An educational prescription for the Sultan: Hüseyin hilmi paşa's advice for the maladies of empire

Abstract

Depicted in word and in caricature as the 'sick man of Europe' throughout much of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, the Ottoman Empire was commonly portrayed in the West as beitig about to expire. Although the dynamics of imperial decline (e.g., political, fiscal, institutional, technological, martial, and territorial) still constitute matters of scholarly debate and variously inform current attempts at a periodization of Ottoman history,1 there can be little disagreement that the empire was under considerable pressure both internal and external in these final decades. Among the better histories written on this period of the empire are those that have gone beyond linear narratives of decline and that have instead examined dynamics within Ottoman politics and society that were geared toward inhibiting and sometimes even toward accelerating the eventual dissolution of the empire.2 Just as the Ottoman state was not passive amid processes promoting its demise, however, neither were local populations devoid of agency or voice as the state sought to implement policies aimed at creating a cohesive citizenry and a stronger imperial state.3 This study critically examines a vital example in Ottoman histories of education with respect to state policy formulation and implementation on the one hand, and local communities responding and finding voice on the other. In 1903, Hiiseyin Hilmi Pa~a4 was appointed as Inspector General for the Imperial Vildyets (or provinces) of Rumelia (Rumeli Vilayat-1 5ahane MtfettiAi)5 for the Hamidian state (a term used frequently by scholars to refer to the reign of Sultan Abduilhamid II, 1876 to 1909). This former Ottoman governor of Yemen and a future grand vizier in the Young Turk/CUP era6 was sent to the Balkan region in order to conduct investigations and provide informed advice to the newly created Rumeli Provinces Reform Commission concerning his findings. His fact-finding mission and recommendations were intended to help promote peace and justice in the region. When violence escalated in the Balkans in the early 1900s, the Ottoman Empire attempted to restore order and protect its people. The brutal nature of the events taking place in the region at the turn of the century were vividly described in the Western press, albeit with a bias that emphasized the suffering of Christians while disregarding similar conditions experienced by the region's Muslims. Assuming the position of 'protector' for their coreligionists in the Balkans, Russia and Austria-Hungary, among other signatory powers at the 1878 Berlin Treaty,