The Ottoman imperium in the Balkans rested on a fundamental distinction between Ottoman Muslims and a variety of Christian underclasses. Yet until the eighteenth century the latter were not conspicuously oppressed, save perhaps in time of war with Christian powers. In a pre-nationalist age, the Empire's multitudinous peoples coexisted without undue friction, as long as the state was administered with reasonable efficiency. It was the institutional degeneration of the Ottoman state, in particular its loss of control over Muslim elites in outlying provinces, which loosened the allegiance of the sultan's Christian subjects.
The outstanding feature of the Ottoman Empire between 1804 and 1867 is the emergence of autonomous or independent nation-states at its expense. The Serbian revolt of 1804 signalled the beginning of a long process of selfliberation by Balkan Christian peoples, albeit one always heavily dependent on great power intervention. By the end of the 1860s an independent Greece had emerged, and de facto if not formal independence had been achieved by Serbs, Romanians and Montenegrins. The very creation of these states fostered an ever greater nationalist fervour. Not only did the new rulers find themselves driven to promote national sentiment through the apparatus of the state itself; all the new states were 'incomplete', in that there were still fellow nationals living under direct Ottoman rule, who must be liberated. This twin agenda of nation-building and national liberation dominated the agenda of the new states.
At the same time the Ottoman Empire had no intention of submitting passively to such a carve-up. Successive sultans wrestled with increasing determination to reverse the Empire's fortunes. Ottoman reformers, however, continued to be hampered by the conservatism or outright opposition of influential elites; worse, they had to cope with physical revolt against imperial authority, not just by Balkan Christians but also by Muslims. The record of
Map 5 The Ottoman Empire 1856-78
Source: Redrawn from ‘The Berlin Settlement in the Balkans'; Anderson, M. S., 1966, The Eastern Question 1774-1923: A Study in International Relations, London and Basingstoke, 213.
Ottoman modernisation in this period, therefore, is one of well-meaning initiatives frustrated by internal resistance as much as inertia.
As if this were not enough, the Empire continued to be the focus of international conflict and great power intervention. This was only partly because so many of its Balkan subjects were Christians, for whom the
Governments of European powers, if not their citizens, professed sympathy. Just as important was the Empire's strategic location astride the Straits and its increasingly titular possession of the Middle East and North Africa. France was a traditional supporter of the Ottomans as a counterweight to the Habsburg Monarchy and, increasingly, Russia. Britain, because of its Indian empire, had an abiding fear of Russian influence in the Ottoman realms, especially if this threatened the status quo in the eastern Mediterranean. The Habsburg Monarchy by the late eighteenth century had ceased regarding the Ottomans as a threat, in view of the more worrying possibility of Russian expansion into the Balkans. Russia itself saw the Ottoman Empire as a legitimate sphere of influence, not least for its importance as a trade route via the Straits, but by the early nineteenth century Russian policy was arguably more concerned to preserve the Ottoman imperium, as a suitably weak and hence biddable neighbour, than it was to acquire fresh territory.
World History
