Middle East Videos

no.

romanian oil industry was not nearly enough to cover for the new industrial war the central powers expected to fight. it was infact still developing. the industrial extraction of oilo started at the break of the century, and the extraction of natural gas started in 1913. they only started the domestic education of drilling professionals when the war was already ongoing, before that they rellied vastly on foregein, particulary american experts.
The oriental oil fields however could be exploited without the need to worry about them running dry soon after the war would be won. The oil costs would also be extremely low for the central powers, so low that the railroad would paid off, and it would also enable massive troop redeployments along the railroad to blockade the english at persia.

because the antante was not expecting them to enter the war on the central powers side.they were still allies a few decades earlier in the crimean war, and some even expected ottomans would fight AH to regain its lands in the balkans. italy and a handful of other states were waiting some time to see whats gonna go down.

first of all the armenian revolt was an internal ottoman issue that wouldnt bear much fruition if funded, and would definetly antagonise turkey against anyone who did it.
second of all funding revolutions was not yet sucha big thing as it became in 1917 when germany got pretty desparate

That's literally not what I said though

you kinda implied you need a source from a paradigm group you yourself trust in order to consider that source legitimate.

and to anwser your question theres really not much on geopolitics and diplomacy of wars in marxist literature, because marxism focuses on the class struggle, not the national struggle, which is inturn borguise.

war in the marxist explanation is as you may know a persuation of geopolitical, resource, geographic and other goods by a national elite against other national elites at the expense of the lower classes that are used as menpower in those wars.

sorry for reddit spacing, im on a phone

Well for starters, Galicia-Lombarda is in modern Southern Poland, not Romania. Extraction there had started as early as the 1860s and actually made the area very rich. Considering its proximities to German lands, it was a prefered source of German oil. The Baghdad railway was more about general influence in the ME, not specifically for oil (which btw is very retconn'ey, like did all the world's great powers have some kind of minority-report style foresight where they were predicting possible resource based conflict that would only really become a thing like 3 decades later?).

If your aim is to fuck with German access to the ME; carving out a state in Eastern Anatolia would be a good way to do it. Considering that plus the fact the Assyrian population was also revolting at this time, you could have states from Trebizond to Mosul cucking the Turks out of any future oil. Also funding revolts to destabilise your enemies was certainly going on in the late 1800s: Russia had done so with every singe Russo-Turkish war since the first Greek war of independence, and even during WWI it did the same. Also others were at it: Bismarck let the Commune of France rise to weaken the third republic and France sponsored revolt in Suez to stop the british attempting to build a canal. Britain or France sponsoring an Armenian revolt through Russia to fuck with the Ottomans would have definitely worked in their favour.

not foresight. you could do the maths back then
this was a big enterprise. same as afganisatn, where the british wasted entire armies in the fight against russia and the locals to control the trade routes in that stony desert

remember that britain was an empire aswell and there were still standards among the powers. the germans themselves offered mexico help for the US invasion very late in the war

which could also backfire and cause arab and persian revolts against the british

yet this was orthodox europeans helping orthodox europeans against oriental muslims. theres alot more trust involved.

because germany had no stake to lose in the event that that revolt would spread among the rest of the rebeling ethnicity. the franco-prusian war was still a national war. and the commune was the french commune, and did not form an effective international. the nearest to that was the spring of nations which didnt really succed in overthrowing the elites of europe elsewhere than france

overall you need to remember that WW1 was inevitable with germans rising in the european theatre. it was all according to the ternal anglo principle of making sure noone is stronger than you, not even allies

Not really, sure one could recognise the rising consumption of oil but during this period there was also proposals for coal or natural gas automotives: saying that Britain was planning its foreign policy around a relatively new resource that at that point was mostly used for lighting is a dodgy. It's like saying the EU made deals with Norway to secure Thorium; sure Thorium may be the future but you cannot just see that shti coming at the time.

Afghanistan was mostly about securing a frontier between two greater powers, very little resources actually in it.

The thing is there was no "Arab identity" at the time, that came about through the proactive action of T.E. Lawrence and Faisal I. As for Persian revolts, Persia was an independent state: Britain's influence through it was actually rather neo-imperialist in its manner, so a nationalist revolt would have not had the same impact.

And there were also Armenian revolts sponsored in areas like Kars; remember the Armenians were coptic christians with a very high opinion of the Russian Empire.

Oh I agree with that, I am just saying pinning it on oil is silly revisionism to make history seem more cyclical and shiet. Also I think you are understating the threat the French felt towards the Germans too: having a growing superpower on your borders scared the shit out of them too.

I mean I was just looking for a specific mode of analysis simply because I find said mode useful. There was nothing really more to it.

what ind of a mode of analysis

oil was a much bigger and clearer investment than todays thorium.
the coal to oil transition was very fast, not like the slow alternative energy sources we se today

by that logic britain could just have stopped at the outskirts of india. and afgan was a major trade route.

i meant arab revolts as revolts by locals across by example of the armenian revolt. similar to the spring of nations or the boxer rebellion

yet still russia had no serious stake should revolts spread. they had a very stable grip on the cucases while the balkans were practically their allies

its not on oil. heres a rundown