Ottoman “Reform” Efforts

Abstract

Centuries of continuous competitive interaction with Western Europe and Russia left traditional Ottoman society destabilized and fragmenting. Western Europe’s unique secular and scientific development proved almost invincible in direct competition with that of non-Western societies. From the late seventeenth century, Orthodox Eastern European Russia, beginning with Tsar Peter I the Great, recognized that fact and adapted Western European models as best it could, eventually ensuring its position as a “European” Great Power. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, only one other non-Western society managed to preserve its independent cultural existence in the face of overwhelming pressures on its native institutions exerted by direct contact with the West: The Ottoman Empire. It did so by making adaptations—euphemistically termed “reforms” by westerners—in response to mounting Western imperialist and nationalist pressures during the nineteenth century. Although those adaptations often were halfhearted and only partially effective—earning the Ottoman Empire the cynical title of “Sick Man of Europe” bestowed by Russian Tsar Nicholas I—they succeeded in preserving the empire into the early twentieth century, despite its losing half of its Balkan possessions.