Carter Vaughn Findley

Bureaucratic Reform in the Ottoman Empire: The Sublime Porte, 1789-1922

From the authors preface: Sublime Porte--there must be few terms more redolent, even today, of the fascination that the Islamic Middle East has long exercised over Western imaginations. Yet there must also be few Western minds that now know what this term refers to, or why it has any claim to attention. One present-day Middle East expert admits to having long interpreted the expression as a reference to Istambuls splendid natural harbor. This individual is probably not unique and could perhaps claim to be relatively well informed. When the Sublime Porte still existed, Westerners who spent time in Istanbul knew the term as a designation for the Ottoman government, but few knew why the name was used, or what aspect of the Ottoman government it properly designated. What was the real Sublime Porte? Was it an organization? A building? No more, literally, than a door or gateway? What about it was important enough to cause the name to be remembered?In one sense, the purpose of this book is to answer these questions. Of course, it will also do much more and will, in the process, move quickly onto a plane quite different from the exoticism just invoked. For to study the bureaucratic complex properly known as the Sublime Porte, and to analyze its evolution and that of the body of men who staffed it, is to explore a problem of tremendous significance for the development of the administrative institutions of the Ottoman Empire, the Islamic lands in general, and in some senses the entire non-Westerrn world.

Economic Bases of Revolution and Repression in the Late Ottoman Empire

Central to late Ottoman history is a series of events that marks a milestone in the emergence of modern forms of political thought and revolutionary action in the Islamic world. The sequence opened with the rise of the Young Ottoman ideologues (1865) and the constitutional movement of the 1870 s. It continued with the repression of these forces under Abdulhamid 11 (1876–1909). It culminated with the resurgence of opposition in the Young Turk movement of 1889 and later, and especially with the revolution of 1908. Studied so far mostly in political and intellectual terms, the sequence seems well understood. The emergence of the Young Ottomans—the pioneers of political ideology, in any modern sense, in the Middle East—appears to result from the introduction of Western ideas and from stresses created within the bureaucracy by the political hegemony of the Tanzimat elite (ca. 1839–71). The repression under Abdulhamid follows from the turmoil of the late 1870s, the weaknesses of the constitution of 1876, and the craft of the new sultan in creating a palace-dominated police state. The emergence of the Young Turks shows that terror ultimately fostered, rather than killed, the opposition. Too, their eventual revolutionary success shows how much more effective than the Young Ottomans they were as political mobilizers.

The Advent of Ideology in the Islamic Middle East (Part II)

This is the point at which a modern kind of political ideology, in something approaching even the Shilsian sense of the term, first began to appear in the Islamic Middle East. This occurred with the emergence, almost entirely out of the civil bureaucracy, of what became known as the Young Ottoman movement. To appreciate the impact of this movement, we must consider not only how the Young Ottomans emerged, but also what they advocated, how they projected their ideas, and how significant a response their appeal evoked. This necessitates some reference to the broader context of political thought and action in the years extending from the formation of the movement in 1865 to the promulgation of the constitution in 1876.

Rise of the Bourgeoisie, Demise of Empire: Ottoman Westernization and Social Change.

BLExamines the process of Westernization and social change during the 18th and 19th centuries in the Ottoman Empire Using empirical analysis of archival documents and historical chronicles, Gocek questions the prevailing scholarly interpretation that Westernization leads to social change. Rather, she argues that social change precedes and contributes to the process of Westernization.

Ottoman Warfare, 1500-1700

A study of the Ottoman military machine and its successes in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East in a period when they were feared by western European states and the focus of much military concern. The book is intended for undergraduate courses in early modern history, Ottoman history, history of the Middle East and North Africa, and for military historians.

The Foundation of the Ottoman Foreign Ministry

Analysis of the late unreformed state of those offices of the Sublime Porte out of which the Ottoman Foreign Ministry was to develop makes clear, as we have shown in an earlier article, 1 that the possibilities for reform of the traditional bureaucracy were generally limited by two sets of determinants. One set, readily perceptible at what might be termed a macrohistorical level, consists of those largely exogenous forces which dominated the entire later history of the empire. 2 In contrast, the other set derives from the legacy of the old bureaucracy itself. Determinants of this class can be identified only by close examination of that legacy, which in turn had been shaped by the nature of the traditional state, as well as by those patterns of social organization and economic outlook which over the centuries had characterized Ottoman society in general.