How the Ottoman Empire held together for 600 years
Review of Empire of Difference: The Ottomans in Comparative Perspective by Karen Barkey
The Ottoman Empire lasted from the 14th century to World War I. It was multi-ethnic and enjoyed extended periods of peace in which its peoples could live in relative freedom and even prosper. How did its society work? Could it be taken as an example to emulate? What lessons are relevant for today?
Rebelling against the template of rise and decline, Barkey breaks down the stages of the Ottoman Empire into 3 periods: 1) the establishment of a vast geographic empire that tolerated and absorbed representatives from virtually all of the major Mediterranean civilizations as well as many of Asia; 2) the long struggle to wage (and finance) innumerable wars in the 17th and 18th centuries, which eventually established a more or less Sunni Islamic state that relied on the "privatization" of many essential state functions; 3) the failed transition from multi-ethnic empire to Turk-dominated nation-state, with the rise of extraordinary violence and exclusion as coherent political entities emerged.
Up to the end of the 16th century, the Ottoman Empire created a state that was ruled in a hub and spoke model, emanating from Istanbul. The Sultan cultivated the elites of conquered territories – preserving their status, offering them some peace and justice, tolerating and even encouraging religious and ethnic differences among its subjects. This stood in stark contrast to the Christian persecutions of the Reformation that were gaining momentum. The elites were co-opted, but they also saw it in their self interest to accommodate the Ottomans. The religions were a fluid mix of Christian and Moslem variations, which were "syncretic", i.e. feeding off each other and merging in their forms and even their beliefs; this reflected the balance of ethnicities over which the Ottomans presided, straddling Europe and the Near East.
According to Barkey, this required a subtle balancing act: non-Muslims accepted an inferior status – a clear boundary – in exchange for autonomy and the designation of circumscribed areas for their own enterprise. Muslims controlled the military with all its booty and glory, while the others had trade, certain areas of administration, etc. Each community interacted bilaterally with the center and did not forge relations across their boundaries. Ottomans in their turn acted as "brokers" between interests, negotiating with extraordinary flexibility and pragmatism and choosing elite members of the communities who would cooperate and in their turn gain advantage. These boundaries also were somewhat porous, with conversion to Islam (exempting converts from taxation, for example) as well as the entry of dragooned Christian youths into the elite Janissary warrior class.
Once the Ottomans reached the apogee of their expansion, the world had changed in a number of ways. With new technologies and ideas, other powers were constantly encroaching on Ottoman borders, which were increasingly costly to maintain by warfare. Perhaps more important, with the conquest of the old Arab lands, the balance of population shifted decisively towards Sunni Islam, lessening the tolerance for which the Empire had become known. This entailed increasingly severe restrictions of who could work in the Ottoman court, which quickly lost much of its eclectic mix and flexibility. Nonetheless, even though madrassas and an elite ulema were set up by Suleiman the Magnificent, Islam became more or less a tool of the state. Dissent in this period was not tolerated if it had an ideological character that, through ideas or faith, might threaten the diversity and delicate balances that centuries of negotiation and accommodation had established between communities.
In another vein, the financial stresses of constant warfare led to a decisively important development in the administration of the Empire. To raise funds quickly, the Sultan sold rights to tax farmers, which created an entirely new class of autonomous elites that moved into commercial trading at the moment that the industrial revolution was dawning. These elites, Barkey says, created "horizontal" relations with each other, supporting the Sultan in many cases (as in his struggles against Janissaries allied with the conservative ulema that resulted in repeated, deadly shows of force), but also carving out their own areas of interest, introducing wider political concerns rather than merely territorial considerations into the dialogue with the central state. This signaled the end of the hub and spoke model, delegating many state functions to regional actors who gained great power and autonomy while forging new alliances with each other.
Finally, in the 19th century, the Ottoman state attempted to modernize itself with the administrative tools of the nation state. Unfortunately, with the many strains of reform movements that emerged – Enlightenment-oriented, Islamic, and nationalist-Turkic – the various nations and ethnic groups no longer felt an accepted or equitable part in the compact of the Empire. As a result, these group sought increasingly to extricate themselves from traditional arrangements. This reflected the birth of ethno-nationalism and it would quickly tear the Empire apart. The traditional toleration, which had made the Ottoman Empire a beacon of enlightened governance, died. But the world had also become a far more complex place than the command-economies that existed to the end of the 17th century.
The author does clearly address the issue of Armenian genocide, which she sees as a product of the Young Turks and their attempts in the context of war with Russia to instill a pan-Turkic ideology (as a new basis of political legitimacy), in essence shamefully turning the violence of the state on "outsiders" as a unifying threat from within the Empire. Her treatment of this is curiously muted and dryly academic, but she does not shrink from addressing it even though she is an emigrant from Turkey.
Interestingly, Barkey could have written this differently in terms of style. In her introduction, she evokes the differences between her grandfather's attitude (who loved the bounded culture mix that still existed into the 19th century) and that of her father, who was concerned with the modernization of the Turkish nation after World War I. She probably had to write the book with her sociologist colleagues in mind, which is a pity for the interested layman reader as her talent as a writer surpasses that of most academic sociologists.
This is one of the most interesting history books I have recently read. It offers a dazzling and fascinating tour from the establishment of the vast and durable Ottoman Empire to the birth of the Turkish modern state, not from a European perspective but from a near-Eastern one. However, to be perfectly clear, this book is an academic work of sociology as applied to history: it is heavy with the driest jargon, has no narrative whatsoever to it, is frequently repetitive, and demands that the reader know a great deal about not just Ottoman history, but also histories of the Romans, Habsburgs, Russians, and Byzantines. From my reading, I would say it is a graduate-level book.
That being said, the ground that the book covers – how to explain the longevity of certain multi-ethnic and -religious empires – is absolutely essential for any serious student of history. This book is the best single treatment I have ever seen of the subject and will richly reward anyone who perseveres with it. While difficult, once I finished it I went right back through it a second time, underlining it with the enthusiasm of a student.
Related reviews:
