The decline of the Ottoman Empire
Alec Kenningham
To the British historian Bernard Lewis, perhaps the most influential post-war historian concerned with Islam and the Middle East, the decline and ultimate fall of the Ottoman Empire was due to the reformist movements (and the subsequent conservative resistance) that emerged throughout the nineteenth century. 1 Lewis, following tradition, looked to the nineteenth century as the period in which the Empire began truly to decline, 2 and, while scho larly literature has generally moved beyond Lewis’ argument that reformist movements instigated a decline, it largely remains wedded to the belief that the answer to this question lies in that century. In the 1970s there was a focus on the economics of the Empire, with many analysing the manner in which the Ottomans became entangled in international debt that led to a quasi-loss of sovereignty through the intrusion of the OPDA. The 1990s saw another shift of focus, this time towards the rise of nationalism and the flaws in the Ottomans’ colonial occupation of its territories. 3 There is a common factor amongst these evolving opinions: the first is the Whiggish construction of a themed narrative that inexorably leads to the nineteenth century, as it was only in this century that recognisable, traceable forces began to emerge in earnest. There is a conceptual problem here, as the first section of this essay seeks to demonstrate: these arguments find a simultaneity between the symptoms and the causes of decline, mistaking the former for the latter. In fact, the Empire peaked in the late sixteenth century, 4 thus, arguably was in some sort of decline since then, certainly territorially. This hints at much more deep-rooted issues for the Empire that began, somewhat incongruously, around the time of its apogee, and simply culminated in the nineteenth century. Historians such as Lewis contradict themselves by simultaneously accusing the Sultans of being obstinate in regard to adopting western ideas, as well as being flawed in doing so. 5 This was the general opinion in the 1950s, 6 against the backdrop of the Cold War, which encouraged an almost fanatical enthusiasm for democracy amongstmany westerners, and the recent victory of democracy over fascism which caused many historians to look for the narrative of such a victory in Turkey. 7 It is unsurprising, therefore, that the event to which many historians focus on as the turning point in the Empire’s fortunes, is the Tanzimat Proclamation in 1839, an attempt by Sultan Mahmud II to liberalize and transform the Empire, building a new style of bureaucracy and economy modelled on the west. It is this top-down reform, which tied the Empire to the west, contrary to the will of the imperial bureaucracy, that these historians regarded as having tipped the Empire into decline, as it caused a divide that proved impossible to overcome. Lewis notes that it is only in the mid to late nineteenth century that Ottoman architecture began to use western, classical techniques, most notably the Dolmabahçe Palace, a lavish
1 Lewis 2001. 2 Ibid. 3 Emrence 2007. 4 Finkel 2006 . 5 Lewis 2001. 6 Emrence 2007. 7 Lewis 2001.
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