1600-1923
Ottoman history from 1566 -1792 has been described as ”The Decline of Faith and
State.” To Ottomans, " decline ” meant dislocation of the traditional
order; hence, ” reforms " to check or reverse " decline " meant
restoring the old order which had produced the Golden Age of Suleyman the
Magnificent.” At times decline was checked but only temporarily. Decline was not only
slow, gradual, interrupted, lasting rnore than three centuries, but also it was relative
only to its own Golden Age and to the remarkable progress of its Christian European
neighbors.
It is easier to describe decline than to explain it. Some developments which the Ottoman
Empire did not take part in gave Europe its relative superiority.
1- Its 16th-10th c. commercial expansion overseas enriched Western Europe to the detriment
of the Ottomans.
2- The West
improved agricultural methods while technology and industry advanced rapidly, all tied to
the new scientific experimentation and rationalist attitudes stemming from the Renaissance
and Reformation and culminating in the Enlightenment; only weak echoes of these events
reached the East before 1800.
3- Strong,
centralized, national monarchies or bureaucratic empires appeared not only in Western
Europe but also along the Ottoman frontiers in Central and Eastern Europe just when
centrifugal forces were weakening the previously centralized Ottoman bureaucratic empire.
4- A
prosperous,enterprising bourgeoisie on the Western model failed to appear in the Ottoman
Empire to back up the ruler; the wealthy bourgeoisie which did exist was small and
composed largely of either non-Muslim merchants and bankers, who were not acceptable as
the sultan’s allies, or bureaucrats, who were a part of the "establishment
” anxious to protect their own interests and often resisting change.
The Ottomans were
more conscious of the dislocations in their own traditional system:
1- Leadership :
17 sultans after Suleyman ( from1566 to 1789) were, with few exceptions, men of little
ability, training, or experience, and some were incompetent, even mentally defective;
their average rule of 13 years was less than half that of the first 10 sultans. This was
no accident! Mehmed III died in 1605 leaving two minor sons as the only direct male
survivors. The elder, Ahmet I, spared the life of his brother, Mustafa, but kept him
secluded in a special apartment in the harem of Topkapi Palace. The Sitva Torok treaty
with Austria (1606) should have been a wake-up call for the Ottomans. It was a negotiated
compromise rather than a grant of peace dictated by the sultan; in it, the Hapsburg
monarch finally was recognized as the sultan’s peer, as " Emperor”
(Padishah rather than simply King of Vienna.” Mustafa I’s accession in 1617
marked the end of ”succession by military contest and the practice of royal ”
fratricide,” replaced by confinement of princes in the palace and succession by the
eldest male of the imperial family. Not only were most inexperienced and incompetent, many
were minors under the influence of the Queen Mother (Valide Sultan) and harem favorites,
giving rise to palace cliques and intrigue. For several decades in the first half of
the17.th century, women of the palace exercised such influence that the period is called
" The Sultanate of the Women "
2- Bribery,
purchase of office, favoritism, nepotism : Promotion by merit, long the hallmark of
Ottoman administration, became less common. Corruption spread to the provinces where an
official would buy his office, then squeeze more taxes from the populace to reimburse
himself. There were frequent shifts in judicial as well as civil officials, with justice
also sometimes for sale. In the mid-to-late 17th c., the great Koprulu family of viziers
attempted to root out corruption and improve administrative and military efficiency. They
were temporarily successful in arresting " decline " through traditional
reforms, and in 1663 Ottoman forces besieged Vienna for the second time. But in the 17th
c., the Ottomans were confronted by an extended arc of opponents, Venice, Austria, Poland,
Russia, and Iran, often obliged to confront several at once. In 1699, after defeat by a
coalition of all Central and East European powers, the Ottomans accepted mediation,
negotiated peace, and, by the Treaty of Karlowitz, for the first time gave up territories
in the Balkans. The shrinking of Ottoman frontiers had begun.
3- Military
: The devshirme was abandoned ( just when is uncertain ); sons of janissaries were
admitted to the corps, then other Muslims; and imperial slavery became a legal
fiction.” Provincial janissaries sometimes acted as semi-autonomous local rulers,
while in Istanbul they become a disruptive force, often in collaboration with
artisans / craftsmen and students. The provincial cavalry army was made obsolete by
musket-armed European troops, requiring the Ottomans to increase their standing infantry
and equip them with firearms. This required money. The military fief system was all but
abandoned and replaced by tax-farming. The heavy tax burden was responsible in part for
revolts in Anatolia, abandonment of farm lands, and depopulation of villages; thus the
empire experienced a decline in tax revenues despite higher taxes.
4-
Economics : The Ottoman Empire suffered from severe inflation, as did all of Europe,
as New World silver flooded in. This, together with debased coinage, fueled corruption. By
the 17th c., Europeans and consolidated their control of new sea trade routes, by-passing
the Middle East and diminishing the transit trade through Ottoman lands. Asian spices were
shipped directly to Europe, and wars with Iran interrupted the silk trade. European
manufactured goods flowed in, undercutting local handicraft products and enriching
Levantine merchants. The Ottoman Empire’s unfavorable trade balance resulted in an
outflow of gold, while European states demanded more favorable trade treaties (
”Capitulations" ) and were guilty of blatantly abusing them.
5- Intellectual
decline--Selim and Suleyman’s 16th c. victory over Safavid Shi’ism so
consolidated Sunni orthodoxy that Muslims in the Empire were not forced to engage in
intellectually challenging and stimulating conflict as Catholics and Protestants were in
Europe. Muslim scholars became intellectually conservative and resistant to new ideas;
convinced of the superiority of Muslim / Ottoman civilization, they were seemingly
oblivious to the advances being made in the infidel West. Meanwhile, the Ottoman religious
establishment gradually became infiltrated by the Sufi orders, producing a new sort of
symbiosis which gave greater strength to conservative religious” elements.
In the18th c.
more wars and losses resulted in another attempt at reforms. The Tulip Period (
1718-30 ) marks the first conscious borrowing of European culture and art.
During the mid-century interlude of peace on the European frontiers, Ottoman political
authority was further diffused. Provincial notables and governors barely heeded orders
from Istanbul. Levantines and Phanariot Greeks enjoyed enormous prosperity and influence.
The Muslim religious elite reached the apex of their power. In the last quarter of the
century, Catherine the Great resumed Russian expansion southward; her ” Greek Scheme
" aimed to put her grandson, Constantine, on the throne of a neo-Byzantine Empire
with its capital at Constantinople. Her first war ended in the Treaty of Kuchuk Kaynarca
(1774) by which the Ottomans gave up the Crimea, the first time they had lost territory
inhabited primarily by Muslims. In 1789, during the second war with Catherine, Selim lll
became sultan and initiated a reform program called the New Order, (Nizam-i Cedid) with
emphasis on military and fiscal reform. But Selim’s failure to prevent
Napoleon’s invasion of the rich Ottoman province of Egypt in 1798 revealed to
Europeans as never before that the balance of power had now shifted decidedly in their
favor.
The Imperial
reforms begun by Selim III were taken up again in the early decades of the 19th.c. by
Sultan Mahmud II. They aimed at curbing provincial autonomy and achieving political
centralization and modernization through Western-style military, administrative, and
fiscal reforms. But European intervention in the Greek struggle for independence signaled
the beginning of the modern " Eastern Question ” (Simply put : Who would divide
the spoils when the Ottoman Empire collapsed ? ). To counter this, the Tanzimat period
(1839-76) saw reforms center around a new concept of justice (adalet): equality before the
law for all Ottoman subjects, Muslim and non- Muslim alike. This concept was fundamental
to the prevalent ideology of the Tanzimat, Ottomanism ( patriotism but not yet
nationalism). In the 1850s-60s, intellectuals known as the New Ottomans” engaged in a
liberal critique of Tanzimat policies with emphasis on fatherland (vatan), freedom
(hurriget), and constitutionalism. The Tanzimat reforms culminated in the constitution and
parliament of 1876, but the 1877-78 war with Russia and the Treaty of Berlin, by which
most of the Ottoman lands in Europe were lost and the European powers laid claim to
spheres of influence in the Middle East, allowed Sultan Abdulhamid II to bring an end to
" liberalism” and proceed with reforms under an autocratic- regime. By the 1880s
Germany under Kaiser Wilhelrn had replaced France and Great Britain as friend and military
advisor of the Ottoman Empire, and new ideologies were challenging Ottomanism. Abdulhamid
embraced Pan-Islamism; his opponents, known collectively as Young Turks, were drawn to a
secular Ottoman pseudo-nationalism and some to Pan-Turkism.
The Hamidian
despotism was ended by the Young Turk Revolution(1908-09) and replaced by constitutional,
parliamentary government under the Young Turk Committee of Union and Progress. Their
policies reflected a growing sense of Turkish nationalism. But in the five years preceding
World War I, two Balkan wars and a war with Italy, which had invaded Libya, brought the
military element of the Young Turk movement to the fore and resulted in the domination of
the Istanbul political scene by the Young Turk Triumverate ( Enver, Talat, and Jemal
Pashas) . Under their leadership, the Ottomans entered World War I on the side of Germany.
The victors dictated the peace to end all peace at Paris in 1919. With even the heartlands
of the Empire partitioned and Istanbul occupied by the victorious allies, the Turks of
Anatolia under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk) rejected the terms of the
dictated Treaty of Sevres. Again they took up arms, fought successfully for their
independence, and --- bringing to an end the 600 + year-old Ottoman Empire –-
negotiated the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 which granted international recognition to the
boundaries of the new Republic of Turkey.
Assembled by Richard L. Chambers,
The University of Chicago
