War in the Balkans: an encyclopedic history from the fall of the Ottoman Empire to the breakup of Yugoslavia

2015 ◽  
Vol 52 (08) ◽  
pp. 52-4001-52-4001
Keyword(s):  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
The Balkans

Сирия (аш-Шам) в системе османских владений (XVI – начало XX в.)

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
D.R. Zhantiev
Keyword(s):  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Social Mechanisms ◽  
Checks And Balances ◽  
Local Elites ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
The Face ◽  
High Level ◽  
The 19Th Century

Аннотация В статье рассматривается роль и место Сирии (включая Ливан и Палестину) в системе османских владений на протяжении нескольких веков от османского завоевания до периода правления султана Абдул-Хамида II. В течение четырех столетий османского владычества территория исторической Сирии (Билад аш-Шам) была одним из важнейших компонентов османской системы и играла роль связующего звена между Анатолией, Египтом, Ираком и Хиджазом. Необходимость ежегодной организации хаджа с символами султанской власти и покровительства над святынями Мекки и Медины определяла особую стратегическую важность сирийских провинций Османской империи. Несмотря на ряд серьезных угроз во время общего кризиса османской государственности (конец XVI начало XIX вв.), имперскому центру удалось сохранить контроль над Сирией путем создания сдержек и противовесов между местными элитами. В XIX в. и особенно в период правления Абдул- Хамида II (18761909 гг.), сохранение Сирии под османским контролем стало вопросом существования Османской империи, которая перед лицом растущего европейского давления и интервенции потеряла большую часть своих владений на Балканах и в Северной Африке. Задача укрепления связей между имперским центром и периферией в сирийских вилайетах в последней четверти XIX в. была в целом успешно решена. К началу XX в. Сирия была одним из наиболее политически спокойных и прочно связанных со Стамбулом регионов Османской империи. Этому в значительной степени способствовали довольно высокий уровень общественной безопасности, развитие внешней торговли, рост образования и постепенная интеграция местных элит (как мусульман, так и христиан) в османские государственные и социальные механизмы. Положение Сирии в системе османских владений показало, что процесс ослабления и территориальной дезинтеграции Османской империи в эпоху реформ не был линейным и наряду с потерей владений и влияния на Балканах, в азиатской части империи в течение XIX и начала XX вв. происходил параллельный процесс имперской консолидации.Abstract The article examines the role and place of Greater Syria (including Lebanon and Palestine) in the system of Ottoman possessions over several centuries from the Ottoman conquest to the period of the reign of Abdul Hamid II. For four centuries of Ottoman domination, the territory of historical Syria (Bilad al-Sham) was one of the most important components in the Ottoman system and played the role of a link between Anatolia, Egypt, Iraq and Hijaz. The need to ensure the Hajj with symbols of Sultan power and patronage over the shrines of Mecca and Medina each year determined the special strategic importance of the Syrian provinces of the Ottoman Empire. Despite a number of serious threats during the general crisis of the Ottoman state system (late 16th early 19th centuries), the imperial center managed to maintain control over Syria by creating checks and balances between local elites. In the 19th century. And especially during the reign of Abdul Hamid II (18761909), keeping Syria under Ottoman control became a matter of existence for the Ottoman Empire, which, in the face of increasing European pressure and intervention, lost most of its possessions in the Balkans and North Africa. The task of strengthening ties between the imperial center and the periphery in Syrian vilayets in the last quarter of the 19th century was generally successfully resolved. By the beginning of the 20th century, Syria was one of the most politically calm and firmly connected with Istanbul regions of the Ottoman Empire. This was greatly facilitated by a fairly high level of public safety, the development of foreign trade, the growth of education and the gradual integration of local elites (both Muslims and Christians) into Ottoman state and social mechanisms. Syrias position in the system of Ottoman possessions clearly showed that the process of weakening and territorial disintegration of the Ottoman Empire during the era of reform was not linear, and along with the loss of possessions and influence in the Balkans, in the Asian part of the empire during the 19th and early 20th centuries there was a parallel process of imperial consolidation.

Caught between Two Empires: The Teaching of Persian in Bosnia at the Time of Transition from Ottoman to Austro-Hungarian Rule

DIYÂR ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 186-207
Author(s):  
Munir Drkić
Keyword(s):  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Educational System ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Foreign Languages ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Similar Process ◽  
British India ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Lively Debate ◽  
Mass Expansion

This article considers the presence of Persian within the educational system of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the westernmost frontier of the ‘Persianate world’, between the 1860s and the first decade of 1900. Based on a survey of primary sources, such as the first journals introduced in Bosnia by the Ottoman administration, I show that the introduction of new educational establishments in the 1860s and 1870s brought a mass expansion of the teaching of Persian in Bosnia. Even after the Austro-Hungarian occupation of 1878, Persian continued to be taught in old and some newly founded schools. However, the following decades saw a lively debate on the teaching of Persian, highlighting the redundancy of this language in a new social and cultural context. As a result, Persian was completely removed from Bosnian schools at the beginning of the 20th century. In addition to presenting new knowledge about the spread of Persian in the Balkans, and the instruction of foreign languages in the Ottoman Empire, I intend to demonstrate here that a similar process of withdrawing and removing Persian from the educational system was occurring in Habsburg Bosnia simultaneously with the decline of Persian in British India.

The Ottoman Empire

2021 ◽  
pp. 729-750
Author(s):  
Dariusz Kołodziejczyk
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
State Building ◽  
Religious Tolerance ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Warrior Ethos ◽  
Bureaucratic Institutions

The Ottoman rulers masterfully combined military prowess with state-building skills. Having adopted Persian bureaucratic institutions, at the same time they maintained such typical Turkic traits as the nomadic warrior ethos, religious tolerance, and the institution of slave soldiers. To their Greek and Slavic subjects in the Balkans, the Ottoman sultans appealed as a viable (and more successful) alternative to the Roman/Byzantine emperors; to Arab subjects in the Middle East, they were the legitimate successors of the first caliphs. Yet in the long run, keeping such distinct traits proved difficult: the more rigid the Ottoman rulers were in their confessional policy in order to consolidate the Sunni Muslim core of the empire’s population, the more they alienated those who did not belong to this core. The empire’s final decades were characterized by the rising nationalisms and ethnic cleansings whose effects were further deepened by the humanitarian catastrophe related to the wars fought incessantly in the years 1911–1922.

“Population Politics” at the End of Empire: Migration and Sovereignty in Ottoman Eastern Rumelia, 1877–1886

2013 ◽  
Vol 55 (4) ◽  
pp. 955-985
Author(s):  
Anna M. Mirkova
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
State Building ◽  
Peace Treaty ◽  
World War ◽  
Political Autonomy ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Population Politics

AbstractThis article explores the migrations of Turkish Muslims after the 1878 Peace Treaty of Berlin, which severed much of the Balkans from the Ottoman Empire as fully independent nation-states or as nominally dependent polities in the borderlands of the empire. I focus on one such polity—the administratively autonomous Ottoman province of Eastern Rumelia—which, in wrestling to reconcile liberal principles of equality and political representation understood in ethno-religious terms, prompted emigration of Turkish Muslims while enabling Bulgarian Christian hegemony. Scholars have studied Muslim emigration from the Balkans as the Ottoman Empire gradually lost hold of the region, emphasizing deleterious effects of nationalism and aggressive state-building in the region. Here I look at migration at empire's end, and more specifically at the management of migration as constitutive of sovereignty. The Ottoman government asserted its suzerainty by claiming to protect the rights of Eastern Rumelia's Muslims. The Bulgarian dominated administration of Eastern Rumelia claimed not only administrative but also political autonomy by trying to contain the grievances of Turkish Muslims as a domestic issue abused by ill-meaning outsiders, all the while insisting that the province protected the rights of all subjects. Ultimately, a “corporatist” model of subjecthood obtained in Eastern Rumelia, which fused the traditional religious categorization of Ottoman subjects with an ethnic one under the umbrella of representative government. The tension between group belonging and individual politicization that began unfolding in Eastern Rumelia became a major dilemma of the post-Ottoman world and other post-imperial societies after World War I.

Russia and the Eastern Question

2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Bitis
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
The Caucasus ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Eastern Question ◽  
Book Covers ◽  
Russian Military ◽  
The Military ◽  
European Diplomacy

This book covers one of the most important and persistent problems in nineteenth-century European diplomacy, the Eastern Question. The Eastern Question was essentially shorthand for comprehending the international consequences caused by the gradual and apparently terminal decline of the Ottoman Empire in Europe. This volume examines the military and diplomatic policies of Russia as it struggled with the Ottoman Empire for influence in the Balkans and the Caucasus. The book is based on extensive use of Russian archive sources and it makes a contribution to our understanding of issues such as the development of Russian military thought, the origins and conduct of the 1828–1829 Russo-Turkish War, the origins and conduct of the 1826–1828 Russo-Persian War and the Treaty of Adrianople. The book also considers issues such as the Russian army's use of Balkan irregulars, the reform of the Danubian Principalities (1829 –1834), the ideas of the ‘Russian Party’ and Russian public opinion toward the Eastern Question.

Sultan Abdülhamid II and Palestine: Private Lands and Imperial Policy

2008 ◽  
Vol 39 ◽  
pp. 129-166 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roy S. Fischel ◽  
Ruth Kark
Keyword(s):  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Rural Settlements ◽  
Private Lands ◽  
The Caucasus ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Economic Profit ◽  
New Towns ◽  
External Threats ◽  
Modern Methods ◽  
Unique Measure

AbstractThis paper surveys the private lands owned by of Sultan Abdülhamid II in Palestine and analyzes their spatial distribution and impact, in the context of regional imperial policy. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the Ottoman Empire faced serious external and internal problems. Sultan Abdülhamid II (r. 1876-1909) used various traditional and modern methods in order to increase the internal cohesion of the empire and strengthen it vis-à-vis external threats.One unique measure taken by the sultan was the purchase of large tracts of land. He became one of the largest landowners in the empire. In Palestine alone, the sultan purchased around 3% of the total area and initiated measures to increase these lands' productivity for his Privy Purse. In addition to gaining economic profit, Abdülhamid II employed his private lands to solve problems which challenged the sovereignty of the empire. These included attempts to settle the Bedouins, the establishment of new towns in order to subjugate nomads in regions where they threatened rural settlements, settling Muslim refugees from the Caucasus and the Balkans, and protecting strategically sensitive lands located on the frontiers, by purchasing them and thus keeping them out of the hands of others.

Land Reform and Serbian Colonization

2015 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-103
Author(s):  
Vladan Jovanović
Keyword(s):  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Land Reform ◽  
Agrarian Reform ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Archival Material ◽  
Demographic Shifts ◽  
Western Historiography

The disintegration of the Ottoman Empire caused major demographic shifts in the Balkans. After the forced exchange of Greek and Turkish populations, the experience of the new Yugoslav state has received the greatest historical attention. Western historiography has emphasized the statements and efforts of a Serbian-led government to replace Muslim Albanians and Turks with Serbs. This paper, based on relevant historiography and unpublished archival material, reexamines the process of Serb colonization in Macedonia and Kosovo between the Two World Wars, including the Muslim migration from Yugoslavia to Turkey. It acknowledges the Serbian rationale for repopulating Kosovo, in particular, but goes on to emphasize the problems of an agrarian reform intended to favor smallholders across all of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, but also to facilitate the colonization project. Overseen by a new Belgrade Ministry for Agrarian Reform that was unable to fund the support needed for the colonists or to prevent local corruption, the reform failed to keep enough settlers in place to reverse the balance of population.

EFRAIM KARSH AND INARI KARSH, Empires of the Sand: The Struggle for Mastery in the Middle East, 1789–1923 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999). Pp. 419. $29.95 cloth.

2000 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 559-565
Author(s):  
Charles D. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Harvard University ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Promotional Campaign ◽  
The 19Th Century

The subject of a promotional campaign by Harvard University Press, Empires of the Sand purports to challenge established scholarship with respect to the drawn-out demise of the Ottoman Empire from 1789 to 1923. The Karshes argue that European imperialism was more benevolent than threatening and coexisted with Middle Eastern imperialisms—Ottoman, Egyptian, or Arab. In their view, European imperial powers “shored up” the Ottoman Empire rather than sought to deprive it of territories under its domain during the 19th century. To be sure, there was some European “nibbling at the edges of empire” (Algeria, Tunisia, Libya), but these incursions had little impact on the Ottomans; Cyprus (1878) is ignored. The only true “infringement on Ottoman territorial stability,” the British takeover of Egypt, happened by “chance not design,” with the blame attributed to Sultan Abdul Hamid's mismanagement of the crisis. The same story of Ottoman incompetence and attempts to manipulate European powers explains Ottoman loss of territory in the Balkans.

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