XX. The First World War - Part III "Victory attended by Catastrophe" (1918-1936)
Faith and nationalism
The long wars of the past six decades had not only produced feelings of gloom and anxiety; they had also fostered the rise of a fervent nationalism among the Persian people. Minorities (Indians, Arabs, and others) now did not feel that they were quite as warmly welcomed within the republic, as the main Persian ethnicity began to blame them for the ongoing troubles. In addition, although the republic had been secular for almost two centuries (since Nader Shah), Persian citizens began to rediscover a nationalist pride in their native religion, Christianity.
The completion of the Cristo Redentor monument of Samarkand, the cradle of Christianity, in 1924, solidified this sentiment. Jingoistic leaders began to look for ways to harness this religious fervour in order to increase the centralisation of power in Parsa.
The Cristo Redentor monument in Samarkand, birthplace of Christianity
In 1926, the newly elected Prime Minister Mostowfi ol-Mamalek, a high-ranking bureaucrat from a well-connected family, began reforms which removed the last vestiges of monarchial power.
The system of viceroys in the Satrapies (who reported to the Shah) was replaced with a system which gave greater (but not complete) autonomy to the nations of Russia, Germany, Turkey, and Scandinavia, wherein their ambassadors reported (through the quarterly meetings of CATO) to the Prime Minister, who was now the chief executive of the republic. At the same time, a military doctrine of direct occupation of conquered cities was adopted. Historians, with hindsight, generally agree that these changes would have been far more beneficial at the beginning of the war, but it is doubtful that the public would have accepted them at an earlier time. Now, however, with the threat of a hostile China on their doorstep, and renewed Christian nationalism, there was little opposition. Nevertheless, in 1928,
courthouses were quickly established in the Mongol cities of Ulaan-Ude and Ulaan Baatar, and in the colony of Gogana, as there were indications that the stability of the republic was shaky.
Mostowfi ol-Mamelek's reforms
Modernisation
Meanwhile the nation slowly modernised, with
the invention of a workable combustion engine in 1922,
the adoption of the assembly line (from Scandinavia) in 1926, and the first oil wells, near Gogana in Africa, becoming operational in 1930.
Technological exchanges with Scandinavia
The oilfields near Gogana
Military campaigns
In 1928, the navy reported that, from their vantage point at sea, the Chinese city of Dalian on Borneo was undefended, and that the oilfields outside the city could be easily controlled. A cavalry regiment that was scouting the area was ordered by radio to immediately capture the city, extending Persian control over the whole of northern Borneo.
The annexation of Dalian
In 1932, a new Prime Minister was elected, Mehdi Qoli Hedayat, an Azerbaijani, on a platform of increased increased military efficeincy. In 1934 he ordered the generals on the northern front to bring the Mongolian war to a close by the end of the year.
The conquest of Kharakhorum was achieved as demanded, but at the cost of
the complete defeat of the storied Lotf (10th) Infantry, due to a reckless assault on a heavily fortified city. As a result, mainland Mongolia was now controlled, but was refusing to capitulate, even though it had been reduced to the overseas province of Astrakhan.
Peace was made on very generous terms, and
the Mongolian government barely lasted the year before collapsing into anarchy in 1935.
The Battle of Kharakhorum
The peace treaty with Mongolia
The plan to liberate Mongolian cities back to a subjugated Mongolian protectorate was no longer viable. Thus, at the next meeting of the Central Asian Treaty Organisation,
the two most northerly Mongolian cities (Kharakhorum and Khovsgol) were assigned to Russia.
The CATO agreement to assign Mongolian cities to Russia
The First World War was now declared over, and the military could focus on the 'internal' problem of the Chinese revolt, now approaching the end of its second decade. In 1935, seventeen years after the revolt began in 1918, enough regiments had gathered in Hangzhou
to begin the offensive against Beijing. The military leadership hoped for a campaign that would last no longer than one winter, as artillery and airships were in place to pound the Chinese defenses, and Persian infantry was far superior to the 19th-century riflemen who made up the Chinese garrison.
The approach to Bejing from the north
Catastrophe
Disaster then struck the strained republic from a completely unexpected source.
On the first day of the year 1936, in a move that is as unexplained now as it was unanticipated then,
Indian militias rose in coordinated attacks on the government offices in Dilli, Chittagong, Lahore. They were joined, on the very same day, by Buddhist and Taoist militias in Armuza and Ectabana, who in their communique said that they were, unbelievably, joining forces with the Indian revolution.
The Indian revolution, and the uprisings in Armuza and Ectabana
Intelligence agencies scrambled to understand the networks that were behind the Nowruz Coup, as it became known, realising that they had completely underestimated the discontent that was sweeping the non-Persian, non-Christian segments of the population. Still, the alliance between the non-Christian Persians (in Armuza and Ectabana) with the Indians was beyond the most bizarre scenarios they had imagined. The most likely (though still unsatisfying) explanation that they could come up with was that the militias in the Persian cities were using the cover of the Indian revolution to achieve what they knew they could not achieve alone, and that the alliance would soon wither, with the military juntas in the cities of Armuza and Ectabana planning on subsequently declaring independence.
Whatever the motives, the Persian Parliament and military High Command declared a state of emergency across the republic. Regiments returning from Mongolia were sent directly to deployment zones to the north of Armuza, with the hope of reestablishing control in the all-important trade centre before the rebels had a chance to organise.
However, even the best scenarios for the next decade were bleak. Even if control could be reasserted over Chinese and Indian lands quickly, the damage to infrastructure in the affected cities would set the republic back by at least two decades, throwing into jeopardy its globally leading role.
Indeed, in capitals around the world, diplomats were whispering that their nations would need to prepare for the unstable world that would follow the fall of the Persian empire.
Nice to see that you didn't lose all hope due to the respawn and adopted the totalitarian civics. Your civic stability will probably rise above zero and with a little economic growth you'll be able to go on the warpath again; like a fascist nation should.
