William Tyler
The Decline of the Ottoman Empire to 1914
William Tyler - The Decline of the Ottoman Empire to 1914
- And congratulations to those of you who’ve found me. I feel like a disc jockey who’s changed channels and times. Changing to Wednesday was always planned, because of the events of the South African course on the Monday. Changing to seven o'clock, I apologise, was because of me, because I had to take my wife to hospital to an appointment earlier this afternoon, and I was unsure that I would make it for five o'clock. In fact, I wouldn’t have made it for five o'clock. And I’m very grateful to Trudy for swapping times. Just to say that after today, we, I revert to Mondays and to five o'clock British time. I will be on Mondays for the rest of the course right to the end of July, and, it will be at five o'clock British summertime. I’m going to talk today about the decline of the Ottoman Empire, and I’ll take the story up in broad terms to 1914 and the outbreak of war. In two weeks time, I shall talk about the 1914/18 war, in the context of Arab nationalism and ottoman decline in the Middle East. Next week I should be talking about English Arabism and English Zionism, because Arabism and Zionism had a lot to do well with Britain interfering, certainly we know that, but also with people who believe strongly in the case of Arabs or in the case of Jews and Zionists. So that’s what I’m going to be talking about. Now then, let’s look then at the decline of the Ottoman Empire. Many of you will know the story I’m sure, that when King Charles II of England was dying, he reportedly said on his deathbed, it took him something like five days, between being taken seriously ill and passing away. He thought to have made the mark, they made the remark to those around the bedside. “I’m sorry,” he said “that I’m taking an unconscionable time of dying.”
Well, an unconscionable time of dying is very much a Charles II humorous comment, even in the moment of death. And the same could be said and has been said by contemporary historians of the decline of the Ottoman Empire, and by historians of the Ottoman Empire, up until about the mid 20th century, they also thought of the Ottoman Empire as taking a long unconscionable time to finally die. Indeed, the Russian Czar Nicholas the first, in the middle of the 19th century, is reported to have said of the Ottoman Empire, that it is “The sick man of Europe.” And that Russian phrase, the sick man of Europe, spread right across the chancellors of Europe, particularly, and this is important to our story, to France and to Britain. According to this idea, that it was a slow decline, a slow graph to the bottom. Over a period of centuries, different historians have taken different views of when the decline started. Some go as far back as the death of Solomon the magnificent in 1566 and others with, I think more truth in it, as I see it, take the defeat of the Ottoman army before the gates of Vienna, in 1683, as the marker decline. It was certainly the point at which the Ottoman Empire ceased to gain additional territories. Indeed, it is the point at which they began to lose territories. And by the end of the 17th century, the Ottoman Empire had lost, for example, Hungary in the aftermath of its defeat at the gates of Vienna. Certainly by the mid-18th century, we can tell in Western Europe, you can tell in British documentation, that the fear of what had been called, “The terrible Turk”, was fading. We no longer feared that we would all be committed to Islam by the advance of the Ottoman Empire. That threat had been removed at Vienna in 1683.
But this analysis of a slow decline has been challenged in recent years, particularly during the 21st century, by modern scholars. And they say no, that gives a false impression, because there were times during the 18th, 19th and the beginning of the 20th century when the Ottoman Empire was not in decline, but was making advances, was modernising, if you like, it’s the one word to use, and modernising its infrastructure, modernising its taxation system, modernising its judiciary, and indeed modernising its army. And if you are British, Australian, New Zealand, you will recall the horrible defeat of our armies at Gallipoli, in 1915. Well, the Ottoman Empire did not look like a sick man of Europe, as the allies were forced to withdraw both from naval combat and military combat, having lost so many men. As they say, Gallipoli was the beginning of Australia thinking of itself as a very distinct entity as compared to mere adjunct of Britain. So there’s an argument to make, and this argument is made in the following way by Jane Hathaway in a book called “The Arab Lands Under Ottoman Rule”. And Hathaway writes, “Historians of the Ottoman Empire have now rejected a narrative to decline, in favour of one of crisis and adaptation, after weathering wretched economic and demographic crisis in the late 16th and early 17th century,” she writes, “The Ottoman Empire adjusted his character from that above a military conquest state, to that of a territorially more stable, bureaucratic state whose chief concern was no longer conquering new territories, but extracting revenue from the territories had already controlled while shoring up its image as the bastion of Sunni Islam.”
And yes, that’s true. I’m sure that’s true, but I think, maybe it’s rather pusillanimous to say I’m in the middle of these two arguments, of the slow decline or adaptation. I don’t think you need to make a choice between the two frankly, you can see that it’s in decline, particularly if you compare it as we did a few weeks ago, to the fact that it never had to any extent at all the European Enlightenment. And it fell behind militarily. It fell behind constitutionally politically, it fell behind industrially. When Britain began the Industrial Revolution, it simply fell behind. But on the other hand, one cannot deny, that by 1914, thanks to the Germans, the Ottoman army was in such a good nick that it could win it Gallipoli and it could win it, and we shall come back to that in a fortnight summit, cooked, in what is now Iraq, where it defeated the British Indian army. You can’t deny that and you can’t deny that there were serious attempts at Democratic to use a western word, at democratic reform. So I think it’s a mix if you like. So you must judge for yourselves whether you think it was a slow decline or whether you not like that. But if you think it was more like that, the ups and downs is entirely up to you. But it’s really an analysis of the story. The facts remain the same. It’s just as historians interpret those facts. The Ottoman Empire, just to remind us all, finally ended after the First World War. And 1923 is the date officially given to the end of the Ottoman Empire. So to bear that in mind, it existed right into the second decade or third decade of the 20th century. And that comes as a surprise to some people who think, well, the Ottoman Empire is something of the past.
It’s mediaeval. Well, no, it wasn’t. It did exist and had it chosen to ally itself with Britain, France, and Russia, and not with Germany, and had come out on the winning side, well, that’s one of the big ifs of history. What would’ve happened to the Middle East? Had the Ottoman Empire been at the Victor’s table, as one of the victors, rather than at the Victor’s table as one of the defeated? Well, I shall throw light on that today, a fortnight’s time and in whatever that makes it three weeks time. What is true and clear and we’ve seen before, is that having missed out on the European enlightenment, in matters such as a written constitution, the separation of powers between executive, legislative and judiciary and in the Industrial Revolution, as John McHugo writes in his book, “A Concise History of the Arabs”, which I feel is an extremely good book, “A Concise History of the Arabs” by John McHugo. McHugo writes might simply this, “Those in the Ottoman world who paid attentions to the ideas of the enlightenment, seem to have been few and isolated. Nevertheless, after their crushing defeat before Vienna in 1683 and the loss of Hungary, the Ottomans became aware that there was more than a gap in technological expertise between themselves and the Europeans.” And by that he means political and social gap. It isn’t that like the Chinese were in the 19th century, really regarded the West as barbarians and didn’t want anything to do with Western civilization.
The Ottomans were different than that. There was a realisation by many at the top of Ottoman society, that they were, if you like, falling behind the west, falling behind the ideas of the west, falling behind the industrialization of the West, just falling behind in general. The question is, were they able to do anything about it? And the answer to that is well, sometimes they did. And one of the sometimes is quite early, in the reign of the Sultan Selim, S-E-L-I-M. Selim III, who ruled between 1789, interesting date, the start of the French Revolution, between 1789 and 1807. And he was one of those who was a progressive, who realised that the Ottoman Empire needed to catch up with the West. And he introduced wide ranging reforms. For example, in the Army, he introduced proper training in the Army. He introduced new technologies in the Army, and he introduced new modern organisations of the Turkish army. Now we’re talking here about the turn of the 18th and 19th century. He did more than that. He reformed the taxation system, to make it more effective, thus the state would have more money to do the things that it needed to do or wanted to do. He established embassies right across Europe, both to improve communication, but also to improve trade. Moreover, he sought alliances with European powers. So this is a man who’s looking westwards, not abandoning the main tenets of the Ottoman Empire, in particular Islam, but being aware that the Ottoman Empire could not, in all consciences, allow itself to be outstripped by the West for the obvious reason that sooner or later the West would interfere. And so he’s making these alliances, and not least, because he’s faced with two threats, the two traditional threats of the Ottoman Empire, from Persia, modern day Iran, and from Russia, Persia matters little in our story of the decline, because Persia is a spent force and the Ottoman Empire doesn’t really have problems with the Persians.
It has continuing problems with the Russians, and we will come to that again in a moment. Now, Selim III’s reforms were liberal reforms, if you like, in an enlightenment sort of way. But he was forced to row back on them, because of largely clerical, Islamic clerics, opposition traditionalists, who felt that this was going too far and was undermining the precepts of Islam. In fact, at the end of the day, he was arrested by these conservative elements of the top of Ottoman society. He was imprisoned, and then in traditional Ottoman Way, strangled to death in 1808. I’ve written in my notes here, a missed opportunity for reform had Selim III’s reform stuck, and other Sultans had continued with those reforms. Then the story of the Ottoman Empire, and in particular, the story of the Middle East, would be very, very different today. In fact, the story of Turkey today is still a story. You all know that Turkey, although Islamic is a secular state, as set up by Atatürk, after the First World War, the only secular Islamic state in the world. And because of that, there are tensions between the secular army, which was Atatürk’s base for power and those politicians who have embraced Islamist ideas, conservative ideas of Islam. So there’s that tension in Turkey. Now, I don’t know about other people outside of Britain, but in Britain we are deluged with advertisements to go on holiday in Turkey. And it looks fantastic. None of the young girls are parading in any of the traditionalist Islamist costumes, but rather in fetching bikinis. There’s all sorts of activities going on with young men behind Powerboats, and it looks fantastic and is, I’ve not been on holiday to Turkey, my son has on a number of occasions.
And he said it is just like that. It’s very modern and yet very European, and yet behind that is always the spectre that Erdogan will link as he has done in the past with the Prime Minister, will link with is Islamists. So this tension between conservatives and liberals, I won’t use the word radical, because I don’t think it’s the right word, which began in the reign of Selim III, at the turn of the 19th century, sorry, 18th and 19th century, is still the story now in the 21st century in Turkey. And to be honest, the jury is still out on Turkey and we shall have to see what happens. Sir Charles Eliot, a British diplomat, met in 1900 a field marshal, an Ottoman Field Marshall, who told him this story and he put it in his book. So this is a story told to an Englishman to Charles Eliot in 1900 by a Ottoman Field Marshall. And the Field Marshall said to him, “I was a very young man and went for a ride with my old father. I was very foolish then and my head was stuffed with silly notions and liberal ideas.” In other words, he’s become a very conservative member of the Ottoman Elite by 1900. “I told my father, as a young man, ‘We ought to reform our constitution, systematise our administration, purify our family life, educate our women, introduce liberal ideas and imitate Europeans.’ My father answered, not a word. So we rode along the banks of the Bosporus. At last we came to a Christian village and round the Christian village were many pigs. And my father said, ‘My son, what you see?”
And I replied, 'Pigs father’, ‘My son", he said, “are they all similar in size and colour or do they differ?” 'They differ, father, but all of them are pigs.“ 'My son’, he said, ‘it is with the Christians, even as with the pigs, there are big Christians and little Christians, Russian Christians, English Christians, French Christians and German Christians, but they are all of them swine. And he wishes to imitate the Christians wishes the wallow with the swine in the mud.’” That is a very good story to illustrate the liberalism in 19, well, in the late 19th century and the conservatism at the top of Ottoman society. And it’s worth noting that when this story was told to Sir Charles Eliot, the field Marshall had become a conservative. In other words, it turned into his father. And it’s worth noting that liberalism, within the Ottoman Empire came from the young. There’s an essay for those of you who want to write one, which would be entitled, “Does Liberalism Always,” or what you call radicalism, “Always come from the young?” Question, not necessarily, but in the case of the Ottoman Empires, which we’ll see in a moment or so, absolutely is that the case. There’s another event in the reign of Selim III, which is external to him, which impacts on the Ottoman Empire, then and later, and impacts on the Middle East in 2024. Who was the man that upset the world most? Many people would say Stalin or Hitler. The answer is no, they didn’t. They failed. The man who really changed things was Napoleon Bonaparte. And in 1798, Bonaparte invaded Ottoman Egypt. Why Egypt? Well, to take India, it was a quick route to India. He wanted to India from British. He wanted to control the Eastern Mediterranean, as he controlled the Western Mediterranean.
And indeed, in his own words, he wanted to be master of the world and to enter India, “Like Alexander the Great on the back of an elephant”, he said. Napoleon is a sort of, because of Hitler and because of Stalin, Napoleon’s become a sort of woolly sort of figure, sort of figure- I mean, the British always admired Napoleon, but he wasn’t, he was a megalomaniac and he caused so much disruption across the world. And by entering Egypt, he forced Britain to enter it. Britain could not allow France to gain the edge. And so it not only brings France into the story of the Middle East, but the invasion of 1798 brought Britain into the Middle East. In the end, Napoleon is defeated, firstly off the coast of Egypt in Aboukir Bay by Nelson. And then on land, he’s defeated by a joint Ottoman and British army. And he has long gone by the time the army is defeated, fleeing back to France. And the whole business was a failure from the French point of view. But he introduced into France and later into Europe, ideas of the east, the fabulous East, he brought Giraffes to France. And he brought Egyptian temple architecture to Britain. And you can see that, and I think I mentioned that before in non-conformist, not Church of England, but non-conformist chapels in England built around the period of the first couple or three decades of the 19th century. Alliances kept shifting, the British and the French like that. And so the Ottomans played one against the other. But in 1806, the British Navy actually bombarded Constantinople from sea. The outcome of this, and it has to be a very brief little piece, the history of modern Egypt is a fascinating and conflicting one and one for another course, another day.
But by the end of the 19th century, that is to say by 1882, the British were to all intents and purposes in control of Egypt, even though Khedive, who technically before had given allegiance to the Sultan in Constantinople, but in practise had not. But the British arrived in 1882 and the British really took over. As McHugo, whom I’ve used just now, writes of this. He writes in this way, “Between Napoleon’s landfall in Egypt and the start of the British occupation of Egypt in 1882, the world changed at a speed, that had no precedent. On the seas, sail was steadily giving way to steam. And Alexandria Beirut, another Eastern Mediterranean ports, were now linked to Europe by steamship services. The railway and the electric telegraph was shrinking the world beyond recognition. The industrial revolution has spread beyond the British Isles across much of Western Europe and to the United States. The countries of the Middle East were already being drawn into a new pattern of trade before the 19th century began.” One of the determinants of history is religion, we know that. But another determinant is trade. “Local manufacturing was in decline as factory produced European goods, financed by modern European credit instruments provided by new European finance houses, dominated markets. As the century progressed, the European paths were granted treaties, which opened up Eastern markets to their traders.”
Think of China. “In the case of the Ottoman Empire, this meant that these goods were often free of internal customs duties, which were still imposed on local competition.” So we’re moving in financially, in terms of Britain and Egypt, it was Barings bank that moved into Egypt and made a great deal of money, some of which they gave to the refounding of my Oxford College in the 19th century. So I must’ve been too damning about Baring’s Bank. In 1914 at the start of World War I, Britain ceased being the so-called protector of the Khedive and made it a colony. Egypt became a colony in 1914, but was the first country to leave the British Empire in 1922. It’s a fascinating story. And then in 1956, Suez is marks the beginning of the end of Britain as a major power. Even if you ignore Britain’s position in 1918 and 1945, there’s no disguising it in 1956. So I’ve got to leave the story of Egypt. I hope we may be one day come back to it. I spoke a moment or so ago about changing alliances. In the middle of the 19th century, France and Britain together allied with the Ottomans in order to fight the Ottoman’s great enemy, Russia. And they fought in the Crimean War and the historians seeing the Ukraine, Russian War and seeing bits and pieces from the Crimea, it reminds us of that war in the 1850s, involving Britain and France and the Ottomans against Russia. Why did France and Britain get involved? Oh, there were a lot of stories about not allowing the Russians to protect Christians in the holy places of Jerusalem and Bethlehem, and to give preference of Russian, oh, forget that’s just, that’s just cover. The basic reason is neither France nor Britain wanted Russia to control the Dardanelles. Why?
Because it would allow Russian shipping, including naval forces to come out of the Black Sea and into the Eastern Mediterranean, and thereby threaten Britain’s and France position in the Middle East, let alone if they took Constantinople. And the Russians are still playing that game. If you think about it, in the Russian Ukrainian war at present, there was the question of getting oil out of Ukraine and the Russians attempting to stop it, and the Ukrainians having great success with the Russian fleet in the Black Sea. There’s been considerable concern, throughout history, of Russia taking the Dardanelles as an enemy. Now this is Czarest Russia, which 60 odd years later after the Crimean War, is Britain, France’s ally against Germany, I said changing alliances. But in the 1850s, it suited France and Britain to make sure that the Ottoman Empire survived, and the Russians did not come through the Black Sea for military reasons, but also for trade reasons, and to protect French and British trade, which was now of considerable size with the Ottoman Empire. And so that’s really the reason that we went to war one year after the Ottomans went to war. The war started in 1853, Britain and France, deploy troops in the Crimea in 1854. And once the Britain and France were involved, the decision of the outcome of the war was clear. Russia would lose. And some of you who know your history are saying, how could Russia lose when there’s such incompetence in the British army with the charge of the light brigade, for example, which some of us who are British had to learn the Tennyson’s poem about “The Charge of the Light Brigade”. And as a child, as a little boy learning, it was fantastic. In reality, it was a complete failure. But we won because the Russians were even worse than the French and the British. The Russian guns were appalling.
I used to live in Essex and in the garden, outside the museum, in the county, in the county, city of Chelmsford is a Russian Gunn from the Crimea brought back, brought back by the Essex regiment in the 1850s. And it’s still there, with children climbing all over its large barrel. The Russians were incompetent, so incompetent that after the Crimean War, even the Russians decided that they had to modernise their army. Russia is always, Russia is always lagging behind in terms of the technology of its weapons. And Ukraine isn’t a bad example, and nor indeed was the German advance in World War II. Russia’s advantage always as it is in Ukraine, is numbers, and also a willingness to sacrifice numbers of Russians to the guns of the enemy. So we are allied with the Ottomans in 1850s. By the time we get to World War I, the Ottomans are against us. And why are they against us? Because Russia is with us, oh do keep up. It’s very difficult, these alliances. Britain and France are obviously allied when it’s against Germany. But Russia comes in, because it also fears the Kaiser’s Germany, as it feared Hitler’s Germany. But with Russia on our side and with the Germans pouring money into the Ottoman Empire, prior to 1940, and of training the Ottoman Army and boosting the Sultan, the Ottomans chose Germany, whom they believe would win, but they chose Germany because Germany would prevent Russia from invading through the Black Sea and taking Constantinople. So these, the 19th century is an extraordinary century and early 20th of shifting alliances. But there was one outcome. There are unforeseen consequences of wars. We have no idea what the consequences of the Ukraine/Russian war will be. But one of the unforeseen consequences of the Crimean war was that there was increased demand by the Army who had seen the French and the British soldiers and had served alongside them, and imbued some of the ideas, who wanted reform. They wanted constitutional reform in that, in other words, a parliament, and the destruction of the absolute monarchy, which had happened in, and it happened in Britain.
And so one of the consequences was that, it’s like the second World War and black GIS in Britain who go back saying to their comrades back in America, “Well, you should see Britain, they had black officers in the army in charge of white troops. And what are we doing? We’re serving in black regiments.” So the same as here where the Turks, Ottomans, I should use that word, in the Army, meet French and English opposite numbers, and think we’re we’re behind all of this. Not in terms of technology at the Army. That’s a different issue. But in terms of the political issue. This is a book called “The Travellers History of Turkey” by Robert Stoneman. And there were just a couple of things I wanted to read, if I may. “One result of the Crimean war was a slowing, was a slowing in-”, sorry. “One result of the Crimean war was slowing in the rate of the reforms during the previous time.” Because the Sultan took an opposite view to the soldiers in quote, in the trenches as it were in the Crimean War. The Sultan thought, we don’t want these ideas circulating, so we must hit back at it. “But dissatisfaction at the Sultan group and a group emerged who were called the Young Ottomans.” Now that word is important. They called themselves the young Ottomans. What did they want? A constitution. You can sort of hear students at universities, “What do we want?” “A constitution.” “When do we want it?” “Now”, they did not want to destroy the Ottoman Empire.
They wanted the Ottoman Empire to modernise and have a constitution and a parliament. Moreover, they wanted Islam to be firmly embedded in that constitution. Now we would call that fairly conservative today, but at the time, to the absolute rule of the Sultan, it was liberalism gone mad. There’s a second piece I wanted to read, if I may, which goes like this. “Concurrently with this movement”, that is to say the young Ottomans demanding a parliament, a constitution from the Sultan, “Many of the provinces have been evincing nationalist aspirations, perhaps encouraged by the series of European national revolutions of 1848. This problem became known in the West as the eastern question.” Now that is not the Middle East, it’s Eastern Europe. Napoleon had spread the ideas of the French revolution of democracy. He’d spread them right across the Europe that he’d conquered. And so we get the beginnings of German nationalism, the beginnings of Italian nationalism, and we get the beginnings of the stirrings of nationalism within the Austro-Hungarian Empire. But that idea of nationalism, which was rooted in the enlightenment of the French philosophers and of the French Revolution, doesn’t stop at some imaginary border between Western and Eastern Europe. It flows over into Eastern Europe. And the Ottomans find themselves challenged by this. And the challenge comes in the following way. But before I do that, let me just say that the young Ottomans achieved their objective, and in 1876, the Sultan agreed a constitution and a parliament. But … within a very short period of time, just over a year, it’s gone. He hit back in a counter coup, if you like. In 1876, the Constitution is introduced, in 1878, its withdrawn.
So it looks as though by the end of the 1870s that he’s in charge. But, and this is a big important but, there are murmurings in Eastern Europe and the murmurings in Eastern Europe lead to countries moving out of the Ottoman Empire. Serbia was formally independent in the same year that the Sultan rejected the Constitution, I.e. 1878. Montenegro declared its independence in the same year, 1878, Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria, also in 1878. So Serbia, Montenegro, and Bulgaria. Bulgaria formally withdrew in 1908. But in 1878 it was withdrawing. Greece had already declared its independence in 1821, supported by Britain and long gone. So not only Hungary at the end of the 17th century, but now in the last quarter or so of the 19th century, Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria have gone, plus Greece. In 1912/1913, there’s a Balkan war, followed in 1913 by a second Balkan war. The first Balkan war was Serbia, Montenegro, Greece and Bulgaria, fighting the Ottoman Empire, attempting to gain further territory. In the second Balkan war, it’s Bulgaria who fight Serbia, Greece, Romania, and the Ottoman Empire changing alliances. What on earth’s going on? It’s because Bulgaria got the short straw after the first Balkan war, it thought it would get more territory than it finally got, what they called greater Bulgaria. And the territory loss was divided between Serbia and Greece. Now, although the Ottoman Empire had allies in the second Balkan war, it didn’t gain them much, but it did gain them something. The outcome of both set of these Balkan wars, is an indication in Western Europe that the Ottoman Empire is on its last legs. It cannot control its Eastern European territories.
As a result of the Balkan wars, it lost Albania, it lost Macedonia, and it lost most of the Aegean islands. But it managed to hang on to Eastern Thrace, and Eastern Thrace with its capital at modern day Edirne, old fashioned Adri- One of these words I can never get my teeth around. Adrianopolis. Adrianopolis. Is still Turkish today as indeed is the Gallipoli peninsula. So the Gallipoli and Eastern Thrace, in Europe remain Turkish today. because it managed to secure that at the second treaties after the second Balkan war in 1913. But what it is, is showing that the Ottoman Empire is collapsed, not collapsing, but has collapsed in Eastern Europe. And as Bismarck, the great chancellor of Germany once remarked of a coming war, I.e. the first World War, he remarked, “It’ll be some downfall thing in the Balkans that sets it off.” And of course, that’s exactly what does happen, not with the Ottomans being involved, but with the Austro-Hungarian heir to the throne, Ferdinand, being shot dead in Sarajevo by a Serb, Princip. So Bismarck was right, the Balkans are, have always been and will remain a problem even in today’s world. Now, let me go back a little way. I talked about the young Ottomans, and that’s rather important to do that. But in 18, in later than that, the young Ottomans were formed in 1865, later a new movement started, which was called the Young Turks.
Now the Young Turks and the young Ottomans were separate, and both existed up to World War I, the young Ottomans wanting a reformed Ottoman Empire. The Young Turks following ideas of Western nationalism, and realising the loss of territories in Eastern Europe wanted a Turkey. And one of the members of the Young Turks was a man called Kemal Atatürk, a young army officer, who we know as Atatürk, father of Modern Turkey. So it’s important to grasp this point, if I may be so pedagogical. We have the young Ottomans who want to preserve the Ottoman Empire that modernise it, but we have the young Turks who are thinking in terms of a Turkish state, what we have today. And of course it’s the Young Turks who in the end win out because there’s no way that the Ottomans can hold the empire together with the loss of Eastern Europe. And more than that, with the loss of its territories in Africa. We’ve already talked about the loss of Egypt, but we could also talk about the loss of Tunisia, the loss of Tunisia in the 19th century, which went to France and the loss of Libya at the beginning of the 20th century, which went to Italy. The Ottomans never reached Morocco. So we’ve got Tunisia that’s French by 1881, Libya, which is Italian by 1911/1912, Tunisia was technic a French protectorate, Libya was an Italian colony, Egypt, a protectorate of the British, later incorporated within the Empire as a colony of Britain. So the Ottomans are faced with the loss of North African territories. It had very little control over them since the early 17th century. It’s also lost its Eastern European territories, in broad terms, with the exception of Eastern Thrace, by 1914. And it’s left with the Middle East. And it’s the Middle East, which is of interest because it’s Arab.
Now we’re used to thinking perhaps of countries, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and so on. But in truth, those countries were simply formed after the end of the First World War by Britain and France. In truth, they were Arabs. This is where it all becomes quite interesting in the modern day to talk about who are the Palestinians. These were Arabs, and it’s the Arabs in Egypt who first led the way to thinking about being a Arab state. In their case, Egypt. But there have been moves since, and we know that since Second World War, in various ways you remember Egypt and Syria to try and create one Arab nation. The idea of having these separate nations is a very western and modern view of things. The older view, and a view that still exists in places, is that there should be an Arab nation, one Arab nation, which would be the reincarnation if you like, of the old mediaeval Arab empire that got as far as Southern France. Now this is something that McHugo writes that I will share, “The spread of Western ideas such as nationalism and constitutionalism in Egypt, was a gradual process, as it was in other Arab countries, not fast as in Eastern Europe. Before they could be adopted, they needed to be measured critically against local values, especially those of Islam. Not a problem in Eastern Europe. Yet by 1914, there had been changes to Egyptian intellectual life that could never be reversed.”
As I said earlier, Egypt is free and independent from 1922. Now, this is really fascinating. Who leads, who are some of the leaders of Arab nationalism in the Middle East? And you say Arabs of course, don’t be so stupid. No, no, no, no, no. There were Christians advocating. That’s part of the story of next week with English Arabs. But I’m talking about Middle Eastern Arabs. But there were also, there were also Christians and there were also Jews. And this is a fascinating piece. You can read it and in more depth in McHugo’s book, “Concise History of the Arabs”. But I thought it was well worth sharing. “James Sanua was born in Cairo-” sorry, “Was born in Cairo in 1839, and sent to Italy to study as a young man. He fell under the spell of both nationalism and the theatre while in Europe and achieved fame back in Cairo as a pioneer writer and producer of plays in colloquial Egyptian Arabic. Using Molière as one of his inspirations, Sanua produced successful operettas and comedies that satirised current Egyptian society. His targets included religious hypocrisy, the unseemliness of old men marrying young girls, the aping of western ways by the emerging middle class, especially by women and the practise of polygamy among the wealthy.” But what was he? He was a Jew.
He was a Jew. He wasn’t an Arab. How fascinating. And that’s the problem in the Middle East, isn’t it? It doesn’t divide, it doesn’t necessarily divide naturally. It’s like all these youngsters in universities protesting against Israel, failing to understand that their Arab Israelis serving in the IDF and Arab Israelis sitting in the Knesset. And that is much more a picture of what the 19th century Arab world looked like than the modern Arab world. There are no answers to any of those questions. It’s just fascinating that that should be the case. So the Young Turks are about a Turkey. In 1908 they create a revolution. The army gets involved, gets involved and he does a deal in 1908 to link with the MPs who’ve been called, because of crises within the Ottoman Empire. So he meets, he has the army. Now he has the MPs together, they send the Sultan into exile and put Mehmed the fifth, a new Sultan on the throne who’s a puppet of the army and the politicians. And in the strangest of cases, maybe one of the very few cases in the world, the Turkish army is the supporter of democracy. While some of the politicians are the supporters of the conservative clerics in Turkey today. So they get of the Sultan in 1908, yes, there is a Sultan, but he’s a constitutional monarch. He has very few powers and he does what the army tells him to. Look, if you are going of cause a revolution in whatever country you’re living, make sure you’ve got the support of the army. I mean, I think that is, that’s an important element in any revolution. And that is where Atatürk came from. He was an officer in the army.
He has the support of the army, and the coup of 1908 did not lead to a republic. It led to a constitutional monarchy, and keep the Islamist definitely down. And that’s as early as 1908. Now, had the first World War not come, I can’t say what would’ve happened. It’s possible that if the Ottomans had chosen to fight on the side of Britain and France, the Ottoman Empire might have survived. Well, not in North Africa and not in Eastern Europe, but in the Middle East, or would it? Because they’re all those British Arab, not least Lawrence of Arabia, who represents the Arabs at the Peace Treaty at Versailles in full Arab dress, to the annoyance of the British Prime Minister Lloyd George, who’s pro-Zionist. But I’ll come to that next week. What is important in this story, is that it is clear by 1914 that the old Ottoman Empire’s finished. It’s finished literally in North Africa. It’s finished in Eastern Europe with the exception of Thrace deliberately. But what are the Middle East? Would it have been wise to keep the Ottoman Empire going in the Middle East to prevent the troubles of the 20th century, or was that totally impossible? Not in the face of Zionism, but in the face of Arab nationalism, supported by Lawrence of Arabia in World War I and supported in and after World War II by Glubb Pasha, whom I once saw, next. That’s another story for next week.
I’ve got to come to some sort of end. And I thought this quotation was worth sharing. It’s from a grand vizier, to a Western ambassador in the middle of the 19th century. And it goes like this, if I may, I think I may have picked up the wrong book. I have. Yeah, it’s a book by Sean McMeekin, called “The Ottoman Endgame” in Penguin. And here he gives this quotation from this Grand Vizier, of the mid 19th century who sent this to a Western ambassador. “Our state is the strangest state, for you are trying to cause its collapse from the outside and we from the inside, but still it does not collapse.” Well, that was true in the middle of the 19th century. By 1914, the game is really up. The loss of territory, it’s falling behind. It’s outdated infrastructures and in the heartland of the Middle East rising Arab nationalism. And that is something that the Ottomans find very difficult to deal with, and which the British exploited through Lawrence Arabia in the first World War. Promising, well, promising the world to Hussein. We will come back to that. Now, there’s a, I’ve got time, there’s a little P.S. to my story. My American listeners will be saying, “Oh, he’s talked so much about France and Britain and Russia. He’s not mentioned America. This is disgraceful. It’s not what we paid to hear or not paid to hear in the case of lockdown.” And it’s interesting, it’s very interesting, because America didn’t take part in the Middle East, you said, “But come harm William the American are deeply involved in the Middle East today.” Yes, it is, but it’s worth remembering how and when it got involved. This is a book, quite a recent book, called “The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Emergence of the Modern Middle East” by O'Brien and Maddox.
And they tell this story, which is about America, and I’m going to end with this. “As the first World War began, the American government did not have any military presence or role in the region. It did, however, have an embryonic diplomatic relationship with the Ottoman government and American Christian missionaries were actively and extensively involved in religious, educational, and relief work. In 1906, the litigation of Constantinople was elevated to an embassy and within the Empire, Bierut and Smyrna had been elevated to consulates General, by 1914, to supplement the Constantinople consulate general. New posts had also popped up in Aleppo, Cairo, Tabriz, Manissa, and Trebizond. Meanwhile, the stations at Baghdad, Jerusalem, Sivas and Harput, were beginning to receive more diplomats, as the communications between the Ottomans and the American government grew, and the diplomatic relationship deepened. The Americans were very late on the scene. The Western powers involved with the Middle East were France and Britain, right way back to the Middle Ages and in now to the 20th century, America had no relation.” Now this is important. Why? Because it’s important to the discussions of what’s happening in the Middle East after the end of the first World War. America is not into- Does not have an understanding of the Middle East.
“In 1909, the American State Department created its Near East,” Near East is what we now would now call the Middle East, “Created its Near East Division, establishing a clear focus on keeping up with the politics and economics of the Middle Eastern nations.” That’s late 1909. Too late, war is coming, in less than five years, and the story is exploded. The area is exploded. It’s like Humpty Dumpty is exploded and can’t be put back again. The Ottoman Empire cannot be reformed. Something new has to take its place and America, America is not overly involved in those discussions. Had it been more involved, had Woodrow Wilson taken the Middle East more seriously, might there have been a different outcome? A Britain, France has simply manoeuvring, as it were, for greater influence within the Arab nations against each other. And of course there’s that three letter word, oil. That story is for the future. I hope that you’ve gained something from the talk this evening. I’ve enjoyed preparing it and I’ve enjoyed delivering it, and I hope some of that enthusiasm might have rubbed off on you. Next week, we will look, excuse me, we’ll look at English Arabists and English Zionists. Now, I’m not going to pinch territory and fire when it comes to talking about the rise of Zionism, but I need to say something, and Christian Zionists, which is a phrase used in England, goes back to the 16th century, long before Jews talked about Zion. The English puritans were, you all know why, of course, but that’s next week. If you don’t know, you’ll have to remember to tune in next week, Monday, five o'clock. I look forward to seeing you all then, but I guess there’s lots of comments. There are, let me see.
Q&A and Comments:
Lorraine, thank you. Yes. We had a scare of the Big C with my wife fortnight ago, and we saw a consultant today, and it’s okay. It’s not that, and it’s something that’s manageable and not a problem that we had two weeks of being worried about it.
Q: “Couldn’t you argue that Russia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, also the sick men of Europe the 19th century?”
A: Shelly, that’s a very good point. Yes, you could, and that would make a very good essay for undergraduates to answer. Yes, you could make it. I’m not so sure I would agree with the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Certainly with Russia you can, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, slightly more complex in my view. But no, that makes a good essay.
“The bird is in competition with you.” Do you know, I’ve only just, now you’ve said it, I can hear it. I think the birds are making comment on it. My God, that man’s boring.
Q: “Why was Selim strangled?”
A: Because the conservatives thought that he was going to far too the liberal. I don’t want to use left and right. They thought he was too liberal. And so with the support of the clergy, they strangled him. That was the usual way you got rid of people in the Ottoman Empire.
“I read somewhere that,” who’s this? Monty, “I read somewhere that the attack on the Twin Towers in New York on nine 11 was carried out on the anniversary of the defeated of the Ottomans in 1683 in Vienna.” You are probably right off the, off the cuff. I can’t remember seeing that.
Q: “Can you repeat the first book you read out”.
A: The book, it was probably, the book, the book probably was “A Concise History of the Arabs” by John McHugo, “A Concise History of the Arabs”. The book I’ve been using on the Ottomans is the latest book, which is simply called “The Ottomans” by David Baer, B-A-E-R, B-A-E-R, David Baer, “The Ottomans”. The other book, which I think is great, is John McHugo’s, “A Concise History of the Arabs”. Those are the two, the others, which I talked about, “Fall of the Ottoman-” “Beginning of Modern Ottoman Endgame” are put on my blog in two weeks time when I’m talking about that.
Q: “How could armies of England, France, and Ottomans coordinate their actions when they spoke different languages?”
A: No, most of the Ottoman senior command would have spoken French or English. The French commanders would’ve spoken English. The English commanders unlikely to have spoken French or in any sense, an Eastern language. So there wasn’t, there wasn’t too much of a problem. The problem was the French and British never got on, and there’s the story of the British General asking, true story on his horse, asking his aide-de-camp “And where are the bloody French?” He says, with his telescope to his eye, and the aide-de-camp says, “They’re our allies, sir, the French General is just a couple of yards to your right.” Because they were so cons, they were so trained that the enemy was always the French. I mean, it’s the whole story of the Crimean War is disastrous.
Q: “Would the World War I have started without killing of Ferdinand?”
A: Yes, the Germans would have found a reason. It was too, the Germans didn’t want to go in 1914, but they would’ve gone by 1916. Oh, yes. We seem to have got a blackbird in our big hedge at the back, you’re right, Miriam.
Q: “Why are the Balkans a problem even today?”
A: Because of the divisions of religion between Orthodox Christianity and Catholic Christianity, between Christianity and Islam, because of the corruption, which you could argue comes in the Ottoman Empire days, because of corruption in the Balkans and because they still dream of a greater Greece or a greater Serbia or a greater Bulgaria. And because, there’s Orthodox Christians, Putin thinks he has a hand in the game. So those are in broad terms.
Oh, Louis says, “A fascinating work of fiction on the kind of documentary, is Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk’s book, "Nights of Plague”. I’ve written, I’ve read rather, some of the other books written, but not “Nights of Plague”. That’s that’s another one to put on my ever-growing list.
Q: Shelly, “What role did religion play in nationalism in Balkan states?”
A: Well, it plays a big part of religion. If you take the Balkan wars at the end of the 20th century, beginning of 21st, we have seen there how religions played a very big part.
Mitsy, “Before the Arabs came in and began to impose their culture in the Middle East, the people were predominantly Christian.” That isn’t really true. That really, no, that isn’t true. The Arabs, of course, there were Arab converts to Christianity, but not significant.
Yes, Barry, “Erdogan does not admit that the church killed many Armenians. Yet he seems to criticise Israel for everything.
Q: Is he a hypocrite?”
A: You’ve answered your own question. I’ll talk about the Armenian problem. The, although there were massacres of Armenians in the period that I’ve been talking about today, it is in the middle of World War I, but the worst massacres of Armenians takes place, and I will refer to that in a fortnight’s time.
Oh, sorry. James Sanu, Sheila.
Shelly, I’ll talk about the Armenian situation. It’s the Armenian nationalism. It is different from Kurdish nationalism. There is a country called Armenia. There is no country called Kurdishstan, but I will say something about Armenia and the massacre of 1915.
Q: “Were not American oil companies … deeply involved?”
A: It’s largely British companies, in the Gulf For example. I’ll come back to the issue of oil, If I may, when I talk about after World War, I’ll look up the figures between France, Britain, and America. The point about America was the government wasn’t involved.
Yes, Shelly. I tried to make that. It was in my notes when, I sort of abandoned notes. I may not have said it. You’re absolutely right. The Austrian Hungarian Empire also had an issue with emerging nationalism. That’s why some people say that the Austro-Hungarian empires a model for the European Union, and it’s a shame that the Austro-Hungarian empire couldn’t hold together. But there was no way at the time with or without a first world war, that they ever could. Yeah, it’s not my garden outside. It’s the garden of the flat, but it’s a very long hedge. I’m sitting in the back of the flat. There’s a very long lawn and far garden and a big hedge, quite tall behind me, and that’s where they are. We, my wife has an app, so we go outside like this time of night and just see what birds are singing. We have had a nightingale, we’ve had wrens, we’ve had all sorts, Robins, all sorts of things. But the Blackbird, I love Blackbird. Right there we are I think, for this evening, thank you so much for bearing with me, in terms of day and time, and also thanks all of those of you who commented and asked questions, it’s always smashing to have those.
I do appreciate it, and thank you all, and I will see you Monday at five o'clock British time. Bye for now.