After the death of Stephen the Great, his son, Bogdan III (r. 1504–1517), continued to acknowledge the suzerainty of the Ottoman sultan and paid him an annual tribute. By 1513 Moldavia had become a full-fledged, tribute-paying vassal-state of the Ottoman Empire. In 1541, during the reign of Süleyman I, the tribute imposed on Moldavia was increased, and the prince of Moldavia, Petru Rareș, “was forced to accept a guard of 500 janissaries, but it was agreed that no mosques and no military fiefs or colonies should be established in Moldavia, and that it should always be ruled by a prince of the Greek Orthodox faith” (Pitcher: 133).
For the next 300 years the principality remained subject to the sultan, except for a few brief periods when Moldavia rejected Ottoman rule, for example, when John the Terrible (r. 1572–1574) rebelled against a demand for higher tribute payments; when Michael the Brave, prince of Wallachia, united his principality with Moldavia and Transylvania in 1600; and when Moldavia recognized Polish suzerainty (1601–1618). As the bread basket of the Ottoman Empire, Wallachia and Moldavia continued to supply Istanbul with meat and grain and commanded the important commercial routes of the Black Sea and the Danube that were used by the Ottomans to transport their armies to fight against the Habsburgs (Shaw: 1:184).
With the signing of the Treaty of Karlowitz on January 26, 1699, the Ottoman Empire ceased to be the dominant power in the Balkans. The European states were quick to recognize the altered balance of power. The Russian czar already had used the presence of the Swedish monarch at the Ottoman court as a convenient justification to mobilize his army. He also had sought and received commitments of support from the princes of Wallachia and Moldavia. As the news reached Istanbul of Peter the Great’s military plans, hostilities became unavoidable, and the Ottoman government declared war on Russia in December 1710. Fortunately for the Ottomans, the Habsburgs did not provide any support to Peter. Having recognized the threat from an aggressive Russia, the Tatars and Cossacks came together with the goal of coordinating their raids against Peter’s army. With his rear threatened and the princes of Wallachia and Moldavia reneging on their promise to provide support for his troops, Peter, who had crossed the Pruth (Prut) River into Moldavia in July 1711, was forced to retreat. As the Russian army was about to cross the Pruth on its return journey, however, the Ottoman forces struck and surrounded the czar and his troops. Peter was forced to surrender his cannons, return the Ottoman-held territories he had occupied, and remove the forts he had built along the frontier with the Ottoman Empire. In return, the Ottomans allowed Russian merchants to trade freely in their territory and agreed to mediate a peace treaty between Russia and Sweden (Jelavich: 231). One of the most important implications of the Russo-Ottoman war was the change in the political structure of Moldavia and Wallachia. The secret negotiations between the princes of the two Romanian principalities and the Russian government convinced the sultan that he should remove the native princes and have governors appointed directly by the Porte (Jelavich: 101–102). The new governors were selected from the Greek Phanariote families of Istanbul, who had played an important role within the Ottoman state as the dragomans of the sultan (Jelavich: 102). With the rise of these new governors to power, the population in Moldavia and Wallachia began to develop a deep resentment toward the ascendancy of the Greek language and culture in their administrative system (Shaw: 1:231).
Throughout the 18th century Moldavia emerged as a target of Russian expansion in the Balkans. As Ottoman power in the principality declined, Russia’s influence and intervention increased. On October 8, 1768, after the Ottomans declared war on Russia, the Russian armies attacked Moldavia, destroying Ottoman defenses on the Danube and then pushing into Wallachia in September 1769. The native Romanian elite, who resented the Greek Phanariote governors (hospodars), joined the Russians and called on the populace to rise in support of the invading army. When the Ottomans finally managed to organize a counteroffensive, their army was destroyed by the Russians on August 1, 1770, at Kagul in Moldavia. Moldavia and Wallachia were lost, and the Russian army was poised to invade Bulgaria and even Istanbul. On July 21, 1774, the Ottoman Empire and Russia signed the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca, south of the Danube in present-day Bulgaria. According to this treaty, the Ottomans relinquished their rule over Crimea, while the Russians agreed to withdraw their forces from Wallachia, Moldavia, and the Caucasus. The sultan also consented to the establishment of Russian protection over all Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire.
Although a new war with Russia and the Habsburgs, which started in 1788, resulted in a series of military defeats, the empire was saved by the rivalries and conflicts among the European powers as well as by the French Revolution, which erupted in 1789. The Habsburgs captured Bosnia, parts of Moldavia, and eventually Belgrade in October 1789, while the Russians occupied Akkerman, entered Wallachia, and captured the city of Bucharest in November. The Ottomans could neither organize a counteroffensive nor maintain their defenses, particularly when Sultan Abdülhamid I (r. 1774–1789) died in April 1789 and the new sultan, Selim III (r. 1789–1807), removed the grand vizier Koca (Koja) Yusuf from his post. Fortunately for the Ottoman Empire, both European powers were anxious to end the hostilities and seek a peaceful resolution. Catherine the Great was worried about the Swedish attempt to incorporate Finland, and the Habsburgs were greatly alarmed by revolts in Hungary and the Netherlands, as well as by the growing power and influence of Russia in the Balkans. Both shared a common concern over a new Triple Alliance among Prussia, the Netherlands, and Britain. The Habsburgs agreed to a new peace treaty with the Ottoman Empire, signed in Sistova on August 4, 1791. They returned Bosnia, Serbia, and the parts of the principalities they had occupied in return for the Ottoman promise of fair treatment of the sultan’s Christian subjects and the recognition of the Habsburg emperor as their protector. The peace with the Habsburgs encouraged the new sultan, Selim III, to organize a new campaign against Russia. This effort, however, led to a devastating defeat in April 1791. The Ottomans agreed to a new peace treaty, signed at Jassy on January 9, 1792, which was based on the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca. The sultan recognized the Russian annexation of the Crimea and sovereignty over Georgia, in return for Russian withdrawal from Moldavia and Wallachia and the establishment of the Dniester River as the boundary between the two empires.
In 1774 the Habsburgs seized Bukovina in northwestern Moldavia and incorporated the strategic region into their expanding empire in the Balkans. In the Treaty of Bucharest, signed between Russia and the Ottoman Empire in 1812, Moldavia lost its eastern region of Bessarabia to czarist Russia. In the 19th century Romanian nationalism emerged as a potent ideological force. Much of this nationalism was directed against not only the Ottoman Turks but also the Greek Phanariote families, who ruled the principality on behalf of the sultan. A nationalist revolt in 1821 finally ended the Phanariote rule in Moldavia. The Treaty of Edirne, signed in September 1829 at the conclusion of another war between the Ottoman Empire and Russia, forced the sultan to recognize the independence of Greece and the autonomy of Moldavia, Wallachia, and Serbia.
Under Russia’s guidance a series of political and economic reforms was initiated, and a constitution was adopted in 1832. The Treaty of Paris, signed on March 30, 1856, at the conclusion of the Crimean War (1853–1856), forced Russia to withdraw from Wallachia and Moldavia, which along with Serbia were to regain their autonomy under Ottoman rule. By surrendering southern Bessarabia to Moldavia, Russia’s access to the Danube was blocked. Following Russian defeat in the Crimean War, Moldavia was reorganized as an autonomous state under Ottoman suzerainty. In 1859, influenced by Romanian nationalism, the ruling assembly of Moldavia voted to unite with Walachia under Prince Alexandru Ion Cuza to form the single state of Romania. Formal unity was, however, delayed until 1861. On March 3, 1878, the Treaty of San Stefano was signed between Russia and the Ottoman Empire. Among other clauses, this treaty called for the establishment of an autonomous Bulgarian state, stretching from the Black Sea to the A
egean, which Russia would occupy for two years. Serbia, Romania, and Montenegro were also to be recognized as independent states, while Russia received the districts of Batumi, Kars, and Ardahan in eastern Anatolia. The Congress of Berlin, held between June 13 and July 13, 1878, replaced the Treaty of San Stefano and recognized the independence of Romania.
See also: Battles and Treaties: Congress of Berlin; Peoples and Cultures: Wallachia; Sultans: Abdülmecid; Bayezid I
Further Reading
Abou-El-Haj, Rifa’at Ali. “Ottoman Diplomacy at Karlowitz.” In Ottoman Diplomacy: Conventional or Unconventional, edited by A. Nuri Yurdusev, 89–113. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.
Black, Henry Campbell. Black’s Law Dictionary. 6th ed. St. Paul, MN: West Publishing Company, 1990.
Hitchins, Keith. A Concise History of Romania. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2014.
Inalcik, Halil. The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age 1300–1600. Translated by Norman Itzkowitz and Colin Imber. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1973.
Jelavich, Barbara. History of the Balkans: Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. Vol 1. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
Jelavich, Charles, and Barbara Jelavich. The Establishment of the Balkan National States, 1804–1920. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1977.
Kaplan, Robert D. Balkan Ghosts: A Journey through History. New York: Picador, 2005.
Karpat, Kemal H., and Robert W. Zens. Ottoman Borderlands: Issues, Personalities and Political Change. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003.
King, Charles. The Moldovans: Romania, Russia and the Politics of Culture. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 2012.
Pitcher, Donald Edgar. An Historical Geography of the Ottoman Empire. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1972.
Shaw, Stanford J. History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey. 2 Vols. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1976.
Serbian Orthodox Church
The Serbian state, established by the Nemanjić dynasty in the 12th century, reached the zenith of its power under Stefan Dušan (r. 1331–1355), who elevated the Serbian Orthodox Church “to the rank of patriarchate with its seat in Peć” (Fotić: 517–518).
The Serbian people, who had inhabited vast areas in modern-day southern Hungary, Kosovo, Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Croatia, were unified under a single institution, namely the Serbian Orthodox Church and its religious hierarchy, which constituted an important segment of the Serbian elite (Fotić: 517–518). Established in 1219 as an autocephalous member of the Orthodox communion, the Serbian Orthodox Church followed the traditions of Orthodox Christianity but was not subordinate to an external patriarch, such as the ecumenical patriarch in Istanbul. Serbian Orthodox religious texts were written in the old Serbian-Slavonic language, in which services were also conducted.
Though the Serbian prince, Lazar (r. 1371–1389), was defeated and killed at the battle of Kosovo Polje in 1389, the Serbs resisted direct Ottoman rule for decades before they were fully conquered in 1459. The memory of the defeat and martyrdom of Serbia’s last independent monarch was preserved by the Serbian Orthodox Church. During long centuries of Ottoman rule, the Patriarchate of Peć “felt itself the heir to the medieval Serbian kingdom and was well aware of its national mission” (Fotić: 518). The church referred to lands under its ecclesiastical jurisdiction as “Serbian Lands” despite the varying religious and ethnic character the territories exhibited. In this manner, the Serbian Orthodox Church became the repository of the national ideal and kept alive in the minds of the Serbian faithful their unique identity and glorious past. Through their membership and participation in their church, the Serbian people preserved their religion, as well as their language and historical identity, which distinguished them from their neighbors such as the Hungarians and Albanians.
At the time of the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453, aside from the Greek Orthodox Church there were two other autocephalous churches in existence: in Peć in present-day southern Hungary for the Serbs, and in Ohrid for the Bulgarians (Jelavich: 49). As the power of the Orthodox Church in Istanbul—backed and supported by the Ottoman government—increased, the authority and influence of the Serbian and Bulgarian churches waned, allowing the patriarch to secure their abolition in 1463 (Jelavich: 49). Serbian and Bulgarian bishops were replaced by Greek priests, who were dispatched by the patriarch from Istanbul. This policy ignited deep resentment among the local clerical establishment and the native population, who would later accuse the Greek clergy of trying to assimilate them by banning Serbian and Bulgarian liturgy and imposing Greek language and culture.
To appease the Serbs, Süleyman I restored the Serbian Patriarchate in 1557 and appointed a relative of his grand vizier, Sokollu Mehmed Pasha (Mehmed Pasha Sokolović), as the patriarch. This restoration played an important role in safeguarding the Serbian national and cultural identity under a unified religious authority. During the “Long War of 1593–1606,” the Ottoman war against the Holy League (1683–1699), and the “Habsburg–Ottoman wars of 1716–18, 1736–39, 1788–91,” however, the Serbs “took an active part as opponents of the Ottomans” and “suffered severe consequences” (Fotić: 518). One result was that the Ottoman government abolished the Serbian patriarchate in 1776 and placed it under the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Istanbul, igniting strong anti-Greek sentiment among the Serbs, who resented the increasing power of Greek bishops. The resistance of Serbian churches to Ottoman rule led to Serbian Orthodoxy becoming inextricably linked with Serbian national identity and the new autonomous Serbian principality that emerged after the first Serbian national uprising (1804–1813) led by George Petrović or Karageorge (Karadjordje). The Serbian Orthodox Church finally regained its status as an autocephalous church in 1879, a year after Serbia gained its full independence.
See also: Battles and Treaties: Kosovo, Battle of; Peoples and Cultures: Bulgarians and the Bulgarian Orthodox Church; Rebels: Karadjordje
Further Reading
Fotić, Aleksander. “Karadjordje (Djordje Petrović; Kara George).” In Encyclopedia of the Ottoman Empire, edited by Gábor Ágoston and Bruce Masters, 307–308. New York: Facts On File, 2009.
Fotić, Aleksandar. “Serbia”. In Encyclopedia of the Ottoman Empire, edited by Gábor Ágoston and Bruce Masters, 517–519. New York: Facts On File, 2009.
Fotić, Aleksandar. “Serbian Orthodox Church”. In Encyclopedia of the Ottoman Empire, edited by Gábor Ágoston and Bruce Masters, 519–520. New York: Facts On File, 2009.
Imber, Colin. The Ottoman Empire, 1300–1650: The Structure of Power. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.
Inalcik, Halil. The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age 1300–1600. Translated by Norman Itzkowitz and Colin Imber. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1973.
Jelavich, Barbara. History of the Balkans: Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. Vol 1. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
Jelavich, Charles, and Barbara Jelavich. The Establishment of the Balkan National States, 1804–1920. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1977.
McCarthy, Justin. The Ottoman Turks: An Introductory History to 1923. London and New York: Wesley Longman Limited, 1997.
McCarthy, Justin. The Ottoman Peoples and the End of Empire. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2001.
Shaw, Stanford J. History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey. 2 vols. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1976.
Somel, Selçuk Akșin. Historical Dictionary of the Ottoman Empire. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2003.
Sugar, Peter. Southeastern Europe under Ottoman Rule, 1354–1805. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1977.
Wallachia
One of two Romanian-populated principalities that joined the other Romanian principality of Moldavia in 1859 to form the modern state of Romania. Called Eflak in Ottoman Turkish, Wallachia was a principality in southeastern Europe located north of the Danube River and south of the Southern Carpathian mountain range.
Wallachia was founded by Basarab I (r. 1330–1352) after he revolted against Hungarian king Charles I in 1330 and secured Wallachian independence. The new principality prospered from its rich agricultural lands and from the flow of trade passing through it between northern Europe and the Black Sea. It faced dangers from Hungary, which tried to restore its domination, as well as from the Ottoman Turks, who steadily extended their control over the Balkan Peninsula during the 14th and 15th centuries.
After Ottoman armies annexed northern Bulgaria in 1393, the ruler of Wallachia, Mircea the Old (r. 1386–1418), was forced to confront the threat posed by the Ottomans. On May 17, 1395, Mircea fought the armies of the Ottoman sultan Bayezid I. Though the Wallachian prince was victorious on the battlefield, he had to relinquish Dobrudja, which was occupied by the Ottomans. Mircea eventually was forced to accept the suzerainty of the Ottoman sultan and pay an annual tribute. Beginning with Mircea the Old, the princes of Wallachia ruled as vassals of Ottoman sultans until the 19th century, when Wallachia joined Moldavia and formed the independent state of Romania (Sugar: 22).
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