I. Corruption and conservatism among the Janissaries:
the Ottoman sultans used slaves as administrators in the far-flung parts
of their empire. The slaves were Christian boys given to the empire
to be converted and then trained as loyal and capable government administrators.
II. European economic competition: After the Portuguese
seized Hormuz (a port on the Persian Gulf) in 1507, commercial activity
for Europeans shifted from the Mediterranean Sea to the Atlantic Ocean.
Therefore, trade between Europe and the Ottoman Empire declined as did
the tax revenues for the Ottomans. Caravan merchants between Egypt
and Iraq turned to raiding villages. Disease and malnutrition increased
as resources dwindled. After decades of trying but failing to break
the Portuguese hold on Indian Ocean trade, the Ottomans signed a treaty
with the French in 1536 to promote commerce again with Europe. Finally,
the Ottomans realized that drastic measures were needed, and they gave
the same capitulations to French, British, and Dutch merchants that they
had previously only offered to the Italians. Capitulations gave European
merchants self-rule in their areas of ports or cities and tax-exempt status.
Obviously, capitulations also diminished the tax revenue of the Ottoman
empire.
III. Conservative religious leaders (ulama): Conservatism
in the Ottoman Empire kept it from modernizing successfully in the 19th
C. The ulamas wanted their madrasas (schools) to keep their focus
on religious instruction not technical or European topics. The Janissaries
had traditionally been allies of the ulamas and rarely carried out modernizing
orders that came from the sultan. Moreover, there were Muslim religious
fraternities that slowed progressive change. These fraternities were
dervish orders derived from the Sufi sect of Islam, named for the suf,
an undyed woolen garment worn by many early Muslim mystics to symbolize
their noninvolvement in struggles for wealth and power. The dervish
orders practiced rites like singing or dancing, during which they entered
an ecstatic state in which they felt themselves to be in communion with
Allah. Therefore, the Muslim religious communities for the most part
kept the Ottoman Empire from modernizing their transportation, public works,
and educational systems that would have helped them compete with 19th C.
Europe.
IV. Upset of the balance of power in the ruling class:
One of the modernizing attempts by the Ottoman sultan in the 19th C. was
to change the legal and tax systems. These attempts failed not only
because of conservative forces, but also because of corruption. Previously,
non-Muslims had benefited from the capitulation system and resisted the
efforts of the Ottoman sultan to declare all subjects in the empire equally
subject to taxation and a universal penal code based on that in France.
The tax collection system also was changed to lessen the corruption
of tax "farmers" who previously had kept a share of the taxes collected
to a centrally administered bureaucracy, but the tax "farmers" were reluctant
to give up their lucrative jobs.
V. Economic Weaknesses: The Ottoman Empire in the
19th C. collected smaller amounts of taxes as the economy continued
to fail to compete with the industrialized European nations. As the
sultans tried to modernize, they had to borrow funds from European banks
to pay for improvements in public works and transportation networks (e.g.
the famous Berlin to Baghdad railroad). The Ottoman Empire came to
be dominated by European collection agencies like the British "Ottoman
Debt Administration".
VI. Nationalism Among Non-Muslim, Non-Turkish Minorities:
The many wars with Russia also put a strain on Ottoman finances and on
the loyalties of non-Muslim, non-Turkish minorities. Beginning with
Greece in 1829, groups began fighting for the right to create their own
nation-states. Soon, Serbia, Montenegro, Rumania, Bulgaria, Egypt,
and Iraq all were separated from the Ottoman Empire.