Signs from Allah: History, Science and Faith in Islam
110. The Tanzeemat of the Ottoman Empire - Part 6
By Professor Nazeer Ahmed
Concord, CA
Technology changes society. The printing press facilitated the growth of a vigorous media and the introduction of European ideas into the empire. Increased industrial employment coupled with a secular system of higher education produced a consumer-oriented middle class.
The emerging secular elite challenged the traditional power structure of the ulema and the landed aristocracy. The ulema had long benefited from their monopoly of the educational and judicial systems. The introduction of secular education and a uniform commercial code after the pattern of the French commercial code eroded this monopoly.
The power structure of the non-Muslim millets was similarly transformed. The Armenian Patriarch as well as the chief rabbi in Istanbul had to accept the oversight of elected councils dominated by laymen. The functions of the patriarchs and rabbis were confined to religious matters. The elected councils decided all other issues, such as taxation, education and community welfare. The religious establishment, both Muslim and non-Muslim, resented the reduction in their former power and privileges and their cooperation with the reforms was at best lukewarm.
The power of the Sultan, the religious establishment and the landed elite was reduced while the increasing power of the bureaucrats went unchecked. The increasing centralization of power produced a cadre of arrogant bureaucrats, cocky and self-assured that the direction they had charted for the empire was the correct one. This generated an intellectual backlash that sought to redress the erosion of the old institutions and to impose checks and balances on the bureaucrats. The men who led this movement were called the Young Ottomans who sought to restrain the tanzeemat bureaucrats through parliamentary democracy and a constitution. On the one hand they were impatient with the pace of the reforms; on the other, they wanted to transform yet retain the old institutions. They felt that the millet system had outlived its usefulness and they campaigned for equality of all Ottoman citizens under a single constitution, irrespective of their religion or nationality. Their efforts led to an indirectly elected parliament in 1876, but as we shall see, it was soon bogged down in procedural issues and was abandoned by Sultan Abdul Hamid II in 1879.
The reforms were taking place under the shadow of aggression from Russia, which had not given up its dream of capturing the Dardaneles, thus providing an outlet for its navy to the Mediterranean. Russia had shown in the war of 1828 that it had the military capability to penetrate the Turkish heartland and reach Istanbul. The military weakness of the Ottomans brought it into the vortex of European colonial politics. Austria and Russia both coveted the Balkans. The French had their eyes on Algeria and North Africa. The British desired to control Egypt as a passageway to their Indian Empire. All of these powers agreed on a dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire, but each had its own ideas about who would pick up the pieces.
The presence of a large number of Christian minorities in the Ottoman Empire provided the European powers ample opportunities to interfere in Ottoman affairs. In the 1850s, their conflicting interests led to a general war involving Russia, Britain, France and the Ottomans. The wrangling of the Christian minorities for privileges in Palestine provided the trigger. Since their conquest of Jerusalem in 1517, the Ottomans had tried to keep the peace between the various sects by a juggling act of balancing competing claims. Following the war of 1828-1829, the Russian Czar obtained the permission of the Sultan to repair some of the Eastern Orthodox monasteries in Jerusalem. The Patriarch of Jerusalem declared his autonomy from the Patriarch of Istanbul and placed himself under Russian protection. The growing Russian influence whetted the appetite of the French, who were accepted as protectors of the Catholic minority in Syria and Palestine by the Capitulatory Agreements. Emperor Napoleon III of France, trying to improve his standing with his subjects following his abrogation of the French Republic (1851), demanded from the Sultan similar privileges for the Catholics. The Sultan, trying to maintain a neutral position between the claims of the Russians and the French, acceded to the French requests. In turn, the Russians demanded greater privileges for themselves including an acceptance by Istanbul that Russia was the protector of all Eastern Orthodox subjects in the Ottoman Empire. These demands irked the Porte. Ottoman public opinion was outraged at what it considered was Russian infringement of Ottoman sovereignty.
The British, at first inclined to side with the Russians against France, saw that Russian ascendancy would jeopardize their interests in the Ottoman Empire. Thanks to the Capitulary Agreements, the Ottoman Empire was a ready source of raw materials for British factories, as well as a good market for their products. British diplomacy now tilted against Russia. Encouraged by Britain and by popular resentment at home against Russian demands, the Porte at first agreed to the Czar’s demands and then rejected them. Enraged, the Czar threatened war unless Istanbul immediately capitulated. A conference in Vienna failed to produce a mutually acceptable solution; war ensued in July 1854 with an Ottoman advance into Romania and into the southern Caucasus. The Russians soon gained the upper hand on both fronts. A Turkish naval squadron sent into the Black Sea to destroy the Russian fleet fared no better. Alarmed that a Russian victory would leave the Czar in possession of the Ottoman Empire, Britain and France declared war on Russia.
This was the beginning of the Crimean War in which Britain and France sought to contain the Russians by propping up the Ottomans against the Czar’s war machine. British and French naval squadrons advanced through the Dardaneles and bombarded Russian fortifications in the Crimea. The port of Sevastopol soon became the focus of a major trial of strength between the Russians on the one hand and a British-French expeditionary force on the other. Meanwhile, to avoid having to fight a war on two fronts, the Russians handed over the territories of Romania to the Austrians. The siege of Sevastopol continued for more than a year (1854-1855). The Russians surrendered the port city only after a long and bitter fight. To the east, however, the Russian armies advanced through the Caucasus into eastern Anatolia, capturing Kars, Van and Erzurum and threatening Central Anatolia. A brutal war of attrition went on even as the contestants wrangled over terms of a ceasefire. Finally, by the Treaty of Paris (1856), the forces disengaged. The warring parties agreed to relinquish each other’s territories. The autonomy of Romania and Serbia under Ottoman sovereignty was reaffirmed, and the European powers declared themselves guarantors of the rights of the Christian inhabitants in the Balkans. The Czar obtained a concession as protector of the Orthodox Church in Jerusalem.
Although the Crimean War ended with the Ottomans nominally retaining their territories, in the long term it proved to be the beginning of the end of the empire. The war effort was enormously expensive in men and material. To meet the heavy war expenditures, the Ottomans took their first loan from European bankers in 1854. The terms of the loan were harsh; they carried discounts of up to 40%, plus exorbitant rates of interest. Each year, to balance their budget, the Porte had to borrow additional funds from the Europeans. Despite the reforms of the tanzeemat to increase revenues and the efforts of successive grand viziers to cut expenditures, the empire could not dig itself out of debt. It was about the same time that Egypt, the most important Muslim province of the empire, also contracted international debts to construct the Suez Canal. By 1875, both Cairo and Istanbul were up to their necks in debt.
The proportion of the budget earmarked for debt servicing continued to increase, so that by 1878, it consumed over 80% of all revenues! The Ottomans tried different methods to balance the budget, including printing paper money and borrowing internally from their own citizens. Such efforts generated inflation, further eroding the value of the Ottoman currency and making international debt payments more expensive. Most of the loans originated from bankers based in London. Britain had successfully put a noose around the Ottoman Empire without declaring war on it. The noose tightened every year. It was this bankrupt empire that Abdul Hamid II, the last of the great Sultans in Islamic history, inherited when he became the Sultan/Caliph in 1878.
The Ottoman Empire of the 19th century faced most of the issues that confront the world of Islam today: centralization versus decentralization, nationalism versus pan-Islamism, tradition versus modernism, Sultanate versus democracy, pluralism, education, organization, technological development, foreign domination and international debt. The Ottoman Empire made a valiant attempt to transform itself and meet these challenges. While honoring the autonomy of its Eastern Orthodox, Catholic, Jewish and Armenian subjects within the millet system, it sought to modernize its armed forces, administration, education, economy and legislative processes.
The reforms failed to prevent a collapse of the empire for five principal reasons. First, the need to defend themselves against military aggression forced the Ottomans into international debt from which they never recovered. Second, the reforms were imported from Europe and were forced from the top. Third, the ulema failed to provide intellectual leadership, reform education and evolve institutions that would lead the Muslims from the medieval to the modern age. Fourth, Russian aggression from the north and British and French political machinations from the south, worked like a hammer and anvil to crush the empire. And fifth, the millet system, however benevolent it was from a Muslim perspective, was unacceptable to the large Christian minorities in the Balkans and Armenia. They resorted to increasing terrorism against Muslims and aided and abetted by the principal European powers, used every opportunity to destroy the empire.
(The author is Director, World Organization for Resource Development and Education, Washington, DC; Director, American Institute of Islamic History and Culture, CA; Member, State Knowledge Commission, Bangalore; and Chairman, Delixus Group)
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