[quote=@Lady Lascivious]
<Snipped quote by Letter Bee>

Again - I'm not arguing against it at all. I think it's unrealistic, and the British would oppose it as it would upset the balance of power in the region and destabilize things, as well as being greedy imperialistic little bastards. The conservative and traditionalist factions do not have the 20/20 vision of history with which to realize that would be by far the best deal they could get, and him ceding Crete and making other such concessions would, in my view, absolutely infuriate them, since such factions are rarely motivated by purely rational logic. 

I assumed we were playing a setting that allowed more low probability stuff to occur - and "peasant rebellion lead by a military genius and supplied by Russia in exchange for one of their longest running strategic goals" didn't seem all that outlandish to me, to be honest.
[/quote]

1.) Yes. But if the British are mollified by the chance of an earlier Suez Canal, then that ought to buy the Sultanate of Egypt time to violently suppress the conservative/traditionalist factions, at least in theory. The idea is still problematic, but there's still a thin thread of plausibility which makes it a gamble, not an impossibility.

2.) The game was not meant to be 'low-probability'. You say my idea is implausible due to the British being bastards (which I already addressed in the premise) and the conservative/traditionalist factions in the Sultanate of Egypt being prepared to rebel because of that (when they have been [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peasants%27_revolt_in_Palestine]violently suppressed before in Palestine itself[/url]). Well, I think your idea is implausible because Japan has been under a long period of stability and peace, the Tokugawa have had experience with suppressing peasant revolts, and Russia, which [i]has not even freed its own serfs[/i], would betray the peasant rebels eventually once they show too great an enthusiasm for ideological egalitarianism.

If anything, why wouldn't Russia sell out the rebels, if they do make headway, in exchange for the Shogunate giving them Nagasaki? And the Japanese people have their own conservative/traditionalist factions which would be angry at concessions involving ceding or leasing Home Islands Japanese territory to outside powers, including the Emperor himself - A disadvantage far outweighing potential internal opposition among the Egyptians in the Sultanate.