By Patricia H. Kushlis
The 150 years leading up to the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in 1920 should be required study for understanding the history behind the seemingly never ending conflicts from the Balkans to Eastern Turkey, the Caucasus to the Arabian Peninsula and Egypt to Algeria. Şükrü Hanioğlu, Princeton University professor of Near Eastern Studies, makes this painlessly possible through his readable, thoughtful and manageably-sized 241-page book entitled A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire and published by Princeton University Press in 2008.
I thought I had a pretty good grasp of the period and the region – especially with respect to the Balkans and Turkey – but I missed the tug and pull inside a highly decentralized empire as its leaders attempted to deal with the impact of modern technology, nationalisms and the rise of the West while at the same time fending off the expansionism of the Russian Empire in its quest for ever more territory and warm water ports all the while dealing internally with competing tribal chieftains and independently minded local and regional leaders from Bosnia to the Arabian Peninsula and beyond.(Photo right: Dolmabahçe Palace by PHKushlis 2006 - Photo Note: the Sultanate was moved from Topkapi to the European-style Dolmabahçe in 1843)
The Empire's Two Pillars
This vast – amorphous territory that at one time stretched from Sarajevo to Algers was ruled, at least on paper, by the Ottomans. It fundamentally rested on two geographic pillars – Rumelia (or the Balkans in Europe) and Anadolu (Anatolia or what is now Eastern Turkey in Asia).
These two regions were joined at the center by Constantinople – the multi-ethnic Ottoman capital and seat of the Sultanate located at the southern mouth of the Bosporus where Europe and Asia divided. It had been so since 1453. (Photo left: Sultan's Loge, Aya Sofia, Istanbul, by PHKushlis 2006; Photo right: Mouth of the Bosporous by PHKushlis 1984).
Yet once the Ottomans lost the Balkans to mostly Christian nationalist movements in the 19th century, the empire’s thrust shifted towards Asia, and particularly the Arab world where the moderate Islam of the Ottomans clashed with fundamentalist Wahabbi version of the Saudis. Meanwhile, the Egyptian Mamluks were, in reality, uncontrollable and nationalist unrest was breaking out in Anatolia as well.
Modernization's backlash
Hanioğlu tells us that, opposed to conventional wisdom, the Ottoman Empire had been grappling with modernization and the problems of acculturation for decades but that the technological tools which allowed the empire greater central control especially in terms of revenue collection produced a gigantic backlash throughout an empire composed of local leaders who preferred the existing decentralized, largely religious-based centuries old power sharing arrangements.
Same went for the introduction of the printing press – a major obstacle was not fear of the modernity that came with the press but that its use would put scores of irate manuscript copiers out of work.
Hanioğlu also argues that the empire’s fall – unlike the Soviet Union in 1991 – did not come from internal collapse but rather from a “new international order” in which powerful European leaders were interested in “seeing a weak Ottoman entity subdivided into autonomous zones open to European commerce and influence.”
What Europe Got Was Not What It Expected
What they got was a strong, secular Turkish government under the leadership of a military general named Ataturk, or father of the Turks. Not only did he take control of the country and establish the Turkish state, but he blocked the Soviets from expanding their control beyond the Black Sea, saved the country from the British sponsored Greek invasion and other foreign domination - albeit in ways not necessarily condoned today. Meanwhile, instability and nationalist based conflicts particularly in the Balkans smoldered and occasionally erupted while short-lived French and British colonialist rule spread over much of the Middle East beyond the Turkish borders. This lasted until the end of World War II.
Furthermore, Hanioğlu suggests that despite the fact that the Ottoman state did not have “the innate power to transform itself into a new kind of empire more suited to the modern age . . . its leaders might have prolonged its life considerably had they opted for armed neutrality in 1914” rather than siding with the losing Germans in the European balance of power game that led to World War I. Yet, a change in British policy towards the Middle East essentially forced the Ottomans into German arms.
Farewell, I hope, to the pinball theory of international relations
The importance of the interplay between external and internal factors – and the need to restore diplomatic history to its rightful place in academia as a part of all of this – is another of the many points Hagioğlu persuasively demonstrates through his study. At the very least, this book lays waste to a bankrupt theory of international relations which sees nations as single entities interacting with one another like pin balls – in a universe where domestic considerations are of no consequence. In this study of one of the world’s most important empires, in contrast, borders are demonstrably amorphous and relations among nations are as important in terms of domestic politics as they are externally.
M. Şükrü Hanioğlu, A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire, Princeton University Press, 2008.
