Ottoman Empire in the 19th Century PDF

International History (Prof. Gianluca Pastori) Script 04 – The Ottoman empire in the 19th century International History (Prof. Gianluca Pastori) Script 04 – The Ottoman Empire in the 19th century 1. Europe and its dynamics were the key elements that shaped the 19th century’s international history....

International History (Prof. Gianluca Pastori) Script 04 – The Ottoman empire in the 19th century International History (Prof. Gianluca Pastori) Script 04 – The Ottoman Empire in the 19th century 1. Europe and its dynamics were the key elements that shaped the 19th century’s international history. Such a remark is especially true if we look at the Ottoman empire. At its apogee, in the mid-16th century, the Ottomans controlled – directly or indirectly -- a large span of Europe, all the North African coast, today’s Middle East, the Caucasus, northern Persia, and a good portion of today’s southern Russia and Ukraine, exerting an almost uncontested control over the Black Sea. In addition, the Empire was a dominant naval force, controlling much of the Mediterranean Sea and the Arab coasts of the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. In the mid-16th century, in Europe, the Empire stretched over the whole of the Western Balkans, including today Greece, Serbia, Bosnia, Albania, and the minor regional states; Hungary up to Buda; Bulgaria and Romania’s coastal strip (Bessarabia and Dobruja), together with the vassal states of Walachia, Moldavia, Transylvania and Crimea. In the following years, expansion proceeded in some areas (e.g., in the Aegean or today’s Southern Ukraine), while in others (e.g., in Southern Russia or along the Habsburg border), the imperial authority was increasingly challenged. The Ottomans laid siege twice to Vienna, in 1529 and 1683. The defeat in Vienna (1683) is usually considered the turning point. After that date, the ottoman position started declining, and in the 18th century, the Habsburg and Russia conquered large portions of territories. At the end of the Napoleonic war (1815), Ottoman control over Europe had significantly reduced, with the loss of Hungary, Transylvania, Russian and Ukrainian possessions, and the authonomisation of several North African territories. 2. In this period, due to its weakness and alleged inability to reform its structures, the Empire was increasingly perceived as ‘the sick man of Europe’. The end of the Napoleonic wars and the strengthening of the European powers after the Congress of Vienna fuelled the process. Within the Empire, centrifugal tensions emerged. In 1821, the Greek war of independence started, ending in 1829. In 1830, France invaded Algeria. In 18311833, in the first Egyptian-Ottoman War, the French-trained army of Muhammad Ali, the Ottoman governor of Egypt, marched into Anatolia, forcing the Ottoman authorities to ask for Russia’s help. The following treaty of Unkiar Skelessi (July 8, 1833) guaranteed that the Ottomans would close the Dardanelles to any foreign warships if the Russians requested such action. In 1839-41, a second Egyptian-Ottoman War allowed the Ottomans to retake part of what they had lost during the first. At the end of the 1830s, facing this string of defeats, the Ottoman government (the so-called ‘Sublime Port’) started a new phase of reform. Mahmud II (r. 1808-39) had already disbanded the Janissary corps in 1826, replacing it with a European-style conscript army, but the most coherent effort was the ‘Tanzimat’ (‘Reorganisation’), which started in 1839 and ended in 1876. The Tanzimat did not aim for radical transformation but for modernisation, consolidating the social and political foundations of the Empire and securing its territorial integrity against internal nationalist movements and external aggressions. The reforms also aimed to encourage Ottomanism among the diverse ethnic groups of the Empire as an attempt to stem the tide of rising nationalism. 3. In the long run, the Tanzimat proved only partly successful. They did not halt the rise of nationalism at the Empire’s periphery. At the same time, economic and administrative reforms proved more difficult than envisaged, although some fundamental 1 International History (Prof. Gianluca Pastori) Script 04 – The Ottoman empire in the 19th century principles were affirmed. Reforms led to a fairly modern conscripted army, banking system reforms, and the replacement of religious law with secular law. They also called for a modern financial system with a central bank, treasury bonds and a decimal currency and implemented the expansion of roads, canals and rail lines for better communication and transportation. In 1839, the Imperial Rescript of Gülhane enforced the rule of law for all subjects, including non-Muslims, by guaranteeing the right to life and property, establishing legal and social equality for all Ottoman citizens, and eliminating the millet system of religiously based communities, that operated autonomously. The Rescript terminated the privileges of these communities and constructed a society where all followed the same law. In 1856, the Imperial Reform Edict promised equality for all Ottoman citizens regardless of ethnicity and religious confession. Quite paradoxically, these reforms were widely resented in many national communities, which lost their previous privileges without gaining full equality with the Turkish element. At the same time, the more technical reform increased the Ottoman dependence on European assistance. For instance, Prussian advisors were engaged in organising and training the new army, while British subjects were heavily involved in the financial sector. Since the mid-century, the Empire also started borrowing massively from abroad, laying the foundations for the financial difficulties it had to face in the following years. 4. On the political side, nationalism was the Empire’s main problem. The Serbian revolution (1804-15) and the Greek war of independence (1821–29) -- which established the principality of Serbia and the Greek republic (since 1832 Kingdom under Otto von Wittelsbach), respectively -- opened Pandora’s box. During the 19th century, through a gradual process, the Ottoman lost control of: – Bulgaria – Principality in 1878 (after the treaty of Berlin) under formal Ottoman sovereignty; in 1885, the principality (under Alexander of Battenberg) annexed Eastern Rumelia, another formal Ottoman territory; the two regions merged and became formally independent in 1908 under Ferdinand I of Saxe-Coburg Gotha. – Montenegro – De facto independent principality since 1858; fully independent after the treaty of Berlin (1878), first under Danilo I, since 1860 under Nikola I PetrovićNjegoš, who transformed the principality into a kingdom in 1910. – Romania – Principality in 1859 (after the Crimean War and the merger of Walachia and Moldavia) under formal Ottoman sovereignty; independent kingdom since 1881 under Charles I of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen. – Serbia – Principality since 1815, under formal Ottoman sovereignty; de facto independent since 1867; fully independent after the treaty of Berlin (1878), under the House of Obrenović, who ruled the country since 1815. In the same period, the Empire also lost Bosnia-Hercegovina, which the treaty of Berlin placed under Austrian administration, although the territory remained under formal Ottoman sovereignty until Austro-Hungary annexed it in 1908. 5. Nationalism was also a problem in the territories that remained within the Empire. The Empire’s composite nature and the presence of multiple ethnic and religious communities fuelled the process that undermined its cohesion in the long run. During the 19th century, forms of national awakening affected – in one way or another -- Albanians, Arabs, Armenians, Assyrians, Bosnians, Kurds, Jews, and Macedonians. This flourishing triggered a reaction among the Empire’s Turk component. The most successful element of the Turk nationalistic galaxy was the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), the main faction 2 International History (Prof. Gianluca Pastori) Script 04 – The Ottoman empire in the 19th century within the Young Turk movement. Established in 1889, the CUP was also the main driving force behind the 1908 Young Turk revolution. The political turmoil following the CUP’s rise to power was the element that allowed Bulgaria to proclaim its formal independence and Austria-Hungary to annex Bosnia-Hercegovina. The CUP’s rise to power also opened the so-called ‘Second constitutional period’. The Parliament -- opened in 1876, after the adoption of the Constitution, and disbanded in 1878 by caliph Abdulhamid II (r. 1876-1909) -- was restored. However, already in 1912-13, the CUP managed to transform the Empire into a one-party state with power in the hand of the “Three Pashas” (Talaat Pasha, Enver Pasha, and Cemal Pasha) and Sultan Mehmed V (r. 1909-18) relegated to a mere figurehead. In this period, Young Turks’ original modernising and westernising ambitions gave way to harsh authoritarian rule, which heavily affected the national minorities, especially the Armenian Christian communities, already victims of pogroms in the last years of the 19th century. 6. Between the 1850s and 1890s, the Ottoman Empire enjoyed Britain’s support at the international level. The Empire’s control over the Turkish Straits, excluding Russia from the Mediterranean, was essential to British supremacy. Russia’s control of the Straits would have allowed its Black Sea Fleet – based in Crimea – to move freely back and forth from the Mediterranean and possibly from here to the Oceans, challenging the British global position. St. Petersburg repeatedly tried to reverse this situation, also establishing a long-term alliance with the Ottomans. The origins of the Ottoman-British alliance are in the Crimea War (1853-56), started by Russia with the invasion of the Ottoman possessions of Walachia and Moldavia. Russia's initiative prompted the intervention of an international coalition of Britain, France, and the Kingdom of Sardinia in support of the Ottomans, while military operations moved from the western coast of the Black Sea to Crimea. In a second moment, the Habsburg Empire joined the pro-Ottoman coalition, forcing the new Tzar, Alexander II (r.: 1855-81), to sue for peace. Among others, the peace clauses (Treaty of Paris, 30 March 1865) made Walachia and Moldavia autonomous principalities under formal Ottoman sovereignty and demilitarised the Black Sea, forcing Russia to remove its fleet. The Russian fleet returned to the Black Sea after the 1878-79 Russo-Turkish War. The Crimea war not only led to the emergence of the British-Ottoman axis. It also ended the possibility of a Russo-Ottoman alliance and broke the existing friendship between Russia and the Habsburg Empire, fuelling a rivalry that would have been a structural element of the following period. 7. The British-Ottoman alliance was troubled, and the repressive policies that the Ottoman authorities adopted against the Empire’s national minorities in the second part of the 19th century were a frequent embarrassment for British cabinets (especially the liberals). Ottoman violence against the civilian population at the time of the 1876 Bulgarian revolt (‘Bulgarian Horrors’) played a crucial role in arousing public sympathy for the Bulgarians and other southern Slavs attempting to gain independence from the Ottoman Empire. British criticisms of Ottoman rule often reflected domestic dynamics. For instance, in 1876, the report of the Ottoman atrocities was part of a Liberal campaign against the foreign policy of the Conservative Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, who favoured supporting the Ottoman Empire as a counterweight to Russia. Things changed in the 1890s. The Young Turks' attraction to the German model and Berlin’s will to assert its global role led to a German-Ottoman rapprochement. This rapprochement raised British concern and pushed London to revise its previous posture. In 1907, the Anglo-Russian entente (Treaty of St. Petersburg), reducing the reason for Anglo-Russian rivalry, 3 International History (Prof. Gianluca Pastori) Script 04 – The Ottoman empire in the 19th century strengthened the process, making credible, in Ottoman eyes, the possibility that London and St. Petersburg agreed on a new status for the Turkish Straits at the expenses of the Ottoman interest. Since then, the Ottoman authorities increasingly leaned towards Germany, while Germany was increasingly involved in the modernisation of the Empire. In 1903, the project for the building of the Berlin-Baghdad railway became the most evident sign of the link existing between the two countries. 8. The German-Ottoman alliance did not end the Empire’s decline. In 1911, Italy conquered Libya (more correctly: Tripolitania and Cyrenaica, the last Ottoman possessions in North Africa, which the Italian authorities later merged into a single political entity under the name of ‘Libya’) and occupied the Dodecanese Islands in the Southern Aegean Sea. In 1912, the First Balkan War (October 1912-May 1913) erupted between the Empire and a motley coalition of Balkan states (the ‘Balkan League’, made of Bulgaria, Greece, Serbia, and Montenegro), which conquered what remained of the Ottoman European possession but a relatively small pocket of territory in the Straits region. In the wake of the Ottoman defeat, also Albania proclaimed its independence, albeit an Albanian principality under Wilhelm of Wied (r.: 1914-25) was formally established only in 1914, under Italian and Austrian auspices. The immediate outbreak of the Second Balkan War (JuneAugust 1913) between Bulgaria and its former allies, plus Romania and the Ottomans, allowed the Empire to retake part of the lost territories but did not affect the declining trend. Nationalistic claims were on the rise also in the Arab part of the Empire. Moreover, the two Balkan Wars favoured the authoritarian twist of the Young Turks’ government. The defeat in World War I (October/November 1918) gave the Empire the final blow, although the new Grand National Assembly of Turkey (GNA) formally abolished it only in November 1922. After the Empire’s abolition, the religious title of Caliph passed from the last Ottoman Sultan (Mehmed VI, r.: 1918-22) to Abdulmejid II, who kept it until the GNA abolished the Caliphate in March 1924. 4