How Successful Was The Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman Empire was one of the longest and most powerful empires in the World that lasted six centuries. The empire was established by Osman I as a small but powerful state in present-day Turkey in the late 1200s and grew into a vast empire whose territories covered lands in Asia Minor, North Africa, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe as far as modern-day Czech Republic. The Empire was strategically divided into a central and provincial government. The Ottomans established a bureaucracy through which the sultan, the supreme leader and his council made key decisions, maintained absolute power and controlled of the administrative, military and economic affairs of the empire. This system enabled the Sultan to appoint provincial and religious who ensured that

provinces’ residences paid taxes. Further the provincial governments handled local administrative matters and administered justice through their religious leaders. The Ottoman’s lands acquisitions and conquests were successful due in part to the skills of their military fighting elite unit, the Janissary Corps (Janissary). This military unit started out with young Christian male ages of 12-20 years old from the Balkans through the Devsirme System. The Janissaries were well respected for their military proficiency, and they became a very influential in Ottoman politics. Secondly, the Ottomans devised an organizational structure that allowed their subject to practice their own religions. The Sultan recruited Christian subjects and other non-Muslims for high level positions in his court.

The rise of the Ottomans can be created to the Sultans’ tolerances for their subjects. They allowed defeated Europeans Christian princes to remain in control of their territories as long as they paid tribute to the Ottomans and join the armies as mercenaries to assist in furtherance o the Ottomans interests. The Sultan established the millet system, under which Jews and Christians were permeated to live in separate communities for which the Sultan appointed a religious leader who ensured that members of the community paid taxes. Further, the Ottoman’s unification of the all lands notably in the Middle East under the Islamic faith helped establish a common identity for all the people who might have been divided by ethnicity, sect, tribal customs, practices, and traditions.

After six centuries of successes, failures, and internal conflicts, the empire slowly began to decline, primarily due to the weakening of its provinces, poor leadership from the central government and economic problems.

The central government lost its ability to control its territories. The Sultan lost much of his absolute control over the administrative and military affairs of the empire, relinquishing some of his authority to provincial leaders who seized the opportunities to expand their governing powers and acquired new wealth and lands once belong to the empire. As a result agricultural production plummeted, prompting government officials to impose heavy tax quotas on the already struggling peasants. Local leaders consolidated their powers and no longer answer to the central government and appointed their own successors from their relatives. The Janissary, who was once the protectors of the empire and the sultan, became one of the empire’s biggest problems as they rebelled against reforms. These factors weakened the once powerful Ottoman Empire and curbed its ability to face off more modern and technologically advanced European forces, which led to massive territorial losses in Europe to the

Europeans.

The empire was threatened by the Russian Empire who was emerging as a major power in Europe and sought to influence Christian minority groups to revolt against the Ottomans for their own strategic and economic interests. Secondly, Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798 and manhandled the Egyptian military forces opened up Ottoman’s Middle East territories to European commerce and trade. As the Europeans sought the cheap resources throughout the empire, the Ottomans became financially dependent on Europe. They relinquished or made concessions through which tax exemptions for to Europeans merchants and products were granted and special privileges to Christians, local agents and European nationals conducting business activities in the Ottoman’s lands (Shaw & Çetinsaya). Hence, The Europeans became the greatest benefactors of the internal conflicts between different factions in the empire.

The failure of the Sultan’s bureaucratic system created a vacuum that prompted fanaticism, sectarianism, economic havoc, and new political identities fueled by separatist and nationalist movements notably in Eastern Europe. The military decline of the Ottomans enabled Europeans to shift the balance of power, which made it possible for many ethnic groups to break away from to empire to create their own independent states. By the end of the Greek war of independence, similar national liberation movements sprang up in lands controlled by the Ottomans throughout Southeastern Europe, with each movement having its own characteristics (Brown, 1984). Further, The European’s nationalist movement was motivated among other things by the French Revolution, cultural differences with the Ottoman Muslim majority, and had greater ties to Europe than the Middle East. The inhabitants of the lands controlled by the Ottomans were connected to the rest of Europe by language, religion and shared similar ideologies.