Ottoman decline thesis
Thus, many Ottomans writing in this genre, such as Mustafa Âlî,[13] described the reign of Suleiman I as the most perfect manifestation of this system of justice, and put forth the idea that the empire had since declined from that golden standard.
[15][16] One of the first references of Ottoman decline in Western historiography can be found in Incrementa atque decrementa aulae othomanicae completed in 1717 by Dimitrie Cantemir[17] and translated in English in 1734.
As the Ottoman state and society was geared towards constant expansion, their sudden failure to achieve new conquests left the empire unable to adapt to its new relationship with Europe.
In addition, the Price Revolution led to the destabilization of Ottoman coinage and a severe fiscal crisis, which proved disastrous when paired with the rapidly rising costs of warfare.
As the cavalry army of the Ottomans became obsolete, the Timar System of land tenure which had sustained it fell into obsolescence, while the corrupt bureaucracy was unable to replace it with a functional alternative.
The decline thesis was rooted in the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century conception of distinct "civilizations" as units of historical analysis, and thus explained Ottoman weakness with reference not only to its geopolitics but also defined it in social, economic, cultural, and moral terms.
Such comparisons caused earlier researchers to see transformation and change as inherently negative, as the empire shifted away from the established norms of Suleiman's romanticized and idealized age.
[39] The reigns of such figures as Ahmed I,[40] Osman II,[41] and Mehmed IV[42] (among others) have been re-examined in the context of the conditions of their own respective eras, rather than by inappropriately comparing them with a mythical Suleimanic ideal.
[46] Furthermore, the importance of the rapidly expanding bureaucracy is now particularly emphasized as a source of stability and strength for the empire during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, drawing particularly upon the work of Linda Darling.
[47][48] Based largely on the work of Ariel Salzmann, the empowerment of regional notables in the eighteenth century has been reinterpreted as an effective form of government, rather than a sign of decline.
[51] Furthermore, far from becoming militarily ineffective, the Janissaries continued to remain one of the most innovative forces in Europe, introducing the tactic of volley fire alongside and perhaps even earlier than most European armies.
The breakdown of the Timar System is now seen not as a result of incompetent administration, but as a conscious policy meant to help the empire adapt to the increasingly monetized economy of the late sixteenth century.
They maintained full self-sufficiency in gunpowder production until the late eighteenth century, and with rare and brief exceptions were continually able to produce enough cannon and muskets to supply their whole armed forces as well as surplus stockpiles.
[66] Early critiques of the decline thesis from an economic standpoint were heavily influenced by new sociological perspectives of dependency theory and world-systems analysis as articulated by scholars such as Andre Gunder Frank and Immanuel Wallerstein in the 1960s and 1970s.
Modernization theory held that the underdeveloped world was impoverished because its failure to follow Europe in advancing along a series of distinct stages of development (based on the model provided above all by France and Britain), which were assumed to be uniformly applicable to all societies.
[67] Dependency theory, in contrast, viewed modern-day underdevelopment as the product of the unequal global economic system gradually established by Europeans beginning in the early modern period, and thus saw it as the outcome of a historical process rather than a simple inability to adapt on the part of the non-Western world.
However, this economic downturn was not unique to the Ottomans, but was shared by European states as all struggled with the diverse pressures of inflation, demographic shifts, and the escalating costs of warfare.
[73] However, subsequent research demonstrated that, in the words of Şevket Pamuk, the eighteenth century "was in fact a period of recovery for the Ottoman monetary system," indicating that "the old thesis of continuous decline cannot be sustained.
[78] Historians such as the above-mentioned Bernard Lewis once referred to the supposed fall in the quality of the empire's bureaucratic records as an indication of stagnation in the Ottoman administrative apparatus.
The assessment methods in use under Sultan Suleiman were well-suited to ensuring proper distribution of revenues to the army of feudal cavalry that then made up the bulk of Ottoman forces.
However, by the turn of the century, the need for cash to raise armies of musket-wielding infantry led the central government to reform its system of land tenure, and to expand the practice of tax farming, which was also a common method of revenue-raising in contemporary Europe.
[81][82][83] These changes, contrary to the claims of earlier historians, do not seem to have led to widespread corruption or oppression to a degree greater than that observable among the Ottoman Empire's European contemporaries.
[86][87] The role of economic and political crises in defining this period is crucial, but so too is their temporary nature, as the Ottoman state was ultimately able to survive and adapt to a changing world.
A remarkable adaptation to new realities, rather than decline and disintegration, was its main feature; it reflects the resourcefulness, pragmatism and flexibility in thought and action of the Ottoman military-administrative elite, rather than their ineptitude or incompetence.
[93] Thus, per Dana Sajdi: "Regardless of what one may think of an individual revisionist work, or a particular method or framework, the cumulative effect of the scholarship has demonstrated the empirical and theoretical invalidity of the decline thesis, and offered a portrayal of an internally dynamic Ottoman state and society.
