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Japanese troops in Mesopotamia

R

Ricardolindo

Well-known member
Location
Portugal
What if Japan had sent troops to fight in the Mesopotamian campaign of World War I? How helpful would the Japanese troops have been to the British campaign?
Having helped the Allies more, could Japan have gotten more in the Treaty of Versailles, like the racial equality clause they wanted?
 
If the Japanese troops are sufficiently numerous, acclimated, competent, and arrive in place with sufficient logistic resources prior to November 1915 and the Turkish repulse of the British forces at Ctesiphon, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Ctesiphon_(1915), the Allies may be spared the defeat and humiliation of the siege and and surrender at Kut al-Amara, and possibly victoriously completely the Mesoptamia campaign a year earlier than OTL.

Ooh, that timing, against that enemy - the Turks - would sort of show up the strongest objectors to the racial equality clause - the Australians under the Billy Hughes government, because it would be in a similar timeframe as the Gallipoli evacuation. [Racist as he was, Wilson was not the primary objector to the clause, Australia, South Africa were, possibly Canada as well - because they were the most panicked about Asian immigration being affected by an equality clause. I have the feeling Wilson figured anything could be declared but it wouldn't trump US domestic law.]

Doesn't mean they'd get the clause. Might make the British think harder before discarding the Anglo-Japanese alliance. [which ironically, the Australians favored continuing, even while the Americans opposed].

The Japanese might be more insistent about the racial equality clause in this ATL though, make a bigger stink, threaten a walk-out. Or they might feel more entitled to stay permanently in Qingdao. Or entitled to enforce the 21 Demands on China. Which can cause all sorts of trouble.

Or if it causes nothing so dramatic, it could still have some lesser medium and long-term effects - a cadre of Japanese converts to Islam, more ties between Japan and future Iraq and Iran and Kuwait.

It would not be unreasonable, although it is certainly not guaranteed, for a sufficiently early and successful Japanese expeditionary force (JEF) in Mesopotamia, accelerating the success and completion of that campaign to link up with the Russian campaign from the Caucasus into northeast Anatolia/Greater Armenia at some point in Kurdistan, doing a lot of damage to the Turks in the process, allowing redeployment of British forces west to the Palestine front, all resulting in early death/capitulation of the Ottomans, possibly saving the Russian war effort from death by Bolshevik revolution.
 
raharris1973 said:
If the Japanese troops are sufficiently numerous, acclimated, competent, and arrive in place with sufficient logistic resources prior to November 1915 and the Turkish repulse of the British forces at Ctesiphon, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Ctesiphon_(1915), the Allies may be spared the defeat and humiliation of the siege and and surrender at Kut al-Amara, and possibly victoriously completely the Mesoptamia campaign a year earlier than OTL.

Ooh, that timing, against that enemy - the Turks - would sort of show up the strongest objectors to the racial equality clause - the Australians under the Billy Hughes government, because it would be in a similar timeframe as the Gallipoli evacuation. [Racist as he was, Wilson was not the primary objector to the clause, Australia, South Africa were, possibly Canada as well - because they were the most panicked about Asian immigration being affected by an equality clause. I have the feeling Wilson figured anything could be declared but it wouldn't trump US domestic law.]

Doesn't mean they'd get the clause. Might make the British think harder before discarding the Anglo-Japanese alliance. [which ironically, the Australians favored continuing, even while the Americans opposed].

The Japanese might be more insistent about the racial equality clause in this ATL though, make a bigger stink, threaten a walk-out. Or they might feel more entitled to stay permanently in Qingdao. Or entitled to enforce the 21 Demands on China. Which can cause all sorts of trouble.

Or if it causes nothing so dramatic, it could still have some lesser medium and long-term effects - a cadre of Japanese converts to Islam, more ties between Japan and future Iraq and Iran and Kuwait.

It would not be unreasonable, although it is certainly not guaranteed, for a sufficiently early and successful Japanese expeditionary force (JEF) in Mesopotamia, accelerating the success and completion of that campaign to link up with the Russian campaign from the Caucasus into northeast Anatolia/Greater Armenia at some point in Kurdistan, doing a lot of damage to the Turks in the process, allowing redeployment of British forces west to the Palestine front, all resulting in early death/capitulation of the Ottomans, possibly saving the Russian war effort from death by Bolshevik revolution.
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What if the Japanese asked for a racial equality clause for Japanese only rather than a general one? I think they would have had a better chance.
 
raharris1973 said:
If the Japanese troops are sufficiently numerous, acclimated, competent, and arrive in place with sufficient logistic resources prior to November 1915 and the Turkish repulse of the British forces at Ctesiphon, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Ctesiphon_(1915), the Allies may be spared the defeat and humiliation of the siege and and surrender at Kut al-Amara, and possibly victoriously completely the Mesoptamia campaign a year earlier than OTL.

Ooh, that timing, against that enemy - the Turks - would sort of show up the strongest objectors to the racial equality clause - the Australians under the Billy Hughes government, because it would be in a similar timeframe as the Gallipoli evacuation. [Racist as he was, Wilson was not the primary objector to the clause, Australia, South Africa were, possibly Canada as well - because they were the most panicked about Asian immigration being affected by an equality clause. I have the feeling Wilson figured anything could be declared but it wouldn't trump US domestic law.]

Doesn't mean they'd get the clause. Might make the British think harder before discarding the Anglo-Japanese alliance. [which ironically, the Australians favored continuing, even while the Americans opposed].

The Japanese might be more insistent about the racial equality clause in this ATL though, make a bigger stink, threaten a walk-out. Or they might feel more entitled to stay permanently in Qingdao. Or entitled to enforce the 21 Demands on China. Which can cause all sorts of trouble.

Or if it causes nothing so dramatic, it could still have some lesser medium and long-term effects - a cadre of Japanese converts to Islam, more ties between Japan and future Iraq and Iran and Kuwait.

It would not be unreasonable, although it is certainly not guaranteed, for a sufficiently early and successful Japanese expeditionary force (JEF) in Mesopotamia, accelerating the success and completion of that campaign to link up with the Russian campaign from the Caucasus into northeast Anatolia/Greater Armenia at some point in Kurdistan, doing a lot of damage to the Turks in the process, allowing redeployment of British forces west to the Palestine front, all resulting in early death/capitulation of the Ottomans, possibly saving the Russian war effort from death by Bolshevik revolution.
Click to expand...
Could Japan get more access to oil as a result of a participation in the Mespotamian campaign of World War I?
 
I suspect it would be seen as a neat thing for trivia purposes, but I doubt anything more than a token amount of Japanese would be in Iraq.

The racial equality provision provoked too much ire in Australia and the USA to pass, I think. On the other hand, the language could be construed narrowly to only apply to dominant groups in League Member States. Ergo Ethiopians, Liberians, and Japanese get equal treatment - but Somalis, Nigerians, and Koreans do not.

The equality of nations being a basic principle of the League of Nations, the High Contracting Parties agree to accord as soon as possible to all alien nationals of states, members of the League, equal and just treatment in every respect making no distinction, either in law or in fact, on account of their race or nationality.
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Jackson Lennock said:
I suspect it would be seen as a neat thing for trivia purposes, but I doubt anything more than a token amount of Japanese would be in Iraq.

The racial equality provision provoked too much ire in Australia and the USA to pass, I think. On the other hand, the language could be construed narrowly to only apply to dominant groups in League Member States. Ergo Ethiopians, Liberians, and Japanese get equal treatment - but Somalis, Nigerians, and Koreans do not.
Click to expand...
That would effectively preclude postcolonial states from League membership, no?
 
Wendell said:
I don't think Japan at this point has the interest or manpower to do this at that time. Were they even at war with the Ottomans?
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Japan actually offered to send troops to Mespotamia, read https://dlme-prod-lb.stanford.edu/library/catalog/81055/vdc_100000000833.0x00029f_dlme.

Jackson Lennock said:
I suspect it would be seen as a neat thing for trivia purposes, but I doubt anything more than a token amount of Japanese would be in Iraq.

The racial equality provision provoked too much ire in Australia and the USA to pass, I think. On the other hand, the language could be construed narrowly to only apply to dominant groups in League Member States. Ergo Ethiopians, Liberians, and Japanese get equal treatment - but Somalis, Nigerians, and Koreans do not.
Click to expand...
As @raharris1973 said, Australia was the primary objector to the Racial Equality Clause.
The US opposition was not that strong. Probably, despite his racism, Woodrow Wilson believed that anything could be declared but wouldn't trump US domestic law.
 
Wendell said:
That would effectively preclude postcolonial states from League membership, no?
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Not at all, if and when the colonizer can be brought to concede independence to the colonizer. That can happen through further warfare, insurgency, or nonviolent political struggle, or some combination of them coming from different sources that wears down a colonizer's will to stay.
 
raharris1973 said:
Not at all, if and when the colonizer can be brought to concede independence to the colonizer. That can happen through further warfare, insurgency, or nonviolent political struggle, or some combination of them coming from different sources that wears down a colonizer's will to stay.
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So independence becomes the basis for racial equality in the League?
 
Wendell said:
So independence becomes the basis for racial equality in the League?
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more or less - if you can stand up for yourself, you've earned it

In the Cold War era, people have cited foreign policy background influences on the success of the US Civil Rights and anti-segregation movements. By 1960, with a raft of newly independent Sub-Saharan African states (and soon Caribbean states) sending their diplomats to America to New York and Washington for UN and bilateral relations, on top of the Asian and Middle Eastern-North African states gaining independence since the end of WWII, federal tolerance of segregation in the states when these diplomats went down to, for example, tour Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia, Opry-land in Tennessee, or Disney World in Florida, was becoming less and less tenable and an ever greater foreign policy liability.
 
raharris1973 said:
more or less - if you can stand up for yourself, you've earned it

In the Cold War era, people have cited foreign policy background influences on the success of the US Civil Rights and anti-segregation movements. By 1960, with a raft of newly independent Sub-Saharan African states (and soon Caribbean states) sending their diplomats to America to New York and Washington for UN and bilateral relations, on top of the Asian and Middle Eastern-North African states gaining independence since the end of WWII, federal tolerance of segregation in the states when these diplomats went down to, for example, tour Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia, Opry-land in Tennessee, or Disney World in Florida, was becoming less and less tenable and an ever greater foreign policy liability.
Click to expand...
There are stories of West African states, Ghana specifically I think, opting for the Soviet rather than the U.S. orbit after diplomats experienced firsthand segregated lunch counters in the latter.
 
raharris1973 said:
more or less - if you can stand up for yourself, you've earned it

In the Cold War era, people have cited foreign policy background influences on the success of the US Civil Rights and anti-segregation movements. By 1960, with a raft of newly independent Sub-Saharan African states (and soon Caribbean states) sending their diplomats to America to New York and Washington for UN and bilateral relations, on top of the Asian and Middle Eastern-North African states gaining independence since the end of WWII, federal tolerance of segregation in the states when these diplomats went down to, for example, tour Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia, Opry-land in Tennessee, or Disney World in Florida, was becoming less and less tenable and an ever greater foreign policy liability.
Click to expand...
Wendell said:
There are stories of West African states, Ghana specifically I think, opting for the Soviet rather than the U.S. orbit after diplomats experienced firsthand segregated lunch counters in the latter.
Click to expand...
Here is an article about this, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/hist...ho-protested-segregation-in-the-us-180981682/.
 
Wendell said:
There are stories of West African states, Ghana specifically I think, opting for the Soviet rather than the U.S. orbit after diplomats experienced firsthand segregated lunch counters in the latter.
Click to expand...
Ghana is where W.E.B. Dubois chose to settle at the end of his life/semi-exile as a nonagenarian. As an octogenarian he was harassed in the McCarthy era and subject to passport hassling through 1963, his last year.
 
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