Kurulus Osman Episode 105 English Subtitles Under the post.
The nineteenth century
Introduction
During the long nineteenth century, 1798–1922, the earlier Ottoman patterns of political and economic life remained generally recognizable. In many respects, this period continued processes of change and transformation that had begun in the eighteenth century, and sometimes before. Territorial losses continued and frontiers shrank; statesmen at the center and in the provinces continued their contestations for power and access to taxable resources; and the international economy loomed ever more important.
And yet, much was new. The forces triggering the territorial losses became increasingly complex, now involving domestic rebellions as well as the familiar imperial wars. Domestically, the central state became more powerful and influential in everyday lives than ever before in Ottoman history, extending its control ever more deeply into society. Its primary tools of control changed from consumption competitions and tax farms to a much larger and professional military and bureaucracy.
As a part of the effort to more fully control its population, the state redefined the status of Muslims and non-Muslims and, after some delay sought, towards the end of the period, to re-order the legal status of women as
well. And finally, a new and deadly element evolved in the Ottoman body politic – inter-communal violence among Ottoman subjects – that attested to the power of these accelerating political and economic changes.
The wars of contraction and internal rebellions
By the twentieth century, the Ottoman Empire in Europe had receded to a small coastal plain between Edirne and Istanbul. One measure of the losses: before 1850, a majority of all Ottoman subjects lived in the Balkans while, c. 1906, the European provinces held only 20 percent of the total. Foreign wars on the Balkan frontiers, sometimes against the Habsburgs but especially against Russia, continued to shred the Ottoman domains.
The nineteenth century Within the empire, as we have seen, many provincial notables during the eighteenth century had practiced substantial degrees of autonomy while acknowledging the fundamental legitimacy of the Ottomans’ enterprise and their state. Seldom, if ever, had the rebels sought to break out of or destroy the Ottoman imperium.
There had been revolts but, generally, these had worked within the system, claiming as their goal the rectification of problems within the Ottoman universe, such as the reduction of taxes or better justice. But in the nineteenth century – in the Balkan, Anatolian, and Arab provinces alike – movements emerged that actively sought to separate particular areas from Ottoman rule and establish independent, sovereign states subordinate to no higher political authority.
Further, in almost every instance, one or another of the Great Powers supported these revolts, and their assistance indeed was crucial to the success of the rebels’ effort. Thus, the nineteenth century is different in that many of the territorial losses resulted from revolts and rebellions on the part of Ottoman subjects against their suzerain or sovereign.
This seems generally new in Ottoman history. The eighteenth century closed with Napoleon Bonaparte’s invasion of
Egypt in 1798, which ended with his solo flight back to France in 1799 and the later surrender of the French army to its British and Ottoman foes (see map 3 on p. 39). In the turmoil, an Ottoman military officer from the Albanian region, Muhammad Ali, eventually seized power in 1805 and established himself as master of Egypt.
During his remarkable reign (until his death in 1848), Muhammad Ali built up a formidable military that threatened the European balance of power and, it seems, the Ottomans’ hold on the sultanate itself. Thanks to his career, Egypt embarked on a separate course for the remainder of Ottoman history.
It remained the sultan’s nominal possession after the British occupation in 1882. But, in 1914, Egypt formally became part of the British Empire following the Ottoman entry into World War I on the German and Austro-Hungarian
side. In 1804, at about the same moment that Muhammad Ali was seizing control of the southeastern part of the Ottoman Empire, the Serbs in the northwest corner rebelled.
Appealing to the Sultan to correct abuses at the hands of the local administration, Serb rebels turned to Russia for
aid. A complex struggle evolved, involving the two powers and the Serbs. By 1817, hereditary rule by a Serbian prince had been established and from that date, in reality, Serbia was a state separate from the Ottoman.
Legally it became so only in 1878, as a result of the Congress of Berlin. In a sense, this pattern reversed that of the Ottoman conquests, from direct rule to vassalage to independence. Other losses derived from the more familiar pattern of war with Russia, ending with a formal agreement, as instanced by the 1812 Treaty of Bucharest that acknowledged the loss of Bessarabia.