Talaharan Civil War

Talaharan Revolution
The Burning of Rušadar
Date 29 March 1834 – 20 June 1838 (1834-03-29 – 1838-06-20) Location Talahara Result Communard victory Fall of the Third Talaharan Kingdom Fall of the Constitutional Republic of Talahara Formation of the Talaharan Commune
Belligerents
Monarchists Royal Talaharan Army Foreign mercenaries	Constitutional Republicans File:Flag of Libya (1977–2011, 3-2).svg Constitutional Army Constitutional Fleet	Communards Central Commune Army Black Guards

The Talaharan Revolution was a conflict 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 Constitutional Republicans, a group of wealthy independent liberals. The conflict rapidly evolved to include the Communards; a nascent movement of commoners and slaves demanding an upheaval of the social and economic order. The Communards ultimately defeated both the Constitutional Republicans and the monarchist remnants after four years of war.

The new Talaharan Commune was a radical state in its region and the Revolution left a lasting legacy on the world. To Talahara's immediate east, popular unrest would result in a syndicalist revolution within the century. In the future, writers including Arthurista's Werner, Jhengtsang's Tsenpo, and Tsurushima's Kitakami Yukichi drew on the theory and lessons of the Revolution and its core thinkers as well.

Historical context

Private industry continued to supersede the assets of the nobility who increasingly relied on them to finance projects and enterprises. On their part, the landowners began to clamour for additional political power while the vast majority of slaves and commoners languished under oppressive conditions. Despite the attempts of the nobles and the landowners alike to repress the lower classes, improved infrastructure and the geographic mobility afforded by wage labour expanded communication and mobilization. Further unrest and revolts pressured the upper classes who ultimately criminalized vagrancy and vagabondism at beginning of the 19th century.

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, landowners, 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 landowners spread as the Assembly of Chiefs began to lose its grip over the state.

Liberal and revolutionary ideologies had become the dominant discursive forces in the nation among the religious, military, and common classes by 1833. Among all corners of the kingdom, the acceptance of the chiefs’ authority was rapidly waning. The liberal landowning class used their resources to spread their influence and agitate politically for abolishing noble privileges. While the wealthy landowners 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. The revolutionary ideology that was spreading among the peasants built on the theoretical foundations of rebels from the previous ceremony. While the revolutionaries agreed on abolishing privilege, it also sought to recentre the labourer as the core unit of society and redistribute wealth so that the landowners could not buy their own privileges at the expense of the poor.

Ideological underpinnings

Portrait of Mass Ziri Akli

Revolution

Periods of drought and famine were common in pre-industrial societies where the food supply was unstable. In the 1830s, Talahara experienced a severe period of drought. The instability of the food supply was compounded by decades of divestment from agricultural production. The edges of the Ninva began to expand northward over the Adras Mountains as desertification of fertile lands in the southeast set in. The lower classes, the inadan, were suffering greatly but the ruling classes were not insulated from economic hardship either.

Something about the Constitutional Republicans