Some Reflections on the Decline of the Ottoman Empire

Abstract

The decline of great Empires has always been a subject of fascinated interest, and in our own day has a new poignancy, both for those who rejoice and for those who weep at the passing of Imperial greatness. The decline of the Ottoman Empire has also received its share of attention, though not of serious study. (2) The half-millennium of Ottoman history is still one of the most neglected of fields of study, and recent research, both in Turkey and in the West, while it has increased our knowledge of the beginnings and of the end of the Empire, has shed but little light on the processes of its decline. The modern Turkish historians, naturally enough, have devoted most of their attention to the early greatness and recent revival of their people, while such Western scholars as have discussed the subject have been content, in the main, to follow the analysis of the Ottoman historians themselves. Often, too, they have been influenced by the national historiographic legends of the liberated former subject peoples of the Empire in Europe and Asia. These have tended to blame all the defects and short-