Far East Cynic

Countdown to catastrophe-January 6th 1914

Stock brokerage firm of Merrill Lynch founded. After almost a 100 years of existence and avoiding the fate of Lehman brothers-the firm was merged into Bank of America in 2013. ( The evil empire wins again!)

Arnold Richardson, composer was born. So too was, Danny Thomas-later of television fame in the 1950’s.  Also born this day was David Bruce, an actor.

In the Ottoman Empire, Enver Pasha-one of the leaders of the Young Turk movement had become the central leader of the Empire. He ” he helped orchestrate a coup d’état, with which he introduced a military triumvirate that came to be called the “Three Pashas” (Enver Pasha, Talaat Pasha, and DjemalPasha). In 1914, he was again Minister of War in the cabinet of Said Halim Pasha and married HIH Princess Emine Naciye Sultan (1898–1957), the daughter of Prince Süleyman, thus entering the royal family as a damat (“bridegroom” to the ruling House of Osman). His power grew steadily while Europe marched towards total war.”

The Ottoman Empire, known as the sick man of Europe had LOTS of problems. For one thing, a growing Zionist movement in Palestine was making the Arab residents of the region quite upset and more land fell into their hands. Secondly, there were nationalistic movements stirring in Mesopotamia and what is now Syria. Later on during the war -Britain, and France would seek to capitalize on these movements. By 1914 the Ottoman Empire had been driven out of nearly all of Europe and North Africa. It still controlled 28 million people, of whom 15.5 million were in modern-day Turkey, 4.5 million in Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Jordan, and 2.5 million in Iraq. Another 5.5 million people were under nominal Ottoman rule in the Arabian peninsula