Betül Başaran, Selim III, Social Control and Policing in Istanbul at the End of the Eighteenth Century. Between Crisis and Order

Abstract

The year that Selim III ascended the throne in 1789, assuming the title of sultan from his uncle Abdülhamid I, was the year that the revolutionary movement in France had begun. What followed the revolutionary turmoil in France spread throughout Europe, intrinsically changing the structure and absolutist regimes of European states. It is this particular period in time that Başaran chooses to begin her account—namely the first three years of Selim III’s reign—to better elucidate the Ottoman Empire’s reaction to the radical changes surrounding it. In modern historiography Selim III was primarily recognized as the ”reform-minded” sultan who pioneered the modernization of the Ottoman military and administrative by turning to contemporary Western models. This modernizing attempt was only to be hindered by the successive wars with Austria and Russia, and internal discord, eventually resulting in Selim’s deposition and subsequently costing him his life.