The Eighteenth Century: the Westernizers

chapter 9 The Eighteenth Century: the Westernizers Unlike the preceding years, the final decade of the eighteenth century is one of the most studied periods in Ottoman history.1 Selim III (1789–1807) succeeded Abdülhamid in the course of the war against Russia and was determined to enforce decisive reforms and restore Ottoman power. Even before his ascen- sion, from 1786 on, he had been corresponding with the French king Louis XVI with the help of his tutor, Ebubekir Ratıb Efendi, as seen in the previous chapter, with a view to seeking advice and diplomatic support for his plans.2 At the beginning of his reign, he called an enlarged council, consisting of more than 200 administrators and military and religious officials to ask their opinion on how to restore Ottoman power. It is interesting to note that this was not a novelty; such councils (meşveret) were regularly held at many administra- tive levels and they became increasingly important in the second half of the eighteenth century.3 For instance, we have the minutes of the council called after the disaster at Maçin (1791), arguably the central event that set Selim’s thoughts into action.4 After the end of the 1787–92 war, Selim III asked a series of high administration officials to write memoranda on the situation of the army and the state and to propose reforms or amendments, and then set out to make radical changes, particularly in the military. In the janissary corps, ad- ministrative roles were allocated to special supervisors, while the former aghas were left with military tasks alone. What remained of the timariot system was rearranged, with special care given to producing a cavalry ready to fight during both summer and winter, thanks to a system of rotation; provincial governors were asked to recruit and train troops as reserves; the engineering schools, ini- tiated by Bonneval and Tott earlier, were expanded and enhanced; and foreign advisors were invited to contribute their knowledge to drilling and training the janissaries and other soldiers. Most importantly, an entirely new corps was cre- ated, the Nizam-i Cedid or “New order”. This was composed of youths recruit- ed in Anatolia; they were trained and commanded by European officers and 1 On the events of this period, see Shaw 1971; Mantran 1989, 425–445; Beydilli 2001, 70–90; Hanioğlu 2008, 42–71. 2 Uzunçarşılı 1938; Ratıb Efendi – Yıldız 2013. 3 See Aksan 2004, 21–22, and cf. Yaycıoğlu 2008, 144ff.; Yılmaz 2015a, 255–258. The preambles of the Nizam-i Cedid regulations often stress that these decisions were taken unanimously (ittifak-ı ara-yı ulema ve erbab-ı şura ile); see, for example, Koç – Yeşil 2012, 3, 60, 79, 95. 4 Yıldız 2016, 150–156. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004385245_011 382 chapter 9 funded by specially allocated revenues, the irad-i cedid (“new revenues”).5 In addition, recent research has shown that, the new army apart, Selim’s reforms also had a centralizing aspect, specializing in population control and what has been called the “statistical” state, which was very much in line with features of “modernity” without being introduced from the West.6 Unfortunately for Selim, earlier troubles did not cease. In the Balkans, the power of the provincial notables reached new heights with Ali Pasha in Yanya and Pasvanoğlu Osman Pasha in Vidin creating nearly autonomous territories. On the other hand, the rearrangement in European alliances brought about by the French Revolution soon reached the Ottoman Empire with Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt (1798–1801), which ultimately resulted in enhanced power for provincial notables in Syria and Arabia and increased the role of Russia in the Balkans. What was perhaps more important was that the opposition to Selim’s military reforms, led by dispossessed members of the janissary corps (which, by that time, had come to represent a huge number of urban dwellers),7 fi- nally brought about his demise. After a first conflict in Edirne in 1806, which ended with Selim dismissing the commanders of the new troops that he him- self had selected, the following year a revolt erupted among the auxiliary forces of the janissaries (yamak) who were guarding the fortresses of the Bosphorus, under Kabakçı Mustafa.8 As had happened before, the rebels were soon joined by janissaries, ulema, and urban dwellers; Selim was forced to dismantle the Nizam-i Cedid and soon after to abdicate in favor of his cousin Mustafa IV. In response, the ayan of Ruşçuk and a former opponent of Selim, Bayraktar (or Alemdar) Mustafa Pasha, marched on Istanbul; in 1808 he entered the city with his army, as the chief of a committee of notables. He did not manage to rescue Selim, who was killed in the palace, but he overthrew Mustafa IV and put on the throne the young prince Mahmud II (1808–39). Mahmud’s reign began with an impressive document, the famous Sened-i ittifak or “Deed of alliance” (1808), which was signed by the sultan, the rep- resentatives of the government, and a group of provincial ayan, officially de- scribed as “great families” (hanedân), who had assembled in Istanbul. With this document, the latter had their local powers guaranteed in exchange for their support for the dynasty, and thus for the first time had their role in imperial 5 On Selim’s reforms see Shaw 1971; Karal 1988; Kenan 2010. 6 Başaran 2014, 82–105; Başaran – Kırlı 2015. 7 Quataert 1993; Sunar 2006; this process had begun in the mid-seventeenth century (Tezcan 2010a; Yılmaz Diko 2015). 8 On this rebellion see the detailed analysis in Yıldız 2008; Yıldız 2012. The analysis in Argun 2013, 271ff., argues that this was “much more about the collision of two rival elite cliques for apportion of human and material resources than that of reformist-conservative struggle”..

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