Section 1

Ottoman Empire In Decline

Nature of Decline:

Military Decline:

• Ottoman Empire reached limits of its expansion

• Armies had lots of defeats

• Armies didn’t advance their military tactics

• Military capacity declined

• Ottoman realm became vulnerable to its neighbors

• Less effective government

• Government lost power in the provinces to its own officials

• Semi independent governors had formed private armies to support the sultan in Istanbul

  • Wanted recognition of autonomy

• Independent rulers turned administration to their own interests,

  • Collected taxes for themselves

  • Deprived state of revenue

Territorial Losses:

• Ottoman government maintained authority in Anatolia and Iraq

• Russian forces took over poorly defended territories in the Caucasus and central Asia

• Austrian empire took western frontiers

• Nationalist uprisings forced ottoman rulers to recognize the independence of Balkan provinces (Greece and Serbia)

• Lost Egypt to Muhammad Ali

• Trade declined through the Ottoman Empire

Economic Difficulties:

• European producers became more efficient and their goods flowed into the Ottoman Empire

• People protested the foreign imports

• Ottoman exports were raw materials, but did not make enough money

• Ottoman empire depended on foreign loans

• Ottoman empire couldn’t pay interest on its own loans and had to accept foreign administration for its debt

The Capitulations:

• Agreements that exempted European visitors from Ottoman

  • European powers had jurisdiction over their own citizens

  • Avoided burden of administration for communities of foreign merchants

• Ottoman officials thought of capitulations as humiliating and intrusions

• Ottoman state lacked resources to maintain its bureaucracy

• Rise in corruption

• Increased taxation

• Exploitation of peasantry

• Decline of Agricultural production

Reform and Reorganization:

The Reforms of Mahmud II:

• Separatist ambitions of local rulers persuaded Mahmud to launch his own reform program

• Reforms viewed as restoration of traditional Ottoman military

• Proposal for new European style army brought conflict with Janissaries

• Mahmud massacred the Janissaries when they wanted to protest

• Wanted more effective army

• Ottoman soldiers learned European military style tactics and used European weapons

• Ottoman military recruits studied at military and engineering schools

• Created a system of secondary education

• Tried to transfer power to the sultan and his cabinets

  • Taxes rural landlords

  • Abolished the system of military land grants

  • Undermined Ulama (Islamic leadership)\

• Established European style ministries, made new roads and built telegraph lines and created a postal service

• Ottoman empire had shrunk but was more powerful than before

Legal and Educational Reform:

• Reform sped up during the Tanzimat (Recognition) era

• Tanzimat reformers drew from enlightenment thought and constitutional foundations of western European states

• Wanted to make the Ottoman law acceptable to Europeans (To get rid of Capitulations)(wanted to reclaim sovereignty)

• Used French Legal system to create codes of conducts

• Safeguarded the rights of their subjects

  • Guarantee of public trials

  • Rights of Privacy

  • Equality before the law

• Legal reform undermined the ulama and enhanced the authority of the Ottoman state

• Ulama previously controlled religious education

  • Educational reform undermined ulama

  • Took control of education from them

• Comprehensive educational plan from primary to university

  • Primary was even free and compulsory

Opposition to the Tanzimat:

• Tanzimat provoked opposition, including critique from:

  • Religious conservatives

    • Thought that reformers posed a threat to the Islamic foundation

  • Young Ottomans

    • Wanted individual freedom, local autonomy and political decentralization

    • Wanted establishment of a constitutional government

  • High Level Bureaucrats

    • Wanted the sultan to accept a constitution

The Young Turk Era:

Reform and Repression:

• Group of radical dissidents from the Ottoman bureaucracy seized power in a coup

• Formed a cabinet:

  • Sultan: Abdul Hamid

• Reformers convinced Sultan to accept a constitution that limited his authority and established a representative government

• The sultan then suspended the constitution and killed many

• Sultans rule created many liberal opposition groups

The Young Turks:

• Ottoman Society for Union and Progress

• Founded by exiled ottoman subjects living in Paris

• Promoted suffrage, equality, freedom of religion, free public education, secularization of the state, and the emancipation of women

• Inspired army coup that forced Abdul Hamid to restore parliament and the constitution

• Dethroned the sultan and established Mehmed V Rashid as a puppet sultan

• Wanted to maintain Turkish Hegemony

• Policies aggravated relationships between Turkish rulers and subject peoples outside of the Anatolian heartland

• Syria and Iraq resisted Ottoman rule

The Russian Empire Under Pressure:

Military Defeat and Social Reform:

The Crimean War:

• Russia expanded into Manchuria, Caucasus, and Central Asia

• Interference in the Balkan Provinces of the Ottoman empire

• Russia tried to establish a protectorate over the weakening of the Ottoman empire

• Threatened the balance of Power in Europe

• Caused Crimean war

• Revealed weakness of the Russian Empire

• Russian armies were defeated in their own territory

• Russia’s economy could not support expansion ambitions

• Wanted to restructure social order

Emancipation of the Serfs:

• Opposition of Serfdom had grown among radicals and high officials

• Many believed it had become an obstacle to economic development and a source of rural instability and peasant revolt

• Tsar Alexander II abolished serfdom although it remained in practice for decades

• Terms were unfair to most peasants

• Serfs won their freedom, had their labor obligations gradually cancelled and gained opportunities to become landowners

• Peasants had to pay redemption tax for most of the lands they received

• Most peasants were in debt for the rest of their lives

• Emancipation resulted in little increase in agricultural production

Political and Legal Reform:

• Created elected district assemblies (Zemstvos)

  • To deal with local issues of health, education and welfare

• All classes elected representatives

• Zemstvos remained subordinate to tsarist autocracy

• Revised the judiciary system

  • Changed to western European models

• Legal reforms also instituted a trial by jury for criminal offences and elected justices

• Encouraged emergence of attorney’s and other legal experts.

Industrialization::

The Witte System:

• Count Sergei Witte, minister of finance.

• Wanted to remove “unfavorable conditions which hamper the economic development of the country”

• Implemented policies to stimulate economic development

• Railway construction which linked far away regions, stimulated development of other industries

• Trans-Siberian railway:

  • Caused exploitation and industrialization

• Remodeled the state bank and encourages savings

• Supported infant industries with protective tariffs

• Secured large foreign loans from western Europe to finance industrialization

Industrial Discontent:

• Witte system was crucial to industrialization of Russia

• Lots of Peasant rebellion and strikes by industrial workers

• People didn’t like the low standard of living created by Witte’s system

• Industrial growth generated an urban working class

• Horrible working conditions

• Bad wages and poorly housed

• Government limited maximum working day to 11.5 hours

• Government prohibited the formation of trade unions and outlawed strikes

• Economic exploitation and the lack of political freedom made workers want a revolution

• Foreign investors, a Russian business class and Russian entrepreneurs benefitted

Repression and Revolution:

Protest:

• Antigovernment protest and revolutionary activity increased

• Hope was created by government reforms

• Peasants were unhappy with what industrialization had created

• Intelligentsia: A class of intellectuals

  • Wanted political reform and thorough social change

  • Drew inspiration from western European socialism

  • Despised individualism, materialism, and capitalism

  • Wanted social system that kept Russian cultural traditions

• Anarchists wanted to vest all authority in local governing councils elected by universal suffrage

Repression:

• Anarchists and other radicals traveled to rural areas to enlighten peasantry

• Police arrested the idealists, Tsarist authority sentenced them to prison and sent the rest away

• Tsarist authorities were scared of the radicalism

• Censored publications

• Sent secret police to infiltrate and break up dissident organizations

• Only encourages people to engage in conspiratorial activities

• In the Baltic provinces, Poland, Ukraine, Georgia, and central Asia, people used political groups and schools as foundations for separatist movements

  • Wanted autonomy or independence from Russian Empire

• Tsarist officials repressed the use of other languages and restricted educational opportunities to only people loyal to tsarist state

Terrorism:

• Land and Freedom party

  • Promoted assassination of prominent officials to pressure the government into political reform

• The People’s Will

  • Assassinated Alexander II

  • Brought the era of reform to an end

  • Caused Tsarist autocracy to adopt an uncompromising policy of repression

• Nicholas II Became ruler

  • Oppressed people

• Tsarist government embarked on mission to expand into east Asia

• Clashed with Japanese and began the Russo-Japanese war

• Japanese destroyed the Russian navy

The Revolution of 1905:

• Russian Military defeats brought up social and political discontent

• Group of workers marched on the Stars Winter palace to Petition Nicholas for a popularly elected assembly

• Government troops killed them all (Bloody Sunday Massacre)

• Caused unrest and peasants wanted to seize property of their landlords

• Soviets: Urban workers created councils to organize strikes and negotiate with employers

  • Elected delegates from factories and workshops served as members of the soviets

• Government had to create legislative assembly

• Created Duma, Russia’s first parliamentary institution

  • Lacked power