The Ottoman Empire was an ugly affair, but they had the right idea. The rulers in Turkey were fortunately so corrupt that they left people alone pretty much–were mostly interested in robbing them–and they left them alone to run their own affairs, and their own regions and their own communities with a lot of local self determination. —Noam Chomsky
TheOttoman Empire (Ottoman Turkish: دولت عليه عثمانيهDevlet-i ʿAlīye-i ʿOsmānīye, lit. 'The Sublime Ottoman State'; Turkish:Osmanlı İmparatorluğu or Osmanlı Devleti) was anempire that controlled much ofSoutheast Europe,Western Asia, andNorthern Africa between the 14th and early 20th centuries.
Let’s turn to a favorite area for the enthusiasts of the culture hypothesis: theMiddle East. Middle Eastern countries are primarilyIslamic, and the non–oil producers among them are very poor, as we have already noted. Oil producers are richer, but this windfall of wealth has done little to create diversified modern economies inSaudi Arabia orKuwait. Don’t these facts show convincingly thatreligion matters? Though plausible, this argument is not right, either. Yes, countries such asSyria andEgypt arepoor, and their populations are primarilyMuslim. But these countries also systemically differ in other ways that are far more important for prosperity. For one, they were all provinces of the Ottoman Empire, which heavily, and adversely, shaped the way they developed. After Ottoman rule collapsed, the Middle East was absorbed into theEnglish andFrench colonial empires, which, again, stunted their possibilities. After independence, they followed much of the former colonial world by developing hierarchical, authoritarian political regimes with few of the political and economic institutions that, we will argue, are crucial for generating economic success. This development path was forged largely by the history of Ottoman andEuropean rule. The relationship between the Islamic religion and poverty in the Middle East is largely spurious.
Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson,Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty (2012)
Sovereignty andkingship are never decided by academic debate. They are seized by force. The Ottoman dynasty appropriated by force thegovernment of theTurks, and reigned over them for six centuries. Now theTurkish nation has effectively gained possession of its sovereignty… This is an accomplished fact… If those assembled here … see the matter in its natural light, we shall all agree. Otherwise, facts will still prevail, but some heads may roll.
The Ottoman Empire was an ugly affair, but they had the right idea. The rulers inTurkey were fortunately socorrupt that they left people alone pretty much–were mostly interested in robbing them–and they left them alone to run their own affairs, and their own regions and their own communities with a lot of local self determination.
Noam Chomsky, Delivered at the First Annual Maryse Mikhail Lecture “No peace without justice; no justice without truth” The University of Toledo, March 4, 2001.[1]
The Ottoman Empire was, of course, much more than a military machine. A conquering elite (like theManchus inChina), the Ottomans had established a unity of official faith, culture, and language over an area greater than theRoman Empire, and over vast numbers of subject peoples. For centuries before 1500 theworld of Islam had been culturally and technologically ahead ofEurope. Its cities were large, well-lit, and drained, and some of them possesseduniversities andlibraries and stunningly beautiful mosques. Inmathematics,cartography,medicine, and many other aspects ofscience andindustry—in mills, gun-casting, lighthouses, horsebreeding—the Muslims had enjoyed a lead. The Ottoman system of recruiting futurejanissaries fromChristian youth in the Balkans had produced a dedicated, uniform corps of troops. Tolerance of other races had brought many a talentedGreek,Jew, andGentile into the sultan’s service—aHungarian wasMehmet’s chief gun-caster in theSiege of Constantinople. Under a successful leader likeSuleiman I, a strongbureaucracy supervised fourteen million subjects—this at a time whenSpain had five million andEngland a mere two and a half million inhabitants.Constantinople in its heyday was bigger than any European city, possessing over 500,000 inhabitants in 1600.
Paul Kennedy,The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500-2000 (1987)
Yet the Ottoman Turks, too, were to falter, to turn inward, and to lose the chance ofworld domination, although this became clear only a century after the strikingly similar Ming decline. To a certain extent it could be argued that this process was the natural consequence of earlier Turkish successes: the Ottoman army, however well administered, might be able to maintain the lengthy frontiers but could hardly expand farther without enormous cost in men and money; and Ottoman imperialism, unlike that of theSpanish,Dutch, andEnglish later, did not bring much in the way of economic benefit. By the second half of the sixteenth century the empire was showing signs of strategical overextension, with a large army stationed incentral Europe, an expensivenavy operating in theMediterranean, troops engaged inNorth Africa, the Aegean,Cyprus, and theRed Sea, and reinforcements needed to hold the Crimea against a risingRussian power. Even in theNear East there was no quiet flank, thanks to a disastrous religious split in theMuslim world which occurred when the Shi’ite branch, based inIraq and then inPersia, challenged the prevailing Sunni practices and teachings. At times, the situation was not unlike that of thecontemporary religious struggles inGermany, and the sultan could maintain his dominance only by crushing Shi’ite dissidents with force. However, across the border the Shi’ite kingdom of Persia underAbbas the Great was quite prepared to ally withEuropean states against the Ottomans, just asFrance had worked with the “infidel”Turk against theHoly Roman Empire.
Paul Kennedy,The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500-2000 (1987)
With this array of adversaries, the Ottoman Empire would have needed remarkable leadership to have maintained its growth; but after 1566 there reigned thirteen incompetent sultans in succession. External enemies and personal failings do not, however, provide the full explanation. The system as a whole, like that of Ming China, increasingly suffered from some of the defects of beingcentralized,despotic, and severelyorthodox in its attitude toward initiative,dissent, andcommerce. An idiot sultan could paralyze the Ottoman Empire in the way that apope orHoly Roman emperor could never do for all Europe. Without clear directives from above, the arteries of thebureaucracy hardened, preferringconservatism to change, and stiflinginnovation. The lack of territorial expansion and accompanying booty after 1550, together with the vast rise in prices, caused discontented janissaries to turn to internal plunder.Merchants andentrepreneurs (nearly all of whom were foreigners), who earlier had been encouraged, now found themselves subject to unpredictabletaxes and outright seizures ofproperty. Ever higher dues ruinedtrade and depopulated towns. Perhaps worst affected of all were thepeasants, whose lands and stock were preyed upon by thesoldiers. As the situation deteriorated, civilian officials also turned to plunder, demanding bribes and confiscating stocks of goods. The costs of war and the loss ofAsiatic trade during the struggle with Persia intensified the government’s desperate search for new revenues, which in turn gave greater powers to unscrupulous tax farmers
Paul Kennedy,The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500-2000 (1987)
So there is no singleEuropean people. There is no single all-embracing community of culture and tradition among, say,Warsaw,Amsterdam,Berlin andBelgrade. In fact, there are at least four communities: the NorthernProtestant, theLatinCatholic, theGreekOrthodox, and theMuslim Ottoman. There is no singlelanguage - there are more than twenty. (...) There are no real Europeanpolitical parties (...). And most significantly of all: unlike theUnited States, Europe still does not have a common story.
The Ottoman padishahs (emperors), also known as sultans, were initially a dynasty of and golden extraordinarily dynamic conquerors. The succession demanded a large number of heirs, cages who were produced by a numerous harem of potential mothers of future sultans. However, once a padishah had succeeded, this multitude ofprinces was a constant threat to his throne, a problem new sultans increasingly solved by murdering all their brothers. Troublesomeharem girls orprincesses who interfered too much in politics were killed also. In the East, it was forbidden to shed royal blood and thus fromMongolia to theBosphorus, princes were killed by being suffocated, crushed in carpets by horses or elephants, or strangled with a bowstring. The girls were sown up in sacks and dropped into the Bosphorus. WhenSuleiman the Magnificent was informed by his favourite wife, the blonde Slavic Roxelana, that his own son Mustafa had been plotting against him, he summoned the prince and watched as he was asphyxiated before him. A similar fate befell one of Roxelana’s sons, Bayezid, after he betrayed the sultan and briefly took up with thePersian shah; Bayezid’s four sons were despatched in the same way.
The Turkish empire was divided in spite ofBritain’s promise. The Sultan was made a prisoner inConstantinople.Syria was absorbed byFrance.Smyrna andThrace were swallowed byGreece, whileMesopotamia andPalestine were taken possession of by theBritish. InArabia, too, a ruler was created who would support theBritish. Even the Viceroy admitted that some of the conditions of peace could not but offend theMuslim community. It has been a heart-breaking episode for theIndian Muslims, and how canHindus stand unaffected when they see their fellow countrymen thus in distress?
From the 14th through the early 20th century, theMiddle East consisted of a hybrid civilization composed of various tribes and peoples stretching from theBalkans down through the Arabian Peninsula under the auspices of the Ottoman Empire.To its promoters,Constantinople administered a multicultural society that balanced ethnic and religious differences into a harmonious whole. To its detractors, the Ottoman regime was a decadent, degenerateruling class that lived above thepoverty of itsservants and relied upon an endless supply ofslaves to feed itsmilitary and royal harems. In the end, economic and political weakness led to the empire’s unraveling, asnationalism in the wake of thefirst world war broke the back of the empire and led it to the carve up into themodern Turkish state and the surrounding nations.
These different blocs in the Turkish Empire...always conspired againstTurkey; because of the hostility of these native peoples, Turkey has lost province after province -Greece,Serbia,Rumania,Bulgaria,Bosnia,Herzegovina,Egypt, andTripoli. In this way, the Turkish Empire has dwindled almost to nothing.
Mehmed Talat, Quoted in "A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility" - by Taner Akçam, Paul Bessemer - History - 2006 - Page 92
The Turkes have a custome, when they are maisters of any Province, to extermine all the native Nobility, chiefely these of the blood-royall of the Countrey: And neverthelesse they permit to all and every one of theirs to live and follow his owne Religion as he pleaseth without violence or constraint.
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