Emerging Nationalisms, Declining Empire?

Part 1: Politics and Power (1), (2)

Princes walking in the harem, an indication of the confined upbringing of potential sultans. Earlier sultans spent their childhoods riding in the provinces, observing rough statecraft and learning the ways of rule. Later sultans took their exercise in confinement. It is no wonder that the quality of sultanate declined.  

"Like all other non-Western cultures, the people of the Ottoman Empire did not go through the Renaissance. Nor did they take part in the educational, scientific, philosophical, economic and industrial revolutions that followed upon the Renaissance in Europe. ...Whatever, the reason, it is true that Europeans passed first into the modern technological age. All the great non-European empires, including the Ottomans were left essentially outside of European development." 

"The elements of European development that most affected the Ottoman Empire were unquestionably military and economic. The Ottomans might have been able simply to ignore European intellectual development if it had been solely a matter of art, literature and philosophy, but they could not ignore the presence of European armies at their gates, armies made stronger than their own through technology. They could and did try to ignore the effects of the new European economy, especially because economic matters were poorly understood."

The Sultans and the Court

The Advance of the Ottoman Empire until the time of Suleyman was tied to the greatness of its leaders, and the retreat of the Empire was tied to its leaders' weakness. More than other systems of government the Ottoman system was dependent on the ruling abilities of the head of state. In theory and in practice, the Ottoman government was the wishes of the sultan.  

Much has been written of the invidious effect of palace life on the potential sultans. Europeans loved to portray life in the harem as passing from one vice to another, leaving morally debilitated wrecks to take the throne. Since these conclusions were based on a remarkable lack of knowledge of the actual workings of the harem or the personal lives of its members, it is probably better to acknowledge that the most significant problem was lack of experience. To lead a great empire properly when one's practical knowledge only spanned the limits of one very small part of Istanbul was an impossible task.

[a slightly different perspective, as presented by Perry, p.111,2]

Among the obvious reasons for decline was a degeneration in the quality of rulers.... Sometimes a child, a lunatic, or some other totally incompetent prince ascended the throne, and the real rulers were the shifting cliques of courtiers, military commanders, queen mothers, and concubines. Overlooking the fact that some of the most capable figures in Islamic history were women and that men provided their share of bad rulers, past writers mistakenly treated the influence of the harem as a major factor in the Ottomans' decline. The relevant point is that the sultan had always been the keystone of the state; and a bad one, who relied on cliques of either sex, weakened the whole structure.

The Court System and the Devshirme

When Suleyman the Magnificent died the Devshirme had already dominated the administration of the Ottoman government for more than 100 years. The path to high positions in the government was through the clientage system. Young, able men attached themselves to rising leaders of the Devshirme. If the leaders failed, there might be a chance for an able junior to switch sides and go over to his previous mentor's political enemies. This system fostered the creation of political parties that were based on individuals, not party platforms. As alliances were made and broken, the composition of the parties changed. Development of personal loyalties, mutual political favours and a keen knowledge of the shifting sands of politics were [sic] necessary to personal success.

Only very crafty politicians made it to the top. This merit system was remarked upon by contemporary Europeans, who saw it as a contrast to their own lands, where incompetents advanced, owing their preferment to birth, not ability.

The system was also open to corruption. Extensive bribes were one way to guarantee the success of ones 'political party'. The temptation to recoup the cost of bribes from the government treasury was overwhelming, as was the temptation to reward political cronies with government jobs. 

Some of the learned men in the Ottoman Empire saw the handwriting on the wall and gave warning, but no one paid any attention to them. One of these, Kohi Bey, wrote a report on the state of the empire in 1630, when Sultan Murat IV had reached the age of twenty-one. In unusually clear language Kohi Bey described the degeneration of the empire and enumerated the causes in his report. Among other things, he mentioned that the sultan had made himself "invisible", preoccupied, as he was, with his harem. Because of the influence of the harem "the sultan no longer governs himself and neither is the grand vazir allowed to do so; power is actually in the hands of negro eunuchs and purchased slave girls.

... Another writer in the same century, the celebrated historian Haji Khalifa claimed that the state was sick and diagnosed the reasons for the illness as high taxation, oppression of the masses and the sale of offices to the highest bidder. [Arjami and Ricks]

[In the early seventeenth century...] public order broke down all over the Empire, even in Istanbul. It appeared the Empire might dissolve from internal decay. ...

Reforms

In 1632 Murat IV actually took charge... [He] was the exemplar of what has been called traditional reform. His reform of the operation of the Ottoman state stymied Ottoman enemies, reinvigorated the Empire for a time, and allowed it to continue much as it had been for centuries, a strong, traditional Middle Eastern empire. Murat's reforms did not however, change the fundamental flaws that were to make the ottomans the prey of European Imperialists.

Murat and his advisors could not help but see the decay around them. They assumed that it had resulted from a failure to keep to old Ottoman standards. Reformers saw that everything had been better during the reign of Suleyman the Magnificent and drew the obvious conclusion. ... The solution to governmental decay was to become better Ottomans, to return to the values of the Empire at its height. This Murat began to do with a vengeance.

... Like many a modern reformer, Murat believed that the greatest downfall of his people was moral laxness. He saw foreign substances, which in his day were coffee and tobacco, as the leading edge of depravity. The shops in which coffee and tobacco were consumed were potential hotbeds of seditious talk, so they were closed. Both substances were forbidden. Other lapses from morality were strictly punished, and woe betide the artist or poet who offended religious or political propriety. It was a bad time for sin.

Murat's reforms worked, at least as long as he was sultan. Celali revolts in Anatolia were put down mercilessly. A renewed army was able to defeat the Safavids and retake Baghdad in 1638. The northern borders were held against Polish incursions. Civil peace throughout the Empire was greatly improved. For contemporaries, it may have appeared that the glory of the Ottoman Empire as it had been under Suleyman had returned....

In fact the situation of the Ottoman Empire was very different from what it had been one hundred years before. Murat had made the system work as well as it could, but what was needed was another system.

[Perry would agree with the last statement but gives us a different angle and indeed, extends the influence of Murat's reforms...p.113]

From time to time strong individuals attempted to restore Ottoman grandeur. Several sultans were helpless in the face of opposition from ulama and Janissaries, but some carried out campaigns of reform through ruthless cruelty toward corrupt people. Sultan Murat IV brought an upturn in Ottoman fortunes with large-scale executions that become more and more arbitrary, allegedly claiming 100,000 victims.

From 1656 to 1661 an octogenarian "slave" strongman, Mehmed Koprulu, became grand visier. He accepted the office only on the condition that the sultan and the shaykh al-Islam [the millet system at work] give approval in advance to all his actions. Again a campaign on behalf of honesty and austerity was pursued through bloodthirsty means. Much of this was repeated by a series of Koprulu's descendants, who gave the grand vizierate a nearly dynastic character throughout the rest of the century. But no reformer at this time sought to make any basic changes in the Ottoman system.

The assumption was always that the machine of government had simply to be restored so that it would work again as in the days of Sulayman the Magnificent.

Reforms and the 'Tulip Period'

[On questions of reform and Islam, refer to the supplemental readings.]

[From Perry, 113] One cannot understand the gradual decline of the Ottoman state after the late sixteenth century ... simply in terms of incompetent individuals and misdirected institutions. Rather it basically reflected the ebbing fortune of Islamic civilization while Christian Europe's edge grew to indisputable predominance by the late eighteenth century.

The years from 1718 to 1730 in the Ottoman Empire came to be known as the "tulip era', as gardens in which that plant was cultivated became the rage among the ruling class. Along with these came an aping of European buildings, furniture, clothing, and other superficial matters that would have been inconceivable in former times. Only a century before, awe for the East had induced King Charles II of England pretentiously to adopt Persian dress at his court for a short time. Even now the notion of Eastern inferiority was not so completely jelled in the west as to prevent some craze for Ottoman styles and for tulips.

Not all the reforms of the tulip era were so superficial, although the ideas still prevailed that no basic changes in Islamic civilization need accompany the adoption of specific European techniques. The Ottoman ambassador to Paris was instructed to seek out useful knowledge, and he wrote in approving tones about some of the exotic social customs there, including the appearance of women in public. A few individuals bothered for the first time to learn French. Among numerous Western-inspired reforms, the most notable was the establishment of a printing press on the initiative of Ibrahim Muteferrika, a Hungarian convert to Islam. A ruling from the shaykh al-Islam approved this innovation, but only on the condition that books on religion be excluded from such reproduction. In turn, western science and ideas seeped in faster by way of printed translations. Another convert to Islam, a French renegade, the Comte de Bonneval, was instrumental in bringing about several reforms in the army, including the establishment of schools for teaching modern mathematics and medicine for military use. Even a conservative reaction, which brought a Janissary revolt and the fall of Sultan Ahmad and his modernizing grand vizier in 1730 could not stop the herodian trend in the long run.

[McCarthy, p.184]

The immediate result of Tulip Period was a popular uprising. Poor people in Istanbul saw that new palaces and European finery were increasing while they often went hungry. Taxes were increased, at least some of which went on expensive imports of unnecessary fripperies from Europe. Prejudice against the works of the infidel West was already present, and the excesses of Ahmed II (1703-1730) seemed to confirm all the fears of religious and cultural conservatives.

Next Lecture: Part 2: War, Economy and Society