5 • The Era of the Tanzimat, 1839-71
Sultan Mahmut II died of tuberculosis on 30 June 1839, before
the news of the Ottoman defeat by the Egyptians at Nizip had
reached Istanbul. His elder son, Abdiilmecit, who succeeded
him, was to reign from 1839 to 1861. Mahmut’s death did not
mark the beginning of a period of reaction, as Selim Ill’s
death had in 1807. The centralizing and modernizing reforms
were continued essentially in the same vein for another
generation. Indeed, the period from 1839 to 1876 is known in
Turkish historiography as the period of the Tanzimat (reforms)
par excellence, although one could well argue that in fact the
period of the reforms ended in 1871. The term Tanzimat-i
Hayriye (beneficial reforms) had been used even before 1839,
for instance in the imperial order establishing the Supreme
Council for Judicial Regulations (Meclis-i Vala-i Ahkam-i
Adliye).' This illustrates the continuity between the period
of Mahmut II and that of his successors. The main difference
was that the centre of power now shifted from the palace to
the Porte, the bureaucracy. In order to create a strong and
modem apparatus with which to govern the empire, Mahmut had
helped to start transforming the traditional scribal
institution into something resembling a modem bureaucracy,
thereby so strengthening it that his weaker successors lost
control of the bureaucratic apparatus for much of the time.
The reform edict of GOlhane
Under Mahmud’s successors foreign, especially British,
influence on policy-making in Istanbul vastly increased. For a
generation after the second Egyptian crisis, Britain supported
the Ottoman Empire’s continued existence as a buffer against
what was perceived in London as dangerous Russian
expansionism. The Russophobe Stratford Canning (from 1852 Lord
Stratford de Redcliffe), who was British ambassador in
Istanbul from 1841 to 1858 and was on close terms with many of
the leading Ottoman reformers, played a crucial role in this
British support.
The beginnings of the Tanzimat coincided with the attempts to
solve
THE ERA OF THE TANZIMAT, 1839-71
51
the second Egyptian crisis. When Ottoman fortunes were at
their lowest ebb, on 3 November 1839, an imperial edict
written by the leading reformer and foreign minister, Re§it
Pasha, but promulgated in the name of the new sultan, was read
outside the palace gates (at the Square of the Rose Garden,
hence its name Gulhane Hatt-i §erifi (the Noble Edict of the
Rose Garden) to an assembly of Ottoman dignitaries and foreign
diplomats. It was a statement of intent on the part of the
Ottoman government, promising in effect four basic reforms:
• The establishment of guarantees for the life, honour and
property of the sultan’s subjects;
• An orderly system of taxation to replace the system of tax
farming;
• A system of conscription for the army; and
• Equality before the law of all subjects, whatever their
religion (although this was formulated somewhat ambiguously
in the document).2
Controversy has raged ever since its promulgation over the
character and especially the sincerity of the edict and the
Tanzimat policies based on it. It is undoubtedly true that the
promulgation of the edict at that specific time was a
diplomatic move, aimed at gaining the support of the European
powers, and especially Britain, for the empire in its struggle
with Mehmet Ali. It is equally true, however, that the text
reflected the genuine concerns of the group of reformers led
by Re?it Pasha. The promised reforms were clearly a
continuation of Mahmut II’s policies. The call for guarantees
for the life, honour and property of the subjects, apart from
echoing classic liberal thought as understood by the Ottoman
statesmen who had been to Europe and knew European languages,
also reflected the Ottoman bureaucrats’ desire to escape their
vulnerable position as slaves of the sultan. Taxation and
conscription, of course, had been two of Mahmut’s most urgent
concerns. The promise of equal rights to Ottoman Christians,
ambiguously as it was formulated, was certainly meant in part
for foreign consumption. On the other hand, it is clear that
Re§it Pasha and a number of his colleagues believed, or at
least hoped, that it would halt the growth of nationalism and
separatism among the Christian communities and that it would
remove pretexts for foreign, especially Russian, intervention.
In the short run the Gulhane edict certainly served its
purpose, although it is hard to say how much it contributed to
the decision of the powers to save the empire.
A solution to the Egyptian crisis
The defeat at Nizip had left the empire practically
defenceless and it
52
TURKEY: A MODERN HISTORY
would have had to give in to the demands of Mehmet Ali
(hereditary possession of Egypt, Syria and Adana) had not the
great powers intervened. Britain reacted quickly, giving its
fleet orders to cut communications between Egypt and Syria and
taking the initiative for contacts between the five major
powers (Russia, Austria, Prussia, France and Britain itself).
Diplomatic consultations lasted for over a year, with Russia
and Britain jointly pressing for an Egyptian evacuation of
Syria, while France increasingly came out in support of Mehmet
Ali. In the end, the other powers despaired of getting French
cooperation and on 15 July 1840 Russia, Prussia, Austria and
Britain signed an agreement with the Porte envisaging armed
support for the sultan. Late in 1840 the British navy
bombarded Egyptian positions in and around Beirut and landed
an expeditionary force, which, in conjunction with widespread
insurrections against his oppressive rule, forced Ibrahim
Pasha to withdraw from Syria. Diplomatic haggling went on for
some time longer, but basically the issue had now been
settled. In June 1841 Mehmet Ali accepted the loss of his
Syrian provinces in exchange for the hereditary governorship
of Egypt, which remained nominally part of the Ottoman Empire
until 1914.
Internal unrest and international politics
With the end of the second Egyptian crisis a noticeable
lessening of tension in the Middle East set in. The
fundamental problems of the empire, caused by rising tension
between the different nationalities and communities, which the
central government was unable to solve or control, had not
gone away, but for about 15 years they did not lead to largescale intervention on the part of the great powers of Europe.
The most violent inter-communal conflict of these years was
fought out in the Lebanon. The strong man of the area was the
Emir Bashir II, who belonged to the small religious community
of the Druzes,3 but had converted to Christianity and ruled
the Lebanon from his stronghold in the Shuf mountains for 50
years. He had linked his fate closely to that of the Egyptian
occupation forces, and when the latter had to leave Syria, his
position became untenable and he was ousted by his enemies
among the Druze tribal chiefs. After his demise in 1843, the
Ottoman government introduced a cantonal system, whereby
Lebanon north of the Beirut-Damascus highway was governed by a
Christian kaymakam (governor), while the area to the south of
the road was ruled by a Druze one, both under the jurisdiction
of the governor-general of Sidon, whose seat was now moved to
Beirut.
Because this division took no account of the mixed character
of the population in the south and the north, tensions soon
rose and in 1845
THE ERA OF THE TANZIMAT, 1839-71
53
they erupted in large-scale fighting, with the Druzes burning
down numerous Maronite Christian villages. Under pressure from
the powers — the French had established a de facto
protectorate over the Maronite Christians of the Lebanon (who
were uniate, that is, they recognized the pope and were
therefore officially regarded as Catholics), the British over
the Druzes, and the Russians over the Orthodox Christians the Ottomans severely punished the Druze leaders and set up
consultative assemblies representing the communities in both
cantons. This time the powers refrained from direct
intervention.
The Crimean War
The one great international conflict of these years, the
Crimean War (1853—56), had as its ostensible cause a dispute
over whether the Catholic or the Orthodox Church should
control the holy places in Palestine, especially the Church of
the Nativity in Bethlehem. France interceded on behalf of the
Catholics, while Russia defended the rights of the Orthodox.
The Catholic Church had been granted pre-eminence in 1740, but
the fact that many times more Orthodox than Catholic pilgrims
visited the holy land over time strengthened the Orthodox
Church’s position. France, supported by Austria, now demanded
reassertion of the pre-eminence of the Catholics. Russia
wanted the status quo to remain in force. The bewildered Porte
tried to please everyone at the same time.
The Teal reasons behind the aggressive attitude of France
and Russia were almost wholly domestic. Both the newly
established Second Republic in France, headed by Napoleon
Bonaparte (soon to be Emperor Napoleon III), and the Russian
tsar were trying to gain popular support by appealing to
religious fervour.
A dangerous escalation began when, on 5 May 1853, the
Russian envoy to Istanbul demanded the right to protect not
only the Orthodox Church (a claim based on a very partisan
reading of the privileges that had been granted in 1774) but
also the Orthodox population of the empire, more than a third
of its inhabitants. Supported by the French and British
ambassadors, the Porte refused to give in. Russia announced it
would occupy the principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia if
the Porte did not accept its demands, and in July its troops
crossed into the principalities. A last-minute attempt at
mediation by France, Britain, Austria and Prussia failed. The
Ottomans demanded the evacuation of the principalities and,
when this was not forthcoming, declared war on Russia in
October. Under pressure from violently anti-Russian public
opinion and from the French government, the British cabinet
now opted for war and on 28 March 1854 war was officially
declared. None of the
54
TURKEY: A MODERN HISTORY
great powers wanted war, but all had backed themselves into a
comer they could not leave without serious loss of face.
Austria’s attitude in the conflict had been ambivalent from
the beginning and gradually became more and more anti-Russian,
so much so that the risk of an Austrian attack forced the
Russians to withdraw from the principalities in July. So the
French/British expeditionary force, which was sent to the
Levant in the expectation of having to fight in the Balkans,
was left without a target and landed in the Crimea instead,
hence ‘the Crimean War’. The war brought nobody much credit or
profit. The allies’ only major success was the taking of the
Russian fortress city of Sebastopol, but the price paid in
terms of suffering and casualties during the winter of 1854—5
(when Florence Nightingale reorganized the hospital the
British army had established in the Selimiye barracks in the
Istanbul suburb of Uskudar) was very high. In 1855, therefore,
all the belligerents were ready to talk. A peace conference
was held in Paris in February-March 1856 and produced a treaty
that embodied the main demands of France, Britain and Austria.
Although the war had been fought to defend the Ottoman
Empire, it was not consulted officially on the peace terms and
had to accept them as they were. The most important items in
the peace treaty were:
• Demilitarization of the Black Sea (also on the Turkish
side!);
• An end to Russian influence in Moldavia and Wallachia; and
• A guarantee of the independence and integrity of the Ottoman
Empire on the part of all the major European powers.
As a signatory to the Treaty of Paris the empire was now
formally admitted to the ‘Concert of Europe’, the Great
Powers’ system that had since Napoleon’s defeat and the
Congress of Vienna tried to maintain the European balance of
power. The financial and military weakness of the Ottomans
meant, however, that they remained an object of European
diplomatic intrigue rather that an active participant in it. A
new reform decree elaborating promises made in 1839 and
largely dictated by the French and British ambassadors in
Istanbul, was published to coincide with the peace conference
and to boost Ottoman prestige. The European powers officially
took note of the declaration and stated that it removed any
pretext for European intervention in relations between the
sultan and his subjects.4 This guarantee would prove a dead
letter.
The Crimean War was to have far-reaching consequences for
reforms within the empire and for its finances, but we shall
come to those later. For now, the integrity of the empire was
indeed saved and it would be another 20 years before its
existence was threatened again.
THE ERA OF THE TANZIMAT, 1839 -71
55
The Eastern Question again
In the meantime the old pattern of the politics and diplomacy
of the Eastern Question took shape again. As in the Serbian,
Greek and Lebanese crises, the pattern was basically always
the same: the discontent of (mostly Christian) communities in
the empire erupted into regional insurrections, caused partly
by bad government and partly by the different nationalisms
that were spreading at the time. One of the powers then
intervened diplomatically, or even militarily, to defend the
position of the local Christians. In the prevailing conditions
of interpower rivalry this caused the other major powers to
intervene to reestablish ‘the balance of power’. Usually, the
end result was a loss of control on the part of the central
Ottoman government.
This was what happened when the problems between Maronite
Christians and Druzes in Lebanon developed into a civil war
again in 1860. Maronite peasants, supported by their clergy,
revolted against their landlords (both Maronite and Druze) and
Druze fighters intervened, killing thousands of Maronite
peasants. Shortly afterwards, in July 1860, a Muslim mob,
incited by Druzes, killed more than 5000 local Christians in
Damascus. This caused the Powers to intervene on the
initiative of France. An expeditionary force, half of which
France supplied, landed in Beirut, despite Ottoman efforts to
pre-empt its arrival by draconic disciplinary measures.
France’s efforts to restructure the entire administration of
Syria were then blocked by the Porte with British support. In
the end, the mainly Christian parts of the Lebanese coast and
mountains became an autonomous province under a Christian
mutasarrif (collector), who had to be appointed with the
assent of the Powers.
The pattern was repeated when a revolt broke out in Crete in
1866. What began as a protest against Ottoman mismanagement of
affairs on the island, turned into a nationalist movement for
union with Greece. The conflict aroused public opinion both in
Greece, where volunteers were openly recruited for the
struggle on the island, and among the Muslims in the Ottoman
Empire (Crete had a significant Muslim minority) and by 1867
the two countries were on the brink of war. Russia, where
solidarity with the Greek Orthodox subjects of the sultan was
widely felt, urged European intervention on behalf of the
rebels and the cession of Crete to Greece, but the hesitations
of the other powers prevented the Powers from taking direct
action. Their combined pressure forced the Porte to declare an
amnesty for the rebels and to announce reforms in the
provincial administration of Crete giving the Christians more
influence, but foreign intervention went no further and by the
end of 1868 the rebellion was at an end.
In the Balkans, meanwhile, nationalist fervour was also
spreading,
56
TURKEY: A MODERN HISTORY
encouraged by the rise of the ‘pan-Slav’ movement in Russia
(the influential Russian ambassador in Istanbul, Ignatiev, was
an ardent supporter) and with Serbia as the epicentre of
agitation. When revolts broke out among the Christian peasants
of neighbouring Bosnia and Herzegovina against local Muslim
landlords, Serbian and Montenegrin agitation turned these
riots into nationalist movements. This was in 1853, in 1860-62
and again in 1875. In 1860 the Montenegrins actively supported
a rebellion in Bosnia-Herzegovina. When the Ottoman governor
of Bosnia suppressed the rebellion and then invaded
Montenegro, the powers intervened to save the autonomous
status of the small mountain principality. When the 1875
rebellion broke out, it set in motion a train of events that
nearly ended the Ottoman Empire’s presence in Europe.
The Tanzimat
There can be no doubt that the continuous external pressure
was an important incentive for the internal administrative and
legal reforms announced during the period of the Tanzimat
(1839-71). This is especially true for those reforms that had
to do with the position of the Christian minorities of the
empire. The European powers pressed for improvements in the
position of these communities, which in the classical Ottoman
structure had been that of second-class subjects. Slowly but
surely they achieved equality with the Muslim majority, at
least on paper. This, however, never induced them (or the
powers) to forgo the prerogatives they had under the older
millet system. The powers were certainly motivated in part by
the desire to extend their influence through the promotion of
client groups - Catholics and Uniates (members of the Eastern
churches who recognized the authority of the Pope) for the
French and the Austrians, Orthodox for the Russians, Druzes
and Protestants for the British - but genuine Christian
solidarity played a role, too. The Victorian age saw a marked
increase in piety and in the activity of missionary societies
and Christian fundamentalist movements. The missionaries were
increasingly active in the Ottoman Empire and they provided
their supporters at home with - often biased - information on
current affairs in the empire, so creating a great deal of
involvement on the part of public opinion.
It would be wrong, however, to attribute the reforms to
foreign pressure alone. Like the Gulhane edict of 1839, they
were used to gain foreign support or to avert foreign
intervention, but they were also the result of a genuine
belief that the only way to save the empire was to introduce
European-style reforms.
The post-1839 reforms covered the same areas as Mahmut IPs
programme: the army, the central bureaucracy, the provincial
administration,
6 ■ The Crisis of 1873-78 and its Aftermath
The Young Ottomans returned to Istanbul motivated by an
astonishingly naive belief that with the deaths of Fuat Pasha
(in 1869) and Ali Pasha (in 1871), the obstacles to democratic
reform would disappear. They soon found out that, quite to the
contrary, the death of Ali Pasha was the first stage in a
development that in the course of a few years would lead to a
crisis of unprecedented proportions in the empire.
A number of developments coincided to cause this crisis.
Internationally, the empire’s position had begun to change
even before Ali Pasha’s death. The opening of the Suez Canal
in 1869 meant that Egypt, rather than the empire, became the
focus of interest for the main liberal powers, France and
Britain. The clear and unexpected defeat of France by Prussia
in the war of 1870—71 meant a change in the balance of power
in Europe; France, the power most closely associated with the
Ottoman reformers since the Crimean War, was in temporary
eclipse. This in itself strengthened the hand of the partisans
of the authoritarian and conservative powers (most of all
Russia) in Istanbul. At the same time, the sultan, who had
already shown signs of impatience at the way Fuat and Ali kept
him out of the conduct of public affairs, used Ali’s death to
exercise power himself, something for which he was by now illsuited because of his increasingly idiosyncratic behaviour and
emerging megalomania. One way he tried to exercise control was
by not letting any official become entrenched in his post,
shuffling them around at a frantic pace. The sultan’s righthand man in 1871-72 and 1875—76 was Mahmut Nedim Pasha, who
went to extraordinary lengths in seeking the sultan’s favour
and who was so openly in the pay of the Russian embassy that
he earned himself the nickname ‘NedimofP.1 Nedim Pasha had no
experience of Europe nor did he know a European language and
was thus ill equipped to lead the empire in times of crisis.
Economic causes and political effects
The crisis that developed in the 1870s was economic as much as
it was
72
TURKEY: A MODERN HISTORY
(or became) political. A combination of drought and floods led
to a catastrophic famine in Anatolia in 1873 and 1874. This
caused , the killing-off of livestock and a depopulation of
the rural areas through death and migration to the towns.
Apart from human misery, the result was a fall in tax income,
which the government tried to compensate for by raising taxes
on the surviving population, thus contributing to its misery.
As had become its practice since the Crimean War, it also
looked to the European markets to provide it with loans, but
they were not forthcoming. A crash on the international stock
exchanges in 1873, which marked the beginning of the ‘Great
Depression’ in the European economy and which lasted until
1896,2 made it impossible for dubious debtors like the Ottoman
Empire to raise money. As a result, the empire could no longer
pay the interest on older loans and had to default on its
debt, which by now stood at £200 million.3
With the increased pressure of taxation, the unrest in the
empire’s Balkan provinces (which had not been affected by the
famine) escalated into a full-scale rebellion of the Christian
peasants, first in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and from April 1876
also in Bulgaria. When Ottoman troops suppressed the
rebellion, killing 12,000 to 15,000 Bulgarians,4 a shock wave
swept through Europe, which virtually ignored the large- scale
killings of Muslims by Christians that were also part of the
picture. Especially in England, where Gladstone’s Liberal
opposition used the ‘Bulgarian Massacres’ as propaganda
against the Conservative government of Disraeli (which was
accused of being pro-Turkish and thus an accessory to the
killings), the Turkophile atmosphere, which had prevailed
since before the Crimean War, disappeared.
Russia and Austria-Hungary had been involved in intensive
discussions on the ‘Eastern Question’ since late 1875. Austria
still regarded the survival of the Ottoman Empire as a vital
interest. Besides, its military authorities strongly advocated
the occupation of Bosnia- Herzegovina in case Ottoman control
there faltered. In Russia, on the other hand, pan-Slav
solidarity with the southern Slavs was now widespread and the
Russian ambassador in Istanbul, Ignatiev, was an ardent
supporter of the movement. The Russian—Austrian discussions
resulted in the ‘Andrassy note’ (called after the Austrian
Foreign Minister) of 30 December 1875. This was a set of
proposals for far- reaching reforms in Bosnia-Herzegovina
under foreign supervision. The Porte accepted it in February,
but the rebels refused to give up their fight. A short
armistice in April was soon breached.
The constitutional revolution
In this ominous political and financial chaos, a group of
leading
THE CRISIS OF 1873-78 AND ITS AFTERMATH 73
Ottoman politicians, including the provincial reformer Mithat
Pasha (now minister without portfolio), the Minister of War,
Htlseyin Avni Pasha, the director of the military academy,
Suleyman Pasha, and the §eyhiilislam Hayrullah Efendi, carried
out a coup d’etat, deposing Sultan Abdiilaziz on 30 May 1876.
In his place, Crown Prince Murat, who was close to the Young
Ottomans and who had been in touch with Mithat Pasha through
Namik Kemal and Ziya Pasha, came to the throne as Sultan Murat
V.
Before his accession, Murat had promised to promulgate a
constitution as soon as possible, and it seemed as if the
Young Ottoman programme (constitution and parliament) would
now be implemented in full. Namik Kemal and Ziya Pasha were
appointed as palace secretaries. Once on the throne, however,
Murat listened to Grand Vizier Ru§tu Pasha, who urged caution.
Instead of a concrete promise of a constitution, as advocated
by Mithat Pasha and the Young Ottomans, only a vague statement
on reforms was included in the Hatt-i Humayun (imperial
decree) after Murat’s accession.
On 5 June 1876 ex-Sultan Abdiilaziz committed suicide. Then,
on 15 June, a Circassian army captain called Hasan, motivated
by personal grievances, shot and killed Hiiseyin Avni Pasha,
Minister of Foreign Affairs Re§it Pasha and several others
during a cabinet meeting. This changed the balance of power in
favour of the more radical reformers. On 15 July the first
meeting of the new Grand Council decided to proclaim a
constitution. This could not be carried through, however,
because of the rapidly deteriorating mental state of Sultan
Murat.
Murat, who was by now an alcoholic, had shown signs of
extreme
nervousness when he was taken from the palace on the night of
30 May
to take the oath of allegiance from the high dignitaries of
state at the
Porte (he was convinced that he was being taken to his
execution).5 The
suicide of his uncle and the murder of several members of his
cabinet
seem to have led to a severe nervous breakdown. After having
the
sultan examined by Ottoman and foreign medical experts, the
cabinet
had to conclude that he was unfit to rule. It first tried to
get his younger
brother, Hamit Efendi, to act as regent, but when he refused
had no
choice but to depose Murat and replace him with Hamit, who
ascended
the throne as Abdtilhamit II on 1 September 1876. Murat was
taken to
the Ciragan palace on the Bosphorus, where he lived in
captivity for nearly 30 years.
The Bulgarian crisis escalates: war with Russia Meanwhile tile
situation in the Balkans had gone &om bad to worse m had
declared war on the empire on 30 June 1876 but, faced with
74
TURKEY: A MODERN HISTORY
the superior strength of the Ottoman army, it had to sue for
an armistice by September. By this time, however, pan-Slav
feeling in Russia had reached a fever pitch. Disappointed in
Serbia, the Russian pan-Slavists now concentrated on the
Bulgarians and the Russian government put pressure on Istanbul
to introduce wide-ranging reforms and virtual autonomy in the
areas inhabited by Bulgarians, threatening war if its demands
were not met. Britain now tried to defuse the growing crisis
by proposing an international conference on the Balkans. When
the conference met for the first time, in Istanbul on 23
December 1876, the delegates were startled by the Ottoman
delegate’s announcement that a constitution had now been
promulgated. It was based primarily on the Belgian
constitution of 1831, but a number of its articles (or
omissions) gave it a more authoritarian character and left the
sultan important prerogatives, which he was later to use to
the detriment of the constitutional government. The
authoritarian traits of the constitution were modelled after
the Prussian constitution of 1850.
The promulgation of the constitution, from the Ottoman
standpoint, made all discussions of reforms in the Christian
areas of the empire superfluous, since all subjects were now
granted constitutional rights. The Porte rejected all further
proposals by the powers. As a result the conference failed and
on 24 April 1877 Russia declared war, having first bought
Austria’s neutrality by agreeing to its occupation of Bosnia
and Herzegovina. At first the Russian armies met little
resistance, but then they were unexpectedly checked at Plevna
in Bulgaria, where the Ottomans withstood a number of Russian
assaults from May until December.
When the Russians finally broke through it meant the end of
effective Ottoman resistance and, by the end of February, the
Russians were at San Stefano (modem Ye§ilkoy), only 12
kilometres outside Istanbul. On 3 March 1878 a peace treaty
was signed there, which was an unmitigated disaster for the
Ottomans. It included the creation of a large autonomous
Bulgarian state between the Aegean and the Black Sea, enormous
territorial gains for Montenegro (which became three times its
prewar size) and smaller ones for Serbia. Serbia, Montenegro
and Romania became independent. Far-reaching reforms were to
be carried through in Thessalia and Epirus. In Asia, Batum,
Kars, Ardahan and Dogubeyazit were ceded to Russia and reforms
were to be introduced in Armenia. Furthermore, the new
Bulgarian state was to remain under Russian occupation for two
years. Obviously, it remained under Russian influence even
after that period.
The signing of the treaty produced the shock effect needed
to prod the other European powers, notably Austria and
Britain, into action, not
THE CRISIS OF 1873-78 AND ITS AFTERMATH
75
because of any sympathy for the Ottomans, but because Russian
domination of the Balkans and Asia Minor was unacceptable if
the European balance of power was to remain in force. Pressure
and sabre-rattling on the part of Austria and Britain led to
the holding of a conference in Berlin in June 1878, to find an
acceptable solution to the ‘Eastern crisis’ as the ‘Eastern
Question’ had now become. It was to be the last in the series
of great conferences attended by all the major European
powers, which had started in Vienna in 1814. Needless to say,
the influence of the Balkan peoples and governments at the
conference was negligible.
The end result of the conference, the Treaty of Berlin,
mitigated, but did not nullify, the provisions of San Stefano.
Romania, Serbia and Montenegro still gained their
independence, but the territorial gains of the latter two were
much reduced. An autonomous Bulgaria was created, but it was
much smaller than originally envisaged and it was split in two
along the Balkan mountain ridge, the southern part remaining
an Ottoman province under a special regime with a Christian
governor. In Asia, most of Russia’s acquisitions, including
the port of Batum, remained in place. Moreover, both Austria
and Britain had exacted a price for their intervention Austria now occupied Bosnia- Herzegovina (which technically
remained part of the Ottoman Empire) and Britain did the same
with Cyprus. The sultan had no choice but to acquiesce.
2
The Tanzimat
CARTEL VAUGHN FINDLEY
In Ottoman history, the term 'Vanzimat i literally 'the
reforms'j designates a period that began in 1839 and ended by
Literary scholars speak of'Tanzimat literature' produced long
after arguing thar the literatim: displays continuities that
warrant such usage. Reform policy also display* continuities
after 1876. Vet the answer to the critical question of 'who
governs’ changed. The death of the Ism dominant Tan&imaJ
statesman, Mehmed Cmin Ali Pa$a (1871), and the accession of
the last dominant Ottoman sultan. AbdtHhamid II (1876).
decisively changed the answer to that question.
Background
No disagreement surrounds the beginning of the Tanzimat, f<«*
several watershed events occurred in 1-839, including a change
in who governed’.1 However, Ottoman efforts at modernising
reform had begun much earlier, The catastrophes that alerted
Ottomans nr) the menace of European imperialism began with the
Russo-Ottom.an War of iy^-74, ending with the disastrous
Treaty of Kti^iik Kaynarca. That treaty launched the series
o/criscs known to Europeans as the 'Eastern Question’, over
how to dispose of the lands under* Ottoman rule. Napoleon's
invasion of Egypt <1798) was equally traumatic, although
temporary in its effects compared to Kii<;Uk Kaynarca. as it
showed that the imperialist threat wm not localised in the
European borderlands but could make itself felt anywhere.
These crises stimulated demands in both Istanbul and the
provinces ■ ibr example at Mosul ibr an end to the political
decentralisation of the preceding two centuries and a re
assertion of sultamc authority*
1 This chapter is. adapted from Carter Vaughn
‘Turkey.
KUni, N4fkwwli<r», and
Modernity', ch. a {forthcoming! i Dina Rkk Khtwry, $UU* <ttut
I'mrofW $<vie?y f<? the Otlowtan Empire;
> f S;.j
(Cambridge: Cambridge Unm-tsny Press, wv'u =60 78, pp
11
CARTER VAUGHN PINOtB*
Sultans Setim HI (1789-1807) and Mahmud U (J#Q8~>9) responded
with reform programmes that opened the Ottoman reform era
(1789-192,2).
Seliro's 'New Order' (Nizanvi Cedid) aimed first at military
reform. As in other stales, military reform required more
revenue, and more revenue required more efficient government
overall. Pacing that fact, Ottoman statesmen came to realise
rhar a governmental system previously guided by custom had to
be reconsidered as the object of rational planning and
systemarisa* tion. Lacking precedents to follow, rhe resulting
new programmes required plans, regulations and laws ro guide
them. There would be no Nizam-i Cedid without
(regulations, literally writings about order). The
plans
and regulations that defined Sclims New Order mark the point
at which the Enlightenment s svstematising spirit (esprit de
syslctne) appeared in Ottoman policy; Selim's decision to
inaugurate permanent diplomatic representation in Europe
(1793) furthered this rapprochement between Ottoman and
European modes of thought. In Weberian terms, the perception
that the New Order required planning and regulation marks the
beginnings of the transition from 'traditional' towards
rational legal' authority. In Ottoman terms, finally it was
the sultans command that gave the new regulations the force of
law. The warlords who had wielded power by default during the
period of decentralisation could nos wield power by right. The
sukan could do so, if he possessed sufficient strength of
will, and the re assert ion of his right meant centralisation
and an end to warlordism.
In attempting to create new institutions while unable to
abolish old ones, Selim II f left himself open to attack by
vested interests threatened by his reforms. Jits overthrow
i^esuired from this fact. To avoid repeating Selims mistake,
Mahmud II prepared carefully. Me neutralised provincial
warlords where he could, although the biggest of them, Egypt’s
Mehmed Ali, eluded him. By iBz6 Mahmud was strong enough to
abolish the Janissaries, the once- famou* infantry corps that
had become undisciplined and ineffective to the point of being
a Habiliry: The fact that Sultan Mahmud's forces performed
poorly against the Greek revolutionaries, while Mehmed Ali
Pa$a‘s Egyptian troops performed well, heightened the sense of
urgency in Istanbul. The aho Hi tion of the Janissaries, the
most dangerous vested interest opposing reform, made it
possible for Mahmud to revive Selim’s programme and go beyond
it.* Beginning with a new array and reorganised support corps,
Mahmud went on
5 AvSgdor Levy, "Th« Military Policy of Sultan Mahmud 11’
{Ph.D. thesis. Harvard University, pp. tot- »4
i%
The Tanziirmi
to found new schools, revive diplomatic representation, and
rationalise civil and military institutions overall
Ottoman statesmen under Selim and Mahmud realised that the
empire could no longer defend its interests militarily without
external aid, This realisation raised the importance of
diplomacy and cemented the tie between defensive modernisation
and reforms intended to appeal to European interests. Two
measures from Mahmud’s last years prove the extent ofhis
attempts to align Ottoman and European practice. Dependent on
British support in the last phase of his conflict with Egypt's
Mehmed Ali Pa$a, Mahmud concluded the Ottoman-British
commercial treaty of 1838, which essentially introduced free
trade. The I maty has often been interpreted as ruining
Ottoman manufactures. In fact, the Ottomans' dependent
integration into the world economy had already begun. Both
Ottoman and British negotiators understood the treaty as an
agreement aimed against the interests of Mehmed Ali, a rebel
but still an Ottoman subject and thus bound by the treaty. If
Liberal ideas were introduced in economics, they would have to
be introduced in politics as well. The Gulhane decree 0/1859,
promulgated after Mahmud's death but prepared before it, took
that step. The decree is usually understood as inaugurating
equality among ail the sultan's subjects, whether Muslim or
non-Muslim, bur that interpretation is not entirely accurate
or complete.
What was the Tanzimat?
Between Mahmud's death (18391 and Abdulhamid’s accession
{187^, no sultan dominated policy consistently, Selim and
Mahmud's new elites filled the gap. Because defence depended
011 diplomacy, it was nor the military bur rather the civil
elite, especially the diplomats, who became most influential
The centre of power shifted from the paiacc to the civil
bureaucratic headquarters at the Sublime Porte (Bab-i Ali).
During the Tanzimat, it became common for the foreign minister
to go on to serve as grand vex jr. Dominating this combination
of posts. Mustafa Re$td (j*oo~$8), Rc^ecizade Fuad (1815-69)
and Mehmed Emin Ali Pa?as (1815-71) shaped the period. Their
associates formed a revolving imerministerial elite, rotating
among ministries and provincial governorships.
Tanzimat policy represents « continuation and intensification
of reform. Both the name Tanzimat and the term nismn ('order")
had entered Turkish as loanwords from Arabic: and bolh terms
derive from the same Arabic root, which denotes ‘ordering' A
causative or intensive form of this root, Tanzimat implies the
expansion or intensification of ordering or reform, and that
was
ti
CARYHR VAUGHN FfNOLgV
exactly what happened during the Tanzimat. Ottoman policies
during chat period responded to emerging global modernity in
both its Janus-like faces, the threatening aspect (separatist
nationalism in the Balkans, imperialism in Asia and Africa)
and the attractive aspect (die hope of overcoming Ottoman
backwardness by emulating European progress). The Tanzimat was
both a rime of crises, which implied impending collapse, and
of accelerating reforms, which signified renewal.
As greatly as government policy defined this period, the
formation of new elites and the propagation of new ideas also
slipped beyond government control. Here the most significant
factor was the rise of the modern print media. As government
policy moved further into realms not sanctioned by custom,
critics found more to contest. Consequently, the rise of the
print media was soon followed by that of a.modern opposition
intelligentsia, which used the media to appeal to the emergent
reading public. Less conspicuously, a conservative current,
appealing to propertied interests and grouped most noticeably
around reformist religious movements, was also taking shape,
'{lie conservative trend gained momentum, particularly with
the emergence from Ottoman Iraq of the KhalidiyyaNaqshbandiyya. founded by S’haykh Khaiid al-Naqshbandi (17771826), known as the 'renewer‘ (mujaddiet) of his century The
remainder of this chapter examines the Tanzimat more fully.
Crisis and contraction
The period began and ended with the empire’s survival more
threatened than at any other time in the nineteenth century.
When Mahmud II died in 1&39, he and Mehmed Ali were at war The
latter controlled Crete and Syria as well as Egypt, and had
just defeated che Ottoman army inside Anatolia; die Ottoman
fleet had also defected to Egypt, ’fhe European powers found
the imminent prospect of Ottoman collapse so destabilising
that they intervened in Istanbul's favour. Mehmed Ali was
pushed back, left as hereditary governor of Egypt, and
deprived of his other territorial Egypt j-emained under
nominal Ottoman sovereignty until X914. Under MehmedA&'f
successors, Egypt became increas- ingly both autonomous from
Istanbul and economically dependent on Rurope. Both cotton
exports and the Suez Canal (1869) increased European
investment and strategic interest in the country, setting the
course that led die British to occupy Egypt in i#Hz.
Following the Egyptian crisis of r840-t, the Ottoman Empire
endured a series of local crises that expressed the growing
politicisation of religious and ethnic differences among its
subject populations. Crete and Lebanon sankinto
M
The Taiwtmji:
crises of this type follow nu. iIm t reversion from. Egyptian
to Ottoman rule. Cretan Christians wanted wm>h with
independent Greece, ami the islands historical Chrisd;m-Mtnimi
vj mnosis dissipated into viokn.ce, leading to the revolt
ot'1866. In Lebanon, the okl net work of relationships that
bridged differences of religion and class Had alre ady been
destabilised under f.lgy pcian rule in the 3830s. These
relationships collapsed totally under restored Ottoman ruk
from the impact of both the Tanzimat reforms and the
increased, penetration by Europeans especially missionaries,
who cxtmA new religious differences and politicised old ones.
Sectarian contacts broke out in Lebanon in the 1840s, followed
hy rfms-bzsed conflict?. Damascus lapsed into sect&naiJ
violence in the i$&os. Hie Lebanese crisis led the Ottomans,
in agreement with major European powers, to introduce special
regulations, under which Mount Lebanon would have a special
administrative system, headed by a non* Lebane.se Christian
governor, This? system brought security at the pricct of
lastingly imprinting the new sectarianism on Lebanese
politics.'1 In Damascus, the Ottomans banished the old elites
who had failed, ro restrain the violence of i&ftn thus
fedUtating the rise of a new local elite with interests in
landholding and office-holding.'
In die Balkans, after Serbia won autonomy -1815) and Greece
won independence ifS.io). separatist nationalism continued to
p * <d ufgam flourished economically under Ottoman rule,
despite exp*raring twelve minor insurrections between 1835
find i.Hyti6 At first, the mo »t £.ii«vn? Balkan issue
concerned the Romanian principalities of WaBachia and Mold
rvia. Desiring unification, Romania became the only part of
the Ottoman fcmpine to get caught up m the European
?*vo!urionary wave ofr$4#. Romanian nadsmalism was repressed
then, but unification (t8rt? * and independence (tR?#* were
only questions of time. Alter 1848, the Ottomans also gave
asylum to both Polish and f luntgarian revolutionaries of
184$, whose contribution to Ottoman defence and culture proved
sigysifkant, despite the resulting tensions in relations with
Russia and Austria."
4 Ussama^fakdlsi.
s *\ »i> i 1Hwon f (V >i ) «'* (tenth
WsaHe’M’Berk«ieyaiidl.u A <•»«!< I niversir f htnii
won):
BrtgittAkadi/IlifU'iigPiWf.iXbi.-itjznfhe.H' v a ) i
losAjigcfox * >tw r i \ i< <itforai<? Press, 5«»);j.CH!ir it
lUtP f i in > ?r h tn at {ranti 1 o tcntaryr Record (New Haven
liw t in k i i
( [ f *44-«5 Philipp. Khoury. Utl « 4 abt t i \i M l! tih n h
hhticsajftetiMMwx, fts'j-tzsa ^Cambridge; C<*mla ^ C is u in
* 1
6 Michael PalaireE. Tic r* U T 1 m > 4 I Mien mthw Dtwhpmeni
(Cs»Tnbtit$gc: Czmi sdt i m u !u s f-\ ** 3. &7 (Ilxi- Onsyis. Jmptti ?? j ^ t v ■* \ t I n U HI >tr'<p]>.
'4<\ *<«-•;*•
*•>
CAftTRft VAUGHN VMTilsgY
Balkan tensions did not produce a major war until i$y?, but
the same issues soon caused war over the Christian holy
places. The crisis grew out ofa dis- p\x\:t between Catholic
and Orthodox ttergy over the keys to the Church of the
Nativity in Bethlehem/ Such issues were not new, but the:
growing politi- dMtion of religious difference made them iesv
n anageable than in the past, as did the European powers*
competition to dump*on the interests of different religious,
cotnmuniti.es. Claiming protectorship of Orthodoxy, Russia
issued •an ultimatum. In return for Ottoman promises of
further egalitarian reforms, France and Brium declared war on
Russia. The war was fought in the Balkans and the Crimea and
became known as the Crimean War (i&b-*’)- further
acr.elcra.ting the Ottoman onrush into modernity, the war
brought with it the huge casualties caused by new weapons, the
improvements in medical care symbolised by Florence
Nightingale's pioneering efforts to provide nursing care for
the wounded and advanced commumcationx in the form of both pho
tograph and telegraph, which readied Istanbul during the war.
At the war’s end, the. sultan issued his promised reform
decree of *80, discussed below; and the Treaty of Paris
formally admitted the Ottoman Empire to the concert of Europe.
The Ottoman Empire thus became die first non-Western state co
conclude a treaty with the European powers on supposedly equal
terms.0 However, the treaty contained contradictory clauses,
disclaiming interference in Ottoman affairs in one, while
neutralising the Black Sea, internationalising control of the
Danube and introducing European controls in Romania and Serbia
in others. The Ottoman Empire did not lose territory in the
war, but its sovereignty was further breached.
The territorial loss averted in 1856' occurred in the t870s.
Revolt broke out in Herzegovina in &?4 and spread to Bosnia,
Montenegro and Bulgaria by 1876, The Ottoman government,
havingjust suspended payment on its foreign debt, had to face
this crisis without European support.16 Ottoman efforts to contain the simatkm raised European outcries against massacres of
Christians, even as counter-massacres in die Balkans began to
Hood Istanbul with Muslim refugees, whose plight Europeans
ignored. In Istanbul, the political situation destabilised to
the point that two sultans were deposed within three months,
and Abdlilhamid came to the throne as the third sultan to rule
in t$?6. At once
& Pawi Dumom, ‘D* p»iri«*Je tk*s Tanzimat’, in Robert Maulxan
Histtrir? 4e VBmpin.'
otKnnan (Pans: bayard, £$$91. pp. 505-09 Burewitx, Mithik ami Nerlh AJHau vol. i, pp. a.
so §cvke( Pamak, A Mmmary tti$u*ry <f tht Ottemm Empire
(Cambridge: Cambridge Itoiversiiy Press, zooa’u p. zif. Francois Georgf.on, Akiiilkamui
th Ic mluin atiifk (i$7§~i$z>9)
(Pads: V%yavd, 1003), pp. 7%- %.
f6
i
1
Tlw Tatwimas
a triumph of Ottoman reformism and. a bid to ward off European
interference, the Ottaman constitution was: adapted Deeember
?S7*s) and parliamentary elections were ordered/' No friend of
constitutions. Russia dedared war anyway, attacking in both
the Balkans and eastern Anatolia, The RussoTnrkish War (‘*8778} created, the crisis conditions that enabled Abdulhamid to
end both the bureaucratic hegemony of the Tansdmat and the
First Constitutional Period
The Russo-Turkish War brought the empire closer to
extinction than at any time since J839. Europeans who knew
nothing of the Tanzimat except the Eastern Question might have
found tt logical to dismits the empire as 'the sick man of
Europe', Only by looking srtside does it become possible; to
form a different view.
Major themes of reform
While reformist initiatives proliferated tn this period to a
degree that defies summary, they cohere around eertatn themes:
legislation: cduc&ikm and elite formation; expansion of
government; inrercommunal relations; and the transformation of
the political process. Late in the period, the reformist
momentum grew, producing systemausing measures of wide import,
fn 1&67. Sultan Abdtil.agiz became the first sultan to tour
Europe, with a large suite including foreign minister Fuad
Pa$a and Prince Abdiilhamid- This trip may have helped to
stimulate the far-reaching measures on provincial
administration, education and. the army that ensued between
5867 and 187 s.'2
Legislation
ifde facto dvil bureaucratic hegemony demarcated die Tanzimat.
chronologically, the main instrument of change was
legislation/5 In a sense, the Tmsimat. was fundamentally a
movement in legislation. In essays of the rB.ios, for example,
Sadxk Rifat Pasa< then serving as Ottoman ambassador in
Vienna, elaborated the connection between external and
internal public law, between secur- in.gthe empire's admission
into the European diplomatic system and maintain ing a just
internal order. European demands for internal reform in
exchange for international support in 1839 and 1854 made the
same point. Beginning
a Di.sm<inii T«wim;k', pp. Barbara jekvirh. History tkrHighuxnth *m<i
Ninrtttnth Centuries
Cambridge University Press. 19871,
,*u h%
w CevH-gcen, AMuikamUi U, pp. ;»~5. i.l Ovraylj,
imi'4mt#rhi$n.a> pp. t?p $o,
17
CARTER VAUCJH8 RNZH8T
with the Nizam-t Cedkf the connection between reform and the
drafting of instructions, regulations andlavsrs had t mpressed
itself on Ottoman statesmen's awareness. The fact that
instructions and laws took effect through die sultan's powers
of decree made centralisation, reform md legislation
interdependent. Whenever a given reform, required
implementation all over the empire, the necessity for dear
orders and regulations became especially obvious.
Although they were only crescs on an evef-gacheringwave of
regulation, the most important legal acts of the Tanzimat were
the Gulhane decree of 1839, the reform decree of and the
constitution of 2876. Opening the period, the GUlhane decree
proved less of a westernizing measure than has commonly been
assumed.w It called for reforms in taxation, military
recruitment and judicial procedure, and it extended guarantees
for life, honour and property to all subjects, Muslim and nonMuslim, It promised new laws to implement these reforms -■ a
promise from which a Hood, of new laws flowed. The decree
reflects British Liberal thinking in its denunciation of taxfarming and monopolies and in several specific guarantees. Yet
die repeated references to promulgating kawnin-i $cr'iyc, laws
conformable to Islamic law (jmat), to fulfil the decree's
promises also reflected the Ottoman tradition of aligning
state law (kmun. plural kavaniri) with theicria*. Although
commonly so interpreted, the decree did not say that Muslim
and non-Muslim are equal, which they are not under
%ht.j(eriat, The de ee drJ declare chat the privileges it
granted applied without exception to all s bje f :he
sultanate, both 'Muslims and members of other communities'
(em-i isiam ve miiel-i saire'). as the .state’s Jaw (fcansin)
could do. The provisions on taxation spoke of replacing old,
exorbitant taxes with 'an appropriate tax' Tbir vergO-vi
miinasih'), The intention was to consolidate and reduce taxes;
vergu was not a generic word ibr taxes, but the name of a
specific new tax. The provisions on due judicial process,
finally, had special significance for the ruling elites.
Historically bearing the legal status of slaves to the sultan,
they had been subject to his arbitrary punishment (siy&>ei) in
a way that ordinary subjects were not. The decree repudiated
such punishments. 'This provision gave the ml.i.ng elites a
vested interest in keeping the decree in force, thereby making
of the decree a milestone in the process by which *iyast.t
acquired irs modern meaning of ’politics'.
Although the Gulhane decree had not explicitly stated the
equality of non- Muslims with Muslims, the Reform decree
(fslahat fermam) of 1856 did/5 It
U Ahmtd LutB, Tarih-l Lh0 {K.«*nb«J: Muhmud Bey Mitbaaji,
vol. VI,
|>p, ^-5; Sun* KUi and A. §errf t.>#*Ub«5j?8k, Turk atutws*
matinlm, Smetii imjkkt/xn gwimiizc (Ankara: Turklye 1?
Banbts?, i$%>, pp. u-13.
Kiii -and GiSzabHyiik, Tiirk anay^m, pp. I4-j8.
j B
The Tanzimat
enumerated measures to be enacted fr»r ihe benefit ‘without
exception, of all my imperial subjects of every religion and
sect*. Reaffirming historical communal privilege*, the decree
invited non-Muslim* to form assemblies to reorganise their
aftasvs. As a result, non-Muslim communities drew up communal
regulations {nizamnamet, sometimes t ailed constitutions', and
formed representative bodies.!t' The decree libei alised the
conditions for building and repairing non-Muslim religious
buildings, fs thrbadc language or practices that held some
communities lower than others', it proclaimed Ottoman subjects
of all religions eligible for official appointment according
to their ability, and opened civil and military schools io
all. The decree extended the obligation of military service to
ncm-Mushtns hut allowed for exemption upon payment of a
substitution fee i bedel): buying exemption became the norm
for non-Muslims, and the fee replaced the azye. the tax that,
the $eriat required of non-Muslims. Court cases between
parties from different communities were co be heard before
mixed courts, although cases between coreligionists could
still be heard in communal courts.
The third fundamental act of the period, the constitution of
i#7<\ WAS a logical response both to the international
situation and to the organic regulatory acts promulgated for
various parts of Ottoman polity. In the os, in addition to
those of the non-Muslim communities, organic statures had
defined special regimes for Lebanon and Crete; at die Ottoman
peripheries, Tunisia had its constitution for a rime in the
r8<*os. and Romania acquired one in 1M6. With growing Ottoman
awareness of European practice, organic regulation of parts of
the imperial system heightened demands for a comtitunors for
the whole.17
Hastily drawn up by a commission including ulema, military
officers and civil officials, the constitution contained
compromises and imprecisions. Yet it showed the extent ro
which ideals such .is rule of law, guaranteed rights and
equality had permeated Ottoman thinking. The articles were
grouped in sections pertaining to the empires territorial
integrity, the sultanate: the subjects' rights and
obligations, the ministers; the officials; the parliament; the
courts; the provinces; and a final miscellany The articles
included provisions pregnant with future consequences. Article
7 left the sultan's prerogatives undefined, although it
mentioned many of them; these included appointing
rtf Dumont, Tanxfnt^t . pp, ..»«>?-vx*.
rt Rottelic U. Davbton, Rrfinm in t(uf On^m» Empire,
fPrmmotv l-lmto.,£.nu
University Press, tp6i\ pp. 04- !.%
Nismv •>/' the t.v,
pp. /05 w. Otter
Vaughn
ftcjortn m the Ouom,(n fimpiK; Th? Sablim? fWh’. t
r U2
iPrit’ceron: Princeton University Press, i <*&>:. pp
CABTBR VAUOMK PINOLE*
and dismissing ministers, who would consequently have no
collective responsibility.
Eiifoixremcntoffcrfatasid^anunformcdpartofthe imperial
prerogative. The constitution itself became law only by
imperial decree; the sultans right to continue legislatingby
decree was nowhere restricted; and his freedom to veto laws
passed in parliament, where the ministers retained most of the
legislative initiative, was unchecked. Article 113, inserted
at Abdulhamid's insistence, acknowledged the sultans right
under martial law to exile anyone on the basis of a police
report identifying that person as a security risk.'* Although
martial law was not in force at the time, constitutionalist
hero Midhat Pa$a went into exile in 1876 as a victim of this
provision.
If the acts of 1839,1856, and t«76 formed the crests on die
wave of legista tirnt, much of the wave’s mass consisted of
new codes. An initial penal code (18401 was revised (.1851)
and replaced wkh a code of French origin (1858). Also French
inspired were the codes of commerce (£850, j86;j). When Ali
Pasa proposed adapting the French civil code as well, the
ulema resisted, (nscead, a codification of $«rtot law was
undertaken under Ahmed Cevdet Papa's direction and published
as the Mecrtle (1870-7). Also significant was the land law
(arazi kanunmmcsi) of *858. which codified and systemarised
die historical Ottoman principles of state ownership over
agricultural lands (miri). The law attempted to protect small
cultivators (successfully or not, depending on local
conditions), clarify titles and identify the responsible
taxpayers/9 Thousands more laws and regulations affected life
in coumless ways, adapting Ottoman to international practice
in many cases, for example by prohibiting the slave trade.**
New courts were created to apply the codes, starting with
commercial courts (1840), presided over by panels of judges
named by the government. By the t86os, a network of nizatni
courts had evolved to try cases under the new codes. As m the
case of the regular (nizarni) army, the adjective (deriving
from wtoxm, ’order’) identifies the new institutions as
productsofdie mforms. The aisami courts were organised
hierarchically, with two levels of
i«*i Robert Devereiut, Ttie First Ottoman Constitutional
Period: A Study of the Mutiuit Cmshlv- turn arui Parliament
(Bitkiimo’e; JoJjjjs J lopkias Press. pp. 60 -79; Davawn,
lkj£*m, jyp, 158 -408; Gcftrgcmn Ab*iiiflmmid II. pp. 68-71.
19 Donald Qvwuert, ‘The Age of Reforms. 1X11-17x4. m
HaUlfoalok.aruJ DnnaUQuauert iciis,}. An Sivmmk ami Social
History (ifthe OtumanBmiritt, 1 4 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1994), pp- ^5^‘6K Ortayh, hnpamtorbtgun, p
137; Muss Cadara, Titnwnat Mmwindt Hmtdoitf .wyai w yaptkn
(Ankara' I'Ckk T»i1h Kururou, «#»). p. *8.4.
20 Hhud R. Tokrdano, The Qttomart 5li»vc Trade anil iis
Supptrsshm, 1640-15<jo (Primxtwu Princeton University Press,
20
The Jjivim.tf
appeal courts above the courts of first instance; in contrast,
the jcrint courts tacked a formal appeals instance.
Many scholars have seen in the new codes and in the nizumi
courts many steps towards secularisation and breaches in the
role of Islam in the Ottoman state. Yet this assessment
overstates one issue and ignores another. In 1876,
AhdOlhamid's decree of promulgation still echoed the CJtilhane
decree’s reference to laws conformable to rhe sharia’ by
affirming the constitution's conformity to the provisions of
the jenVu {ahkam-i jcr'-i jem/}li The Mecdht formed the
clearest example of a major component of the new body of Uw
derived from the jerfctt. The land law of 185$ analogously
provided the clearest case where traditional Ottoman kmun
provided the. source for new legists* tion, The fact that
ulema continued to serve in the new courts, as in the new
schools, moderated what might other wise have, been
secularising reforms. However, as the empire gradually created
the outlines ofa modern, law-bound polity, which Turkish
legists idealise as a ‘law state' (hukuk dtvteti. compare the
German ideal of the Ra;htsshiat\. .mother problem persisted.
This consisted of the chasm between the ideal of a law state*
and rhe authoritarianism that either deified the law without
regard ?.o its human consequences, or else used law and
regulation instrumentaily to extend the reach ofa power that
placed itself above the !aw.u
Elite formation and education The need for new elites can be
gauged from rhe fact that the Ottomans created an enure new
army after abolishing the Janissaries. The civil bureaucracy
grew almost as dramatically, from roughly x000 scribes in
service as of 1770-90 to the 55.000-70,000 civil officials
serving at a time under Abduihamid. The Ottoman Rmpire was
still lightly administered compared to other states; yet this
was rapid growth.*3
With growth, disparities appeared in the extent to which
different branches of service benefited from reform, and these
differences aggravated inter-service rivalries. The elite
formation efforts primarily benefited military officers and
civil officials. However, even in those ser vices, gaps opened
between groups
xx Kill and G^Kfihuylik. 'Inrfc atutvasa, pp. JAt fa
zz Orfayfr. /mjttmr.trlugim, |ip. 7^-80; Findley. Bmravctatic
Refrrm, pp t(t\-5; Camr Vaughn PuuSey. ’Osironh xiyas^
du$utxe:vUi<J<r dcvtct ve hukuk: iusatt Haitian nu. huk.uk
d^vkts m%?‘ XH. [QnikwcO 7»»Jr T/mh Kcngrzxi, BiMiritcr f
Ankara; Turk Tsrth Kurumu, jnyaa), pp. rtpj-tzox
^3 Ftrsdtay Buresutr.uu K^lttwj, pp. :n~3, ara-tS
25
CARTfcK VAUfiHS 3PINI>i.8Y
with Afferent qualifications. Civil officials differed in
their degree of western isation, mastery of French serving as
the distinguishing trait. Military officers differed in being
cither 'school men' (mektepli), trained in the new academics,
or 'regimentals' (tdayh), who rose through the ranks and were
often illit erate.5 ? These differences created significant
tensions. Compared to the civil and military elites, the
religious establishment lost influence. The ulema still
carried weight as guardians of Islamic values, as masters of
the old religious courts and schools, as pan of the personnel
for the analogous new state institutions, and as an interest
group. Yet the reforms ended their historical dominance of
justice and education and their control of the revenues from
charitable foundations (cvkaj). Here as throughout the Islamic
world, the largest challenge to the ulema was that the
intellectual impact of modernity was transforming Islam from
the all-embracing cultural reality into one realm in the
universe of knowledge.-*
Tanzimat educational policy was largely driven by goals of
elite formation but gradually produced wider results. The
ulema's educational vested interests made the elementary
mcktchs (Quranic primary schools) and the medrcscs (higher
religious schools) virtually untouchable. The architects of
the new state, schools reacted to this situation by caking a
top-down approach to elite formation. They founded ostensible
institutions of higher learning first and added broader
outlines of a general system of schools later, with the consequence that many years passed before the new elite schools
could perform up to level. Military engineering schools were
founded early for the navy (177:0 and the army '179.I;. Mahmud
II created the military Medical School (1827) and the Military
Academy (1834), Students were sem to Europe, and an Ottoman
school briefly existed in Paris (1857Systematic efforts to
train civil officials began with the founding of the
Translation Office (Ten-time odasi) of the vSubltme Porte in
18*1; it was to train Muslims to replace the Greek translators
whom the Ottomans had employed until the Greek Revolution.
With time, founding schools to train elites became part of a
larger effort to create a network of government schools. The
first new schools for civil officials became the foundations
of the rujtltyc schools (1839), which were upper elementary
schools, intended to pick up where the Quranic mckteb left off
and educate students to about the age of fourteen. Middle
schools fidtaftye) began to be founded in 1845. initially to
prepare students for the military academy.
24 Omyii, hnfxutUorihguv, pp. 9>-iaa, 145 -5,1; Dumont.
T*a*aniat', pp. 47&#i *5 Cf. Adeeb KlvtBti, ThtPdtt&s of
Muslim Cultural R<form:JaiMtm w Centra! Asia ^Berkeley and
Laos Angeles; University of California Press, 19^8), ji 10a.
zz
The I
The first iyece isnltaniye) opened in 1H6X The most important
effort, to systematise education was the public eJuutian
regulations of i86tt (m.wrif-1 ttmumiyt New teaching methods
iuml-i calid). intended to
achieve literacy more quickly than in the mektebs, were
introduced ,is earlv as 1R47 and came into genera) use around
t«70. eventually spreading into Central Asia, There, these
methods assumed such importance in the development of cultural
modernism that the Central Asian m< idernists became known as
jddid- chilar('ne.w4$t$') because they championed this new
method' pedagogy.'8* For die Ottomans, several of rhe. new
school* became paiticulariy important m training civil
officials, notably, the Galausaray Lycce and the 5ch<x4 of
Civil Administration (Millkiye Mektebi, founded in 1859,
upgraded in f876>. Educating far more than the dices, the new
schools propagated lireracy and stimulated transformations in
individual self-consciousness and bourgeois class formation
among Ottoman Muslims by the 1870s" The schools' importance
for elite formation also included one unintended consequence.
For if Ottoman sulrans sought to cram new elites to serve them
personally, the ideas these men discovered at school led them
to transfer their loyalty from the sultan to their own ideal
of rhe state, a fact with consequences enduring to the
present.2*
G avert! m a t tal trxpans ion rrht> role of govern mem
expanded vastly during ihe Tanziraai. In Istanbul. the
expansion was physically obvious. Moving ro rhe new, oversized
Dolmahahcre palace, rhe imperial, household had its own
secretariat (tmbcyn) to communicate with the rest of the
government The civil, military and religious services had
their respective headquarters ar the Sublime J*orte i8ab-i
4Ih, Ministry of War (Bah-i Semskm), and the office of the
^yhiiltsfdm (fiab-i Ms.fihat). By 1871, the Sublime Porte
included the offices of rhe grand vezir and the council of
ministers, the foreign and interior ministries, and the most
impratam condliar bodies. Outside the Sublime Porte the civil
bureaucracy sho staffed the ministries of finance, charitable
foundations (evkafi. education, trade and agriculture,
customs, and land registry.**
26 Ibid , pp.
x? Setguk Akjirt Somd. 'Pbc Metktntxati.*»
t.iufdtkm in
thcOtu*md» Hmprr.
f*£: Islamimttm, M^mcy ami tteapliw il.ni&tn-. BriU, iooiV.
Carter Vaughn Rndtey.
Ottoman Civil Offkiakiftm: A Socud Winery (Pdmcum Princeton
University Press ry%i!>
PP- MX- 71catma MCige Gt>eck, Riif of Empire: Oticnxm Wr.<hr>ti?<ifieu
anA
SenaI Chang? (Nv,\v V>>rk: Otfcmi Univertftv m6>, 4-5-6.
n Findley, BunammUc ft&rm, pp. ufr <*0: Co$fewn Cakir,
Tanzimat J&mmt Ottmnh •n.ifcww*
Osranhui: KOcp. 100O. pp. #•••;>*: CaJiro. fdnzvtun
dtitwmiiuic Anadolu, pp
CARTER VAUGHN KINBT.RY
Along with the expansion of formal bureaucratic
organisations, an unprecedented proliferation of councils
(medis) occurred. These are often interpreted as steps towards
the creation of representative government. In the provincial
administrative councils, the inclusion of clected members and
local religious leaders supports that interpretation. However,
comparison with other administrative systems a bo shows
another dynamic at work. Historically, boards or councils
served as ways either to expand the reach of -an inadequately
staffed bureaucracy or to meet needs for which there was not
yet a permanent agency. In fact, the Ottoman Council on Trade
and Agriculture (1838) evolved into a ministry (1871), ami the
Council of Judicial Ordinances evolved into the Ministry of
Justice soon after, among many other examples.
With its expansion, government intruded increasingly into
Ottomans' lives. For example, each stage in egalitarian reform
produced effects; throughout Ottoman society. The local
councils brought together officials and local representatives
to implement policies about which they often disagreed.
Taxation and financial administration were repeatedly
reformed. Censuses and surveys of households and income
sources were carried out, Istanbulites were exempt from both
conscription and taxation; consequently provincials bore the
tax burden, and provincial Muslim males bore that of military
service. The regulations of 1869 defined their military
obligation as four years of active duty, six years of reserve
service and eight years in the home guard. At that time, about
*10,000 men served m the regular {nizami) army, 190,000 in the
reserves iredifi and 400,000 in the home guard (mustahfizan).
The 1843 division of the empire into five military zones with
an army based in each had created new sites of interaction
between the populace and the military. New schools created
puzzling new educational choices. New courts appeared, and new
laws affected matters as pervasively important as land tenure.
Mailing letters (1840), sending telegrams (1855), and
travelling by steamship (about 1830) ail became possible,
largely by government initiative. M ajor cities acquired such
innovations as gas street lights, regulations on construction,
new firefighting apparatus and the beginnings of public
transport. Modern government began to acquire monumental form
with the building of new provincial government headquarters,
schools, rousts, police stations and docks.w
40 (padun, 'iiitiznneu daru'mwdi Amuiclit. pp. 254-^13.3607.1; ^akix, Tanziimu tlmetni Osmunh maUyesi. pp, Z4--33;
Ortayh, fiMjwratorfutJua, pp. jry-ja; Dumont, Tanaaroit', pp.
Stanford j. Shaw arid Bzai K. Shaw. Hist&y of the Qtijmtm
Umpire smt M«4er* Turkov, vol. H: Rfrfbrm, Rrvoiutim, «m«i
iUpublic; 7'Ke hist ofMotlem Turkey, itot-ivj; (Cambridge'
Cambridge Uniueroiy Press. ivt75. pp. 91-5.
24
The Tanzimat
Provincial administration The changes in Istanbul affected
the provinces profoundly. For much of the period, reforms were
introduced into the provinces gradually, either as pilot
projects or as solutions to local crises, as in Lebanon- Not
uadi 1864 were provincial administration regulations
i'v(j<?y<rt wzrtmwtmwt) issued for general application.
Despite this gradualism, local administrative reiorm produced
significant impacts throughout the period.
Under the Gulhane decree, the first goal in the provinces
was 10 eliminate tax Winning 1Altiza.n1) and appoint salaried
agents (mwhoiiil) to collect raxes directly. The new
collectors' roles were more extensive than rheir tide implied.
‘Hiey were supposed to explain the Tanzimat and the equality
of all subjects, set up councils, collect faxes, and register
taxpayers and their property. The councils were to bring
together officials with representatives of the local populace
to discuss tax apportionment and other issues, live collectors
were expected to raise what they could from the populace and
forward it to Istanbul to finance the reforms. In the long
run. replacing many old exactions with the consolidated tax
(vcygu) announced at Cuihane would produce a significant tax
cut for tax-payers. The local administrative council (mcclis i
idare.} was to include the collector and his assistants, the
local religious leaders and four to svx elected members,
inspection missions were also sent out along three routes into
the Ottoman Balkan* and four routes into Anatolia in *840. As
of 1841, fifty were serving in ten provinces extending from
central Anato
lia to Bulgaria, Macedonia and the Aegean islands’1 However,
direct revenue collection was abandoned as early as 1843.. the
costs of replacing tax-farmers with salaried collectors
exceeded the revenues collected in many places. The. mdirect
electoral system made it easy for notables who had oppressed
the peasants in the past to gain election 10 the new councils.
Orthodox leaders reported to the Patriarch in Istanbul that
that they were ignored or scorned in the councils, and he
complained to the .Sublime Porte. Tax revolts occurred ui a
number of places. Tax-farming made a comeback, with some
exceptions, surviving as Jong as the empire lasted.
Yet elements of the programme survived. Local councils
endured and multiplied. Needed to assess the consolidated tax.
the. surveys of households and income sources, launched in
1840. were revised and implemented in 1S45 on such a scale
that over (7,000 registers survive. Replacing many old
extraordinary fprfi) taxes, but not the jrmit mandated taxes
like the tithe (d$wj and the
u ^'ak,*!v 'VmzmM Mncm Osmmh wftwi, pp. .1? ?, eoj 30, 3/I5300;
Tanzmat
iimemmdt An&tetn. pp. ao$-i8
*3
CARTBft VAUGHN fINDl.8*
tax on non-Muslims (cizyc), the consolidated tax (vrj^tf)
survived. For some years longer, this tax was not fanned out
but was collected at rhe quarter or village level by the
headman (muhtar) and the imam or priest. Dissatisfaction with
the new tax Jed to a project in 1S60 to systematise taxation
of real property and income on a proportional basis. However,
this endeavour required yet another survey arid was
consequently implemented only in places where chat survey
could be carried out/*
After the abolition of the new tax collectors (muhasstl) in
i%4Z, the provincial administration system began to assume the
outlines that would be systema- tised in the regulations of
1864-71 hi 1842,. the government revised the hierarchy of
administrative districts in regions where the Tanzimat had
been introduced, and started to appoint civil officials to
serve as chief administrative officers at three levels'
province (eyafcr), district (saiurak), and sub-district
(kaza)** These officials had supporting staffe and. at least
at the higher levels, administrative councils. In 1845,
representatives from all the provinces were invited to
Istanbul for a genera) council. After it dispersed, temporary
‘development councils' (mnrmedisheri) were set up in the
different provinces. The expansion of civil officialdom into
provincial administration did more than anything else to
increase its numbers. Yet widespread complaints about abuses
showed how inadequate the supply of qualified personnel was
and how wide a gap opened between reformist ideals and
realities on the ground. Separatist movements and foreign
intervention expanded such gaps into threats to the unity and
survival of the empire- While complaints about excessive
taxation were common, Bulgarian evidence indicates that taxes
were 'not oppressive by European standards of the day\w
Likewise, under the special regime set up in Lebanon, taxes
remained 'artificially low'', even while the local road
network was increased in length thirtyfwld. One of the
weaknesses of Tanzimat administration may have been that
taxation was too lenient to finance the promised reforms.
In the early 1860s, contending with crises anywhere from
Bosnia to the Hijaz, the government revised and generalised
its provincial administrative system. Foreigners regarded the
provincial administration laws of 1864 and 1871 as triumphs of
French influence. Whatever the Ottoman reformers drew from
France, they drew more from their own experience since 1842,
not to speak
*3 Cakjr, Tanztrmu liefvrmi Oxmanti maHyesi, pp. 50-6. *.*040; £*dsm, ?arua’nrft Amd&tu, pp. to*- i6, .143-#.
.« £a<dim< Titixiwar j&nemituit AmAah, pp »• 1,109 2*2. zo8 4*
•M Tevfik Gtiran, t p.
Yt2cydUtftianUtAnmiiumHfma4tir^miar(liitmbul: Bren, xv$>\ pp.
174,
Ate; PaUit*?, Stefon# Bcanomia, p. 48; Akr*m Fwwd .Khatet,
Inverting l-hm& Emigration, Gmio; and the MiMc Cults in Ubanm,
t Hji- i ozo (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University f>f
California Press, •aoor's, pp. zo
The Tmdmar
of earlier precedents. In particular. Mklhat Fa$a had
conducted an influential experiment in administrative
improvement since i8<u M governor ofNif The i#6.| provincial
administration law was intended for application in a specially
created Danube province with Midhat -is governor; his i860
appointment as governor of Baghdad probably helped u> spread
the implementation of these policies.* The law was revised in
i#6? with a few moderations for application in a numher of
provinces, the Ottoman term for which was changed from cyalet
to vilayet: f urther revised, the law was published for
general application in 1871 and remained in effect until 1913.
By r8/6. twenty-seven provinces had been organised under the
*&?t law
The 1871 provincial administration law divided the hierarchy
of districts inro four levels. In descending order, the levels
(and their chief administrators) were the vilayet (win, $*inmk
or livn (mMM&tmfi, kaza (haynnakam), and twtovr \miiiiur), The
four levels were one reason why people who did not know much
about Ottoman precedents might think that the law was
imitative of the four-tiered French system of local
administration. The law assigned the governors many functions
and <m enlarged staff, many of whom had specialised
funetionscorrespondingtothose of specific ministries in
Istanbul. There were to be administrative councils at each of
the top three levels. The councils were to include elected
members. Muslim And non-Muslim in equal numbers, as well as
official members. In addition, a general council (medial
umutm) was to bring together representatives of all the
districts in the province once a year for a meeting to discuss
development issues of province-wide interest. Other provisions
concerned the nizami courts, as well as the municipal
institutions for provincial cities. Special commissions might
also be set up for purposes such as refugee settlement.
Dissatisfaction.*? with the 1H71 law' quickly appeared.
Already in the shoit-lived Ottoman parliament of 1877-8, a new
provincial administration passed the lower house but not the
upper. \ -fowever* the £871 law survived until 19M.1*
inU’tccmmunal rihuioM Modernising the empire required
holding it together and promoting cohesion among its peoples
The Tar&tmat included seemingly -contradictory attempts
<5 Mcir Litvak. Shi': Scholar* <>f NiHeKrpth a ur< The Uiama'
t<f Suhtf and Ktirhala’ (Cambridge. C<u»hrttigc University t
j: p iS7-/o. ift Cadiro, Tdnjimat Jiinwimh' \ j ; < arter
Vaughj) Fin<.1k'y. 'The <-vy>Jiitjon
of the systtm «>f provincial admmitfrau mi x \\ J from the
center, its D.-md Ktjshner '<?<!), Pakstim in (he fate O'k^uin
Pert 1 itf» ft Saeiai a«.l fkmifmic Vmmjbrmafimi ijmmltfm;
Varf f.duik tten-Z'-i. ^ 1 mson. Hrfarm, pp. t
17
CARTHft VAUGHN FlNOtK*
to achieve this goal. The Ctlihane decree granted individual
rights with implied equality. The Reform decree of 1856
affirmed religious equality while confirming non-Muslims'
traditional communal privileges. The 1856 decree also proclaimed the goal of strengthening the 'heartfelt bonds of
patriotism' frevabtw kalbiye-i vatanda§j') that united all the
sultan's subjects.
Simultaneously optimising equality at the individual,
communal and empire-wide levels would prove more than
difficult. Yet the struggle to reconcile the rights of the
individual the community and the totality has proven central
to the development of modern polities around the world. The
Tanzimat reformers faced their version of this problem at a
time when identity and difference were becoming politicised in
new ways. The concessions to non-Muslims offended conservative
Muslims, who resented being deprived of the superior status
that the ^emr assigned, them. Some disturbances of the
Tanzimat years, as in Syria and Lebanon, expressed such
feelings. Nonetheless, the non-Muslim communities set about
reorganising their affairs, and the intelligentsia set about
promoting a new, inclusive concept of egalitarian Ottomanism
{OsnumUhfe) as an antidote to separatism.
The reorganisation of non-Muslim communal affairs responded
to several important issues. One, continuing from preceding
periods, was the lengthen mg list of non-Muslim religious
communities seeking official recognition as miUets, Another
issue was the corruption and oppression that prevailed particularly inside the older millets. Both the Greek. Orthodox and
Armenian millets were 'corrupt machines of business and
politics, manipulated for the advantage of the hierarchies'.’7
At times, both issues interacted. In 1850, Armenian converts
to Protestantism, still numbering only a few thousand, gained
recognition as the Protestant milkt. Governed by a bishop with
both lay and religious councils, die Protestant organisation
provided a model tor other communities. ’J*he Protestant lay
leaders' significant role was especially demanded elsewhere as
a corrective to clerical dominance.
Of the historically recognized tnilkts, new regulations were
approved for the Greek Orthodox (I&6O~2), Armenians (1863) and
Jews (1864). An empire inside the empire, the Orthodox church
combined ethnically diverse flocks with a heavily Greek
hierarchy and was vulnerable to nationalism for the same
reason that the Ortomaa Empire was. The result was mounting
demands for autocephalism (independently headed, national
Orthodox churches) in Bulgaria (1870) and Romania (1885)
17 Davison, R«r/ferm, p. h8.
28
'Hie Tanzimat
The reatg^urtteaiion of the mm-Muslim religious communities
had several important consequences. The drafting of communal
regulations (nizamnsmc) - sometimes referred to as
constitutions - for the non-Muslim communities helped to raise
Ottoman constitutionalists' expectations. Progressive Armenians who contributed to their communal reform advocated a
constitution for the empire, and one of them, Krikor Odian.
served on the commission that drafted it.1* At the wme time,
while reinforcing Ottoman solidarity and creating conditions
for specific communities to flourish were philosophically
reconcilable, under Ottoman conditions communal reform could
not he carried out without reinforcing separatism and thus
undermining Ottomantsm. Inasmuch as the religious differences
haste to millet reform seldom matched the ethnic differences
basic to modern nationalism, variable and unpredictable
consequences ensued, as the Greek Orthodox and Armenian cases
illustrate. Among Ottoman religious minorities, only to the
jews were ideas of nationalism or separatism still foreign in
this period
As the communal reforms progressed, die Tanzimat statesmen
attempted to foster the new 'heartfelt patriotic bond* to hold
nil Ottoman subjects together. This formed part of & larger
effort among Ottoman intellectuals to propagate new political
concepts and explain them by redefining old terms. The word
vm<tn. originally used to refer to one's country' in the
localised sense of ‘homeplace’ or the like, had begun to be
readapted to mean ‘fatherland', so recapitulating the
evolution of the French term pays anti its counterparts in
other languages. In official usage, the wording of the Gulhane
decree con nected military recrutcment with the defence of the
mtan. In 1850, the district governor fmuta&irn/^ of Jerusalem
appealed to non Muslims to join Muslims in aiding the poor and
old because all were, brothers in rhe fatherland’ (ikhwan ft
'l-wttMn),™ The Arabic roor from which the term millet derived
also provided material for the new conceptual vocabulary. The
Ottoman usage of the term millet to refer to a religious
community 15 illustrated above: Kn»j milkti, the ‘Orthodox
millet', comprised all Greek Orthodox Christians, including
native speakers of Arabic, Bulgarian or Romanian, as well as
Greek. Yet as ethnicity gained in salience compared 10
religious identity, some Ottomans began to use the term millet
to translate the French nation.-50 With time, Ottomans adopted
I* Ibid. pp. 120 45; ttevcreux, Ftr« Ottoman ftrnW, p. *59
*9 Lutfi. Ttrik, vnt Vf, p. Kj.; Beshara t'frnmuni,
Redtecrvetinj[ Palestine: Merchant and PtAt- mis
i?w»-1
i*v> {Rcrkricy *n»J Lt*?> Angeles: Universiry of CnUforma
Press,
p. ijn.
40 $erif MarcHrs, The unmis <j'Young Quamtn tfohghi: A Study
in theM&fcmizatmi ^[Turkish idem CPmvMntv. SVmceioo,
Uniwt’sin- Press, ^p, V89. *.?v 4. P-7 -9
C4KT8M V*U«WN FINOLEV
the related terms mitli to mean ‘national’ and miUiyet to mean
nationality*. The continual adaptive reuse of old terms to
express new concepts provided one sign of a revolutionary
transformation that was starting to occur in the way meanings
were produced and conveyed.
The new patriotic bond’ was intended to take the form of a
redefined Ottomanism (CtemawMtfe). Historically, the members
of the sultan's ruling elite had been the only people referred
to as Osmanli. Equality meant extending that identity to
rulers and subjects alike. 1b consolidate the affective bond
among all Ottoman subjects, die 1856 reform decree opened
government employment and the elite civil and military schools
to all and expanded non-Muslims' rights in the new secular
(mzami) courts. The employment of non-Muslims in some civil
administrative departments attests to the seriousness with
which the elites took this policy. In addition, the reference
to 'heartfelt patriotism* implicitly recognised the need to
infuse rhe Ottoman ideal with emotional fire. Thuit would
become the task of a new form of Ottoman political opposition.
Under different circumstances, the Ottoman attempt to
reconcile individual, communal and all inclusive rights and
identities might have worked as well as the construction
ofBritish nationality had earlier, huts own day, it worked
about as well as the attempt to create an 'imperial
nationalism’ did in Austria-Hungary.41
Transformation of the political proven In 1839. political
participation was still officially limited to the ruling
elites - an interpretation that ignored a rich history of
negotiation and resistance by the sultan’s subjects. Moreover,
while the empire clearly had administrative institutions, it
had few or no organised political institutions distinct from
them, in the way that modern states have parliaments distinct
from their bureaucracies. The ruling elites and the Ottoman
Intelligentsia were also still virtually identical. What
served as politics took the form of factional rivalries, which
revolved around personalities more than policies. Great men
formed household-based factions and patronage networks.
Factional leaders then vied with one another to place their
.supporters in strategic positions, win rhe sultan's favour,
and discredit their rivals in his eyes. The principle of
official slavery made factional politics into a high-st akes
game. The loser stood to lose life and fortune; his followers
risked their offices, if not their necks.
'{lie legal reforms of the late 1830s increased the security
of high office- holding, enabling Mustafa Re$id, Fuad and Ali
Pa§as to remain at the top far
4i Oruyb. ImpamtprisigHn, p. 90.
1°
The Tamamat
longer than would have been possible before. At the same time,
the political game was changing a!) around them Innovative
reform stimulated dehare over policy alternatives, and
politics started to revolve around ideas, not jusr
personalities. For conservatives, the manipulation of rhe
sultan's pqwer to sanction policies crafted by his officials
heightened the level of controversy, inasmuch as the power
chat civil bureaucrats wielded in fact belonged to the sultan
by tight. Under the circumstances. \r was only a question of
time untd a new form of political opposition would emerge
among the elites.
Cultural change contributed significantly to this
development. Seiirn III had been a major figure in traditional
forms of poetical and mi&icjJ production, not only as patron
but also as poet and composer, hi contrast, his successors set
standards in the westernisation of tastes. No subsequent
sultan, rated mention as a poet, the premier form of literary
creativity.^ What connected poetry to politics was the
essential role that literary production, especially poetry
writing, played m iht: old factional politics. Historically,
Ottoman intellectuals all identified as poets. Those who could
not excel at poetry had to find some other way to make a
living; employment in a government office wss the usual
solution.4* However talented rhe writer, the route to material
reward was through patronage- Bxcept fur close relatives, the
classic way w form a career* launching connection nntistih} ro
& great man was to display one's talent in verse, preferably
in a praise poem, If praising the great man tailed, the
alternate, route to material reward was satire, whtch might
elicit a valuable gift from the victim as an inducement to
desist.
While these patterns survived into the Tanzimat, seismic
shifts occurred in the. context surrounding them. The sultans
had been the. biggest patrons, and the. decline, of palace
pattonage struck a major blow to artists ami writers. A.t the
same time, new media of communication, new ideas about
language and literary genres, arid new forms of individual
subjectivity and class formation implied opportunities for
writers prepared to address a new audience. During the
Tanzimat, Ottoman ‘print capitalism' emerged - not just
printing, but everything that accompanied, the advent of the
print media and \ he. bourgeois reading public. The
consequences proved revolutionary, both in the short, term for
Tanzimat politics arid m the long term for late Ottoman and
modem Turkish culture,
*2 NiMti $xml Banarli. Raimh Tvrk eJt'kiydu uinht ’fsc,mbul;
MilH Egiuns. vol. fl.
pp. ?48-#t 77<> i ami passim <>a Sdjm Ifi, the mda mejsckms no
subwtjutiw sultan 4? Mahmud K.emsi Inal. Sm astt V%fk strict
IsiAnhut MJIW Bipitsm. u>69>. biograj^mai es'ii'y<dop<‘{!tft
^boui and thus n«:i4inullv abow hure<ttu;f^$.,
CARTER VAUfiHN PlNOLSt
This cultural transformation began obscurely. The first
privately owned Ottoman-ianguage newspaper, the Ceride-i
Havadis (1840), had an English proprietor, William Churchill,
but Turkish writers. The first Turkish-owned aon- oflirial
newspaper was Yusuf Agah’s Tercihnan-i Ahval (i860). As other
newspapers followed, the Ottoman-ianguage press flowered in
the 1860s. The first modem-style opposition movement among
Ottoman intellectuals, the Young Ottomans (Yeni Osmanhkr),
also emerged." Although they were young men who could have
enjoyed the leading statesmen's patronage, the Young Ottomans'
responsiveness to the new ideas and media emboldened them to
defy authority in devotion to their ideals. They formed a
'patriotic alliance* (1865} to work for constitutional
government. Fortune favoured them with a new kind of patron,
Mustafa Fazil Pa?a. A rich, alienated member of Egypt's Mehmed
Ali dynasty, he invited them to Pans. There, he bankrolled
their oppositional activities, including newspapers published
beyond the Ottoman censors’ reach. The Young Ottomans thus
became rhe first Ottoman intellectuals to go into foreign
exile voluntarily rather than compromise their ideals.
Historians tend to view the Young Ottomans as a political
movement and emphasise their political ideas. Yet they neither
created! a party, nor organised £he masses, nor fomented a
revolution; and their ideas ranged across the spectrum of
mnereenrh-century modernity, llury used their knowledge to
critique the Tangtraat and ofter their readers a new vision of
the world. Their writings overall identify them as cultural
nationalists, who strove to create a new Ottoman culture that
would be modem without losing its identity in westernisation.
Their reputation as heroes of constitutionalism does, however,
derive from their political contributions. Compared to the
Tansi* mat statesmen, rhe Young Ottomans had a deeper
appreciation of nor only European but also Islamic thought. In
using fslamic terms to convey pivotal ideas ofliheral
political theory, they not only recycled old terms to convey
new ideas, they also adapted the Islamic j\irisprudenti*l
method of reasoning by analogy (kiy«w) so as to gauge whether
specific reforms were Islamically justifiable. The Young
Ottomans' most innovative literary talent, Namik KemaL used
reasoning by analogy to articulate numerous positions later
common among Islamic modernists. He justified representative
government by citing the Qur anic injunction to consult about
affairs’ ('wa shawirhum ft 1 amri ), Me legitimised
responsible government and popular sovereignty through a
contractual interpretation of the bittt (bay'a in Arabic) or
oath of loyalty originally pledged at die accession of a new
caliph. He identified the European ideal
44 Mardh'i. U^nom.pp. so-yi; Findley, BureuiKraik Reform, pp.
ita-rtf.
32
The TVtxttimftt
of rule of law with the $eriat in Islam.45 Discussion of some
of his literary works will show more fully how his writings
reflected the so do-cultural transformations of the times and
extended beyond constitutionalism to a wider ranging attempt
to construct an Ottoman culture of modernity.
Socio-economic change
Although the Tanzimat ended with .state bankruptcy, this was a
period of significant socio-economic changes. Government
revenues remained inadequate ro support the reformist
policies.'1* Expenditures also lacked effective controls,
especially at the palace47 On the positive side, Mahmud li's
measures to reduce warlordism improved rural security and thus
stimulated production. The 1844 coinage reform ended the worn
period of monetary debasements in Ottoman history (1770-1840).
The bimetallic standard of 1844 lasted with modifications
until 192a. although revenue shortages led the government to
issue paper money (kaime, 1840-62). It depreciated badly, and
later issues met the same fate. During the Crimean War the
government also began to contract foreign loans. Mismanagement
of the foreign debt led to state bankruptcy by 1875. Modern
banking institutions emerged m this period, most notably the
Ottoman Imperial Bank (.1863). Although owned by British and
French interests, it served as a virtual state bank in
Istanbul.’4*
Despite the government's difficulties, trade and agriculture
expanded. The value of both exports and imports roughly
quintupled during the Tanzimat. The Ottomans exported mostly
agrarian products and carpets; they imported mostly industrial
products and some colonial goods such as sugar and spices. The
empire partially offset its negative trade balance with Great
Britain by gram exports to Italy and France and tribute
payments from Egypt.4* Foreign trade is hetter documented than
internal; however. Ottoman internal trade accounted for
probably three-fourrhs of ail trade and also grew in this
period.1® Ottoman agriculture also grew despite chronic
inefficiencies. Abundant hind hut inadequate labour and
capital characterised the agricultural sector.
45 Namtk Kemal, Makrfat t aichiyc w *ivasjy<- (Istanbul:
^elsraik
13a?. rwu),
pp. 165-75 CWa-Shawtrhum fjl-Amii'); Margin, Gnu'sis. pp.
psfcjr, TftnxtmiU
Qsmanh matiyen. pp.
■ft Orcayii, hni*ttri>ii>thgtin. p. t?fc
4? C^kir, Tmzimsit ttewmt CteitmU mtthym, p|>, %%■
4# Bdhcm Eldcm. .1 Mutinysff ta Ou<mt<ift fmptrttfi Bauk
(Istanbul: Onom*n Batik Historical Research Centre, ?po«>- 4?
Pamuk, Mi>net/try History, p no: Palaim, Balkan Ecwntm. pp fa3.
50 inakiVund Qvsavaers feds.t, An and History. pp. iH4-<?s.
CARTER VAWCHN FiNDtEV
The high costs of land transport constrained production by
making it unprof' itable to ship crops wry far for sale. With
regions! exceptions, the average size oflandholdings therefore
remained small. However, several factors stimulated
agriculture; the end of warlordism; che abolition of fixedprke government purchases (mui mubayeut} under the free-trade
treaties' anti-monopoly provisions; the clarification of
titles under the 1858 land law; arid the resettlement of
Muslim refugees on vacant lands. As a result, while total
government revenues nearly tripled from 1848 ro [$76. the
tithes on agricultural produce (fyur) nearly quadrupled.**
Despite the impact of imported industrial goods on the
Ottoman guilds. Ottoman manufacturing also adapted and grew.
The. Bulgarian upland towns achieved a rural industrial
renaissance by producing woollens and other textiles for the
Ottoman internal market. 'There was no question whether native
cloth could competc against imports - it was so competitive on
the Ottoman market that European goods were largely restricted
to the fashion trade.'53 By contrast, the Bulgarian economy
would regress after independence (1878). Nablus in Palestine
offers another example of growth, based in this case on
growing olives and making soap Irom the oil. During the
Tanzimat. the number of soap factories at Nablus tripled, and
their production quadrupled. Thus, ‘an ancient manufacturing
sector in a small interior city managed to grow and prosper
without the introduction of new technology, the development of
new techniques, the opening of new markets, or dependence on
foreign investment capital',5* Perhaps the most successful
manufactured exports were carpets, Ottoman carpet exports
increased seven- or eight-fold in value from 1850 to 1914 s4
Significant social development accompanied economic change.
Systematic census data only exists for later periods.
Estimates for 5872 suggest that the empire's population may
have been as high as 40 million for all territories (including
Egypt and semi-independent Balkan territories'*, or 1% million
for rhe provinces directly ruled from Istanbul, Of those 13
million, nearly 9 million lived in Europe, and 14 million
lived in Asia. Non-Muslims outnumbered Muslims by about five
to four in the directly ruled European provinces; in the
51
Otmanh lanmi, \x 58.
52
Pabiirx, Balkan £c<mt>mies* }>. 7a.
53Doumsutt, RcdisarvaitiiPalminf^ pp iSx-ij* (quot&tmn (mm p
ijx); Bugcite L R^gan. Fratitien of tht State in iht Ottoman
timyirz: Trantpnlan, i,1jr<>~twi {C.amHndge Cambridge
University Press, iw). pp ^8-v. 37.
54 Donald Quatacrt, OJfonwtn Maitufacttmng m tkc Age eftkc
indxiitrial Rrwkti ion f Cambntigf*: Oambfidge University
Press, pp. 154-60.
J4
I'hc Tuuimat:
Asian provinces, Muslim*; outnumbered non-Muslims by over four
to one 'rhis was a population in flux in many ways. Ottoman
dues experienced strong growth. Between r8«*o and rgao.
Istanbul grew in population from *oo.ooo to about 900,000;
Izmir grew from 110,000 to 200,000; Beirut grew from about
io.ooo to over 100,000.* Rural populations were also in flux.
Each stage uf Russian expansion into t he Caucasus and Black
Sea region sent waves of Muslim t* fugees into Ottoman
territory, bol:h Muslim Turks and .non-Turkish Muslims
(Circassians, Abkhazians, Chechens). Loss of Ottoman
sovereignty in Balkan territories also led to similar flows.
Annual numbers of migrants numbered m the hundreds of
thousands from 1H54 on. rising to 400.000 in 1*64-s?
Qualitative soda) changes transformed individual
subjectivity and class formation. Although they rightly fek
themselves behind rhe non-Muslim minorities in forming a
commercial middle class. Ottoman Muslims formed elements of a
bourgeoisie. Us segments were endowed with capital that was
either intellectual idvil officials, military officers,
writers} or economic; merchants, landowners}. With educational
reform and expanding literacy, the modernist intelligentsia
found its {brum in the emerging print media. With the appearance of state schools for girls and women teachers (1870) and
the first Ottoman women's magazine ‘Temkkl. *!%*»«;t Ottoman
Muslim women experienced the same changes.5* In contrast,
culturally conservative Ottoman Muslims, who generally
included the merchants and landowners, found their major forum
in religious movements While such movements were many and
diverse, rhe most influential of the era took the form of die
reformist Khalidiyya NJaqshbandiyya movement.** I he
Naq^hbandts' emphasis on political engagement led them
normally to support the stare, and their strict feriat
observance won them adherents among the idema The RhalidtvyaN aqshbandiy y a and its offshoots achieved exceptional
influence, continuing to the present. In time. Ottoman Muslims
ako created an Islamic print culture, but that essentially
occurred after the Tanzimar. Symbolised by the institutions,
sociabilities and practices surrounding Ottoman print culture,
on the one hand, and the Khalidiyya, on the other hand, two
great currents of change wen; emerging to
5$ Ktmai H Karpin, hjpuWum, i.t: , i»>» t iMmogrnphu'
<Mi«/<.‘/Mi.utc'rc*tu\«
^Madison: University of WfctfortMn ^re.-ss. t*jMi pp. ;A, u?
<46 Dumont. ‘TfammaC. p. 48"-; Lcfla T«*C3zi VJWAZ.
;VI«Tcfoimf.< atul Migrant-i in Nineteenth- century Hctntf
(CaniHniS^. M*V Harvard Umvcmty Press. wS?), pp. 2. 28 -tin.
37 Justin McCarthy, D^ath and iixiitv Hit Bkme C'h?ati.un& <*f
Oueman
f s u ..;i>-x
(Princeum: Darwin 'iht%% kk»5K \>\\ *5-5?.
5K Serpi! <^Aku; Om&*h kthim Iwrcftcxi (Iswnbuf Mt'ti*.
uwxj't, pp. za 5.
59 vSrnrt Bara Polev. 'Shaykh Khalui an<i riv Na^shbanJiyynKhalidiv^a Ph i > shwas, Georgetown University teooViCARTER VAU(!HN I'tNDlBV
shape Ottoman approaches to modernity. The current associated
with the prim media and the bureaucratic intelligentsia
included exponents of disruptive change and rapid
modernisation. The current associated with propertied Muslims
and with the religious movements favoured an adaptive approach
towards modernity. Most Ottoman Muslims probably sympathised
with both movements, unless forced to choose. In later
periods, the two trends differentiated more sharply but also
interacted dialecticaUy to shape the Turks' future.
Cultural horizons
Manuk Krmai (184a--88) epitomises the widened cultural
horizons that aceonv pained these social changes better than
any other writer. He is commonly remembered for reinvesting
old terms with new meanings to convey patriotic ideals, but
his creativity enabled him to go far beyond changing the use
of words, Me also transformed old hterarv forms and pioneered
new ones.
His best-known poem, on liberty; uses the conventional forms
for a praise poem (kttside) in a new, electrifying way.*0 Past
poets had written kujuiex to flatter a patron and gain
favours. Among several formulaic, elements, a fcdjufe had to
include a mcdhiyc praising the patron, a fahriyc displaying
the poet's brilliance and a wish or prayer (dim). Usually, the
poet includes his own name near the end of the mafhiye.
Unconventionally, Naimk Kemal made liberty the subject
throughout. In his mcdhiyc. he spoke for ail men of zeal
(crhufc-T Kimmen, using plural, implicitly other-onemcd terms;
he does not mention his own name but rather that of liberty'.
In his fahriye, he spoke for himself, using mostly firstperson, self referential terms. The two sections summoned both
poet and audience not to praise liberty but to defend it.
Kemals wish was that God preserve liberty from adversity.
Realising that modern theatre could reach a broader audience
than the reading public. Namik Kemal helped launch modern
Turkish theatre with another work, Varan yahud Silistre
(’Fatherland, or Silistria', 1873).61 The play caused
demonstrations, which provoked the government to exile the
Young Ottomans, including Namik Kemal, and censor the theatre,
Hie play also exposed a fundamental contradiction in the
Tanzimat s egalitarian Ottoman- ism, namely, that die primary
motivator to sacrifice for the fatherland was Islam. The
melodramatic plot combines mistaken identity with the theme of
rhe heroine disguised as a soldier who follows her beloved
into battle. After
60 Ontk-r GCcgtin, Namik KcuuU tn vebtitvn .p»ri<rn (Ankara;
Ataturk KXikilr MeHu’iii, pp- 7-to,
6r Namsk. Kemal, VaUtn yahuii Siltstrc (Istanbul {?}; ti. p.,
tyjyThe Tanzimat
the daring raid ii\ which they blow up the enemy's munitions,
the heroine, Zckiye. also discovers that their commanding
officer is her long-lost father, Hmetrging from disguise and
resuming Islamic dress, she reunites with her father and her
hero, Islam Bey. Islamic gender norms had to he violated to
get the slory going - in the implausible opening scene. Islam
Bey leaps m through the heroine’s window, in the happy ending,
those norms are restored, as the characters wish long life to
the sultan and cclebrate their good fortune, drvkt, the same
term used by extension to mean state'. The names of both
heroine (‘Miss Intelligent:'} and hero (’Mr Islam') are
obviously sjgmik&nt his stands out more in that, unlike hers,
it is not in common use as a person's name. ‘JTie pi a)’ is in
simple language and in prose., except for rwo patriotic songs.
However* it is full of passages in repetitive, chantlike forms
conducive to impassioned declamation. The play presents the
war-Hke face of nationalism in heroic terms, leaving later
generations to leant how painful it could be to fulfil these
expectations in a region where Islam did not motivate everyone
to fight for an Ottoman future.
Conclusion
Although Ottoman defensive modernisation had begun fifty years
earlier, reform accelerated during the Tanzimat and affected
society pervasively. Even as recurrent crises threatened the.
superstructure of multinational empire, at its core, state,
economy, society and culture all displayed great dynamism in
this period, '('he Tanzimat reforms produced new legislation,
programmes, institutions and elites. Statesmen and
intellectuals strove to hold Ottoman society together by
redefining Ottoman identity' and guaranteeing rights at the
individual, communal and empire-wide levels. The forces of
sociocultural change proved greater than the government could
contain in the case not only of Balkan separatists but also of
the competing trends that emerged among Ottoman Muslims, 'rhe
rise of prim culture and all that was associated with tt enabled rhe bureaucratic intelligentsia to develop into
champions of rapid, disruptive change More conservative
Muslims, stimulated particularly by the KimUdiy'yaNaqshbandivya. favoured a guarded adaptation to changing
times. Economic and demographic change supported the emergence
and dialecrical interaction of these trends, hs of i8?6,
political revolution was still a generation away, but a
cultural revolution had already started with the new media,
and the brief shining moment of the First Constitutional
Period {1876-8) was about to occur.