Turkey

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 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, Reşit 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 Gülhane Hatt-i Şerifi (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 Reşit 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 Reşit 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 Gülhane 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.

The defeat at Nizip had left the empire practically defenceless and it 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.

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 large-scale 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 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 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 real 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 great powers wanted war, but all had backed themselves into a corner 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 Üsküdar) 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.

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 inter-power rivalry this caused the other major powers to intervene to re-establish ‘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, 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.

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 Gülhane 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 II’s programme: the army, the central bureaucracy, the provincial administration, taxation, education and communication. What was new was a much heavier emphasis on judicial reform and on consultative procedures.

The army, now called the nizamiye (regular) troops, was expanded and given modern European equipment throughout this period. Inspired by the Egyptian example, Sultan Mahmut had already tried to introduce conscription. Now, from 1845 onwards, it was officially introduced in most areas of the empire.⁵ Christians, too, were now officially required (or, in Ottoman eyes, allowed) to serve, but since this was expected to create unmanageable tensions within the army, they were soon given the option of paying a special tax (the bedel-i askeri) instead, which by and large they preferred. Muslims, too, could opt for payment instead of service, but the sum demanded was very steep for most people. A number of categories, such as the inhabitants of Istanbul or nomads, were exempt, but for those communities that had to supply the army with recruits, conscription became a burden that was hated and feared. Normal service was for five years, but if the different categories of service with the territorial reserve were included, the total could amount to as much as 22 years.

Organizationally, the most important development (apart from the new census described on page 43) was the institution of provincial armies with their own provincial commands in 1841. These were put under the command of the Serasker in Istanbul, ending the hold of provincial governors and notables over the local garrisons. Most spectacular in terms of hardware was the building of a modern navy with ironclad warships. During the reign of Sultan Abdülaziz (1861–76), who took a personal interest in everything concerned with military equipment, the navy was developed into the third largest in Europe. The quality of the naval personnel lagged far behind that of the major European navies, however, so the Ottoman navy never developed into an effective instrument of power.

The main development in the administrative system at the central level in this period was ongoing rationalization and specialization, whereby a complete set of ministries and boards on the European pattern was gradually established.

As noted above, the centre of power within the government in this period clearly shifted from the palace to the newly emancipated bureaucrats of the Porte. Within the whole administrative structure of the Porte, the role and importance of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs are striking. The leading statesmen of the Tanzimat, Reşit Pasha and his pupils Ali Pasha and Fuat Pasha together, were appointed foreign minister 13 times and they held the post almost continually during the whole period (with the exception of the years 1841–45). The ministry not only conducted foreign affairs, but also took a leading part in formulating the internal administrative, judicial and educational reforms. There are several reasons for this. The normal function of the ministry, the conduct of foreign relations, had in itself been of growing importance since the eighteenth century because of the growing European pressure and the diminishing effectiveness of the empire’s armed forces. Its dominant role in the reform movement stemmed both from the fact that the necessary expertise (knowledge of European languages, experience with European societies) was concentrated at the ministry, and also from the close relationship between foreign diplomatic pressure and intervention on the one hand and the attempts at reform on the other. This was especially evident in all problems related in one way or another to the position of the Ottoman Christians.

Apart from the growth of the new ministries, the one other important trend at the central level was the development of a system of consultative assemblies and commissions. Specialized bodies concerned with specific problems such as building or trade grew up in many ministries. Their task was to help prepare new measures and new legislation. A leading role was played by the Meclis-i Vâlâ-i Ahkâm-i Adliye (Supreme Council for Judicial Regulations), which in 1839 was given a new charter with a kind of parliamentary procedure (with decisions being taken by majority vote and the sultan promising to uphold its decisions). It is important, however, to point out that however ‘parliamentary’ its procedures were, the council and its successors were not embryo parliaments. They were consultative bodies of high dignitaries, not in any way elected, and their powers to control the government, let alone the sultan, were very limited indeed. The Supreme Council combined two functions: on the one hand it discussed and prepared new legislation, on the other it acted as a court of appeal in administrative matters. The amount of work involved soon became so great that the council became more and more bogged down as the years wore on. Furthermore, in the early 1850s divergences of opinion began to appear between the council, which was a stronghold of the first-generation reformers, led by Mustafa Reşit Pasha, and the statesmen of the second generation, led by his pupils and protégés Ali Pasha and Fuat Pasha, who wanted to move further and faster with the programme of Westernization.

For these reasons, a change was introduced in 1854. The judicial function remained with the council, while the legislative function now became the prerogative of a new body, the Meclis-i Ali-yi Tanzimat (Supreme Council of the Reforms), which was dominated by the second-generation reformers, with Fuat Pasha as president. The change removed some of the friction but did not solve the problem of the council’s excessive workload. Therefore, in 1860 (after Reşit Pasha’s death) the two bodies were once more merged, but the work was now divided over three subdivisions, one for legislation, one for administrative investigations and one that functioned as a court of appeal. Finally, in 1868, following the example of France and under French pressure, they were again split into a Council of State (Şura-yi Devlet) with legislative functions and a separate court of appeal.⁶ The one important difference between the arrangement of 1868 and its predecessors was that the Council of State was a representative, though not an elected, body with Christian and Muslim members selected from lists provided by the provincial governors.

More important perhaps than the developments at the central level was the progress of the reforms in the provincial administration in conjunction with attempts to establish a fairer and more effective system of taxation (as announced in the Gülhane edict). In 1840 a major reorganization of the system of taxation was announced, with only three taxes remaining: the ciziye or poll tax on non-Muslims, the aşar or tithe, and the mürettebat or ‘allocation taxes’, in fact service taxes. At the same time, the custom whereby villages or communities had to provide board and lodging for passing or visiting officials and their entourage, and fodder for their horses – a major scourge on the countryside – was officially ended (something that had been attempted before more than once).

More important still, the system of tax farming was replaced by direct collection through centrally appointed and salaried muhassils. It was hoped that this would both increase central government’s income and lessen the burdens on the farmers; but the result was a complete disaster. Reşit Pasha’s government did not have enough competent officials to appoint as muhassils, the local notables who had held the tax farms sabotaged the collection, and lack of precise information (there was no cadastral survey of most areas; in fact, the completion of the countrywide survey, which started in 1858, took until 1908) made adequate collection impossible. State income fell dramatically, just when a system of salaries had been introduced in the bureaucracy. As a result, Reşit Pasha fell from power and the system of tax farming was reintroduced. In most parts of the empire it was not replaced by direct taxation until the end of the nineteenth century and even at the end of empire, tax farmers collected 95 per cent of the tithe.⁷

Of the other tax reforms that affected the mass of the people in the empire in this era, the first was the abolition of the ciziye, which was obviously incompatible with the declared policy of giving equal rights to non-Muslims. However, the military service exemption tax (bedel-i askeri), which in practice amounted to much the same thing, replaced it. The second was the reform of the sheep tax (Ağnam Vergisi), which was extended to all farm animals in 1856 and introduced differentiated taxation according to the animal’s market value. The third was the land law of 1858, which introduced a new system for the registration of ownership based on title deeds. Under the new system large tracts of state land (miri) were now converted into privately owned land (mülk).⁸

Confronted with the complete failure of the introduction of direct taxation in 1840–41, the government resorted to military rule, handing over provincial government to the commanders of the provincial armies.⁹ During the 1840s the government aimed to centralize the internal administration of the empire. It tried to reduce the powers of the governors by appointing officials who were directly answerable to the Porte instead of to the governors, by sending out inspection commissions and by instituting county and provincial councils. In these councils, which were the first more or less representative institutions in the empire, the most important local representatives of the government (for example, the governor, the judge and the police chief) conferred with representatives of the local notables and of the most important millets. In addition, during two months in 1845 an assembly of provincial notables was held in Istanbul, though it produced no concrete results.

In the 1850s, it became clear that this type of centralization, aimed at undermining the autonomy of the provincial governors, was harmful to the efficient administration of the provinces. Accordingly, the new provincial regulation of 1858 restored the powers of the governors, subordinating all officials sent out by Istanbul to them. In 1864, a new law on provincial organization introduced a complete hierarchical system of provinces and subdivisions, from the vilayet (province) through the sancak (county) and kaza (district) to the nahiye (rural community) and the kariye (village). The system was largely based on French practice and it was refined further (under French influence) in 1871.

From Sultan Mahmut II’s time onwards, most reforms were introduced as experiments in one or more model provinces or districts. The experience gained there in turn influenced the reforms formulated later on, like the 1864 law. The effectiveness of the reforms in taxation and administration differed hugely from area to area and from period to period, the main determinant seeming to be the ability of the man at the top. Some provincial administrators gained a reputation for efficiency and honesty wherever they went. Their administration could sometimes yield spectacular results in terms of public works programmes (roads, bridges, street lighting), improved health and safety and tax income for the state. Midhat Pasha in particular gained a reputation for honesty and efficiency during his stints as provincial governor in Nish (1861–64) and subsequently in the newly formed Danube province and in Baghdad.¹⁰ They were, however, the exception rather than the rule.

The Tanzimat era saw a number of important changes in the judicial system, many of them related to the changing position of the non-Muslim communities. The canon law of Islam, the şeriat, was never abrogated, but its scope was limited almost completely to family law (questions of ownership now also being brought under the sway of the secular law) and it was codified along European lines in 1865–88. The empire had always been ruled under a dual system with sultanic decrees functioning side by side with (though theoretically under) the Islamic canon law, but Tanzimat statesmen created new secular laws and institutions to replace this traditional kanun system, mainly where the changing position of the foreigners in the empire or the Ottoman Christians demanded it. In 1843 a new penal code was introduced, which recognized equality of Muslims and non-Muslims. At the same time, mixed tribunals were introduced for commercial cases in which foreigners were involved. In 1844, the death penalty for apostasy from Islam, a provision of the şeriat, was abolished. A new commercial code, copied from France, was introduced in 1850, followed in 1863 by a maritime trade code and in 1867 by a law enabling foreigners to own land in the empire for the first time. In 1869 a hierarchy of secular courts to deal with cases involving non-Muslims, the nizamiye courts, was created.

Not only the law and the institutions of the empire were secularized, so were those of the Christian millets. Within the Armenian and Greek communities the emerging commercial bourgeoisie was getting richer and more self-confident. At the same time its relations with Europe spread French political ideas among its members. This led to a movement for emancipation of the millet organizations from the exclusive control of the churches. This movement gained further impetus from the new Protestant Armenian millet, recognized (under British pressure) in 1850, which had a representative structure from the start. After long deliberations and struggles, the Gregorian Armenian millet adopted a constitution in 1863, which in turn served as an inspiration to the Ottoman constitutional movement. The Greek millet also achieved a measure of secular, representative administration in this period, although clerical control remained much stronger than among the Armenians. The Jewish community received its own constitution in 1865. An ironic consequence of this development was that due to this secularizing process the millets achieved a degree of formal institutionalization they had never had in the classical Ottoman Empire. The fact that representatives of the lay elites within the communities gained in power under the new regulations indirectly stimulated the separatist nationalist movements, which found their support in these circles.¹¹

Secularization was also the most important trend in education in the Tanzimat era. As in the preceding period, priority was given to the creation of professional training colleges for the bureaucracy and the army, the most important being the Mektep-i Mülkiye (civil service school), founded in 1859. They formed the apex of the educational pyramid of the empire, because attempts to found a university, of which there were a number, were not successful until 1900. This reflects the essentially utilitarian educational ideals of the men of the Tanzimat.

Sultan Mahmut had already initiated the building of rüşdiye (adolescence) schools, secular schools for boys between the ages of 10 and 15 who had graduated from the mektep, the traditional primary schools where children learned the Koran by heart and sometimes learned to read and write. The rüşdiyes were meant as a bridge between the mektep and the professional schools or on-the-job training in the government departments. Fewer than 60 of these new schools were opened in the first half of the nineteenth century, however, due to the usual shortages of money and trained personnel. The slow development of modern education forced the army to develop its own network of military rüşdiye schools from 1855 onwards, followed by secondary idadiye (preparatory) schools in the major garrison towns.

In 1869, a new Regulation for Public Education was issued, based on the advice of the French Ministry of Education. This new regulation foresaw a three-tier system of education, starting with rüşdiye schools in every large village or town quarter, civilian idadiye secondary schools in every town, and colleges called sultaniye (imperial) schools, modelled on the French lycées, in every provincial capital. These were all-male schools, but provisions for separate schools for girls were made in the regulation. In the 1870s progress was still very slow, but in the following era, the reign of Sultan Abdülhamit, the network of primary and secondary schools spread rapidly. Only two sultaniye schools were established, both in the capital: one in the old palace school of Galatasaray in 1868 and one in the Aksaray district in 1873, the Darüşşafaka for Muslim orphans. Galatasaray especially was to provide the empire (and later the republic) with generations of well-educated outward looking administrators, diplomats, writers, doctors and academics, both Muslim and non-Muslim.

The result of the educational developments during the nineteenth century was that there were now four types of school in the empire. The first comprised the traditional Islamic schools, the mekteps, and the hierarchy of medreses, which taught the traditional curriculum of Islamic sciences. Then there were secular state schools created during the Tanzimat and much extended during the reign of Sultan Abdülhamit II (1876–1909). Though they were often mediocre, these schools brought forth the reforming cadres that were to lead the empire (and the Turkish Republic). The third type was the schools founded and funded by the millets, and the fourth was the schools run by foreign Catholic and Protestant missions and by the Jewish Alliance israélite universelle, which were attended by a small, but increasing, number of Muslim children too. It goes without saying that this was not an educational system designed to stimulate a feeling of national solidarity or even a common identity among the literate elite of the empire (still less than 10 per cent of the population).¹²

As already noted, the period under consideration here coincided with the mid-century economic boom in Europe. After the free-trade treaties with the major European states in 1838–41, the incorporation of the Ottoman economy into the capitalist system progressed faster than before. The result of this and of economic expansion in the core countries of Europe was that Ottoman foreign trade expanded at a rate of over 5 per cent a year, doubling the volume of trade every 11 to 13 years. At the same time, Britain’s share of this trade increased markedly; it was by far the most important source of industrial products for the empire.¹³ France never came close in this respect, but remained important as a market for Ottoman agricultural products. Austria remained an important trading partner, but much of its trade was with those parts of the empire in the Balkans that seceded in the course of the century. Throughout the Tanzimat period, an important characteristic of the trade pattern was a large Ottoman trade deficit.

From the Crimean War onwards, European economic involvement in the Ottoman Empire expanded beyond trade into loans. Direct investment in enterprises was not yet important, but lending to the Ottoman government by European banks played a significant, indeed crucial, role.

Financial problems were and remained the Achilles heel of the reforming governments. On the one hand, the modernization drive was expensive. Replacing the old system of fees with salaries increased government expenditure, as did the purchase of military hardware for the new army and – especially – the acquisition of a modern navy. From the later 1860s onwards, the personal extravagances of Sultan Abdülaziz also became increasingly hard to control.

The governments of the Tanzimat period no longer tried to cover their deficits by debasing the coinage, as their predecessors had done since the sixteenth century. The reason was that, with the expansion of external trade, the rates of exchange had become much more important, and any debasing of the Ottoman coins was immediately reflected in a drop in its value against the major European currencies.

Local borrowing from Armenian bankers in Galata had been practised for some time, but these banks were relatively small and the rates they charged were high (often as much as 16 to 18 per cent a year). Therefore, the government had already begun to consider borrowing abroad during the 1840s. In fact, some of the borrowing actually involved Europe, as the Galata banks borrowed abroad part of the money lent to the state. Officially, borrowing abroad began in 1854, when the government faced acute financial difficulties because of expenditure for the Crimean War at a time when the alliance with the two major Western powers made conditions for borrowing on European markets relatively favourable – relatively because the terms under which this and successor loans were given were less attractive than they seemed. The nominal interest rate was always between 4 and 6 per cent, but, with the exception of the war loan of 1855, which was guaranteed by Britain and France, the bonds were actually sold on the European exchanges for prices far below their nominal value, often as low as 60–70 per cent. When the fees and commissions of the international banks were subtracted, the net income for the Ottoman treasury generated by these loans on the average was around 50 per cent of their nominal value. The Ottoman government had to pay back twice the amount it actually received, quite apart from the interest due.¹⁴

No wonder the loans soon became a millstone around the treasury’s neck. In real terms, state income hardly grew and as a result servicing the debt became a serious problem. A default was narrowly avoided in 1861. Debt servicing took up one-third of treasury income by 1870 and this percentage was rising fast. A large part (half to two-thirds) of new borrowing was spent on paying interest and principal on earlier loans.

However attractive the loans might look to a government in need of money, to the bankers who earned huge commissions on them and to the small investors in Europe (most of all in France) as a high-yield investment, it was clear by the 1870s that any serious interruption in the availability of European loans would cause a disaster.

One loan of 1858 was specifically intended to restore stability to the Ottoman monetary system, which was very complicated. The continuous debasing had left in circulation coins with the same nominal value but with different silver contents and therefore different real values. The general lack of specie prevented the complete withdrawal of these coins from the market, even after the government had carried out a general monetary reform in 1844. With this reform, three units were introduced: the Ottoman pound, consisting of five mecidiye, each of which was worth 20 kuruş (or piastres). The new coins were linked to a mixed gold and silver standard after the example of France. But Ottoman coins were not the only ones in circulation in the empire. One of the results of the irresponsible monetary policies of different Ottoman governments had been that foreign coins, especially the Austrian Maria Theresa thaler, the French franc and gold Napoleon and the Russian rouble, were widely used, not only for foreign trade but also in internal transactions. On top of this, the Ottoman government in 1840 and again in 1847 tried to lessen its financial worries by issuing paper money, called kaime. Strictly speaking, these were not banknotes in the modern sense, but rather government bonds carrying an interest of 12.5 per cent, intended for use as legal tender. Confidence in the treasury’s ability to pay was so low that kaimes were soon being discounted up to 40 per cent against the equivalent in gold and the only way to restore confidence was to withdraw the kaime altogether, something that the government, thanks to the 1858 loan, was largely able to do. When in dire straits, however, the Ottoman government always felt a temptation to restart the issue of kaime and it actually did so in 1861 and 1876. The last of the kaimes were only withdrawn from the market definitively in 1885.¹⁵

One monetary problem that remained until the end of the empire was the fact that the same coins carried different values at different places within the empire, depending on local demand.

The complex monetary situation made banking a much needed and very profitable enterprise. So much so, in fact, that the rich Armenian, Greek and Jewish bankers showed a marked reluctance to invest in productive enterprises, which needed long-term investments. This was a serious handicap for the development of a capitalist economy in the empire. At the same time, the economic importance of banking was recognized and the government supported its development. In 1856 the Ottoman Bank was founded, which was to be by far the most important of the banks operating in the empire. At the start, this was a British enterprise, which was only marginally successful, but in 1863 the bank, faced with a challenge from French competitors, was reconstituted as the Banque imperiale ottomane, an Anglo-French firm with headquarters in London and Paris.¹⁶

The period of the Tanzimat cannot adequately be understood if it is viewed only in terms of foreign political intervention, administrative reforms or economic incorporation. It was also in a sense a cultural revolution, albeit a limited one. The scribes, who were by now bureaucrats and who came to dominate the state during the Tanzimat, were a new breed. Their passport to preferment was their knowledge of Europe and of European languages, which many of them had acquired in the Translation Office and the foreign correspondence offices of the Porte and in the diplomatic service. Their knowledge was new, and so was their style. They wore frock coats and fezzes and liked the company of Europeans, with whom they now mingled frequently. The new lifestyle even affected the sultans, who now attended social and diplomatic gatherings, showed themselves to the population of the capital and even visited adjacent provinces. Sultan Abdülaziz’s trip to France and Britain in 1867 was a complete novelty: the first time an Ottoman ruler ever set foot on foreign soil for peaceful purposes!

The best exponents of the bureaucracy, such as the ‘father of the reforms’, Reşit Pasha, and his pupils Ali Pasha and Fuat Pasha who directed the affairs of the empire in the 1850s and 1860s, the great provincial reformer Mithat Pasha or the legislator and educator Ahmet Cevdet Pasha, were extremely capable figures. But many of the lesser bureaucrats had only a superficial knowledge of the West, combined with a snobbish rejection of traditional Ottoman ways. That they, the representatives of a centralist state that made new demands on its subjects, were at the same time clearly the bearers of an alien culture, made them extremely unpopular in traditional Muslim circles. Westernized Ottoman Christians and certainly foreigners often ridiculed them as Orientals impersonating a civilization they did not understand.

The reform policies of the Tanzimat had never been based on popular demand. They were imposed on Ottoman society because the leading bureaucrats deemed them necessary or because they were forced to act by the representatives of the great powers. Support for the reforms was therefore never broadly based. The Christians of the empire, who might be expected to support them, did so to a certain extent but the reforms did very little to prevent the spread of separatist nationalism among these communities. The Muslim majority over time became more and more antagonized by what many Muslims saw as the surrender of a pre-eminence that their forefathers had established sword in hand. Especially after the edict of 1856, they saw the great pashas of the Tanzimat as subservient to the European powers and to the interests of the Christian communities whose wealth and power was rising visibly. A Muslim reaction set in during the 1870s, but this kind of feeling already played an important role in an attempt at a coup d’état, which broke out at the Kuleli barracks on the Bosphorus in 1859,¹⁷ and also in the communal violence in Syria in 1860.

Another type of opposition to the reforms developed among the reformers themselves. A number of typical representatives of the reformist group of bureaucrats with Western-type training (most of them had served in the translation bureau of the Porte at one time or another) through their knowledge of French had become acquainted with the European currents of thought of their time, notably the ideas of ‘1848’, liberalism and nationalism. They have been described as the pioneers of an Ottoman intelligentsia. They were also people who, after a promising start to their careers in the 1830s and 1840s as protégés of Reşit Pasha, had fallen out with Ali Pasha and Fuat Pasha and had therefore not progressed during the period when these two established their hold on the politics of reform. Because they were excluded from the centre of power, they had to look for other ways to make their mark and some of them found this in a trade that was new to the empire: journalism.

The first Ottoman newspaper, the Takvim-i Vekai was started in Sultan Mahmut’s days, but was more an official bulletin than a newspaper in the modern sense. The first newspaper in Ottoman Turkish to be privately owned and published was the Ceride-i Havadis (Chronicle of Events) in 1840, which was the work of an expatriate Englishman called Churchill. It, too, largely reflected official policies but it gave more room to news about international developments than the government paper. The real beginnings of the Ottoman press can be traced to the early 1860s, when a new paper called the Tercüman-i Ahval (Interpreter of Situations) was published, which had as its chief editor, a man called İbrahim Şinasi.

Şinasi was a protégé of Reşit Pasha. He had studied in Paris during, or shortly after, the liberal revolution of 1848 and come back as a convinced modernist, imbued with liberal European ideas. In 1862 he left the Tercüman-i Ahval to publish a newspaper of his own, the Tasvir-i Efkâr (Illustration of Opinion). It soon became a vehicle for fairly moderate criticism of the government, attacking its authoritarian tendencies and its subservience to the European powers. In 1865 Şinasi, apparently fearing action on the part of the government, suddenly left the country for Paris, leaving his paper in the hands of a young functionary in the Translation Office of the Porte, who had already written a number of articles for his and other papers: Namık Kemal. Under his editorship, the Tasvir-i Efkâr became more radical. The editorials started to expound ideas that were to be more fully developed in the late 1860s.

The ideas of Kemal, who was the most articulate of the group of disgruntled young bureaucrats and writers, can best be described as a defence of liberal values with Islamic arguments. Kemal and the other ‘Young Ottomans’, as they became known, were both pious Muslims and Ottoman patriots, who looked back nostalgically both to a golden era of Islam and to the era of the empire’s greatness. They decried the policies of Ali and Fuat Pasha as superficial imitations of Europe without regard for traditional Ottoman and Islamic values, and as subservient to European interests. They also saw the regime of the Tanzimat as a one-sided bureaucratic despotism, which had destroyed the older system of checks and balances that had supposedly existed in the empire when the ulema still had a more independent and powerful position. They were convinced that the Tanzimat’s policies would lead to the destruction of the state. The solution, in their eyes, lay in introducing representative, constitutional and parliamentarian government in the empire, thus instilling a true feeling of citizenship and loyalty to the state among all Ottoman subjects, Muslim and non-Muslim. Although the empire would be following the example of liberal European states in doing this, the Young Ottomans believed it would at the same time mean a return to the principles of Islamic law, which recognized popular sovereignty. In the eyes of Kemal, the traditional practice of baya, for example, the oath of allegiance on the part of the leaders of the Islamic community to a new caliph when he ascended the throne, was essentially the sealing of a social contract between the people and the sovereign.

To expound his ideas to an Ottoman public, Kemal created a new vocabulary giving old words new meanings corresponding to the terminology of nineteenth-century liberalism. Vatan, the Arabic word for one’s birthplace, became the equivalent of the French patrie, hürriyet (being a free man, not a slave) that of liberty, millet (community) that of nation. This new terminology would be the ideological instrumentarium for later generations of Muslim liberals and nationalists.

Kemal did not content himself with public criticism and the exposition of new ideas in the press. He was also one of the six young bureaucrats who, in 1865, founded a secret society called the İttifak-i Hamiyet (Alliance of Patriotism), which was modelled on the Carbonari in Italy and aimed at the introduction of a patriotic, constitutional and parliamentarian regime. In the course of two years, a few hundred people seem to have joined the society, among them two nephews of the sultan, Prince Murat (the crown prince) and Prince Hamit.

Other members of the opposition movement who later made their mark through their writings in the emerging Ottoman press were Ziya Bey (later Pasha), a former member of the palace secretariat who had lost his position due to pressure from Ali Pasha, and Ali Suavi, a religiously trained teacher and preacher and editor of the short-lived newspaper Muhbir (Reporter). Ziya was generally more conservative than Kemal, advocating an Ottoman parliament with limited powers and opposing equal rights for non-Muslims, while Ali Suavi was a radical Muslim fundamentalist.

One more figure was of crucial importance to the opposition movement: Prince Mustafa Fazıl Pasha, a brother of the Egyptian khedive (viceroy) İsmail Pasha and a grandson of Mehmet Ali. Mustafa Fazıl Pasha was already known as a man of liberal opinions, but it was a personal grudge that induced him to take a public stand early in 1867. The succession in Egypt, as in the Ottoman Empire, was ruled by primogeniture and, according to this system, Mustafa Fazıl was next in line of succession, but his brother, the Khedive İsmail, had for some time been pressuring and bribing the Istanbul government to get the order of succession changed in favour of his own son. In 1866 he had finally succeeded in getting an imperial order changing the order of succession. Mustafa Fazıl thereupon took his revenge by leaving for France and sending the sultan an open letter in which he drew attention to the weakness of the Ottoman Empire and mercilessly attacked the government. Around the same time Mustafa Fazıl began to present himself in the European press as the representative of ‘Young Turkey’.

The government, which had already introduced a press law and censorship in 1865, grew increasingly irritated by this criticism, notably of its handling of the Cretan crisis. It may also have been aware of the plotting of the İttifak-i Hamiyet. When Kemal and his friends printed and distributed Mustafa Fazıl Pasha’s open letter to the sultan, it decided to crack down on its critics, sending them into internal exile, in the case of Ziya and Kemal exile disguised as appointments in the provincial administration.

When he heard of this, Mustafa Fazıl Pasha invited them to join him in Paris, which they did. By now they called themselves Yeni Osmanlılar (New Ottomans) or, in French, Jeunes Turcs, the phrase first used by Mustafa Fazıl. Supported by subsidies from the extremely rich pasha, they continued their broadsides against the policies of Ali Pasha and Fuat Pasha in journals published in London, Paris and Geneva, which reached the empire through the post offices operated by the European powers inside the Ottoman Empire and through commercial channels. The most important was Hürriyet (Freedom), published by Ziya and Namık Kemal from 1868 onwards, but there were a number of others, often more radical in character. The activities of the Young Ottomans abroad continued even after their patron, Mustafa Fazıl Pasha, had used the occasion of the state visit of Sultan Abdülaziz to France in June 1867 to make his peace with the monarch and return to Istanbul. Before he returned, he made financial arrangements for the survival of the Young Ottoman organs.

He was by no means the last to return to Istanbul. The Young Ottomans were, with the possible exception of Ali Suavi, members of the ruling elite and former civil servants. They identified closely with the state they wanted to save through liberal reforms, and the temptation to return, given a chance to influence policy from within, was always great. Namık Kemal was the second to return, in 1870, and all except two (one of them Ali Suavi) of the Young Ottomans returned after the death of their old enemy Ali Pasha in 1871.

The Young Ottomans were a small group within the ruling elite, whose organized activities spanned no more than five years. They were never tightly organized and the ideas of the individual members of the group differed widely. Nevertheless, their influence in Turkey and beyond has been disproportionate. They certainly influenced, albeit indirectly, the introduction of the Ottoman constitution in 1876, and the Ottoman constitutional movement, which was to oppose the autocratic rule of the sultan after 1878, based itself on their writings. Their line of reasoning, especially that of Namık Kemal, with its attempt to merge European liberalism and Islamic tradition, was taken up by the Islamic modernists later in the century and has remained popular throughout the Islamic world.¹⁸ Apart from their ideas, their major contribution was the creation of a new style of politics. They can be regarded as the first modern ideological movement among the Ottoman elite of the empire, and they were the first who, through their writings, consciously tried to create and influence public opinion, the Ottoman term for which (Efkâr-i Umumiye) was also of their making.¹⁹

5 · The Era of the Tanzimat, 1839–71