21724913-imagine-mayhem-might-have-been-avoided-had-ottoman-empire-been-saved-rather

Food for thought. The Middle East is divided up due to the aid that was provided to the Brits by the Arabs during WWI fighting the Ottoman Empire. Relatively arbitrary and the chaos since then could be attributed to that. This is akin to what if the Confederacy won the Civil War or if the Axis won WWII. World altering change of events. To paraphrase Professor Mark A. Stoler, from "The Skeptics Guide to American History", it is like the the Vikings discovered North America but the significance wasn't world altering until Western Europeans came to North America.

Whomever wrote this for The Economist does not appear to have factored in that the Ottoman Empire had been on the decline for almost 100 years at the point that they are talking about. And they also forget that the Young Turk Revolution had started in 1908 about 5 to 6 years before the Serbian assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. Remember that Serbia had been under the control of the Ottoman Empire for 3 and 1/2 centuries prior to 1804.