history
Land Empires in the Age of Imperialism, 1800-1870
Lecture 13
Prelude to Revolution: The Eighteenth Century Crisis
What were the benefits and the drawbacks to the Ottoman Empire of the reforms adopted during the Tanzimat period?
The Ottoman Empire
After French withdrawal from Egypt, Muhammad Ali seized control and began a French-influenced modernization program.
1.In 1798, Napoleon invaded Egypt and defeated the Mamluk forces he encountered there. Fifteen months later, after a series of military defeats, Napoleon returned to France, seized power, and made himself emperor. His generals had little hope of holding on to power and, in 1801, agreed to withdraw. Muhammad Ali emerged as the victor in the ensuing power struggle;
2.Muhammad Ali used many French practices in an effort to build up the new Egyptian state. He established schools to train modern military officers and built factories to supply his new army;
3.In the 1830s, his son Ibrahim invaded Syria and started a similar set of reforms there. However, European military pressure forced Muhammad Ali to withdraw to the present-day borders of Egypt and Israel.
4.Muhammad Ali remained Egypt’s ruler until 1849, and his family held onto power until 1952.
The Ottoman Empire
His successors continued the program and attacked the Ottoman Empire, but they were thwarted by the European powers.
4.At the end of the eighteenth century, Sultan Selim III introduced reforms to strengthen the military and the central government and to standardize taxation and land tenure. These reforms aroused the opposition of Janissaries, the nobility, and the ulama. Tension between the Sultanate and the Janissaries sparked a Janissary revolt in Serbia in 1805. Serbian peasants helped to defeat the Janissary uprising and went on to make Serbia independent of the Ottoman Empire. Selim also upended his reform program in 1806, too late to prevent a massive military uprising in Istanbul in which Selim was captured and executed before reform forces could retake the capital.
The Ottoman Empire
The Greek insurrection, European intervention, and Egyptian attack drove the westering reform efforts of Mahmud II and its successors.
5.The Greeks gained independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1829. Britain, France, and Russia assisted the Greeks in their struggle for independence and regarded the Greek victory as a triumph of European civilization;
5.Sultan Mahmud II believed that the loss of Greece indicated a profound weakness in Ottoman military and financial organization. Therefore, Mahmud used popular outrage over the loss of Greece to justify a series of reforms that included the creation of a new army corps, elimination of the Janissaries, and reduction of the political power of the religious elite. Mahmud’s secularizing reform program was further articulated in the Tanzimat (restructuring) reforms initiated by his successor Abdul Mejid in 1839.
The Ottoman Empire
The most comprehensive reform initiative was Abdul Mejid’s Tanzimat program.
6.Military cadets were sent to France and Germany for training, and reform of Ottoman military education became the model for general educational reforms in which foreign subjects were taught, foreign instructors were employed, and French became the preferred language in all advanced scientific and professional training;
7.Educational reform stimulated growth of the wealth and influence of urban elites. The reforms also brought about unexpected cultural and social effects that ranged from the introduction of European clothing styles to the equal access to the courts for all male subjects, to equalization of taxation;
8.The public rights and political participation granted during the Tanzimat were explicitly restricted to men. The reforms decreased the influence of women, while at the same time, the development of a cash economy and competitive labor market drove women from the work force.
The Ottoman Empire
The Crimean War marked the transition from traditional to modern warfare and drew the Ottoman Empire into greater involvement with European commerce.
9.Russia’s southward expansion at the expense of the Ottoman Empire led to the Crimean War. An alliance of Britain, France, and the Ottoman Empire defeated Russia and thus blocked Russian expansion into Eastern Europe and the Middle East;
10.The Crimean War brought significant changes to all combatants. The Russian government was further discredited and forced into making additional reforms, Britain and France carried out extensive propaganda campaigns that emphasized their roles in the war, and the French press promoted a sense of unity between Turkish and French society;
The Ottoman Empire
The Crimean War marked the transition from traditional to modern warfare and drew the Ottoman Empire into greater involvement with European commerce.
11.The Crimean War marked the transition from traditional to modern warfare. The percussion caps and breech-loading rifles that were used in the Crimean War were the beginning of a series of subsequent changes in military technology that included the invention of machine guns, the use of railways to transfer weapons and men, and trench warfare;
12.After the Crimean War, the Ottoman Empire continued to establish secular financial and commercial institutions on the European model. These reforms contributed to a shift of population from rural to urban areas and the development of professional and wage laborer classes, but they did not solve the regime’s fiscal problems;
The Ottoman Empire
Declining power and prosperity led to the rise of the Young Ottomans.
13.Problems associated with the reforms included the Ottoman state’s dependence on foreign loans, a trade deficit, and inflation. In the 1860s and 1870s, discussion of a law that would have permitted all men to vote left Muslims worried that the Ottoman Empire was no longer a Muslim society. This worry may have contributed to Muslim hostilities against Christians in the Ottoman territories in Europe, Armenia, and the Middle East;
14.The decline of Ottoman power and wealth inspired a group of educated urban men known as the Young Ottomans to band together to work for constitutionalism, liberal reform, and the creation of a Turkish national state in place of the Ottoman Empire. A constitution was granted in 1876, but a coup soon placed a more conservative ruler on the throne; the Ottoman Empire thus continued its weakened existence under the sponsorship of the Western powers until 1922.
Russia and Europe
How did Russian Empire maintain its status as both a European power and a great Asian land empire?
Russia and Europe
Russian society resembled Ottoman society, but Alexander I undertook top-down westernizing reforms.
1.In 1700, only three percent of the Russian population lived in cities, and Russia was slow to acquire a modern infrastructure and modern forms of transportation.
Nicholas I’s suspicion of Western ideas stalled reform and slowed industrial development.
2. While Russia aspired to Western-style economic development, fear of political change prevented real progress. Nonetheless, Russia had more in common with the other European nations than did the Ottoman Empire.
Russia and Europe
Slavophiles opposed westernizers, and, after the Crimean War, embraced Pan-Slavism, contributing to Russophobia in the West.
3. Slavophiles and Westernizers debated the proper course for Russian development;
4. The diplomatic inclusion of Russia among the great powers of Europe was countered by a powerful sense of Russophobia in the west;
Russia and Asia
Russian expansion southward and eastward added vast territories to the empire and caused frication with China, Japan, Iran, and the Ottoman Empire;
1.By the end of the eighteenth century, the Russian Empire had reached the Pacific Ocean and the borders of China. In the nineteenth century, Russian expansion continued to the south, bringing Russia into conflict with China, Japan, Iran, and the Ottoman Empire;
2.Britain took steps to halt Russian expansion before Russia gained control of all of Central Asia;
Russia and Asia
Resistance to Alexander I’s bureaucratic reforms sparked the Decemberist revolt, which stiffened Nicholas I’s hostility to Western ideas.
3. Russia had had cultural contact with Europe since the late seventeenth century. And the reforms of Alexander I promised more on paper than they delivered in practice. In addition, opposition to reform came from wealthy families who feared reform would bring about imperial despotism, a fear that was realized during the reign of Nicholas I. Furthermore, the Decemberist revolt was carried out by a group of reform-minded military officers upon the death of Alexander I. Their defeat amounted to the defeat of reform for the next three decades;
Russia and Asia
The humiliation of the Crimean War drove Alexander II’s reforms, including emancipation the serfs.
4. Heavy penalties were imposed on Russia in the treaty that ended the Crimean War. The new tsar, Alexander II, was called upon to institute major reforms. Under Alexander II, reforms and cultural trends begun under his grandfather were encouraged and expanded. The nineteenth century saw numerous Russian scholarly and scientific achievements, as well as the emergence of significant Russian writers and thinkers.