Talaharan Civil War

Talaharan Civil War
The Burning of Rušadar
Date 29 March 1834 – 20 June 1838 (1834-03-29 – 1838-06-20) Location Talahara Result Anarchist victory Fall of the Third Talaharan Kingdom Fall of the Republic of Talahara Formation of the United Communes of Talahara
Belligerents
Third Talaharan Kingdom	File:Flag of Libya (1977–2011, 3-2).svg Republic of Talahara	Anarchists
Commanders and leaders
Medur IV N'Zaraba  Karim N'Tsabunar Mawli N'Rušadi †	File:Flag of Libya (1977–2011, 3-2).svg Warmaksan Kabil † File:Flag of Libya (1977–2011, 3-2).svg Zemrassa Waguten Ili Kinawa †	Ziri Akli Kahina Markunda Zidan Misibsen † Baligan Amasen
Units involved
Royal Talaharan Army	File:Flag of Libya (1977–2011, 3-2).svg National Army National Navy	Black Guards
Strength
165,000 soldiers 45,000 militia 20,000 mercenaries	12,000 soldiers 185,000 militia 60,000 mercenaries	105,000 soldiers 280,000 militia
Casualties and losses
46,000 wounded 12,000 killed	33,000 wounded 17,000 killed	62,000 wounded 23,000 killed
100,000-150,000 civilian deaths

The Talaharan Civil War, also known as the Talaharan Revolution or the Talaharan Anarchy was a war that erupted in 1834 between three factions in Talahara. The conflict began with the overthrow of the ruling class of the Third Talaharan Kingdom by the republicans; a faction spearheaded by the affluent liberal merchant class. The conflict rapidly evolved to include the anarchists; a nascent movement of commoners and slaves demanding an upheaval of the social and economic order. The anarchists ultimately defeated both the republicans and the monarchist remnants after four years of war.

The Civil War left a lasting legacy on the world, with the new United Communes of Talahara forming the world's first revolutionary socialist republic. To Talahara's immediate east, popular unrest would result in syndicalist uprisings and eventually revolution within several decades. Future, writers including Arthurista's Werner and Tsurushima's Kitakami Yukichi, drew on the theory and lessons of the Civil War and its core thinkers.

Historical context

Structural conditions

In the centuries leading up to the Civil War, the merchant class of Talahara began to eclipse the ruling noble clans in terms of material wealth and soft influence. On their part, the merchant class began to clamour for additional political power while the vast majority of slaves and commoners languished under exploitative conditions. Despite the attempts of the nobles and the merchants alike to repress the lower classes, improved infrastructure and the geographic mobility demandeded by wage labour expanded the commoners' abilities to communicate and mobilize. Further unrest and revolts pressured the nobility which ultimately criminalized vagrancy and vagabondism at beginning of the 19th century.

Talaharan clan king, Mawli N'Rušadi, c. 1820

The criminalization of vagabondism led to conflict with the minority of free Kel Hadar who had maintained nomadic pastoralist lifestyles for millennia. The cultural and religious elite, which included a large portion of the military, supported the preservation of the Kel Hadar’s rights to nomadism. Several clashes occurred between the nomads and authorities before the law was amended to carve out an exception for the Kel Hadar.

The results of the carve-outs for the Kel Hadar nomads had two major effects. The first effect was mass protests among the Kel Aman (nobles, merchants, and commoners alike) who begrudged unequal treatment in contrast to developing concepts of universal rights. The second effect was that many otherwise repressed Kel Hadar adopted nomadic lifestyles ostensibly as covers for fomenting unrest and revolutionary sentiment. Over the ensuing decades, violent outbursts and independent repression by merchants spread as the Court of the Lions began to lose its grip over the state.

Slavery was a relatively commonplace institution in Talahara from antiquity to the early modern era. By 1830, roughly 35% of the country's inhabitants were chattel slaves. Slaves were typically drawn from Kel Tenere or Kel Hadar clanspeople captured in internal conflict or thereafter born into servitude. The majority of slaveowners were traditionalist Kel Aman noble landowners. A further 45% of the population was estimated to have worked in indentured contracts which were increasingly common arrangements between free lower-class Kel and liberal capitalists.

Map of Talahara, c. 1800

Liberal and revolutionary ideologies had become the dominant discursive forces in the nation among the religious, military, and common classes by 1833. Across all corners of the kingdom, the acceptance of the kings’ authority was rapidly waning. The liberal landowning class used their resources to spread their influence and agitate politically for abolishing noble privileges. While the affluent merchants would be the primary beneficiaries of a new liberal order, their dogma was popular with many commoners as well, particularly those who were sold on narratives of opportunity and class mobility. While the anarchists agreed on abolishing privilege, they also sought to definitively end slavery and recentre the labourer as the core unit of society and redistribute wealth such that the merchants could not buy their own privileges at the expense of the poor.

Ideologies

The Talaharan Civil War was a conflict between three ideological groups: the declining traditional forces of monarchism, the rising industrial liberals, and the nascent socialist movement of Talaharan social mutualism.

Talaharan monarchism

Unlike other monarchies in the world, the Talaharan monarchs of the modern era had no direct divine right to rule. Rather the investiture of autocratic power in the hands of a single monarch was seen as a reflection of natural law. The beginning of the Third Talaharan Kingdom, wherein the throne was awarded to the senior-most member of the eminent Talaharan clans, explicitly dictated the monarchy as an element of the natural order of the world and a function of life's mechanisms, but not that any given individual was personally ordained by a divine figure to rule.

One factor in this theory of authority may have been the decentralized nature of Talaharan religion. Massanism is based heavily on the concept of a shared bloodline between all Kel Aman and Kel Hadar clans. There is no particular theory of purity or greater claim to descendence from Saint Kahina than any other Talaharan. The faith also lacks a religious head with services and rituals performed by an independent priesthood.

As the power of merchants who were not members of the eminent clans grew in the early-modern period, the legitimacy of confining the natural right to rule to a number of historical clans became increasingly suspect. The material capital of the merchant class eclipsed that of the rulers by the mid-18th century. The right to rule thus became a question of political and economic expediency, efficiency, and appeals to tradition. With industrialization and a changing world, the monarchs appealed to a sense of romanticism, arguing that burgeoning industrialization had to be tempered by the natural order. Despite protests, material conditions made the censuring or limitation of the merchant classes almost impossible without starting a war. The turn of the 19th century also brought on liberal republican movements across the world which fueled further discontent among liberal Talaharan merchants.

Liberalism

Liberalism is a social, political, and economic philosophy that asserts a theory of universal rights and freedoms. According to liberalism, all individuals are equal within the natural world and deserve equal rights. In a political sense, liberal ideology called for popular representation in government and the elimination of traditional socio-political hierarchies. In an economic sense, liberalism asserts the right to private property and freedom of commerce as extensions of personal rights and freedoms.

The philosophy of liberalism emerged in the 17th and 18th centuries, with some earlier precursor thinkers. Its emergence was largely correlated with industrial development and the radical socio-economic upheaval that accompanied it. Revolutions in transportation and communication technologies also facilitated the exchange of new, radical ideas and conceptions of broad, modern, democratic ideals. Social clubs such as the Ifurša Commerce Association became important circles for networking, sharing assets and ideas, and building furor against the restrictions imposed by the ruling kings.

The extent of liberal philosophy has been variable even within broadly liberal societies. The definition of universalism has historically been varied, with some theorists and societies only conferring rights among a limited subset of humankind - namely men, individuals with property, or people of a certain ethnicity or religion. Numerous liberal societies have justified the practice of slavery or the limitation of political rights to the unpropertied based on a limited theory of personhood or a question of an individual's stake in society. After Sante Reze abolished slavery in 1712 CE, there was increasing international and commercial pressure against slavery.

Social mutualism and anarchism

Portrait of Mass Ziri Akli

Talaharan social mutualism was the first explicitly revolutionary and self-ascriptive socialist movement in the world. Developed by a developing group of working-class intelligentsia, social mutualism understands itself as the next step in socio-economic development from the conception of universal rights developed by liberal ideology. In addition to the liberal revolution in Ludvosiya and the theories of the Talaharan liberal class, early Talaharan socialists such as Mass Ziri Akli were inspired by communalist societies in northeastern Norumbia.

In terms of its objectives, social mutualism seeks to abolish all unjust hierarchies, both political and economic. The core tenet of social mutualism is that resources essential to life ought to be distributed evenly across society, with no private property or primitive accumulation of resources to the deprivation of others. Economic exchange ought to be based on need and resource use based on usufructuary rights. Unlike ordosocialist theories, social mutualism calls for a decentralized economic organization along a free albeit socialist market, rather than a centrally-planned command economy. Social mutualism also called for extreme emancipation and social revolution, guaranteeing freedoms for different expressions of gender, sexuality, and racial identity.

Social mutualists opposed both the liberals and the monarchy on the grounds that both political systems relied upon unjust hierarchies to impose order on society. In the case of the monarchy, this hierarchy was based on a so-called natural order which placed certain individuals above others. In the case of the liberals, economic hierarchies dominated the lives of individuals in the capitalist system and despite egalitarian philosophy, poverty remained inescapable due to the structural economic hierarchies imposed on the lower classes.

Agitators against both the monarchy and the liberal class were often labeled as anarchists who opposed any system of governance or imposing order altogether. Social mutualist movements began to adopt this label, including those who sought a more harmonic reorganization of society along non-hierarchical lines rather than strict abolition of all government structures.

Conflict

Royal Talaharan Army infantry column c. 1825

The Talaharan Civil War began as an intense conflict between republican and monarchist factions which devolved into a country-wide civil war that claimed the lives of at least 150,000. The conflict involved various forms of warfare, from conventional line battles, skirmish tactics and guerilla warfare, and ideological conflict. The conflict began with a series of uprisings led by conventional forces and the realm was ultimately thrown into chaos following the mass assassination of the monarchist leadership. Thereafter, anarchist forces gathered momentum and overcame the other two factions to emerge as the victor of the war.

The conflict also featured foreign interventions, including the Yisraeli occupation of the northern regions of Kirthan which was incorporated into a protectorate. Several Kel Tenere tribes from Charnea also intervened on the part of both the monarchists and the anarchists, while Rezese mercenaries fought in service of the republicans. Several Rezese houses also offered indirect support to the anarchists against both the chattel slavery and the indentures practiced by the monarchists and republicans, respectively.

First stage

In October of 1833, prominent liberal ideologues and business owners met over three weeks at the Commerce Association Clubhouse in Ifurša, devising a plan to overthrow King-President Medur IV and the Court of the Lions and to establish a liberal republic. The meetings called for the formation of a provisional government and the first steps toward drafting a constitution. By the end of the three weeks in Ifurša, an agricultural magnate named Zemrassa Waguten was acclaimed as the shadow president of the new republic, and a plot to remove the monarchy was put into motion.

Among the republicans was Warmaksan Kabil, a retired colonel from the Royal Talaharan Army who had entered into business manufacturing arms in Mutafayil. Kabil was placed in charge of assembling a military for the republic, at least insofar as military forces would be necessary to execute a coup and contend with the Royal Talaharan Army until the legitimacy of the republic could be assured. To that end, Kabil made contact with several Rezese mercenary companies from the Nine Cousins and procured their services with the collective resources of the liberals. In fact, Kabil assembled a much greater force than he'd been authorized to through promises and depositing collateral, including both Rezese and other mercenary forces, as Kabil anticipated that the coup would not proceed as smoothly as planned.

In February of 1834, the Warchief of the Court of the Lions, Karim N'Tsabunar, was advised of large mercenary movements into the country and privately alerted King-President Medur and the rest of the court. Several mercenaries were bribed to change their allegiances and divulged what information regarding their previous employment contracts they had. The court was unmoved by the limited information provided, accepting that the mercenaries were hired for a joint venture to southern Scipia, unaware of the true numbers or intentions of the forces.

Outbreak

On March 29, 1834, the republicans launched their coup attempt, storming the palace in Maktarim while the kings were in session. The republican conspirators assembled the hereditary kings and summarily executed them, proclaiming the Republic of Talahara with a new liberal constitution, with significant inspirations from the Ludvosiyan model. However, King-President Medur was absent from the palace and escaped the bloodshed alongside several of his close advisors including Karim N'Tsabunar.

See also

• Wazhenaby independence
• Resurgencha and Xidduni's Revolution
• 1893 Revolution
• Crimson Revolution
• Great Ottonian War