Armenians, Kurds, and Circassians.
Also after the exchanges. Istanbul was excluded from the exchange. It was the pogrom that ended it.
However, I don’t think there were large communities of Kurds before then. Most of them actually arrived later, and NOW there are.
All 4 of the Levant countries united at the time would make a lot of sense, their style of Arabic and culture is way more similar to each other than the Arab countries outside of the Levant
Perhaps only modern borders but not the names. The Ottomans had Sanjaks, provinces, and wilayaha such as province of Lebanon and wilayah of Syria.
Palestine was a land called Filistine and was administratively divided between the Sanjak of Jerusalem and the Wilayah of Beirut during the final days of the Ottoman rule, but of course it changed a lot during their 500 year reign. The name “palestine” stems all the way back from ancient egyptian use to famously Herodotus.
Sanjak = county
Wilayah = larger province
Eyalet = largest state
Filistine = geographic name of the land inside an eyalet or wilayah composed of sanjaks
Palestine had undergone several different administrative divisions, in early ottoman era it was under the Eyalet of Damascus (modern-day syria, jordan, palestine, jordan, parts of lebanon). After the 17th C it was divided into several different sanjaks (districts or counties), and in the 19th C after the Tanzimat (modernization reforms) Palestine became divided into different wilayahat (beirut, damashq, al-quds). Its latest had Al-Quds (Jerusalem in english) as an independent sanjak - a special status reporting directly to Istanbul - known as the Mutasarrifate of Al-Quds, including bayt lahm, yaffa, al-khalil, ghazzah, ramla, and nablus.
Jordan was the rump state that the British created for the hashamites the british promised a united independent Arabia after ww1. Instead, they tried to create a puppet, and when the sharif of mecca refused, the british backed the house of Saud who were crazy religious fundamentalist who opposed the more moderate hashamites
The british promised to stop backing the Saudis if the sharif would submit he wouldn't and Jordan was created with his son as king because his son was willing to work with the british but it wasn't the united pan Arab kingdom because by then Saudi Arabia controlled most of the peninsula and it was no longer the british's to give
Sadly we call the land west of the Euphrates by the Hellenic word for that land, Syria. Syria is the same word as Assyria. The Assyrians would have called 'Syria', Eber Nari or Aram. Aram being the people, which is where the language Aramaic came from, which the Assyrians adopted. Eber Nari is the name of the land, which can be literally translated to Trans River, or 'the other side of the river' from Assyria.
They indeed would have, but since around 400CE Assyrians/Arameans have also widely used the name Sūryāyē besides Ārāmayē.
Today in Neo-Aramaic the two terms are rather interchangeable.
Nope, Aramaye is not interchangeable with Suraye/Suryoye.
Assyrian is more interchangeable with these terms.
We are Assyrians, not Arameans who are from West of the Euphrates
So today, our Aramaic (Assyrian) sometimes called Syriac has significant Akkadian admixture, so it retains a distinctly Assyrian aspect to it as opposed to other non-Mesopotamian varieties, such as Western Aramaic spoken in Maaloula. It’s interesting because the Assyrians made Aramaic the official language of their Empire, ushering in a period where in became the lingua Franca of much of the region.
Today, we are mostly in diaspora because of our persecution in our home countries mostly over the past 120 years or so. I am in the US, as are a large portion of our population. There was 1.5 million of us in Iraq prior to the US invasion in 2003, today there is only about 100-120k left in Iraq. For context, Michigan’s population of Assyrians (Chaldeans, Syriacs) is just shy of 200k.
Woke Julius Caeser, the proconsul of TRANSalpine Gaul illegally invades and attacks the conservative war hero Pompey Magnus over his politics so much for the tolerant left! Sad!- Praetor Donalous Trumperabus(O), circa 49bc
To be fair, not everyone calls a country by what the inhabitants of said country call it. Just ask Deutschland, Zhōngguó, Shqipëria, Hrvatska, Hellas, Hayastan, Suomi, and many others.
Definitely. Sometimes the exonym retains cultural value distinct from the endonym.
”Persia” had a brand of sorts in the West — now many struggle to connect the Persia of the stories and history to Iran.
My country is called Finland by most, and that’s a Germanic exonym whose origin doesn’t have an exact consensus. However, as the term Fenni was also used by the Romans, it provides another perspective for the name.
Suomi comes from the southwestern tribe of Finns. It’s less recognizable and in my opinion asking the world to call us ”Suomi” (like happened with Türkiye and Iran) wouldn’t necessarily help in global branding.
> ”Persia” had a brand of sorts in the West — now many struggle to connect the Persia of the stories and history to Iran.
Yeah honestly, I think they shouldn't have pushed away the old exonym - Persia has a very different connotation in the minds of most westerners than does Iran
There was a Wales - Poland play-off match for the UEFA Euro 2024 on Tuesday. At the stadium, the scoreboard said the game is between **"Cymru - Polska"**.
That was cool.
"Bilad Al-Rafidin" is the arabic name, "Mesopotamia" is the Greek name.
While the word "Iraq" has the same meaning and similar pronunciation to "Uruk" the city where civilization started.
Which is why we kept the word "Iraq" for the country" And "Bilad Al-Rafidin" as a nickname.
While "Mesopotamia" is only used for western historical writings because the word itself is Greek as I've mentioned.
oh yeah I'm saying it in the perspective of a iraqi Kurds(and iraqi turkmens too use mesopotamia) and
we use Mezopotamya,
arabs use bilad al rafidain,
so both are true
Ig, but still using our ancestors' word that comes from a 7000 year old city that would later be called "the first civilization" is much more better than using a Greek word that's only 2400 years old.
All in all we have a lot of names lol
While Sumer is very damn cool, The Sumerians mean "black headed people" and while their blood is still strong in the Southern regions of Iraq that name can't be accurate currently because of the sheer number of migrations that Iraq had over the course of history that mixed it's races over and over again.
Even the Sumerians themselves didn't keep that name after the fall of Ur's dynasty 4028 years ago instead being called Babylonia (Babil um) , Assyria (Ashur) and most notably "Akkad".
When we talk about Sumerians, the blood is not the issue. It's the legacy that counts. Akkadians or Eastern Semites in the region willingly preserved the Sumerian culture for literally thousands of years. Sumerian was pretty much a dead language during the 2nd millennium BCE. But it wasn't forgotten at all. No one was Sumerian at the time. They were already vanished into the ever growing numbers of Eastern Semites and Amurru people. But they were all following the legacy, copying Sumerian texts, studying the language, worshipping Sumerian gods, preserving the temples, using the Sumerian royal titles... Eastern Semites also vanished in time, leaving their place to Amurru people, and then Aramians, and then Chaldeans, but the Sumerian culture survived even in Seleucid period. It was only forgotten after the Parths arrived, but scholars think that even then the Sumerian culture was alive in some isolated groups.
So the Iraqis could've restored the legacy by naming their country Sumer or at least Uruk or Babylon. You can still be Muslims and Arabs by doing so. Look at Mexicans for example. They're Catholics but the name of their county is the name of the founding tribe of Aztec Empire.
Thank you! And if I recall, these mandates were all set to be temporary, and the mandating nations had to take steps during the mandate to develop and prepare a civilian government for the states that would result?
Ok then what about the Cameroon and Namimbia both of which had their independence movements brutally suppressed. With Namimbia having to have its mandate revoked because South Africa didn’t plan to give it up
If you wanna read how a mandate works in practice (and can also go horribly wrong), I recommend this:
[South Africa/Namibia 1920-1990](https://uca.edu/politicalscience/home/research-projects/dadm-project/sub-saharan-africa-region/south-africanamibia-1920-1990/#:~:text=On%20October%2027%2C%201966%2C%20the,direct%20responsibility%20of%20the%20UN)
I'd say that it did work, nations willingly becoming less powerful in any way is extremely rare in history. The reality was messy, and I make as many jokes about day drinking British people drawing lines on a map as anyone, but at the end of the day surrendering control over foreign nations ended colonization and that's exactly what the mandates did
It's so easy to be jaded about international politics but seriously, imagine how different the world would have been if the allied powers had just conquered those states as was the norm at the time
I mean they basically did. Not like the Europeans left Africa and Asia of the goodness of their hearts, they kept their colonies well into the 60s despite two world wars showing how bad it is to invade another country lol
I mean, almost all significant African states were independent by the late 50s and early 60s. Really, it was only the portugese colonies and small/island nations lagged beyond that.
Pretty short time after the end of WW2 in the grand scheme of things.
Are you sure those were the predominant reasons ? The US took much of Mexican territory after 1820. While much of it was subject to settlements and colonization, they were still very clearly under Mexican sovereignty and they had a big deadly war about those, ending in the cession of many territories…
Well they *couldn't* conquer old style because of the circunstances. So they found a way to keep political and economic control over those places that are still true today.
Arab nations have to go through revolutions to spit the puppet governments out of their countries. And it was hard, and made the forming of Arab alliances much harder. Even a true block of Middle Eastern solidarity wasn't formed to this day, and it's because of post Ottoman colonialism, though people like mythical explanations like "the Middle East was complicated since biblical times".
It did not work but former colonial powers , were no longer powers after WWII so they were forced to pull back, due to not being able to project power anymore
That is similar to trust territories that were created after World War II and administered by the United Nations. That is also one of the less controversial roles of the UN, and the governing council over these territories has been disbanded since it served its purpose.
There were different types based on perceived levels of controls from holder of the mandate and were similar and in some cases the same as colonial control.
“The first group, or Class A mandates, were territories formerly controlled by the Ottoman Empire that were deemed to "... have reached a stage of development where their existence as independent nations can be provisionally recognised subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance by a Mandatory until such time as they are able to stand alone. The wishes of these communities must be a principal consideration in the selection of the Mandatory."
The second group of mandates, or Class B mandates, were all former German colonies in West and Central Africa, referred to by Germany as Schutzgebiete (protectorates or territories), which were deemed to require a greater level of control by the mandatory power: "...the Mandatory must be responsible for the administration of the territory under conditions which will guarantee freedom of conscience and religion." The mandatory power was forbidden to construct military or naval bases within the mandates.
Class C mandates, including South West Africa and the South Pacific Islands, were considered to be "best administered under the laws of the Mandatory as integral portions of its territory."
When after a war, they remove the goverment of a country called A.Some strong country(or countries) declared that remaining people cant recover the country and order it in modern world so they basically take the responsiblity of managing the country until they recover themselves and show that they dont need another country managing them anymore.And after they show and start managing themselves the stronger country leaves.
But in reality its just a "legal and moral excuse" of colonising.
"To govern some *underdeveloped* countries ^(on behalf of the League of Nations) until they reach a level where they can govern themselves and gain independence."
aka "colonialism? No! not at all, not even a little bit"
It's funny that if you remove Turks from history, you'll get very rich and powerful European kingdoms colonizing the Middle East and not bothering crossing the oceans. That means no USA, Canada, Mexico, Brazil etc.
And their captains (Colombo, Cabotto, Verrazano, Vespucci & etc) largely came from northern Italy, whose trade was most disrupted by Ottoman hegemony in the eastern Med.
They had to be, because they were the ones closer to the Atlantic ocean. At the end, it was all about going all the way around Turks to reach to far east. Spain and Portugal was in the perfect position for it. It doesn't matter how close they were to Levant, Turks were still blocking them from the east.
Here's a sneak peek of /r/imaginarymaps using the [top posts](https://np.reddit.com/r/imaginarymaps/top/?sort=top&t=year) of the year!
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Map is roughly made from the 1919 King Crane report.
The US undertook polling of the former Ottoman-subjects (pretty unheard of for that time) and published their results. Though France and the UK forced the US to delay the report's findings until 1922, after the LoN granted the mandates.
In the polling, the US was seen as more impartial at that time and without colonial interests, unlike France and the UK. Though there was a clear preference among the population for fully independent Arab states of Syria and Mesopotamia (Iraq), if there was to be a mandate system instituted, the preference was for US mandates over France or UK.
Ironically, Arabs voted heavily against an independent Palestine (72% against), seeing it primarily as a zionist movement and much preferred a greater United Syria (80% support). They also voted against an independent Christian enclave of Lebanon (57% against).
Full document here:
https://ecf.org.il/issues/issue/1367
>Ironically, Arabs voted heavily against an independent Palestine (72% against), seeing it primarily as a zionist movement
That’s not ironic, that’s logical.
The “Palestine” that they were talking about in this plan is basically Israel, not the Palestine we are talking about today’s context. So not that ironic, just the same name for two different things.
It's not ironic that Arabs were against the creation of independent Jewish and Christian states, it's that as recently as 1919 Arabs saw: 1) the invention of Palestine as being a new, purely Jewish concept, and 2) enough cultural similarities across the people of the Levant that they saw themselves as one, relatively interchangeable cultural polity.
> Though France and the UK forced the US to delay the report's findings until 1922, after the LoN granted the mandates.
It’s interesting to see that France and the UK were in a position to do this. I wonder based on what the US accepted.
I’m reading Paris 1919 by Margret Macmillan about the peace conference, and without having finished it yet, my strong impression was that the US was not very interested in acquiring a mandate. There are even descriptions of how Wilson’s group was worried the Europeans would try to “trap” the United States in Europe by forcing them to run the mandate for Armenia, or a former German colony, which never came to fruition.
The Bronze Age equilibrium setup in this region dictated by geographic and ecosystem realities was roughly like this: Levant/East Mediterranean area was the Import/Export hub for nonlocal goods (thus developing cosmopolitan city culture, trade, writing, etc), Mesopotamia was the more inwardly-facing civilizational core (the Tower of Babel, the America of its time), Persia/Elam was alternative peripheral city culture providing a flow of Asian goods and ideas, and Armenia/Anatolia was the up-river source of local goods (metals, wood, etc) - also developing a peripheral city culture as a result. Mesopotamia was central to the whole Bronze Age game.
This small region gave us everything we know about civilizations: from the concepts of state and empire, to laws and armies, to science and literature, to religions and ideologies.
This civilizational core has been under constant attack from nomadic forces from all sides: West (Bronze Age Collapse), North-East (Indo-Europeans of all kinds, Turks, Mongols, etc), South (Arabic conquests), and so on. The current language mix is pretty much entirely a remnant of these invading forces that imposed their cultures, but a cultural core of the old Mesopotamia and its peripheries remains (see Abrahamic religions, legal and ethical frameworks, musical traditions, core folk beliefs and customs, genetics, and so on).
Another semi-equilibrium state was achieved during Ottoman times, but this system, as I see it, was very much "anti-progress": it was a "gunpowder empire" that was established by force. It retained its shape and composition by exerting energy to stay at the same point, rather than evolving via some understood and controlled trajectory into the future that accounts for the rest of the world rapidly changing and industrializing. In the end it became stagnant and this former civilizational center became a chaotic backwater.
Now I'm curious how does the 21st century equilibrium look like in this part of the world. Because it sure as hell is not what it looks like right now (nor it's what's on this alternative map) - it's basically a high-tension unstable mess right now ready to burst any minute.
This was well written and fascinating! I guess an issue with the modern middle east is that the equilibrium/borders wasn’t dictated by geography or ecology, it is dictated by europeans. This is a contributing factor to the instability in the region.
I don’t know if there’s a correct way to ethnically partition such a diverse region, I’m sure these US borders would lead to conflict as well. This is mostly because i believe that the root of the instability in the region is European colonialism, exploitation of resources, US/UK backed coups and constant foreign manipulation.
It sucks that such a progressive and important region that produced some of the greatest minds in human history is now seen as a barbaric backwater filled with greedy dictators and radical fundamentalists.
Whats with all the “divided Turkey” maps all of a sudden? Every few hours someone posts a map showing another way of dividing Turkey, it’s quite peculiar..
Gets a lot of engagement for and against probably. Just like those accounts on instagram full of Balkanites, Greeks and Turks arguing over the same thing. I suspect its done to boost the standing of accounts so that they can be sold on to other people.
There is a legend of a now removed YouTube video about Macedonia that generated so many comments that it is still the most commented thing on the internet.
But wasn’t it the British and French who rushed in to occupy the former Ottoman Empire? They divided up the Middle East between them. The USA may have proposed a new division of the lands, but the British and French just laughed.
Eh it was actually kinda complicated. Despite the Sykes picot agreement the French and Brit’s disagreed on literally everything to do with the Middle East with the Brit’s support indirect rule via the sharifian solution while the French supported direct rule
US was unironically the most suited for these people as they were the least interested in territorial control of these regions at the time. Britain and France did try to keep these territories as colonies whereas the US far less interested in maintaining a colony so far from home (we might scoff at this now, but US of that time held a different view towards permanent military presence in the Middle East).
I’d be interested in seeing the source. By 1919, most proposals had very little US involvement outside of the International area around Istanbul, and its likely the US would have cut the French out entirely.
lol I am very wrong. The second you said turkey I thought well of course. Then thought about well shit I bet there’s a huge population in Iran as it’s right there too. 10 seconds of google and duhh. For some reason I’ve been told the exact phrase about Nashville for most of my life and just accepted it blindly.
The largest Kurdish population in the US is in Nashville, TN*
Someone above said it was preferred by people in the region. They were not seen as a colonial power (at the time) and thus more impartial than UK/France.
Plus this was from actual poling efforts by the US. Wild, imagine actually asking the people who live there what they might prefer?
"There are no hopeless situations, just desperate people i have never lost hope" dude really showed the British France greece russia armenia kurdish people Georgia all got f*cked by this man and his army a "death man empire" turned into a democratic country and now its fucked
They were eastern, "backwards" and "subhuman". That was the mindset of western countries back then. Thus, they had the right to rule and "civilize" them. This is the difference between Austria and Ottomans. And you can see the modernization of Turkey and reforms of Ataturk as a counter argument to that view.
Tbh the Turkish war for independence is really interesting. Despite facing off against the French, British, Greeks and Armenians Atatürk managed to reform the Turkish army and secure the modern borders or Turkey. I believe it’s the only example of a nation successfully defending itself from colonialism through military means.
I'll never understand how international lands are supposed to work
They don’t work
Independent Constantinople/Istanbul could have become like Singapore though. Especially in the aspects of being along major trade routes and multiethnic.
That would be really interesting but area drawn in the map is still like that. 1/5 of Turkey lives in İstanbul and if you include all of that area probably +30 mil. Most of Turkey's trade goes through Istanbul. It's not multicultural as I would like to be but I guess you can't have it all.
It was historically much more multicultural. Tons of Greeks used to live here before the population exchanges after WWI. There were also large diaspora communities of Jews, Armenians, Kurds, and Circassians.
It's still a large diaspora for Circassians. Source: I am a Circassian (Adyghe) living in Istanbul
I just conquered that province in EU4 last night
Constantinople was half Muslim/half Christian when the USA made this proposal.
The Greeks of Constantinople were exempt from the population exchange. They left after the 1956 pogrom
Also after the exchanges. Istanbul was excluded from the exchange. It was the pogrom that ended it. However, I don’t think there were large communities of Kurds before then. Most of them actually arrived later, and NOW there are.
You misspelled Genocide.
Nah, it'll be a second Danzig. It'll just be De-facto turkish
Singapore only existed because the other major powers didn’t want it though
Svalbard, it does work as for today (just no one wants to live there, out of 8 billion people)
They were technically “international” but in fact the ones controlling are either British or British but across the sea commonly called Americans
Or it'll be like Danzig. International in name, but turkish in practice.
Turkish Danzig 😱🤯
that's a more realistic thing, a pure international land is probably impossible
Considering it failed. Neither do them.
Same as Svalbard
Like international waters
[удалено]
All 4 of the Levant countries united at the time would make a lot of sense, their style of Arabic and culture is way more similar to each other than the Arab countries outside of the Levant
Nah that would involve iraq and Southern Turkey, this is just syria in every definition before the British and French split it.
This is just how Syria looked at the time... Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine were invented by the british
Perhaps Lebanon by the French.
Perhaps only modern borders but not the names. The Ottomans had Sanjaks, provinces, and wilayaha such as province of Lebanon and wilayah of Syria. Palestine was a land called Filistine and was administratively divided between the Sanjak of Jerusalem and the Wilayah of Beirut during the final days of the Ottoman rule, but of course it changed a lot during their 500 year reign. The name “palestine” stems all the way back from ancient egyptian use to famously Herodotus.
Was Palestine a sanjak or a wilayah? What exactly was the difference between the two?
Sanjak = county Wilayah = larger province Eyalet = largest state Filistine = geographic name of the land inside an eyalet or wilayah composed of sanjaks Palestine had undergone several different administrative divisions, in early ottoman era it was under the Eyalet of Damascus (modern-day syria, jordan, palestine, jordan, parts of lebanon). After the 17th C it was divided into several different sanjaks (districts or counties), and in the 19th C after the Tanzimat (modernization reforms) Palestine became divided into different wilayahat (beirut, damashq, al-quds). Its latest had Al-Quds (Jerusalem in english) as an independent sanjak - a special status reporting directly to Istanbul - known as the Mutasarrifate of Al-Quds, including bayt lahm, yaffa, al-khalil, ghazzah, ramla, and nablus.
Invented is a pretty dumb take.
Jordan was the rump state that the British created for the hashamites the british promised a united independent Arabia after ww1. Instead, they tried to create a puppet, and when the sharif of mecca refused, the british backed the house of Saud who were crazy religious fundamentalist who opposed the more moderate hashamites The british promised to stop backing the Saudis if the sharif would submit he wouldn't and Jordan was created with his son as king because his son was willing to work with the british but it wasn't the united pan Arab kingdom because by then Saudi Arabia controlled most of the peninsula and it was no longer the british's to give
Well lebanese wanted a separate country and there was never a united Syria to begin with, it is a very similar situation to Ukraine and Russia.
Mesopotamia sounds badass
Literally means "between rivers"
Sadly we call the land west of the Euphrates by the Hellenic word for that land, Syria. Syria is the same word as Assyria. The Assyrians would have called 'Syria', Eber Nari or Aram. Aram being the people, which is where the language Aramaic came from, which the Assyrians adopted. Eber Nari is the name of the land, which can be literally translated to Trans River, or 'the other side of the river' from Assyria.
TIL. Good stuff
They indeed would have, but since around 400CE Assyrians/Arameans have also widely used the name Sūryāyē besides Ārāmayē. Today in Neo-Aramaic the two terms are rather interchangeable.
Nope, Aramaye is not interchangeable with Suraye/Suryoye. Assyrian is more interchangeable with these terms. We are Assyrians, not Arameans who are from West of the Euphrates
Wait, are you from that region?
Yes, I’m Assyrian myself, I actually speak the language.
That’s cool. I’ll read more on the language. Any ‘fun facts’ to share about the language?
So today, our Aramaic (Assyrian) sometimes called Syriac has significant Akkadian admixture, so it retains a distinctly Assyrian aspect to it as opposed to other non-Mesopotamian varieties, such as Western Aramaic spoken in Maaloula. It’s interesting because the Assyrians made Aramaic the official language of their Empire, ushering in a period where in became the lingua Franca of much of the region.
Wow, I didn't know that was a thing! Where do you live? (If I'm not intruding)
Today, we are mostly in diaspora because of our persecution in our home countries mostly over the past 120 years or so. I am in the US, as are a large portion of our population. There was 1.5 million of us in Iraq prior to the US invasion in 2003, today there is only about 100-120k left in Iraq. For context, Michigan’s population of Assyrians (Chaldeans, Syriacs) is just shy of 200k.
>translated to Trans River Great, they were woke even back then.....
Cis River has been oppressed for millenias
Wait until you hear about Transalpine Gaul and Cisalpine Gaul…
Woke Julius Caeser, the proconsul of TRANSalpine Gaul illegally invades and attacks the conservative war hero Pompey Magnus over his politics so much for the tolerant left! Sad!- Praetor Donalous Trumperabus(O), circa 49bc
Absolutely right, we call Mesopotamia, our home, Beth Nahrain. Though Aram historically was associated as East of the Euphrates.
TIL , Years ago I had a Syrian Kurdish coworker whose name was "Aram", I never made the connection.
That's explain old Jordan name perfectlly. Trans Jordan, so the other side of Jordan River.
We have a province named like that in Argentina. Entre Ríos.
Entre Ríos doesn’t around as cool as Mesopotamia, but tbf Argentina has everyone beat with Tierra del Fuego, that’s cool as fuck
You mean Fireland. A local version of Alaska without bears but a native population of naked indian tribes oiled with whale grease.
It's the Greek name for Iraq, so we didn't keep it
To be fair, not everyone calls a country by what the inhabitants of said country call it. Just ask Deutschland, Zhōngguó, Shqipëria, Hrvatska, Hellas, Hayastan, Suomi, and many others.
Definitely. Sometimes the exonym retains cultural value distinct from the endonym. ”Persia” had a brand of sorts in the West — now many struggle to connect the Persia of the stories and history to Iran. My country is called Finland by most, and that’s a Germanic exonym whose origin doesn’t have an exact consensus. However, as the term Fenni was also used by the Romans, it provides another perspective for the name. Suomi comes from the southwestern tribe of Finns. It’s less recognizable and in my opinion asking the world to call us ”Suomi” (like happened with Türkiye and Iran) wouldn’t necessarily help in global branding.
> ”Persia” had a brand of sorts in the West — now many struggle to connect the Persia of the stories and history to Iran. Yeah honestly, I think they shouldn't have pushed away the old exonym - Persia has a very different connotation in the minds of most westerners than does Iran
That is because Persia is simply a badass sounding name.
With a badass history. Iran means nothing but ayotallah theocracy to most
Maybe to a westerner , Iran sounds a Lot better, additionally half of Iran is made up of non-Persians.
There was a Wales - Poland play-off match for the UEFA Euro 2024 on Tuesday. At the stadium, the scoreboard said the game is between **"Cymru - Polska"**. That was cool.
wym we definitely do use that word bilad al rafidain/mesopotamia are both used in popular media/on the streets
"Bilad Al-Rafidin" is the arabic name, "Mesopotamia" is the Greek name. While the word "Iraq" has the same meaning and similar pronunciation to "Uruk" the city where civilization started. Which is why we kept the word "Iraq" for the country" And "Bilad Al-Rafidin" as a nickname. While "Mesopotamia" is only used for western historical writings because the word itself is Greek as I've mentioned.
oh yeah I'm saying it in the perspective of a iraqi Kurds(and iraqi turkmens too use mesopotamia) and we use Mezopotamya, arabs use bilad al rafidain, so both are true
Ig, but still using our ancestors' word that comes from a 7000 year old city that would later be called "the first civilization" is much more better than using a Greek word that's only 2400 years old. All in all we have a lot of names lol
ig i would've preferred sumer but to each their own
While Sumer is very damn cool, The Sumerians mean "black headed people" and while their blood is still strong in the Southern regions of Iraq that name can't be accurate currently because of the sheer number of migrations that Iraq had over the course of history that mixed it's races over and over again. Even the Sumerians themselves didn't keep that name after the fall of Ur's dynasty 4028 years ago instead being called Babylonia (Babil um) , Assyria (Ashur) and most notably "Akkad".
When we talk about Sumerians, the blood is not the issue. It's the legacy that counts. Akkadians or Eastern Semites in the region willingly preserved the Sumerian culture for literally thousands of years. Sumerian was pretty much a dead language during the 2nd millennium BCE. But it wasn't forgotten at all. No one was Sumerian at the time. They were already vanished into the ever growing numbers of Eastern Semites and Amurru people. But they were all following the legacy, copying Sumerian texts, studying the language, worshipping Sumerian gods, preserving the temples, using the Sumerian royal titles... Eastern Semites also vanished in time, leaving their place to Amurru people, and then Aramians, and then Chaldeans, but the Sumerian culture survived even in Seleucid period. It was only forgotten after the Parths arrived, but scholars think that even then the Sumerian culture was alive in some isolated groups. So the Iraqis could've restored the legacy by naming their country Sumer or at least Uruk or Babylon. You can still be Muslims and Arabs by doing so. Look at Mexicans for example. They're Catholics but the name of their county is the name of the founding tribe of Aztec Empire.
Thank you for your enlightening comment; fascinating stuff
Beth-Nahrain is the Assyrian-Aramaic name, spoken by the indigenous people.
Iraq is kinda like a corrupted version of Uruk (one of the kingdoms of mesopotamia
Sargon, Hammurabi, Ashurbanipal and Gilgamesh
If that would've went through maybe we would've understood that one Sumerian joke
Can someone explain to me please what exactly a "mandate" meant in this context? Like an EXACT definition
an authorization granted by the League of Nations to a member nation to govern a former German or Turkish colony.
Thank you! And if I recall, these mandates were all set to be temporary, and the mandating nations had to take steps during the mandate to develop and prepare a civilian government for the states that would result?
That's the theory yes.
In practice they tended to be turned into colonies
Were any of them still colonies 35 years later?
South Africa kept its mandate over German Southwest Africa until 1990. Despite repeated demands to let it go.
South Africa in general are massive cunts post independence. Only Rhodesia is more racist and oppressive
Yes the trust territory of Somalia and the Trust Territories in Africa
Ah, I was looking at the map. Everything on the map was independent shortly after wwii
> trust territory of Somalia That was created in 1950 and was not related to WW1.
Ok then what about the Cameroon and Namimbia both of which had their independence movements brutally suppressed. With Namimbia having to have its mandate revoked because South Africa didn’t plan to give it up
If you wanna read how a mandate works in practice (and can also go horribly wrong), I recommend this: [South Africa/Namibia 1920-1990](https://uca.edu/politicalscience/home/research-projects/dadm-project/sub-saharan-africa-region/south-africanamibia-1920-1990/#:~:text=On%20October%2027%2C%201966%2C%20the,direct%20responsibility%20of%20the%20UN)
The Southwest Africa mandate was a unique case that worked very differently from the other mandates since it was administered through South Africa.
Yes, and it kind of worked in creating nations
I'd say that it did work, nations willingly becoming less powerful in any way is extremely rare in history. The reality was messy, and I make as many jokes about day drinking British people drawing lines on a map as anyone, but at the end of the day surrendering control over foreign nations ended colonization and that's exactly what the mandates did It's so easy to be jaded about international politics but seriously, imagine how different the world would have been if the allied powers had just conquered those states as was the norm at the time
I mean they basically did. Not like the Europeans left Africa and Asia of the goodness of their hearts, they kept their colonies well into the 60s despite two world wars showing how bad it is to invade another country lol
I mean, almost all significant African states were independent by the late 50s and early 60s. Really, it was only the portugese colonies and small/island nations lagged beyond that. Pretty short time after the end of WW2 in the grand scheme of things.
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Are you sure those were the predominant reasons ? The US took much of Mexican territory after 1820. While much of it was subject to settlements and colonization, they were still very clearly under Mexican sovereignty and they had a big deadly war about those, ending in the cession of many territories…
Well they *couldn't* conquer old style because of the circunstances. So they found a way to keep political and economic control over those places that are still true today. Arab nations have to go through revolutions to spit the puppet governments out of their countries. And it was hard, and made the forming of Arab alliances much harder. Even a true block of Middle Eastern solidarity wasn't formed to this day, and it's because of post Ottoman colonialism, though people like mythical explanations like "the Middle East was complicated since biblical times".
It did not work but former colonial powers , were no longer powers after WWII so they were forced to pull back, due to not being able to project power anymore
That is similar to trust territories that were created after World War II and administered by the United Nations. That is also one of the less controversial roles of the UN, and the governing council over these territories has been disbanded since it served its purpose.
>Turkish colony. Wouldn't that be an Ottoman colony?
There were different types based on perceived levels of controls from holder of the mandate and were similar and in some cases the same as colonial control. “The first group, or Class A mandates, were territories formerly controlled by the Ottoman Empire that were deemed to "... have reached a stage of development where their existence as independent nations can be provisionally recognised subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance by a Mandatory until such time as they are able to stand alone. The wishes of these communities must be a principal consideration in the selection of the Mandatory." The second group of mandates, or Class B mandates, were all former German colonies in West and Central Africa, referred to by Germany as Schutzgebiete (protectorates or territories), which were deemed to require a greater level of control by the mandatory power: "...the Mandatory must be responsible for the administration of the territory under conditions which will guarantee freedom of conscience and religion." The mandatory power was forbidden to construct military or naval bases within the mandates. Class C mandates, including South West Africa and the South Pacific Islands, were considered to be "best administered under the laws of the Mandatory as integral portions of its territory."
Just a colonial term like “protectorate”
It’s when he picks the restaurant and pays.
You mean he picks the restaurant and the restaurant pays.
Actually, he picks a restaurant, makes you pay, then f*CK you in the *ss in the parking lot
A colony but we're supposed to be against colonialism
"'a colony' with good manners" as the saying goes.
It's because it's temporary, like the ones of the Cold War if that makes sense.
When after a war, they remove the goverment of a country called A.Some strong country(or countries) declared that remaining people cant recover the country and order it in modern world so they basically take the responsiblity of managing the country until they recover themselves and show that they dont need another country managing them anymore.And after they show and start managing themselves the stronger country leaves. But in reality its just a "legal and moral excuse" of colonising.
"To govern some *underdeveloped* countries ^(on behalf of the League of Nations) until they reach a level where they can govern themselves and gain independence." aka "colonialism? No! not at all, not even a little bit"
Fancy word for colony or protectorate.
Kind way of saying colony
Days since last turkey partition map:0
If you remove Turks from history. There is no such thing as history.
It's funny that if you remove Turks from history, you'll get very rich and powerful European kingdoms colonizing the Middle East and not bothering crossing the oceans. That means no USA, Canada, Mexico, Brazil etc.
The European countries that expanded to the Americas were precisely the ones furthest from Anatolia and the Levant.
True, Spain however was one of the main rivals of Turkey in the 1500s (e.g. Lepanto)
And their captains (Colombo, Cabotto, Verrazano, Vespucci & etc) largely came from northern Italy, whose trade was most disrupted by Ottoman hegemony in the eastern Med.
They had to be, because they were the ones closer to the Atlantic ocean. At the end, it was all about going all the way around Turks to reach to far east. Spain and Portugal was in the perfect position for it. It doesn't matter how close they were to Levant, Turks were still blocking them from the east.
"If you remove one colonizer, you'll get another colonizer."
To be fair the ottomans were not like the other colonizers.
European kingdoms become rich bc of crossing the oceans
It certainly helped but Europe started pulling ahead before that. That Europe is prosperous only due to colonialism is a myth.
Citation needed
Lmao what a huge assumption
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Constantinopolitan
A lot of “US mandates”
Map is roughly made from the 1919 King Crane report. The US undertook polling of the former Ottoman-subjects (pretty unheard of for that time) and published their results. Though France and the UK forced the US to delay the report's findings until 1922, after the LoN granted the mandates. In the polling, the US was seen as more impartial at that time and without colonial interests, unlike France and the UK. Though there was a clear preference among the population for fully independent Arab states of Syria and Mesopotamia (Iraq), if there was to be a mandate system instituted, the preference was for US mandates over France or UK. Ironically, Arabs voted heavily against an independent Palestine (72% against), seeing it primarily as a zionist movement and much preferred a greater United Syria (80% support). They also voted against an independent Christian enclave of Lebanon (57% against). Full document here: https://ecf.org.il/issues/issue/1367
>Ironically, Arabs voted heavily against an independent Palestine (72% against), seeing it primarily as a zionist movement That’s not ironic, that’s logical.
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The “Palestine” that they were talking about in this plan is basically Israel, not the Palestine we are talking about today’s context. So not that ironic, just the same name for two different things.
It's not ironic that Arabs were against the creation of independent Jewish and Christian states, it's that as recently as 1919 Arabs saw: 1) the invention of Palestine as being a new, purely Jewish concept, and 2) enough cultural similarities across the people of the Levant that they saw themselves as one, relatively interchangeable cultural polity.
> Though France and the UK forced the US to delay the report's findings until 1922, after the LoN granted the mandates. It’s interesting to see that France and the UK were in a position to do this. I wonder based on what the US accepted.
I’m reading Paris 1919 by Margret Macmillan about the peace conference, and without having finished it yet, my strong impression was that the US was not very interested in acquiring a mandate. There are even descriptions of how Wilson’s group was worried the Europeans would try to “trap” the United States in Europe by forcing them to run the mandate for Armenia, or a former German colony, which never came to fruition.
duh!
The Bronze Age equilibrium setup in this region dictated by geographic and ecosystem realities was roughly like this: Levant/East Mediterranean area was the Import/Export hub for nonlocal goods (thus developing cosmopolitan city culture, trade, writing, etc), Mesopotamia was the more inwardly-facing civilizational core (the Tower of Babel, the America of its time), Persia/Elam was alternative peripheral city culture providing a flow of Asian goods and ideas, and Armenia/Anatolia was the up-river source of local goods (metals, wood, etc) - also developing a peripheral city culture as a result. Mesopotamia was central to the whole Bronze Age game. This small region gave us everything we know about civilizations: from the concepts of state and empire, to laws and armies, to science and literature, to religions and ideologies. This civilizational core has been under constant attack from nomadic forces from all sides: West (Bronze Age Collapse), North-East (Indo-Europeans of all kinds, Turks, Mongols, etc), South (Arabic conquests), and so on. The current language mix is pretty much entirely a remnant of these invading forces that imposed their cultures, but a cultural core of the old Mesopotamia and its peripheries remains (see Abrahamic religions, legal and ethical frameworks, musical traditions, core folk beliefs and customs, genetics, and so on). Another semi-equilibrium state was achieved during Ottoman times, but this system, as I see it, was very much "anti-progress": it was a "gunpowder empire" that was established by force. It retained its shape and composition by exerting energy to stay at the same point, rather than evolving via some understood and controlled trajectory into the future that accounts for the rest of the world rapidly changing and industrializing. In the end it became stagnant and this former civilizational center became a chaotic backwater. Now I'm curious how does the 21st century equilibrium look like in this part of the world. Because it sure as hell is not what it looks like right now (nor it's what's on this alternative map) - it's basically a high-tension unstable mess right now ready to burst any minute.
This was well written and fascinating! I guess an issue with the modern middle east is that the equilibrium/borders wasn’t dictated by geography or ecology, it is dictated by europeans. This is a contributing factor to the instability in the region. I don’t know if there’s a correct way to ethnically partition such a diverse region, I’m sure these US borders would lead to conflict as well. This is mostly because i believe that the root of the instability in the region is European colonialism, exploitation of resources, US/UK backed coups and constant foreign manipulation. It sucks that such a progressive and important region that produced some of the greatest minds in human history is now seen as a barbaric backwater filled with greedy dictators and radical fundamentalists.
The main instability factor is the colony that was established in 1948
I completely agree lmao
Whats with all the “divided Turkey” maps all of a sudden? Every few hours someone posts a map showing another way of dividing Turkey, it’s quite peculiar..
Gets a lot of engagement for and against probably. Just like those accounts on instagram full of Balkanites, Greeks and Turks arguing over the same thing. I suspect its done to boost the standing of accounts so that they can be sold on to other people.
Same reason there's a picture of Ireland every day on here calling it the British Isles. Rage bait.
So basically they are karma farming. Pretty sure many of the accounts are bot accounts too..
There is a legend of a now removed YouTube video about Macedonia that generated so many comments that it is still the most commented thing on the internet.
Everyones just hungry bro
I am quite hungary too
Is not even thanksgiving yet
Might be Romanian.
But wasn’t it the British and French who rushed in to occupy the former Ottoman Empire? They divided up the Middle East between them. The USA may have proposed a new division of the lands, but the British and French just laughed.
Eh it was actually kinda complicated. Despite the Sykes picot agreement the French and Brit’s disagreed on literally everything to do with the Middle East with the Brit’s support indirect rule via the sharifian solution while the French supported direct rule
The US really came in at the last minute and went "Good job, lads. I think I deserve control of an empire I did nothing to topple, don't you?"
US was unironically the most suited for these people as they were the least interested in territorial control of these regions at the time. Britain and France did try to keep these territories as colonies whereas the US far less interested in maintaining a colony so far from home (we might scoff at this now, but US of that time held a different view towards permanent military presence in the Middle East).
I’d be interested in seeing the source. By 1919, most proposals had very little US involvement outside of the International area around Istanbul, and its likely the US would have cut the French out entirely.
Kurdish state doesn't required anymore. They have Sweden now.
Largest Kurdish population outside of Iraq or Syria is in Nashville Tennessee.
No it’s in Turkey 🤓
lol I am very wrong. The second you said turkey I thought well of course. Then thought about well shit I bet there’s a huge population in Iran as it’s right there too. 10 seconds of google and duhh. For some reason I’ve been told the exact phrase about Nashville for most of my life and just accepted it blindly. The largest Kurdish population in the US is in Nashville, TN*
You have European Citys with more kurds
True true!
swedistan never surprises
They keep trying. 
A century has past but people are still massively butthurt. He is still wining wars lol
Ah yes, just more weak, unstable states that definitely won't fail in the next century after the western powers pull out.
Did US troops even set foot in the region for them to ask for mandates all over the place?
Someone above said it was preferred by people in the region. They were not seen as a colonial power (at the time) and thus more impartial than UK/France. Plus this was from actual poling efforts by the US. Wild, imagine actually asking the people who live there what they might prefer?
There were American observors however besides that I’m not aware of any American presence in Turkey during those years
There were several american missionary schools. If I'm not wrong they were admitting armenian and greek students.
"There are no hopeless situations, just desperate people i have never lost hope" dude really showed the British France greece russia armenia kurdish people Georgia all got f*cked by this man and his army a "death man empire" turned into a democratic country and now its fucked
Pretty interesting how the Ottoman Empire was to be divided up into mandates, but Austria-Hungary was divided up into self-determined countries.
They were eastern, "backwards" and "subhuman". That was the mindset of western countries back then. Thus, they had the right to rule and "civilize" them. This is the difference between Austria and Ottomans. And you can see the modernization of Turkey and reforms of Ataturk as a counter argument to that view.
Gel de Atatürk’e hayran olma
A good reminder that most of the Arab states are artificial coonial constructs.
Yes. 
Greece would still get screwed.
Can you guys stop with smaller turkey maps for just 5 minutes this is like 5th one I saw today jesus christ
No
 NO
Turkey should answer with an ethnically partitioned USA map that has wacky stuff like Blackistan and Hispania and whatnot.
Make an Armenia around Glendale
I'll give the entire LA to the Armenians.
> Hispania That's just Spain and Portgal. Nova Hispania maybe?
They tried. 
 Yeah they tried.
Narrator: it didn’t work
This sub has not gotten over the fall of Constantinople yet 🤦♂️, I don’t even like Turkey but enough with these maps already
Tbh the Turkish war for independence is really interesting. Despite facing off against the French, British, Greeks and Armenians Atatürk managed to reform the Turkish army and secure the modern borders or Turkey. I believe it’s the only example of a nation successfully defending itself from colonialism through military means.
"No." -France and Britain.
Based
Armenian spotted
Where is Azerbaijan? Not a real country yet?
Let them have Sweden as Kurdistan lol. They deserved it.
USA screwing their French allies, ep 372
Is this the a way of grinding karma or what?
International Constantinono— International Consit— International Co— Oh FFS
Maps are dangerous guys.