Place
The Ottoman Empire, historically also known as the Turkish Empire or Turkey, was a state that spanned much of Southeastern Europe, West Asia, and North Africa from the 14th century to the early 20th century, centred in modern-day Turkey. It also controlled parts of southeastern Central Europe between the early 16th and early 18th centuries.
The empire emerged from a beylik, or principality, founded in northwestern Anatolia in c. 1299 by the Turkoman tribal leader Osman I. His successors conquered much of Anatolia and expanded into the Balkans by the mid-14th century, transforming their petty kingdom into a transcontinental empire. The Ottomans ended the Byzantine Empire with the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 by Mehmed II. Further conquests by Selim I led the Sultans to adopt the title of caliph. With its capital at Constantinople and control over a significant portion of the Mediterranean Basin, the Ottoman Empire was at the centre of interactions between the Middle East and Europe for six centuries. Ruling over diverse peoples, the empire granted varying levels of autonomy to its many confessional communities, or millets, to manage their own affairs per Islamic law. During the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent in the 16th century, the Ottoman Empire became a global power.
Modern academic consensus posits that the empire began to decline after defeat in the Second Siege of Vienna in 1683, but continued to maintain a flexible and strong economy, society and military into much of the 18th century. The Ottoman Empire fell behind technologically from the rest of Europe by the late 18th century as imperial authority fragmented. Further defeats from Austria and Russia culminated in the loss of territory, and with rising nationalism after the French Revolution, a number of new states emerged in the Balkans. Following Mahmud II's reign and the Tanzimat reforms over the course of the 19th century, the Ottoman state became more powerful and organised internally as a new Ottoman identity took hold. In the 1876 revolution, the Ottoman Empire attempted constitutional monarchy, before reverting to an absolute monarchy under Abdul Hamid II, following the Great Eastern Crisis.
Over the course of the late 19th century, Ottoman intellectuals known as Young Turks sought to liberalise and rationalise society and politics along Western lines, culminating in the Young Turk Revolution of 1908 led by the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), which reestablished a constitutional monarchy. However, following the disastrous Balkan Wars, the CUP became increasingly radicalised and embraced Turkish nationalism, leading to a coup d'état in 1913 that established a dictatorship.
In the 19th and in the start of 20th centuries, persecution of Muslims during the Ottoman contraction and in the Russian Empire resulted in large-scale loss of life and mass migration into modern-day Turkey from the Balkans, Caucasus, and Crimea. The CUP joined World War I on the side of the Central Powers. It struggled with internal dissent, especially the Arab Revolt, and engaged in genocide against Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks. In the aftermath of World War I, the victorious Allied Powers occupied and partitioned the Ottoman Empire, which lost its southern territories to the United Kingdom and France. The successful Turkish War of Independence, led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk against the occupying Allies, led to the end of the Ottoman sultanate in 1922.
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Economy Main article: Economic history of the Ottoman Empire Coins of the Sultanate of Rûm and the Ottoman Empire at Aydın Archaeological Museum Ottoman government deliberately pursued a policy for the development of Bursa, Edirne, and Istanbul, successive Ottoman capitals, into major commercial and industrial centres, considering that merchants and artisans were indispensable in creating a new metropolis. [ 1 ] To this end, Mehmed and his successor Bayezid, also encouraged and welcomed migration of the Jews from different parts of Europe, who were settled in Istanbul and other port cities like Salonica. In many places in Europe, Jews were suffering persecution at the hands of their Christian counterparts, such as in Spain, after the conclusion of the Reconquista . The tolerance displayed by the Turks was welcomed by the immigrants. A European bronze medal from the period of Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror , 1481 The Ottoman economic mind was closely related to the basic concepts of state and society in the Middle East in which the ultimate goal of a state was consolidation and extension of the ruler's power, and the way to reach it was to get rich resources of revenues by making the productive classes prosperous. [ 2 ] The ultimate aim was to increase the state revenues without damaging the prosperity of subjects to prevent the emergence of social disorder and to keep the traditional organisation of the society intact. The Ottoman economy greatly expanded during the early modern period, with particularly high growth rates during the first half of the 18th century. The empire's annual income quadrupled between 1523 and 1748, adjusted for inflation. [ 3 ] The organisation of the treasury and chancery were developed under the Ottoman Empire more than any other Islamic government and, until the 17th century, they were the leading organisation among all their contemporaries. [ 4 ] This organisation developed a scribal bureaucracy (known as "men of the pen") as a distinct group, partly highly trained ulama, which developed into a professional body. [ 4 ] The effectiveness of this professional financial body stands behind the success of many great Ottoman statesmen. [ 5 ] The Ottoman Bank was founded in 1856 in Constantinople. On 26 August 1896, the bank was occupied by members of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation . Modern Ottoman studies indicate that the change in relations between the Ottoman Turks and central Europe was caused by the opening of the new sea routes. It is possible to see the decline in the significance of the land routes to the East as Western Europe opened the ocean routes that bypassed the Middle East and the Mediterranean as parallel to the decline of the Ottoman Empire itself. [ 6 ] [ failed verification ] The Anglo-Ottoman Treaty , also known as the Treaty of Balta Liman that opened the Ottoman markets directly to English and French competitors, can be seen as one of the staging posts along with this development. By developing commercial centres and routes, encouraging people to extend the area of cultivated land in the country and international trade through its dominions, the state performed basic economic functions in the Empire. But in all this, the financial and political interests of the state were dominant. Within the social and political system they were living in, Ottoman administrators could not see the desirability of the dynamics and principles of the capitalist and mercantile economies developing in Western Europe. [ 7 ] Economic historian Paul Bairoch argues that free trade contributed to deindustrialisation in the Ottoman Empire. In contrast to the protectionism of China, Japan, and Spain, the Ottoman Empire had a liberal trade policy, open to foreign imports. This has origins in capitulations of the Ottoman Empire , dating back to the first commercial treaties signed with France in 1536 and taken further with capitulations in 1673 and 1740, which lowered duties to 3% for imports and exports. The liberal Ottoman policies were praised by British economists, such as John Ramsay McCulloch in his Dictionary of Commerce (1834), but later criticised by British politicians such as Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, who cited the Ottoman Empire as "an instance of the injury done by unrestrained competition" in the 1846 Corn Laws debate. [ 8 ] ^ İnalcık, Halil (1970). "The Ottoman Economic Mind and Aspects of the Ottoman Economy". In Cook, M. A. (ed.). Studies in the Economic History of the Middle East: from the Rise of Islam to the Present Day . Oxford University Press. p. 209. ISBN   978-0-19-713561-7 . ^ İnalcık, Halil (1970). "The Ottoman Economic Mind and Aspects of the Ottoman Economy". In Cook, M. A. (ed.). Studies in the Economic History of the Middle East: from the Rise of Islam to the Present Day . Oxford University Press. p. 217. ISBN   978-0-19-713561-7 . ^ Darling, Linda (1996). Revenue-Raising and Legitimacy: Tax Collection and Finance Administration in the Ottoman Empire, 1560–1660 . E.J. Brill. pp.  238– 239. ISBN   978-90-04-10289-7 . ^ a b Black, Antony (2001). The History of Islamic Political Thought: From the Prophet to the Present . Psychology Press. p. 197. ISBN   978-0-415-93243-1 . Archived from the original on 14 January 2023 . Retrieved 20 June 2015 . ^ İnalcık, Halil; Quataert, Donald (1971). An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, 1300–1914 . p. 120. ^ Donald Quataert, The Ottoman Empire 1700–1922 (2005) p 24 ^ İnalcık, Halil (1970). "The Ottoman Economic Mind and Aspects of the Ottoman Economy". In Cook, M. A. (ed.). Studies in the Economic History of the Middle East: from the Rise of Islam to the Present Day . Oxford University Press. p. 218. ISBN   978-0-19-713561-7 . ^ Paul Bairoch (1995). Economics and World History: Myths and Paradoxes . University of Chicago Press . pp.  31– 32. Read more on Wikipedia →
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