CHALLENGE FROM EGYPT
Mehmed Ali, most probably an Albanian from northern Greece, had emerged as the master of Egypt after building a modern army with direct assistance and support from France. Mahmud, who was fully aware of Mehmed Ali’s successes and his newly acquired military capability, asked for his support when the Greek revolution erupted. The defeat in Greece, however, forced the governor of Egypt to withdraw his troops. Moreover, he lost his fleet during the Greek campaign and could not obtain any satisfactory compensation from the sultan in Istanbul. The battles of the Greek revolution had demonstrated that the Ottoman army was in a sorry state. Initially Mehmed Ali had thought of building his own empire in North Africa by attacking Algeria and Tunisia, but the French had acted faster by attacking and occupying Algiers in July 1830.
With North Africa falling into the hands of the French, Mehmed Ali and his son, Ibrahim Pasha, who acted as his father’s army commander, turned their attention eastward and attacked Palestine and Syria in October 1831 (Zürcher: 36). In May 1832 the town of Acre fell, followed by Damascus in June. By July Ibrahim Pasha had routed Ottoman forces twice and established his rule over the entire territory of Syria (Zürcher: 36). As in the case of the Greek revolution, the sultan refused an offer for a negotiated settlement, which allowed the Egyptian army to push into Anatolia and defeat the Ottoman troops who had been sent from Istanbul. By February 1833 the Egyptian army had reached Kütahya in western Anatolia, a short march from Istanbul. Mahmud responded to the military reversals by opening negotiations with European powers, with the aim of securing their support against his rebellious subject. When the British and Austrians turned down the request, the sultan asked for military intervention from Russia, which agreed to provide it. Although the arrival of the Russian fleet in February 1833 prevented Mehmed Ali from marching his troops to Istanbul, it could not dislodge the Egyptian forces from their newly conquered territories in Anatolia. To end the crisis, the sultan agreed to sign the Treaty of Kütahya in April and appointed Mehmed Ali the governor of Syria. On July 8, 1833, Mahmud II also signed the Treaty of Hünkar Iskelesi with Russia, an eight-year defense pact that obligated the Ottoman government to close the Turkish straits to all ships at a time of war between Russia and a foreign power.
Despite the peace with Mehmed Ali, the sultan was anxious to strengthen his army and strike back at the disloyal governor of Egypt. The British, greatly alarmed by the growing power and influence of Russia, viewed Mehmed Ali as an ally of France, whose policies toward the Ottoman Empire had forced the sultan to depend on the Russians for his survival. The sultan hoped to exploit British anxiety over Mehmed Ali to gain Britain’s support for a campaign against him. In 1838 the tension between the sultan and Mehmed Ali erupted again when the latter stated his intention to declare his independence from the Ottoman Empire. When his closest ally, France, opposed this provocative move, Mehmed Ali backed down. The sultan was determined to secure the support of Great Britain in a campaign to destroy Mehmed Ali. Using this opportunity to expand its economic interests in the region, the British government signed a commercial treaty with the Ottoman state in August 1838 that confirmed British capitulatory privileges and opened the Ottoman markets to British investment and trade (Zürcher: 38). Despite warnings from the British, Mahmud II mobilized a force against Mehmed Ali’s army in Syria. Once again, however, Egyptian forces under the command of Ibrahim Pasha soundly defeated the Ottoman army, which had attacked Syria in June 1839. Less than a week later, Mahmud died in Istanbul after a long battle with tuberculosis.
TANZIMAT
To halt the decline and territorial disintegration of the Ottoman state, a small group of Ottoman officials used the death of Mahmud II to embark on a new program of governmental reforms, which came to be known as Tanzimāt (reorganization). On November 3, 1839, the new Ottoman sultan, Abdülmecid (Abdulmejid) (r. 1839–1861), ordered his ministers and dignitaries, as well as representatives of foreign powers, to gather in the rose garden of the Topkapi Palace, where his foreign minister, Mustafa Reşid Pasha (Mustafa Reshid Pasha), read a decree entitled Hatt-i Şerif-i Gülhane (Hatt-i Sherif-i Gülhane), the Noble Rescript of the Rose Garden (Davison: 36; Zürcher: 50–51). The document guaranteed the subjects of the sultan security of life, honor, and property (Davison: 36–38). It also promised a regular system for assessing and levying taxes, as well as a just system of conscription and military service (McCarthy: 297). The royal rescript also committed the central government to a number of essential reforms, such as establishing a new penal code, eradicating bribery, and creating a regular and just tax system that would eliminate inequities and special privileges, such as tax farming. Thus the imperial decree demonstrated a new commitment by the sultan and his advisers to the rule of law, the equality and fair treatment of all Ottoman subjects regardless of their religion and ethnicity, and the establishment of a new justice system that protected their lives and property against arbitrary attacks and confiscation (McCarthy: 296; Zürcher: 50–51).
The introduction of reforms that were to be implemented from above required the creation of a highly centralized bureaucracy. In emulating the European administrative system, the government was divided into several ministries with specific tasks and responsibilities. A council of ministers was created to act as the highest advisory body to the sultan as he attempted to save the empire from further disintegration by imposing the authority of the state over the remotest provinces. Building new roads and railways was viewed as one of the most important priorities of the central government. Armies sent to quell internal rebellions and confront foreign invaders could reach their destinations much faster using a modern road or riding on a train. Telegraph services were introduced as a means of communicating orders from Istanbul and receiving the latest news from the provinces. The improvement of the transportation and communication systems also stimulated the economy and intensified commercial ties among various regions of the empire.
In addition to the modernization of the empire’s infrastructure, the Tanzimat period also witnessed a significant transformation in the Ottoman educational system. Mahmud II had introduced the Ruşdiye (Rushdiye) (adolescent) schools, which provided a secular education for male students who had completed the mekteps, the traditional schools devoted to the study of the Quran (Zürcher: 62). The principal objective for the creation of modern schools was to train a new educated elite capable of administering an empire. The fear of opposition from conservatives, however, slowed down educational reform and forced the reformers to attach modern schools to various governmental ministries and bureaus. Thus, the first medical and engineering schools in the Ottoman Empire were introduced as academic units within a military school (McCarthy: 299). The introduction of modern educational institutions also suffered from a lack of adequate funding and the absence of well-trained teachers and instructors. Despite these difficulties, a new bureaucracy, which was four to five times larger than the imperial administration and relied heavily on graduates from the modern schools, was created.
Finally, the men of Tanzimat tried to create a modern financial structure and an efficient tax collection system that would provide the central treasury with sufficient funds to support governmental reforms. The “main thrust” of their financial reforms was “to simplify the collection of revenues” by delegating “the responsibility of tax collection to the salaried agents of the government, rather than governors, holders of prebendal grants, or other intermediaries of the classical system” (Kasaba: 50).
Despite their best efforts to focus on reform, the men of the Tanzimat faced serious challenges from both internal rebellions and foreign aggression that ultimately undermined their efforts and resulted in the disintegration of the empire. In October 1840 the Ottomans and the British began to exert military pressure on Mehmed Ali, forcing his troops to evacuate Syria and Palestine in February 1841. The sultan, however, issued a decree granting Mehmed Ali and his family the right to rule Egypt. The second important foreign policy c
risis of the Tanzimat era was the Crimean War, which forced the Ottoman Empire to declare war on Russia in October 1853 (Finkel: 456–458). By acting as the big brother and protector of Serbia, the Romanian-populated Danubian Principalities, and the sultan’s Orthodox Christian subjects, Russia intended to replace both the Ottoman Empire and Austria as the dominant power in the Balkans. The ultimate goal of Russian foreign policy was to create a series of satellite states that depended on Russian protection and support for their political survival. Parallel to this was the debate between the Catholic and Orthodox churches over their right to various holy sites in Jerusalem, with Russia championing the Orthodox position and France that of Rome. In 1852 the Ottoman government announced its decision on the question of Christian holy places in Palestine, siding with the French position. Czar Nicholas I was outraged. In response to the Ottoman decision, he ordered a partial mobilization of his army. He also made a new series of demands, including the Russian right to protect the sultan’s Orthodox Christian subjects. Confident that it would receive support from Great Britain, France, and Austria, the Ottoman government rejected the Russian demands. When the Russian forces invaded the Danubian principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, the Ottoman Empire declared war on Russia.
As the British and the French naval forces crossed the Turkish Straits on their way to the Black Sea, the Ottomans fought the Russian navy at Sinop, where the Ottoman fleet was destroyed and thousands of sailors were killed. After negotiations collapsed in March 1854, France and Great Britain declared war on Russia. Fearing an attack from Austria, the Russian forces withdrew from Wallachia and Moldavia (Jelavich: 107). The military campaigns that followed, particularly the attack on Sevastopol, which was occupied in October 1855, forced Russia to sue for peace.
While the representatives of European powers were arriving at the peace conference in Paris in February 1856, the sultan, under pressure from France and Great Britain, issued a second reform decree, the Hatt-i Hümayun, or the Imperial Rescript, committing his government to the principle of equality for all Ottoman subjects. The Treaty of Paris, signed in March 1856, forced Russia to withdraw from Wallachia and Moldavia. Wallachia, Moldavia, and Serbia were granted autonomy under Ottoman rule. Russia’s access to the Danube was blocked by its surrender of southern Bessarabia to Moldavia. That famous river and the Turkish Straits were declared open to ships of all countries. Russia was also forced to withdraw its forces from eastern Anatolia, including the city of Kars, which it had occupied during the war. The Crimean War and the Treaty of Paris resulted in the de facto inclusion of the Ottoman Empire in the “Concert of Europe” that had tried to maintain the balance of power on the continent since the defeat of Napoleon and the convening of the Congress of Vienna in 1814 (Zürcher: 54). The territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire was thus theoretically preserved and Russia’s expansion into the Balkans contained.
With Russian aggression checked, the leaders of Tanzimat could once again focus on the implementation of their reform agenda. The Crimean War had been very costly and forced the Ottoman government to apply for high-interest loans that eventually undermined the economic independence of the state. The accumulation of significant debts to European banks and the continuous struggle to generate sufficient revenue to repay them undermined efforts to reform the government for the remainder of the 19th century.
OTTOMAN CONSTITUTION
After the death in September 1871 of Āli Pasha, the last great statesman of the Tanzimat era, several grand viziers came and went, while Sultan Abdülaziz (r. 1861–1876) became increasingly involved in running the everyday affairs of the empire. Then, in the early hours of Tuesday, May 30, 1876, a small group of government officials and army officers led by the reform-minded statesman Midhat Pasha, who had served as governor of Nish (1861–1868) and Baghdad (1869–1872), carried out a peaceful military coup (Davison: 335–338). A nephew of Sultan Abdülaziz, Prince Murad, was brought out of his residence to the ministry of war and declared the new sultan.
Before the new monarch could establish himself, however, news of Abdülaziz’s sudden death was announced to a shocked populace. The body of the deposed sultan had been discovered in his private bedroom, his wrists slashed with a pair of scissors, leading many to conclude that he had been murdered. To diffuse the rumors of assassination, the government called on doctors from several foreign embassies in Istanbul to examine the body and offer their medical opinion on the cause of death, which was officially declared a suicide. The events profoundly affected the new sultan, Murad V, who suffered a nervous breakdown. Accordingly, Midhat Pasha decided to depose Murad in favor of his brother, who ascended the Ottoman throne in August as Abdülhamid II. Midhat Pasha was appointed grand vizier in December, and shortly thereafter the first Ottoman constitution was introduced (McCarthy: 304).
These momentous events in Istanbul took place in the context of major developments in European power politics and another crisis in the Balkans that erupted when Serbia and Montenegro attacked the Ottoman Empire in July 1876. With chaos and uncertainty reigning in Istanbul and revolt and instability spreading to the rural communities in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Russia had pushed for military intervention by Serbia and Montenegro. This Pan-Slavic project designed by Russia failed when Ottoman troops struck back, defeating the Serbs and forcing them to sue for peace. Russia then instigated a nationalist uprising in Bulgaria, which was crushed by Ottoman forces with heavy casualties and massacres of the civilian population. This allowed the czar to demand that the Ottoman Empire introduce reforms and grant autonomy to the Bulgarian people. Recognizing the threat of Russian intervention in the Balkans, the British government intervened and called for the convening of an international conference to meet in Istanbul with the intention of diffusing the possibility of another war between Russia and the Ottoman Empire. However, on the first day of the conference, December 23, 1876, the Ottoman delegation shocked the European participants by announcing that a constitution had been promulgated and that any attempt by foreign powers to press the Ottoman state into introducing reforms in its European provinces was unnecessary, because under the new political regime all Ottoman subjects would be treated as equals, with their rights protected and guaranteed by the government (Zürcher: 74).
The Ottoman constitution did not prevent another military confrontation with Russia. Continuous palace intrigues convinced Abdülhamid II to dismiss Midhat Pasha, who was sent into exile in February 1877, an event that was soon followed by a Russian declaration of war in April. The Ottoman forces under the brilliant command of Gāzi Osman Pasha fought back heroically and delayed the Russian southward incursion for several months at Plevna in Bulgaria, but by December the czarist army was encamped a mere 12 kilometers outside Istanbul (Zürcher: 74). On March 3, 1878, the Ottomans were forced to sign the Treaty of San Stefano. Among other things, the treaty called for the establishment of an autonomous Bulgarian state, stretching from the Black Sea to the Aegean, which Russia would occupy for two years. Serbia, Romania, and Montenegro were to gain their independence. Russia received Batumi in present-day Georgia on the Black Sea coast, as well as the districts of Kars and Ardahan in eastern Anatolia. In addition, the Ottoman government was obliged to introduce fundamental reforms in Thessaly and Armenia. Great Britain, France, Germany, and Austria could not tolerate Russia’s expansionist policies and its growing influence in the Balkans. The European powers agreed to meet in Berlin at a new peace conference designed to partition the European provinces of the Ottoman Empire in such a way as to prevent the emergence of Russia as the dominant power in the Balkans.
The Congress of Berlin, which began on June 13, 1878, was a turning point in the history of the Ottoman Empire. When it ended a month later, on July 13, the Ottoman Empire was no longer a major power in the Balkans. The Ottomans lost 8 percent of their territory and 4.5 million of their population. The majority of those who left the empire were Christians. Tens of thousands of Muslim refugees from the Balkans and the Caucasus fled int
o the interior of the empire. The large Bulgarian state that had been created three months earlier at the Treaty of San Stefano was divided into three separate entities (Finkel: 491; Shaw: 2:191). The region north of the Balkan Mountains and the area around Sofia were combined into a new autonomous Bulgarian principality that recognized the suzerainty of the sultan, but for all practical purposes acted as a Russian satellite. The region lying between the Rhodope and Balkan Mountains, which corresponded with Eastern Rumelia, was established as a semiautonomous region under its own Christian governor, who was to be appointed by the sultan and supervised by European powers (Shaw: 2: 191). The third area, Thrace and Macedonia, remained under Ottoman rule (Jelavich: 360).
The Congress of Berlin did not provide Greece with any new territory. Instead the powers demanded that Greece and the Ottoman Empire enter into negotiations on establishing their new boundaries, including the status of Thessaly and Epirus. Austria was granted the right to occupy and administer Bosnia-Herzegovina as well as the Sancāk (Sanjāk) of Novi Pazar, a strip of land that separated Serbia from Montenegro (Jelavich: 360). While the congress recognized Serbia, Romania, and Montenegro as independent states, the Romanian state was forced to hand southern Bessarabia to Russia and in return receive Dobrudja (Jelavich: 360; Zürcher: 75). Russia also received the districts of Batumi, Kars, and Ardahan, thereby establishing military control over the eastern shores of the Black Sea and an important strategic land bridge to Anatolia (Hurewitz: 1:190). The British received the island of Cyprus. By handing Albanian-populated areas and towns to Montenegro and Greece, the European powers ignited a new nationalist movement among a proud people who had faithfully served the Ottoman state on many occasions in the past (Jelavich: 361–366). Thus Albanians, with their emerging national movement, would replicate the model set by the Greeks, the Serbs, the Romanians, and the Bulgarians and demand their independence.
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