ECONOMIC DIFFICULTIES

Under such conditions it was inevitable that the Ottoman government could not meet the increasingly difficult problems that plagued the empire in the 16th and 17th centuries. Economic difficulties began in the late 16th century, when the Dutch and British completely closed the old international trade routes through the Middle East. As a result the prosperity of the Middle Eastern provinces declined. The Ottoman economy was disrupted by inflation, caused by the influx of precious metals into Europe from the Americas and by an increasing imbalance of trade between East and West. As the treasury lost more of its revenues to the depredations of the devşirme, it began to meet its obligations by debasing the coinage, sharply increasing taxes, and resorting to confiscations, all of which only worsened the situation. All those depending on salaries found themselves underpaid, resulting in further theft, overtaxation, and corruption. Holders of the timars and tax farms started using them as sources of revenue to be exploited as rapidly as possible, rather than as long-term holdings whose prosperity had to be maintained to provide for the future. Political influence and corruption also enabled them to transform these holdings into private property, either as life holdings (malikâne) or religious endowments (vakif), without any further obligations to the state.

Inflation also weakened the traditional industries and trades. Functioning under strict price regulations, the guilds were unable to provide quality goods at prices low enough to compete with the cheap European manufactured goods that entered the empire without restriction because of the Capitulations agreements. In consequence, traditional Ottoman industry fell into rapid decline. Christian subjects combined with foreign diplomats and merchants, who were protected by the Capitulations, largely to drive the sultan’s Muslim and Jewish subjects out of industry and commerce and into poverty and despair.

SOCIAL UNREST

These conditions were exacerbated by large population growth during the 16th and 17th centuries, part of the general population rise that occurred in much of Europe at this time. The amount of subsistence available not only failed to expand to meet the needs of the rising population but in fact fell as the result of the anarchic political and economic conditions. Social distress increased and disorder resulted. Landless and jobless peasants fled off the land, as did cultivators subjected to confiscatory taxation at the hands of timariots and tax farmers, thus reducing food supplies even more. Many peasants fled to the cities, exacerbating the food shortage, and reacted against their troubles by rising against the established order; many more remained in the countryside and joined rebel bands, known as levends and Jelālīs (Celâlis), which took what they could from those who remained to cultivate and trade.

The central government became weaker, and as more peasants joined rebel bands they were able to take over large parts of the empire, keeping all the remaining tax revenues for themselves and often cutting off the regular food supplies to the cities and the Ottoman armies still guarding the frontiers. Under such conditions the armies broke up, with most of the salaried positions in the Janissary and other corps becoming no more than new sources of revenue, without their holders performing any military services in return. Thus, the Ottoman armies came to be composed primarily of fighting contingents supplied by the vassals of the sultan, particularly the Crimean Tartar khans, together with whatever rabble could be dragged from the streets of the cities whenever required by campaigns. The Ottoman army still remained strong enough to curb the most pressing provincial revolts, but the revolts proliferated through the centuries of decline, making effective administration almost impossible outside the major cities still under the government’s control. In many ways the substratum of Ottoman society—formed by the millets and various economic, social, and religious guilds and buttressed by the organization of the Ottoman ulama—cushioned the mass of the people and the ruling class itself from the worst effects of this multisided disintegration and enabled the empire to survive much longer than otherwise would have been possible.

External relations

Despite these difficulties, the internal Ottoman weakness was evident to only the most discerning Ottoman and foreign observers during much of the 17th century. Most Europeanscontinued to fear the Ottoman army as they had two centuries earlier, and, although its ability was reduced, it remained strong enough to prevent the provincial rebels from assuming complete control and even to make a few more significant conquests in both East and West. The empire suffered defeats for the first time, but it retained reserve strength sufficient for it to recoup when needed and to prevent the loss of any integral parts of the empire. Although the Ottoman navy was destroyed by the fleet of the Holy League at the Battle of Lepanto (1571), it was able to rebuild and regain naval mastery in the eastern Mediterranean through the rest of the 16th and most of the 17th century, taking Tunis from the Spanish Habsburgs (1574), Fez from the Portuguese (1578), and Crete from Venice (1669). In consequence, as long as Europe continued to fear the Ottomans, no one tried to upset the precarious peace treaties concluded in Süleyman’s later years, and the Ottomans were shielded from their own weakness for quite some time. Despite the upsets then disturbing the body politic, the Ottomans occasionally undertook new campaigns. When the rising principality of Moscow conquered the last Mongol states in Central Asia and reached the Caspian Sea, thus posing a threat to the Ottoman positions north of the Black Sea and in the Caucasus, Murad III conquered the northern sections of the Caucasus and, taking advantage of the anarchy in Iran that followed the death of Shah Ṭahmāsp I in 1576, seized long-coveted Azerbaijan. He thus brought the empire to the peak of its territorial extent and added wealthy new provinces whose revenues, for a half century at least, rescued the Ottoman treasury from the worst of its financial troubles and gave the empire a respite during which it could attempt to remedy its worst problems.

Reform efforts

The Ottoman reforms introduced during the 17th century were undertaken by sultans Osman II (ruled 1618–22) andMurad IV (1623–40) and by the famous dynasty of Köprülügrand viziers who served under Mehmed IV (1648–87)—Köprülü Mehmed Paşa (served 1656–61) and Köprülü Fazıl Ahmed Paşa (served 1661–76). Each of these early reformers rose as the result of crises and military defeats that threatened the very existence of the empire. Each was given the power needed to introduce reforms because of the fears of the ruling class that the empire, on which the privileges of the ruling class depended, was in mortal danger. In a war between the Ottomans and the Habsburgs that began in 1593, the Austrians were able to take much of central Hungary and Romania, and only an accidental Ottoman triumph in 1596 enabled the sultan to recoup. The Habsburgs then agreed to the Treaty of Zsitvatorok (1606), by which Ottoman rule of Hungary and Romania was restored. The treaty itself, however, like the events that led up to it, for the first time demonstrated to Europe the extent of Ottoman weakness and thus exposed the Ottomans to new dangers in subsequent years.

In the East, anarchy in Iran was brought to an end by Shah ʿAbbās I, who not only restored Iranian power but also conquered Iraq (1624) and threatened to take the entire Ottoman Empire. Though Murad IV was able to retake Iraq (1638), Iran remained a major threat. Finally, a long war with Venice (1645–69), occasioned by Ottoman efforts to capture Crete, exposed Istanbul to a major Venetian naval attack. Although the Venetians finally were pushed back in a naval campaign culminating in the Ottoman conquest of Crete (1669), they still posed a major threat that, like those which had occurred earlier in the century, stimulated the ruling class to accept needed reforms. The reforms introduced during the 17th century were too limited in nature and scope, however, to permanently arrest the Ottoman decline. The reforms essentially were no more than efforts to restore the inherited system of government and society that had operated successfully in the past. Efforts were made to restore the timar andtax farm systems as the basis of the administration and army and to limit taxes to the limits imposed by law. Provincial revolts were suppressed, peasants were forced back to the land, and cultivation was increased. Debased coins were replaced by coins of full value. Industry and trade were encouraged, corrupt officials executed, and insubordination driven out.

Such reforms were sufficient to end the immediate difficulties. But they were successful only temporarily because the reformers were allowed to act against only the results of the decay and not its cause, the continued monopoly of the self-interested ruling class. As soon as the worst consequences of decay had been alleviated, the old groups resumed power and their old ways. Moreover, the reformers did not understand that the Europe now faced by the Ottomans was far more powerful than that which the great sultans of the past had defeated; even if the reforms had been more permanently successful, they could not have corrected the increasing Ottoman weakness relative to the powerful nation-states then rising in Europe. Such an understanding was to come to the Ottoman reformers only in the 19th century.

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 801