July 5

 The Late Ottoman Empire and Reforms 

Gelvin, 69-89 and 106-116

Nikki Keddie, “Change in the Long Nineteenth Century” in Women in the Middle East: A History (Princeton University Press, 2007), 60-74.  

Ebru Boyar and Kate Fleet, “The Nineteenth Century” in A Social History of Istanbul, (Cambridge University Press, 2010), 271-327. 


---

Optional: 
Rethinking ‘Decline’ in the Second Ottoman Empire,” Ottoman History Podcast, February 17, 2017

***

Prompts for Reading Responses:



Pick one of the following prompts. For either, consider the life of Wasif Jawhariyyeh (as described by Gelvin), the experiences within Ottoman Istanbul (as described by Boyar and Fleet), and the changing roles of women (as described by Nikki Keddie):

How did cities change and new public spheres emerge at the turn of the century? How did people experience those changes in different ways?

Or....


What is defensive developmentalism? Describe how these policies impacted individuals’ lives and shaped forms of national/religious/communal belonging.

1 comment:

  1. Frank Beane

    Defensive Developmentalism


    In the beginning of the early nineteenth century, Middle Eastern sultans and local dynasts such as Mehmet Ali, undertook deliberate policies to strengthen their states in the face of internal and external threats and in so doing, “made their governments more proficient in managing their populations and their resources”.

    Following the Protestant Reformation and the religious wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Europe separated itself into “highly efficient political units”, each seeking to frustrate the strategic ambitions of the other. As a result of technological breakthroughs and institutional developments, European merchants were able to monopolize long-distance trade and competed among themselves for markets in the Middle East.

    In the sixteenth century, the Ottoman Empire controlled a huge expanse of territory, stretching from North Africa to southeastern Europe. However, a series of military defeats shifted the balance of power from Istanbul to the West of Central Europe. In 1656, the Venetians were able to successfully destroy the Ottoman fleet, and in 1699, the Habsburg Empire forced the Ottoman army out of contemporary Hungary, Croatia, and Romania. Mustafa II understood that military reform was essential for his personal survival, and as a result, initiated a program that sought to “borrow recruitment, disciplinary, organizational, tactical, and technological strategies from European states”. Ahmed III and Mahmud I continued a policy of modernization, and during the reign of Selim III, a new professional officer corps, known as the ‘nizam-i-jedid’, was created. The military adopted Western “forms of drill and armament” and protected the imperial government. Secure, the state introduced new policies “against tax farming, restructured the central bureaucracy, and established provincial councils based on representative principals”. Yet, the Ottoman Empire was not demographically homogeneous, and as a result, it was almost impossible to dictate economic policy, or institute a cultural reform, from Istanbul. The Sultan, was therefore powerless to promoted the development of the empire, because “the needs of Lebanese silk producers, as well as the organization of their communities, differed dramatically from those of the cotton producers of nearby Palestine, not to mention those tobacco cultivators of the Balkans”.

    Mehmet Ali, “also began his program of defensive developmentalism with military reform,” hoping a strong army would protect his position in Egypt from both European nation states, and the Ottoman empire. He was initially successful, and proved so effective that Istanbul was forced to recognize Egyptian autonomy. He expanded south into the Sudan and east into Arabia, and in so doing, obtained valuable raw materials such as gold, coffee, and slaves. Because the soil around the Nile River was ideal for the cultivation of cash crops, Mehmet Ali abolished tax farming. Agricultural lands that had once been used for substance farming were used exclusively for cotton, tobacco, and opium. Yet, while this integrated Egypt into the world economic system, it also had negative social consequences. The peasantry, once independent, became wage laborers dependent on the production of commodities that fluctuated greatly. During the American Civil War, the Northern blockade of Southern ports “cut off Europe’s supply of Confederate cotton and drove prices up”. However, the price of cotton plummeted in the summer of 1865, and because Egyptian revenues were “directly dependent on the international marketplace,” the Egyptian economy collapsed.

    Overall, defensive developmentalism essentially failed to protect the Ottoman Empire and Mehmet Ali’s Egypt from Western political and economic intrusion. While the creation of a professional army could and did secure a degree of domestic stability, the cost eventually led to an over dependence on a Europe that dominated the economic system.

    ReplyDelete