Semantron 20 Summer 2020

The decline of the Ottoman empire

decline in powerful grassroots movements within the Empire. The movement that stands out as having damaged state control was nationalism. Nationalist agitation began in the Ottoman Empire in the early 18 th century and began to grow into separate movements by the end of that century. Breuilly notes that the nationalist movements that emerged under both the Ottomans and the Hapsburgs at similar periods tended to grow in strength during periods of civil reform under Selim III and Joseph II in 1789 and 1765 respectively. 13 However, recent historians have generally claimed that the reason for the growing nationalist movements under the Ottomans was not reform, but the breakdown in the symbiosis between state and peoples, that is to say a lack of connection felt between the people and their rulers. This caused a lack of cohesion among the peoples of the Empire that resulted in a rather colonial feel in the controlled territories. 14 As in the 1950s, when historians focused on reformist movements, and the 1970s when that focus shifted to an obsession with economics, historians since the 1990s have, in exploring nationalist movements, remained fixated on the nineteenth century. Although there is certainly value in shifting the focus fromhigh politics and court intrigue to grassroots movements, historians fail to see that the problem for the Ottomans in cases of nationalist movements was not the strength of those nationalist movements, but the weakness of the state in asserting itself over all its people; it is telling that even as the Empire fell the bureaucracy was almost exclusively Turkish and as they were liberated, previously controlled groups retained, close to untouched, their culture and practices that pre-dated their occupation. 15 Upon detailed inspection of the Ottoman Empire’s problems during the nineteenth century, it becomes clear that many of the problems it faced were either necessary for an Empire attempting to catch up with the great powers, or only became problems due to other faults more deep-rooted in the organization and culture of the Empire. To find these real reasons for decline one must look further back in time, starting at the Empire’s zenith, and search there for the reasons and causes of decline. The end of the reign of Suleiman I is often viewed as the peak of Ottoman fortunes, the end of the empire’s ‘golden age,’ 16 with many looking at the naval Battle of Lepanto as the turning point, after which the state of the empire ‘rapidly deteriorated.’ 17 Suleiman came to the throne in 1520 and ruled for 46 years, during which his aggressive military policy brought him victory over the Romanians, the Hun garians, the Knights of St John in Crete and the Austrians. Despite his failed siege of the latter’s capital at Vienna in 1529, the campaign was successful in ensuring Hungary became a vassal state. The tenth Sultan also conquered Iraq and earned his nativ e title, ‘lawgiver,’ while also turning the Ottoman state into an ‘economic powerhouse.’ 18 Suleiman was certainly good at his job; however, he was not beyond fault, failing to achieve a lasting peace with the Safavids on the eastern front with that signed in 1555. After Suleiman, the image of Sultan evolved over the next century from that of a man of warfare and active rule to that of an effete tyrant cocooned behind the doors of the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul. 19 It is a common accusation that a large factor in the decline of the Empire lay at the feet of ‘bad’ Sultans, but

13 Breuilly 2016. 14 Emrence 2007.

15 Black 1999. 16 Finkel 2006 . 17 Davis 2001. 18 Encyclopedia Brittanica: Suleyman The Magnificent. 19 Finkel 2006 .

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