Vangelis Kechriotis

Requiem for the Empire: “Elective Affinities” Between the Balkan States and the Ottoman Empire in the Long 19th Century

As part and parcel of national historiographies, narratives regarding the emer-gence, evolution and consolidation of national movements are often dominated by the purportedly exceptional and special features of each individual narra-tive.1 The broader historical context and the ways that individual cases resemble one another, which would allow us to identify common features and patterns, are doomed to be downplayed. In the cases of modern Greece and other Balkan states, it is worth studying the emergence and evolution of nationalist move-ments not independently or in opposition to the Ottoman Empire’s efforts at re-generation, but as parallel and mutually nurturing processes. Moreover, Balkan nationalisms can best be perceived not only as responses to the ideological pre-cepts of the “West”, but also as the results of domestic challenges. On the other hand, the Empire itself learned from its mistakes and reacted to nationalisms and external imperial aspirations by adopting their practices and their language. Certainly, this development does not pertain only to the Balkans. Imperial prov-inces from Belgrade to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, and from Cairo to the Crimea functioned as connected vessels. Thus, it is hardly possible to meas-ure levels in each one of them separately. Besides, we should not forget that the transition from Empire to nation state was neither smooth nor predetermined. The Empire was forced to grant its subjects either autonomy in the form of self-administration under a Christian governor, or independence.

The present chapter is an attempt at cross-reading the Empire’s fall with the birth of a nation state. It also takes into account interim forms of administration, as the latter are included in what was once described as the “Eastern Question”. Although this term suggests that the issue concerned solely the “East”, it actu-ally refers to the outcome of Great Power competition. This last point is further evidence that the Ottoman Empire is, historically and geographically, a seminal field of study for anyone who wishes to comprehend the way in which Euro-

1 An earlier version of this chapter appeared in Greek as ‘ ’ in the volume : ,

19 in the series , edited by Antonis LIAKOS / Effi GAZI, Athens 2008, 17-52. The first draft in English was produced by Irini Kechrioti, to whom I am thankful.

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pean politics were articulated and defined, through many contradictions and discontinuities, in the “East” and the “West” alike.2

Tanzimat and the Modernization of the Empire

In an era when the Turkish government is continuously implementing reforms in an effort to convince the outside world of its good intentions, it is difficult to ignore the obvious parallel with the mid-19th century. Back then, a series of re-form decrees, such as the Gülhane Hat-i erif (1839) and the Islahat Fermanı (1856), known collectively as the Tanzimat, and finally the Ottoman constitu-tion (1876) shaped similar expectations. Then as now, the public agenda was topped by efforts to modernize society and the state and to come into compli-ance with the demands of the Great Powers, who threatened to intervene should the rights of the Empire’s Christian subjects be breached. Until a few years ago, though the number of Christian citizens today is infinitesimal, the arguments and the mechanisms of pressure and negotiation were quite similar. In the 1960s, when theories of modernization were fashionable, prominent American Ottomanists3 had argued that the Tanzimat reforms were really a result of con-tact with the “West”. Reform was said to have been premised on the painful re-alization that, after successive failures, the Empire would not escape external pressures unless it adopted western structures and institutions. In other words, modernization was linked with westernization or rather Europeanization. The causes of social change were to be sought externally. This was presumably the outcome of political instability, which necessitated intervention from above, a vision that began to take shape in the mid-19th century.

The problem with this reading is that it does not take into account the soci-ety’s internal dynamics, which may or may not have been responsive to external incentives. In other words, both the state and society are considered unable to pursue change from within. Thus, the “West” is called upon to act as an agent of modernization.4 It is certainly true that external incentive was crucial in initiat-ing reform both in the case of the Ottoman Empire and in the case of the Balkan nation states. It is also true that successive failures in carrying out these reforms

2 Any account regarding the Ottoman Empire, its perception and the production of images of the “West” by the “East” and vice versa owes much to Elli SKOPETEA, (The Sunset of the Orient), Athens 1992. This is particularly true of the present chapter.

3 Roderic H. DAVISON, Reform in the Ottoman Empire, 1856-1876, Princeton/N.J. 1963; Bernard LEWIS, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, Oxford 1968.

4 Over the last decade, such an attitude has been duly criticized as orientalist, cf. Butrus ABU-MANNEH, The Islamic Roots of the Gülhane Rescript, in: Die Welt des Islam n.s. 34 (1994), no. 2, 173-203; Uriel HEYD, The Ottoman Ulema and Westernization in the Time of Selim III and Mahmud II, in: Albert H. HOURANI / Mary WILSON / Phillip KHOURY (eds.), The Modern Middle East, New York 2004, 29-61.

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and, thus, keeping up with western expectations have come to be seen as indices for underdevelopment. However, an argument that considers western interven-tion benign and the failure of local politics endemic has multiple problems. Be-yond the fact that this interpretation might serve an imperialist, Orientalist per-ception, which has recently been subjected to harsh criticism,5 it also ignores a very basic principle applied to similar cases by postcolonial studies. It is com-monly known that, no matter how significant its influence might be, in the course of interaction with colonized societies the essence of the “West” itself changes. Differently put, one might say that there is no essence of the “West”, which could function as a common denominator and to which every local cul-ture must respond. This idea has been employed in the discussion of hetero-doxies.6 After all, modern postcolonial experience has proved that populations economically and culturally dominated by the “West”, as well as societies exer-cising domination, are both affected by their reciprocal relationship.7

The fundamental argument regarding the study of this process in the Balkans put forth by historians such as Leften Stavrianos and Peter Sugar8 is that nation states emerged through the Promethean binary conflict between the new and the old, the modern and the pre-modern, the nation state and the Empire. This view is based on a certain model of modernization and has been refuted ever since.9 It is now clear that there were cross-influences between the nation state and the Empire, and that the former gradually prevailed even as the latter was not al-ways necessarily in decay. This assumption resonates with the recent revival of reflection on imperial authority and its legacy at a global scale.10 The Balkan states, in particular, retained administrative structures, concepts of cultural con-figuration, and other elements that had originated in the Ottoman period.11 Reli-

5 Erik J. ZÜRCHER, Introduction: Periodization, Theory and Methodology, in: Id., Turkey: a Modern History, London / New York 2004, 1-8.

6 Henriette-Rika BENVENISTE / Costas GAGANAKIS, Introduction to the issue “Heterodoxies: Construction of Identities and Otherness in Medieval and Early Modern Europe”, in: Historein 2 (2000), 7-12.

7 Partha CHATTERJEE, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories, Princeton/N.J. 1993.

8 Leften Stavros STAVRIANOS, The Balkans 1815-1914, London 2000 and Peter SUGAR / Ivo John LEDERER, Nationalism in Eastern Europe, Seattle 1994.

9 An example is Kostas KOSTIS, The Formation of the State in Greece, in: Faruk BIRTEK / Tha-lia DRAGONAS (eds.), Citizenship and the Nation-State in Greece and Turkey, London / New York 2005, 18-36.

10 On some of the many lingering effects of empire on the modern nation state see Partha CHATTERJEE, The Black Hole of Empire: History of a Global Practice of Power, Princeton 2012.

11 Maria TODOROVA, The Ottoman Legacy in the Balkans, in: L. Carl BROWN (ed.), Imperial Legacy: The Ottoman Imprint on the Balkans and the Middle East, New York 1998. Todorova identifies the Ottoman heritage in “continuities” that can be traced in different sec-tors of modern Balkan societies, such as politics, culture etc., as well as in “concepts” that were shaped a posteriori. For a more recent endeavor focusing solely on institutions cf. Alina

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gion, for example, was an important aspect of political and social relations in the Empire. From the very beginning of Ottoman rule, the subjects of the Sultan were administered by the authorities mostly as religious communities. Although it has been recently documented that the millet system as a narrative and a po-litical principle is a product of the 19th century, it remains equally consensual that at least from the early 18th century onwards, central authorities dealt with the millets or their subdivisions, the local communities, as administrative units and for purposes of taxation.12 In time, territories were detached and nation states established. While the driving ideology behind the secessionist move-ments was usually social discontent invested with a western-inspired liberal na-tionalism, the model of citizen-state relations that prevailed in the end was remi-niscent of the millet system.13 Because nationality overlapped with confession, the potential to integrate groups that were not religiously identified with the ma-jority was limited.14 Interestingly during the Young Turk period, the Empire’s efforts to create institutions such as a national army or a national economy mir-rored similar practices in the Balkan states. Nevertheless, one should not disre-gard the impact of different versions of European nationalism. First and fore-most among these were German romantic ideas of exclusive ethnic citizenship as well as French revolutionary precepts of centralization and cultural homoge-nization. It is also essential that one does not disregard conflicts among diverse models, local peculiarities or transnational trends.15

MUNGIU-PIPPIDI / Wim VAN MEURS, Ottomans into Europeans: State and Institution-Building in South Eastern Europe, London 2011.

12 For a discussion regarding the conditions of the millet’s formation Paraskevas KONORTAS, (Ottoman Perceptions of the Ecu-

menical Patriarchate), Athens 1997. 13 For the application of ideas of the enlightenment to the conditions of southeastern Europe cf.

Paschalis M. KITROMILIDES, The Enlightenment East and West: A Comparative Perspective on the Origins of the Balkan Political Traditions, in: Id., Enlightenment, Nationalism, Ortho-doxy. Studies in the Culture and Political Thought of South-Eastern Europe, Aldershot/Ham. 1994.

14 Nathalie CLAYER, The Dimension of Confessionalisation in the Ottoman Balkans at the Time of Nationalisms, in: Hannes GRANDITS / Nathalie CLAYER / Robert PICHLER (eds.), Conflict-ing Loyalties in the Balkans: the Great Powers, the Ottoman Empire and Nation-Building, London / New York 2011, 89-119.

15 Cf. GRANDITS / CLAYER / PICHLER (eds.), Conflicting Loyalties in the Balkans; Diana MISHKOVA (ed.), We, the People: Politics of National Peculiarity in Southeastern Europe, Bu-dapest / New York 2009; Dimitris TZIOVAS (ed.), Greece and the Balkans: Identities, Percep-tions and Cultural Encounters since the Enlightenment, Aldershot / Burlington/Vt. 2003.

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The Long 18th Century and the Emergence of the Secessionist Movements

The gradual decline of the Empire’s central authority is related to the domi-nance of local Muslim leaders, known as ayans, during the long 18th century (1683-1807). These individuals initially represented powerful pashas in the provinces. They controlled the collection and distribution of taxes through the tax-farming system (iltizam).16 Because the pashas were increasingly unwilling to venture outside the imperial capital, however, the ayans transformed from their representatives into autonomous local feudal lords. They began levying revenue for themselves as tax-farmers (multezim). Furthermore, the office itself became hereditary, a change that led to the emergence of powerful families who controlled entire regions and were capable of challenging central authority. These local lords’ rise to prominence is linked to a process that has been de-scribed by Ottomanists as a transition from timar to çıftlık (large estate). The timar had been the base of land property in the past. It resulted from the allot-ment of land or of certain income from the Sultan to one of his subjects from the askeri class, namely the bureaucracy or the army, for his services. Due to the hereditary character of tax-farming and the weakness of the central authority to impose its own rules, local notables could secure long-term ownership rights in these areas.17

It is noteworthy that arguments linking the decline of the Empire to the dom-inance of local notables and of tax-farming have been criticized. The coun-terargument is that the decline was not due so much to the weakness of central authority, as to a different philosophy of state organization.18 The reforms of 1839 to 1871 reversed this philosophy as part of their effort to restore the cen-ter’s control over the periphery. Because the reforms were considered to be at the core of a modernization effort that is perceived by partisans of moderniza-tion theory to this very day as a progressive impulse for Turkey, the period of decentralization is rejected wholesale. Eventually, if we consider the Tanzimat

16 Bruce MCGOWAN, The Age of the Ayans, 1699-1812, in: Halil NALCIK / Donald QUATAERT (eds.), An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire 1300-1914, Cambridge 1994, 637-758.

17 For more information Halil NALCIK, The Emergence of Big Farms, çiftliks: State, Landlords and Tenants, in: Jean-Louis BACQUÉ-GRAMMONT / Paul DUMONT (eds.), Contributions à l’histoire économique et sociale de l’Empire Ottoman, Collection Turcica, Louvain 1984, 105-126. For a review of the various theories that have been put forth in the frame of Ottoman Studies, but also for a contribution to the broader discussion regarding the relations between the state and the agrarian populations see Faroqhi’s introduction in Halil BERKTAY / Suraiya FAROQH , New Approaches to State and Peasant in Ottoman History, London 1992, 3-17.

18 Regarding the period of this transition Surayia FAROQH , Crisis and Change, in: NALCIK / QUATAERT (eds.), An Economic and Social History, 411-636; Karen BARKEY, Bandits and Bureaucrats. The Ottoman Route to State Centralization, Ithaca 1994; and Rifaat ABOU-EL-HAJ, The Formation of the Modern State. The Ottoman Empire, Sixteenth to Eighteenth Cen-turies, Albany 22005.

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the first substantial effort of the Empire to adopt a nation state rationale, we could assume that this period has been viewed through the distortive lenses of the nation state.

Furthermore, as Kemal Karpat has argued, the 18th century decentralization benefited local Muslim and non-Muslim notables alike.19 Those non-Muslims who were recognized as elders (kocaba ı, çorbacı, knez etc.) on account of their economic activities or personal relations with the local authorities functioned as intermediaries between their respective communities and the Ottoman state. This, it was argued, was the essence of the autonomy that ethnoreligious groups enjoyed under the millet system. By contrast, Tanzimat reforms, and even the preceding policies of Sultan Mahmud II, marked the central authorities’ effort to curtail the autonomy and the privileges of local Muslim notables and Christian elders. These changes led both groups to take on different roles within local so-ciety. Muslim dignitaries such as Osman Pasvanto lu in Vidin and Ali Pasha of Tepelen reached out to their Christian subjects. For the first time in about three centuries, since the time Christians had been recruited to the Ottoman army as sipahis (noble horsemen) and with the exception of the Christian levends re-cruited to the Ottoman navy, non-Muslims were recruited by a Muslim overlord to fight for the Sultan. They served shoulder to shoulder with Muslim soldiers, and they acted out of loyalty to a legitimate leader and not on account of a reli-gious or nationalist vision.20 Under the pressure of centralization policies, Chris-tian elders claimed the role of local community leader instead of intermediary. Ottoman authorities, for their part, tried to suppress the autonomist trends of both Muslims and non-Muslims.21 This perspective does not neglect the impact of urbanization among a large part of the Christian population or the frequent and direct contacts with the technologically and politically advanced “West”. Nor does it fail to note the influx of nationalist and liberal ideas that shaped po-litical culture in the region and fostered secessionism. It also highlights, though, indigenous processes that did not always depend directly on the international environment. It is marked, therefore, by a strong suspicion against the authori-tarian character of state modernisation.

Within this framework, two temporal conjunctures stand out as turning points for the Empire. The first was during the years 1804-1805. These years were marked by the first Serbian uprising, which was carried out under the leadership

19 Kemal H. KARPAT, The Roots of the Incongruity of Nation and State in the Post-Ottoman Era, in: Benjamin BRAUDE / Bernard LEWIS (eds.), Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire. The Functioning of a Plural Society, New York / London 1983, 141-170.

20 Cf. Rossitsa GRADEVA, Osman Pazvantoglu of Vidin: Between Old and New, in: Frederick F. ANSCOMBE (ed.), The Ottoman Balkans, 1750-1830, Princeton/N.J. 2006, 115-162.

21 See the seminal article by Halil NALCIK, Application of the Tanzimat and Its Social Effects, in: Archivum Ottomanicum 5 (1973), 97-127. Contrary to Karpat, nalcik describes the upris-ings in Vidin and Ni as a result of both local discontent and foreign manipulation. He also acknowledges the beneficial character of the reforms.

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of Karadjordje (Black George) Petrovi (1752-1817). Petrovi was a local elder and pig merchant, a profession that was also practised by the first prince of the autonomous Serbia, Karadjordje’s associate and later rival Miloš Obrenovi (1780-1860). This first turning point was also marked by the ascent of Kavalalı Mehmet Ali Pasha (1769-1849) to the office of governor in Egypt. The Serbian uprising is considered by Balkan historians to be the first secessionist move-ment describable as a national revolution. However, it has long been established that the uprising was an expression of discontent in the pa alık (province) of Belgrade against oppression by the local janissary garrison. The rebels sent a letter to Sultan Selim III declaring, as evidenced by Karadjordje’s letter to the Prince-Bishop Peter I Niegoš of Montenegro, their loyalty to the Ottoman au-thorities and calling for the Sultan’s intervention to provide relief from the local janissaries (dahije).22 Ironically, a few years later, the janissary corps turned against the Sultan himself after the latter had tried to replace them with modern army units (nizam-i cedid) based on European models.23 Their revolt was facili-tated by the actual inability of the central state to impose its authority over pro-vincial notables. This configuration of power dominated for a short period and claimed the lives of both Sultan Selim III and his successor, Mustafa IV (who reigned only for a few months). His brother Mahmud II’s rise to the throne was to be the turning point, as the new Sultan eventually succeeded in eliminating all the forces that challenged his rule.24

A year after the Serbian revolt of 1804-1805, Mehmet (Muhammad) Ali Pa-sha of Egypt, an Albanian of significant administrative talents, managed to overthrow the Mamluks, the century-old Egyptian military caste. He then estab-lished his own rule over the province, while, at the same time, he integrated the Bedouin population.25 Mehmet Ali had fought in the Ottoman army against the Napoleonic forces that invaded Egypt in 1798. A young and ambitious leader, he eliminated all opponents using the valuable experience gained in the cam-paigns against the French, who had eventually withdrawn from Egypt in 1804. He introduced a series of reforms such as the adoption of the Napoleonic Code, the implementation of French models of military organization, and the settling of Christian merchants from his hometown Kavala and the Aegean islands to strengthen Egypt’s commerce and economy. It is commonly accepted that these

22 Barbara JELAVICH, History of the Balkans. Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, Cambridge 1983, cf. esp. part II: The Revolutionary Years, 1804-1887, 171-376; Wayne S. VUCINICH

(ed.), The First Serbian Uprising, 1804-1813, New York 1982. 23 Stanford SHAW, Between Old and New. The Ottoman Empire under Sultan Selim III, 1789-

1807, Cambridge/Ma. 1971, 180-199. 24 Donald QUATAERT, The Age of Reforms, 1812-1914, in: NALCIK / QUATAERT (eds.), An

Economic and Social History, 759-944. 25 Reuven AHARONI, The Pasha’s Bedouin: Tribes and State in the Egypt of Mehmet Ali, 1805-

1848, London / New York 2007.

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reforms were used as a model by the Tanzimat elite.26 Mehmet Ali also re-built the city of Alexandria as a symbol of his modernization policies.27 This contrib-uted to the rise of Christian families of whom several would later play an im-portant role in financing uprisings in Greek-populated areas of the Empire, par-ticularly in Crete. However, this did not prevent Egypt’s ruler from providing assistance to the desperate Ottoman Sultan in his effort to suppress the Greek revolution of 1821-1829. In fact, Mehmet Ali dispatched to the Peloponnese a strong military force commanded by his son brahim (1789-1848). Thus, in many respects, the new Egyptian rulers followed the Ottoman imperial tradition of multilayered loyalties.

These processes reflected the failures of the Ottoman army, paving the way for Sultan Mahmud II’s decision to get rid of the janissaries once and for all by slaughtering them in cold blood. The slaughter of the janissaries was initiated in Istanbul and then spread to the provinces. The Sultan even ordered the janissar-ies’ tombs destroyed in order to wipe out any trace of their existence. He held this elite corps responsible for provoking the Serbian uprising and failing to su-press the one in Greece. Having antagonized both Christians and Muslims, the janissaries had developed economic relations with Jewish entrepreneurs whose downfall followed the demise of their patrons. Unfortunately for both Mehmet Ali of Egypt and for Mahmud II, the Ottoman and Egyptian navies were de-stroyed by the united fleets of Great Britain, France and Russia at Navarino in 1827. This was an early example of “humanitarian intervention” by the Great Powers. Pressured by the philhellenic emotions held by part of the public opin-ion, the Great Powers wished to present their blunt intervention as an initiative to rescue the suffering Greeks. The Ottoman Sultan was left without an army or a fleet. The Egyptian leader, on the other hand, used his still intact ground forc-es for a much more important campaign, the seizure of the Ottoman capital it-self.28

The years 1821-22 mark yet another important juncture. The Greek uprising signaled the beginning of a long-lasting struggle that would lead over time not only to the foundation of an independent Greek state but also to the emergence of a Romanian polity. The principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia, which lay north of the Danube and which were autonomous but under the suzerainty of the Sultan, were the theatre of the first clashes between rebels and the Ottomans in this region. The Sultan had rewarded the doctor and diplomat Alexander

26 Khaled FAHMY, All the Pasha’s Men. Mehmed Ali, his Army and the Making of Modern Egypt, Cambridge 1997; Id., Mehmed Ali: From Ottoman Governor to Ruler of Egypt, Ox-ford 2009.

27 Robert ILBERT (ed.), Alexandrie 1860-1960. Un modèle éphémère de convivialité, Paris 1992. 28 In addition to the 1826 elimination of the janissaries, the centralizing trend in the Ottoman

realm became manifest over the next two decades in the abolition of the Kurdish emirates, the last of which, Botan, ceased to exist in 1847. Martin van BRUINESSEN, Agha, Dhaikh and Sta-te. The Social and Political Structures of Kurdistan, London 1992, 175-180.

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Mavrokordatos for his services during the negotiations for the treaty of Karlowitz (Karlovci) by appointing his son Nikolaos (1670-1730) Prince of Moldavia in 1708. For more than one hundred years, the descendants of fami-lies from Phanar (from the Greek Fanari, the neighbourhood around the Ortho-dox Patriarchate of Constantinople), would be affluent and hold positions of po-litical authority. They were able to use this wealth and power in two important ways. They practiced tax-farming (iltizam) and bought off the office of the Prince (hospodar in Romanian and Slavic) of the Danubian principalities. Until the Greek revolution, members of prominent families, such as the aforemen-tioned Mavrokordatos, as well as Soutsos, Gikas, Ypsilantis and others, rotated into princely office. In so doing, they contributed to the creation of a peculiar cultural paradigm where Byzantine Romaic (i. e. Modern Greek) identity and Ottoman rule coexisted in harmony. In Greek historiography, the period is de-scribed as one when arts and sciences flourished. Particular emphasis has been placed on the educational and publishing initiatives of figures such as Constantinos (1711-1769) and Alexandros Ypsilantis (1725-1805). These ef-forts also involved locals who had embraced the Greek language, education and culture. On the other hand, the same period is described in Romanian historiog-raphy as an unbearable yoke that was imposed by both the Greeks and the Turks on the wretched local agrarian population.29 The same can be said of Bulgarian historiography, where the standard depiction of the Phanariot clergy is very sim-ilar to the one that emerged on the opposite side of the Danube.30

It seems that the local population detested the Phanariots so much that Alexandros Ypsilantis (1792-1828), grandson of the homonymous reformist leader, son of the prince Konstantinos Ypsilantis, and protagonist of the Greek revolution, was met with great indifference when he crossed the river Prut and entered Moldavia with 2,000 students. Soon afterwards, these students formed the Sacred Band in Bucharest as part of their effort to incite the Orthodox popu-lation. In fact, the only reason that the locals offered some assistance to the “So-ciety of Friends” ( ), the clandestine organization behind the up-rising, was the presence of the experienced military chieftain Tudor Vladimirescu (1780-1821). A native of the village of Vladimir in Oltenia (west-ern Wallachia), he had promised reform and a better life to the region’s farmers. He ended up executed on Ypsilantis’ orders. Shortly thereafter, however, almost all of the Sacred Band’s inexperienced fighters met the same fate at Draga an. Stefanaki Vogoridi (1774-1869), a masterful bureaucrat of Bulgarian origin ac-cepted as a Phanariot by marriage, was temporarily appointed kaymakam in Moldavia. Eventually, all Phanariots were ousted from the princely office,

29 Vlad GEORGESCU, The Romanians: A History, Colombus/Oh. 1991; Keith HITCHINS, The Romanians 1774-1866, New York 1996.

30 Cf. Richard CLOGG (ed.), Balkan Society in the Age of Greek Independence, Totowa/N.J. 1981, where one finds separate accounts on the diverse ethnic communities in the region.

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which also signalled the gradual decline of Ottoman power in the Danubian principalities.31 Scions of local boyar families replaced the Phanariots, imposing a very similar burden on the peasantry that endured for many years. Modern bo-yars, however, used to receive their education in Greek and French and were familiar with contemporary western ideas. Moreover, by the beginning of the 19th century, the fact that they shared a common language with the rural masses allowed them to appear as broadly accepted leaders. In addition, with the 1829 treaty of Adrianopole (Edirne), the principalities came under Russian protec-tion, which endured until the Crimean War (1853-56). The Treaty of Paris that marked the end of the war, then, was another turning point. It enabled in 1859 the de facto unification of the two principalities under the prince Alexander Cuza and eventually the establishment of an independent Romanian state recog-nized by the Treaty of Berlin in 1878.32

The elimination of the ruler of the Pashalik of Yanina, Ali Pasha of Tepelen, was equally significant to the contemporaneous Greek uprising. This event ex-emplified Mahmud II’s strategy of eliminating all challengers to his rule. For decades, this dignitary of Albanian origin played a significant role in the devel-opment of both Greek and Albanian nationalism. Ali Pasha spoke Albanian, Greek and Turkish. He had recruited both Albanian- and Greek-speaking Chris-tians, and opened his court to non-Muslim medical doctors and scholars.33 In so doing, he created the conditions for the reception of western ideas. Just as his star faded, his former courtiers and henchmen, including the military leaders Odysseas Androutsos (1788-1825), Ioannis Makrygiannis (1794-1864) and the first Prime Minister Ioannis Kolletis (1773-1847), gained prominence. The fact that Ali Pasha kept the Ottomans busy in the first crucial period of the Greek revolution probably is of less importance than the cultural and political influ-ence his entourage had on the Greeks by envisioning the organization of the fu-ture Greek state. Certainly, Albanian nationalists could be proud a posteriori of the fact that two autonomous territories created by two of their kin became sources of political and cultural inspiration. These models were created by Mehmet Ali Pasha for the Ottoman Empire and by Ali Pasha for the Greek state.

31 Vogoridi was one of the few Phanariots who survived and made a new career in the post-revolutionary world, cf. Christine M. PHILLIOU, Biography of an Empire: Governing Otto-mans in an Age of Revolution, Berkeley 2011.

32 Nicholas CONSTANTINESCO, Romania on the European Stage, 1875-1880: the Quest for Na-tional Sovereignty and Independence, Boulder/Co. 1998.

33 Katherine E. FLEMING, The Muslim Bonaparte: Diplomacy and Orientalism in Ali Pasha’s Greece, Princeton/N.J. 1999.

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The Empire Responds with Reforms

The Greek revolution shook the foundations of the Ottoman administration for two reasons.34 The revolution demonstrated the decline of the army and proved that western powers, no matter how conservative, could not be trusted in their relations with Christian communities. Perhaps more importantly, it showed that the Ottomans were very slow to realize the fact that this uprising was different from others. Terms used by the rebels such as nation, country, and culture caused immense embarrassment for the bureaucracy, which took a lot of time to grasp the fact that this affair was not just about a gang of bandits.35 The defeat had a shocking effect and revealed the urgent need for reform. The Empire would learn from its mistakes, however. Its first lesson was that curtailing Christian elders’ privileges without replacing them fostered alienation and cre-ated the potential for many further difficulties. Consequently, all non-Muslims now had to be convinced that they did not need special privileges but rather rights equal to those of the Muslims. In 1839, shortly after the deceased Mahmud II was succeeded by his underage son Abdülmecit (1823-1861), and just as the Egyptian troops of Mehmet Ali were threatening the Ottoman capital, the Gülhane edict officially declared the equality of all the Empire’s subjects. After the Crimean War ended in victory for the Empire as well as its coveted recognition as a European power at the 1856 Paris peace conference, a second edict confirmed the equality principle and laid out a program for the reorgani-zation of the communities.

Following this last edict, all non-Muslim communities were invited to elabo-rate on fundamental charters which eventually took the form of constitutions (Nizamname). It is worth noting that the community constitutions ratified by the Sublime Porte in 1862-63 neither had similar origins nor did they postulate the same set of checks and balances. With the support of their foreign protectors, different religious groups were capable of organizing themselves and of influ-encing power relations within the Ottoman administration. As a result, the latter closely followed developments in the non-Muslim communities. According to their foundational myths, only the Greek Orthodox, Armenian, and Jewish mil-lets had been recognized by the Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror in the 15th centu-ry. No more were added until the 19th century. Starting from 1830 though, a number of millets were recognized. This may have been due to pressure exer-cised from abroad, or it may have been a policy specifically intended to turn one community against the other, and thus to “divide and conquer”. Regardless of

34 The Greek revolution has recently witnessed a revived interest among historians both in Greece and Turkey, cf. Petros PIZANIAS (ed.), The Greek Revolution of 1821: a European Event, Istanbul 2011.

35 Hakan ERDEM, “Do not Think of the Greeks as Agricultural Labourers”: Ottoman Responses to the Greek War of Independence, in: BIRTEK / DRAGONAS (eds.), Citizenship, 67-84.

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the reason, the Ottoman administration gave up on the simple way it had hith-erto classified its non-Muslim subjects and acknowledged the complexity of self-definition. Thus, after the Adrianople (Edirne) treaty in 1829 and under pressure from France, the Catholic millet was established in 1830. This was fol-lowed in 1850 by the Protestant millet.

The Catholic and Protestant populations were corollaries of missionary ac-tivity. The Catholics had been active in the Empire since the end of the 17th cen-tury, when Austria had taken them under its protection as a result of the Karlowitz treaty. Already earlier, with the foundation of the college Propa-ganda Fide in 1622, the Jesuits and other monks had arrived to “bring the light” to the infidels of the east.36 The Protestants, Americans and British, appeared in the eastern Mediterranean only in the 19th century, but their influence was re-markable.37 One of the principal elements in the Protestant worldview was sec-ularism. This included, among other things, the endorsement of practical-tech-nical education coupled with the rejection of superstition and of unnecessary rituals, as well as suspicions about the obscurantist role of the clergy. Thus, when the Protestants organized their millet in 1850, they appointed a lay leader rather than a religious one. Three years later, the first discussions about the need for a charter arose in the Armenian community. When in 1856 the Sublime Port issued an order to that effect, a group of Armenian constitutionalists (also known as the “Young Armenians”) containing many future Ottoman bureau-crats was ready to take the offensive against the previously dominant money-lenders (sarrafs). The role of the clergy was confined to a minimum, and the charter served as a model for the Ottoman Constitution of 1876. This latter doc-ument was drafted by Midhat Pasha and his entourage, which included Arme-nian constitutionalists.38 In the Jewish millet, the representation of the clergy re-mained important. In the Greek Orthodox one, the clergy never lost its primacy but it did transform its character. Furthermore, the secular character of the Ar-menian leadership was significant for the revolutionary fervor that developed in the following decades, especially after the suspension of the Ottoman Constitu-tion in 1878, only two years after it was put in place. If Greece was the refer-ence point for an alternative to Ottomanism amongst the Greek Orthodox, the constitution itself served as this alternative for the Armenians.39

The reforms were a gamble for the Ottoman Empire, as were similar projects undertaken by other Empires. The Habsburg Monarchy had pursued a series of

36 Charles FRAZEE, Catholics and Sultans. The Church and the Ottoman Empire, London 1983. 37 Joseph L. GRABILL, Protestant Diplomacy and the Near East, Missionary Influence on Ameri-

can Policy 1810-1927, Mineapolis 1971; Ussama MAKDISI, Artillery of Heaven: American Missionaries and the Failed Conversion of the Middle East, Ithaca 2008.

38 Artinian VARTAN, The Armenian Constitutional System in the Ottoman Empire, 1839-1963. A Study of its Historical Development, Istanbul 1988.

39 Anahide TER-MINASSIAN, Nationalism and Socialism in the Armenian Revolutionary Move-ment, 1887-1912, transl. into English by A. M. Berrett, Cambridge/Ma. 1984.

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transformations, during the reigns of Maria Theresa (1717-1780) and Joseph II (1741-1790). The latter personified what has been described as “enlightened despotism”. Under his rule, laws and policies that opened up educational oppor-tunities to broader social strata were institutionalized. Even more importantly, these reforms accorded privileges to the nationalities in order to ensure their loyalty to the imperial centre. The system worked for several decades but reached its limits with the 1848 revolutions, which glorified liberal ideas across Europe. Though Baron Alexander von Bach’s (1813-1893) neo-absolutist post-1848 reign marked a clear setback, the Habsburg Monarchy accepted the dualist constitution just a few years later. In 1867 it was renamed Austria-Hungary, ex-tending further rights to several nationalities.40 However, while the Habsburg state chose to make overtures towards the lower strata by conceding privileges, the Ottoman Empire promoted an opening towards the upper strata. It adopted a hierarchical structure that precluded the participation of most social groups in the Empire’s ethnoreligious institutions. A further difference is related to the fact that the Habsburgs maintained the dynasty as the primary target of their subjects’ loyalty; they were reluctant to foster a Habsburgian sense of nation-hood. The Ottomans, on the contrary, attempted to create an Ottoman nation that would resemble any other nation. Yet, this Ottoman nation would not de-pend on a shared language and religion but rather on a common territory, home-land and history.41 Religion in fact never ceased to be a contested ground among the Ottomans. Conversion, for instance, traditionally accepted as the means to integrate into the askeri class, in this new era took the form of ethnic or even national adherence.42

As a consequence, while in the Habsburg Empire most ethnicities remained loyal to the dynasty until fairly late, in the Ottoman context the competing claims of the Great Powers were balanced by the aspirations of the nationalisms within. This does not mean that national ideology had taken firmer root in the Balkans than it had in central Europe. Nevertheless, nation state ideology did play a fundamental role in continuously fuelling emotions amongst the co-na-tionals in the Ottoman lands. While both empires eventually collapsed, the Ot-toman state’s course of disintegration was more protracted. It also triggered vi-olence that spread over a larger geographic and temporal realm. Interestingly, in the eleventh hour, Austria-Hungary was perceived as a successful model. Dur-

40 In the context of the post-communist reflections on Empire, it was assumed that similarities can be drawn between the current condition and 19th century. These reflections were mirrored in volumes such as Karen BARKEY / Mark VON HAGEN (eds.), After Empire: Multiethnic So-cieties and Nation-Building: the Soviet Union and the Russian, Ottoman, and Habsburg Em-pires, Boulder/Co. 1997; and Richard RUDOLPH / David F. GOOD (eds.), Nationalism and Em-pire, The Habsburg Empire and the Soviet Union, New York 1992.

41 Ça lar KEYDER, The Ottoman Empire, in: BARKEY / VON HAGEN (eds.), After Empire: Multi-ethnic Societies, 3-44.

42 Selim DERINGIL, Conversion and Apostasy in the Late Ottoman Empire, Cambridge 2012.

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ing the second constitutional period (1908-1912), as the Ottoman Empire was testing the possibilities for survival without further territorial losses, Austria-Hungary became a major subject of discussion among Christian and Muslim politicians and intellectuals alike. Some Christians aspired to create a federal Ottoman Empire in which all nationalities would enjoy a high degree of re-gional autonomy. The Young Turks, on the contrary, firmly rejected such ideas. They argued that such policies would result in the decentralization and eventu-ally the disintegration of the Empire.43

In 1856, however, such debates remained still out of sight. As mentioned be-fore, an imperial edict commanded non-Muslim communities to reorganize their leadership by electing representatives. They were also going to elaborate fun-damental charters which, upon governmental endorsement, would serve as a sort of constitution. However, administrative improvements would prove an ambiguous endeavor. The 1864 Law for the Administration of the Provinces (Vilayet Nizamnamesi) was aimed at strengthening local governors. An im-portant role in the crafting of this law was attributed to Midhat Pasha (1822-1884), the right-hand man of the Grand Vizier Fuat Pasha (1815-1869). He, in turn, had been a protégé of Mustafa Reshid Pasha (1800-1858), the Grand Vi-zier who had published the Gülhane edict. Following the introduction of the law, Midhat Pasha was appointed governor of the Danube vilâyet (Tuna vilâyeti). Situated mainly in present-day Bulgaria, this territory had been se-lected as a pilot region for the new law. Employing both Christians and Mus-lims in his administration, this talented bureaucrat ruled according to the doc-trine that improving living standards and good governance would eliminate the causes of nationalism. Initially, Midhat Pasha’s actions were crowned with suc-cess and welcomed by all except the rebellious autonomists, a view that is shared by Bulgarian historiography as well.44 In the long run, however, Midhat’s reforms helped train locals who would later staff the administration of the autonomous Bulgarian principality. It seems that the frail character of the reformist movement ensured the further alienation of the local elites, including those who had profited from the above-mentioned developments. On the whole,

43 Vangelis KECHRIOTIS, Greek-Orthodox, Ottoman-Greeks or Just Greeks? Theories of Coex-istence in the Aftermath of the Young Turks Revolution, in: Études Balkaniques (Sofia) 1 (2005), 51-72.

44 Bulgarian historiography had its best moment in this respect in Maria TODOROVA, Midhat Pa a’s Governorship of the Danube Province, in: Caesar E. FARAH (ed.), Decision Making in the Ottoman Empire, Kirksville/Mo. 1993. In current historiography, Turkish and Bulgarian historians seem to follow on a similar path: Mehmet Safa SARAÇO LU, Sitting Together: Lo-cal Councils of Vidin County as Domain of Hybridization (1864-1877), CAS Working Paper Series 2, Sofia 2009, 3-35; Milen V. PETROV, Tanzimat for the Countryside: Midhat Pa a and the Vilayet of Danube, 1864-1868, unpublished PhD Dissertation, Princeton University 2006.

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therefore, the measures did not lead to the consolidation of Ottomanism in these territories.45

The Empire faced a similar dilemma in its eastern provinces. brahim Pasha, the son of Mehmet (Muhammad) Ali of Egypt, sent his troops from Syria back to Egypt in 1840. This retreat came after he had attempted to install a central Syrian government in Damascus, and it gave way to the re-institution of Otto-man domination. Clashes later broke out between the local Druze and Christian Maronites. As the latter already in the 17th century had declared their accession to Catholicism, France took the opportunity to claim for itself the role of their protector as part of an attempt to put Mehmet Ali in his place. In 1860, a new round of the conflicts between the two communities led to a short but bloody civil war, which climaxed with a massacre of Christians in Damascus. This out-burst of violence, however, was followed by a long period of peace, which last-ed until the First World War. In line with their reformist tendencies and as a re-sult of the Great Powers’ intervention, the Ottomans accepted the establishment of an autonomous province along the coast and in the mountains of Lebanon. This region, where Christians were in the majority in most areas, was to be ruled by a Christian governor (mutassarıf) appointed with the consent of the Great Powers. The first governor, the Armenian Davut Pasha (1816-1873), gained widespread recognition for his successful administration. As a result, the example of Lebanon has been used by those historians arguing in favor of de-centralizing the Empire.46

The Empire Divides Its Subjects

The process of reforms initiated by the state bureaucracy triggered various re-sponses among the non-Muslims. In the 1860s and 1870s, many members of the Ottoman Greek elite felt that nationalism or phyletism – the term used in the rel-evant patriarchal declarations47 – could only bring disaster to the Orthodox pop-ulation in the imperial domains. In this context, certain elite groups both in the Greek state and the Ottoman Empire set for themselves the task of defending the “Empire in danger”. This policy, in turn, bred theories about the coexistence of Greeks and Ottomans, known as Helleno-Ottomanism.48 As mentioned be-fore, Ottoman communities were motivated to think about the possibility of a dual administration similar to that of Austria-Hungary. The existence of such

45 DAVISON, Reform, 114-171. 46 Engin Deniz AKARLI, The Long Peace: Ottoman Lebanon, 1861-1920, London 1993. 47 Phyle semantically unites both “race” and “community”, permitting a conceptual discrediting

of nationalism as being both parochial and discriminating. 48 Sia ANAGNOSTOPOULOU, 19os .-1919. :

(Asia Minor, 19th c.-1919. The Greek Orthodox Communities: from the Millet of the Rum to the Greek Nation), Athens 1998, 303-307.

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parallel discourses of “duality” should not come as a surprise, since they emerged as responses to parallel and mutually exclusive nationalist projects. Po-litical agents of various Bulgarian elites developed their own demands similar to Helleno-Ottomanism. From the beginning, the Bulgarian movement expe-rienced an internal split. Wealthy residents of Istanbul were suspicious of the radical language used by revolutionaries like Georgi Rakovski (1821-1867) and Ljuben Karavelov (1834-1879), both of whom were working in Serbia and the Danubian Principalities. Intellectuals such as Stoyan Chomakov and Nikola Genovich, by contrast, were in favor of an evolutionary process that would lead to a form of national emancipation fully supported by the Ottoman government. They adopted a political vision of true dual authority, where the Sultan would also be given the title “tsar of the Bulgarians”. A similar dualist project envis-aged a Serbo-Bulgarian monarchy headed by the Serbian Prince Mihailo Obrenovi . When an autonomous Bulgaria finally was founded, its T rnovo Constitution (1879) was based on the Prussian model of 1850 (as had been the Serbian constitution of 1869). This represented a compromise between liberals and conservatives, though the differences between these two groups corre-sponded only partially to the previous cleavages.

The discussions and conflicts among Bulgarian conservatives and liberals had begun even before the first ecclesiastic assembly of 1871, which took place just one year after the Ottomans recognized a separate Bulgarian Exarchate. While the conservatives were in favour of securing legitimation for the Exar-chate based on ecclesiastical tradition and history, the liberals preferred to ap-peal to reform ideology and the concept of progress. This cleavage was of fun-damental importance, because the liberals deemed negotiations with state au-thorities much more effective than negotiations with the Greek Orthodox Pa-triarchate. Over time, the conservatives acquiesced with the radicals who re-jected any negotiation with the Ottoman government and also refused to com-promise on the prospect of an independent Bulgarian state.49

The cleavage between liberals and conservatives took various shapes in the Balkans, and the Bulgarian example should not be used to make sweeping gen-eralizations.50 In Serbia, the conservatives were bureaucrats originating from the other side of Danube. Specifically, they came from Vojvodina in the Habsburg Empire, where Serbian cultural institutions had flourished since the end of the 18th century. It was there that figures like Dositej Obradovi (1739-1811) and later Vuk Karadži (1787-1864) worked systematically to forge a new literary

49 Boyco PENCHEV, Tsarigrad/Istanbul and the Spatial Construction of Bulgarian National Iden-tity in the Nineteenth Century, in: John NEUBAUER / Marcel CORNIS-POPE (eds.), History of the Literary Cultures of East-Central Europe. Junctures and Disjunctures in the 19th and 20th Centuries, Amsterdam2 2006, 390-413.

50 Diana MISHKOVA, The Interesting Anomaly of Balkan Liberalism, in: Iván Zoltán DÉNES (ed.), Liberty and the Search for Identity. Liberal Nationalisms and the Legacy of Empires, Budapest / New York 2006, 399-456.

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language based on the vernacular rather than Church Slavonic. In order to staff the bureaucracy, the first Serbian prince, Miloš Obrenovi , invited bureaucrats and scholars from Vojvodina into Serbia. Their arrival resembled that of the Phanariots in Greece. Inspired by the ideas of enlightened monarchy and re-formism, they demanded and achieved a fundamental charter and a parliament at exactly the same time as King Otto of Greece was compelled to endorse a similar charter in 1844.51 Accordingly, these newcomers were called “constitu-tionalists” (ustavobranitelji). They came to dominate Serbian society in the 1850s, after they had succeeded in politically eliminating the once powerful Prince Miloš and his son Prince Mihailo. A new generation of politicians and intellectuals appeared on the scene a few years later, however. This new gen-eration accused the constitutionalists of elitism and anti-democratic practices. Their main argument was that not only privileged people in urban centres, but also the agrarian majority, needed to participate in decision making processes. This generation became known as the “liberals”. Vladimir Jovanovi (1833-1922) and Jevrem Gruji (1826-1885) are considered its main representatives. Despite its name, this group endorsed a deeply atavistic religious nationalism that had little in common with western liberal values. Still, in their writings it is often argued that liberalism had been a part of Serbian popular tradition even before the “West” became aware of it.52

Similar developments took place in Romania. The conservative party there was represented by the boyars who opted for modernization without agrarian reform. Liberal politicians and intellectuals, such as Ion Br tianu (1821-1891), who would later become prime minister, supported the reformist efforts of Al-exander Cuza (1820-73) and his minister Mihail Kog lniceanu (1817-1891), a well-known historian. Obviously in both Serbia and Romania, the liberals were inspired by the revolutions of 1848. Though short-lived, the uprisings that took place in the Danubian principalities, particularly in Wallachia, were hostile to-wards both Ottoman and native Romanian “despotism”. One should not forget that Romania was a unique case because of its indigenous landed aristocracy, which had survived due to the Danubian principalities’ special autonomous sta-tus.53

In Greece, on the other hand, the liberals around Harilaos Trikoupis followed a cautious course vis-a-vis the Ottoman Empire even as they pushed for the pro-found modernization of Greek society. This excluded agrarian reform, which

51 For the trajectory of parliamentarism in the Balkans and its implications for the survival of traditional economic structures see Nicos P. MOUZELIS, Politics in the Semi-Periphery: Early Parliamentarism and Late Industrialization in the Balkans and Latin America, London 1986.

52 Victor ROUDOMETOF, Nationalism, Globalization, and Orthodoxy: The Social Origins of Eth-nic Conflict in the Balkans, Westport/Ct. 2001, cf. the chapter “Invented Traditions, Symbolic Boundaries and National Identity in Greece and Serbia, 1830-1880”, 99-129.

53 MISHKOVA, The Interesting Anomaly of Balkan Liberalism.

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was instead embraced by populist conservatives.54 However, towards the end of the century, these differences largely lost their meaning. They turned out to be mostly manoeuvres on the part of ambitious leaders interested in their own po-litical survival. Thus, assertive monarchs like Ferdinand (1861-1948) in Bul-garia, Carol I (1839-1914) in Romania and George I (1845-1913) in Greece all succeeded in expanding their power. To be sure, it was the Ottoman Empire that set the tone here. The absolutist Ottoman monarchy thrived under Abdülhamit II (1842-1918), who continuously replaced his Grand Viziers.

Two elements are very significant here. The first concerns the debate on pro-gress, modernization and liberalism. Until the 1870s, this debate could be re-lated to developments that took place in the Empire. Also, it reflected British influence in the region in terms of constitutional and ideological models. How-ever, during the same period, a neo-romantic, almost populist language was de-ployed against all of the above. In the Empire, the most prominent representa-tives among the “Young Ottomans”, Namık Kemal (1840-1888) and Ibrahim Sina i (1826-1871), aspired to a new synthesis of Islam with western values. According to these Young Ottomans, the principles of western civilization, such as liberalism and the parliamentary system, had existed in Islam long before the “West” discovered them. Thus, the Ottomans needed only to (re)embrace these longstanding principles.55 This idea echoed the rhetoric of the Serbian liberals mentioned above. In Romania, a particular critique of modern Romanian society was voiced by Titu Maiorescu (1840-1917), Ion Caragiale (1852-1912) and oth-ers who spoke of westernization and institutional borrowings as “form without content”. In Greece, Markos Renieris (1815-1897) had made a similar assess-ment already in the 1850s.56 Stefan Verkovich (1821-1893), a Bosnian Catholic who studied Bulgarian folklore, tried to prove that Slavic culture and values ex-isted before Homer and that the Greeks had simply appropriated them.57 This new romantic turn, reflective of the distress brought upon the Balkan and Otto-man elites by the modernization process, curbed the reformist dynamic and nur-tured a fundamentalist nationalist language. It is worth noting that in this period the Empire was fully part of these processes of exchange as one of the many states that constituted the Balkan nexus. This serves also as proof that the “sick man of Europe” was still responding to medical treatment. Moreover, develop-ments in southeastern Europe can be closely related to similar developments elsewhere on the continent. The articulation of theories that combined moder-nity with tradition offered a vehicle for the diversification of politics and the

54 Giorgos DERTILIS, . (Tax-effectual or Not. Taxes and Authority in the Modern Greek State), Athens 1993.

55 erif MARDIN, The Genesis of the Young Ottoman Thought. A Study in the Modernization of Turkish Political Ideas, Princeton 1962.

56 Markos RENIERIS, Le dualisme Grec, Le Spectateur de l‘Orient 1, 26 August, 1853. 57 Stefan VERKOVICH, Veda Slovena, vol. I, Belgrade 1874; II, Saint Petersburg 1881.

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struggle for broader participation. In response, official institutions were con-solidated within Empires or nation states. In trying to maintain their power, the-se institutions became more and more authoritarian and self-referential.

The Regression of the Reforms and the Redrawing of the Balkan Map

The romance could not last forever. Things would change with the new Balkan crisis that broke out in 1875 in Montenegro and rapidly expanded. It first led to the uprising of April 1876 in the commercial towns of central Bulgaria, where radical groups inspired by the ideas of revolutionaries such as Vasili Levski (1837-1873) attacked the local Ottoman garrisons. This triggered events that shook the European public opinion and are known as the “Bulgarian massa-cres”. Most importantly, the crisis led to yet another Russian-Ottoman war. This time, the Porte was left to its own devices and not supported by western Eu-ropean powers.

The Treaty of San Stefano, which established Greater Bulgaria, was followed by the Berlin Congress in the summer of 1878. The latter event shaped the re-gion’s map until the Balkan Wars of 1912/13. Serbia, Romania and Montenegro gained their independence. Together with these new states, an autonomous Bul-garia was founded. The autonomous province of Eastern Rumelia, however, was created south of the Balkan mountains range, with Plovdiv (Filibe in Turk-ish, Filippoupolis in Greek) as its capital. Following the model of the old Danubian Principalities, it was to be ruled by a Christian. After a short tenure in office by Giannaki Savva Pasha (1832-1904), the office of the governor was taken over by Aleko Vogoridi Pasha (1825-1910), son of Stefanaki Vogoridi (1780-1859). The new governor had been the prince of the island of Samos for decades and was the most important representative of the neo-Phanariot class.58 The establishment of this principality was part of the compensation agreed to in the negotiations between the Great Powers and the Ottoman Empire. When an independent Greece had been created, an intermediate solution was found for Samos that did not include it in the new state. The principality of Samos, which was to survive until the Balkan Wars, closely resembled the Danubian model. Moreover, the way in which the Neo-Phanariot families of Vogoridi, Mousouro, Vagiani, etc. competed for the new office echoed the way that the Phanariots had once bid for the office of prince in Moldavia and Wallachia. Eastern Rumelia, however, was not to last for long. After a coup in Filibe, Prince Alex-ander von Battenberg (1857-1923), the first ruler of Bulgaria, annexed the prov-ince into his country’s territory in September 1885. The Ottoman government

58 On Vogoridi cf. PHILLIOU, Biography of an Empire.

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proved incapable of preventing the advance of Bulgarian troops and the Bulgar-ian-dominated provincial militia.59

Parallel to the Balkan settlement, a similar regime was agreed for the island of Crete, another part of the Empire that caused a seemingly permanent head-ache. The Halepa Treaty (1878), which expanded the Organic Law of 1868, de-clared that the isle’s governor should be a Christian, even though the province was technically not autonomous. The first to be appointed to this post was Kostaki Fotiadi (1830-1897). Upon the outbreak of a new rebellion in 1889, the Sultan partially suspended the treaty and handed over the Cretan administration to a Muslim governor. A series of rebellions culminating in the 1897 revolt that sparked a war against the Ottomans disastrous for the Greeks led the Great Powers to introduce autonomy to Crete. The Sublime Porte had no other choice but to retreat. Prince George, later King George II of Greece, now headed the autonomous Cretan polity. Transforming a previously dominant Muslim popu-lation into a minority under Christian administration proved difficult, however. The island became the arena for a conflict that would shape Greek political life for decades. It conditioned the long-term rivalry between the then young Cretan politician Eleftherios Venizelos (1864-1936) and the Greek royal dynasty, rep-resented first by Prince George (1890-1947) and then by his older brother and heir to the throne, Constantine I (1868-1923). The political and cultural choices that would define the fate of the Greek kingdom and later the Greek republic owe a lot to this small and short-lived principality.60

The issue of Crete acquired symbolic dimensions for Ottoman public opinion as well. This was especially true after 1908, when the Cretan polity unilaterally declared its unification with Greece. The adherents of Turkish nationalism once again drew the lesson that decentralization meant the Empire’s extinction. The historical weight of Crete is obvious even today. In discussions on the Cyprus question, references are frequently made to the way Crete was lost and the local Muslim community destroyed. Such allusions imply that the Cretan scenario should not be allowed to repeat itself.

It is well-known that the San Stefano Treaty was a triumph for Bulgarian as-pirations for autonomy. The resolutions of the Berlin Congress, in contrast, brought great disappointment. What is less known is that the Armenians were equally disappointed. An Armenian delegation was present in San Stefano, and it was here that the Armenian Question was discussed for the first time. The Sublime Porte committed itself to reforms, but these were never implemented because the respective reference in the Treaty of Berlin was very vague. This

59 Richard J. CRAMPTON, Bulgaria, Oxford / New York 2007. 60 Theodore George TATSIOS, The Megali Idea and the Greek-Turkish War of 1897: The Impact

of the Cretan Problem on Greek Irredentism, 1866-1897, New York 1984; Pinar ENI IK, The Transformation of Ottoman Crete: Revolts, Politics and Identity in the Late Nineteenth Centu-ry, London / New York 2011.

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led, on the one hand, to a campaign of educational and cultural regeneration of the Armenian community spearheaded by moderates who did not endorse the use of violence. On the other hand, it led to the formation of the revolutionary committees Hantzak and Dashnaktsutyun, both of which fought for the protec-tion of the rights of the indigenous Armenian population on territories that were historically considered to be Armenian.61 In the years 1894-1895, a series of events led to massacres of Armenians both in Anatolia and in Istanbul, trigger-ing outcry in Europe and earning Abdülhamit the sobriquet “red Sultan”. In 1905, Armenians sought to take revenge by organizing a legendary but failed assassination attempt against the Sultan. In the end, this event only initiated a new round of violence. The Armenians were also inspired by the Internal Mace-donian Adrianopolitan Organization (IMARO), later to be renamed Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO). This group led an armed struggle for the autonomy of Macedonia and Thrace. It, too, appealed to the am-biguous provisions of Article 23 of the Treaty of Berlin, which foresaw reforms in “European Turkey” on the Cretan model. Crucial, however, was also Article 10 of the ferman establishing the Bulgarian Exarchate in 1870, according to which the religious institution gaining the loyalty of two thirds of the local pop-ulation at the kaza level would take over all churches and schools. This led to extensive interethnic violence between Greek, Bulgarian but also autonomist Macedonian militias. This violence is known as the “Macedonian Struggle” and led to international intervention as well as the rise of a new awareness among low-ranking military officers who served there, known as the Young Turks.62

The Young Turk revolution of 1908 gave new hopes to the autonomist Ar-menians. They had cooperated closely with these young officers and bureau-crats, as had the IMRO in Salonica and elsewhere in Macedonia.63 Nevertheless, their ways parted very quickly, when both sides realized that their choices were incompatible.64 In a last ditch effort during the spring of 1914, broader reforms were approved and European bureaucrats were appointed to monitor the pro-

61 Louise NALBANDIAN, The Armenian Revolutionary Movement. The Development of Armeni-an Political Parties through the Nineteenth Century, Berkeley 1963; Gerard J. LIBARIDIAN, What Was Revolutionary about Armenian Revolutionary Parties in the Ottoman Empire?, in: Ronald Grigor SUNY / Fatma Müge GOÇEK / Norman M. NAIMARK (eds.), A Question of Genocide: Armenians and Turks at the End of the Ottoman Empire, Oxford / New York 2011, 82-112.

62 Anastasia KARAKASIDOU, Fields of Wheat, Hills of Blood: Passages to Nationhood in Greek Macedonia, 1870-1990, Chicago 1997.

63 Dikran Mesrob KALIGIAN, Armenian Organization and Ideology under Ottoman Rule, 1908-1914, New Brunswick/N.J. 2009.

64 There were many among the Christians who shared the enthusiasm of the Young Turks in the period at least up to the Balkan Wars, cf. Vangelis KECHRIOTIS, On the Margins of National Historiography: The Greek ttihatçı Emmanouil Emmanouilidis – Opportunist or Ottoman Pa-triot?, in: Amy SINGER / Christoph K. NEUMANN / S. Aksin SOMEL (eds.), Untold Histories of the Middle East: Recovering Voices from the 19th and 20th Centuries, London 2011, 124-142.

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cess.65 This agreement was made under the pressure of the Russian government, which had assumed de facto patronage of the Armenians since 1878.66 When the Great War broke out a few months later, panic spread among the Young Turks about the imminent collapse of the Empire. This in turn led to mass deportations and massacres of Armenians across Ottoman territories. Plans for these actions seem to have been on the table at least since the debacle of the 1912 Balkan War. The anti-Armenian violence was supported by Istanbul’s German allies and carried out by clandestine legions of Young Turks, occasionally over the objections of high-ranking Ottoman army officers.67 The events of 1915 have been described as the first genocide of the 20th century. Along with the deporta-tions and persecution of the Greek Orthodox population, which were not always carried out in the frame of war operations, and the uprooting of Bulgarians from the Edirne vilayet as a consequence of the Balkan Wars, the Armenian genocide was part of an attempt to de-Christianize Asia Minor and, to a lesser degree, Eastern Thrace. Another practice, that of population exchange, was applied ad hoc between Bulgaria, Greece and Serbia in 1913. It finally led to the mass transfer of populations in the interwar period, when 1,500,000 people crossed the Aegean Sea. These population movements were based on an international agreement on the compulsory exchange of populations, which was part of the Lausanne Treaty in 1923. Thus these transfers officially inaugurated a new form of demographic engineering.68

Towards the Final Solution of the Eastern Question

The last decades of the 19th century were marked by the collapse of the opti-mism of the Tanzimat era. The Great Powers, amongst whom competition had escalated, began claiming their own spaces of influence in a straightforward manner. Partly in reaction to this, and partly as the Muslim version of a more universal reappraisal of religion in identity-politics, Abdülhamit II systemati-cally promoted a set of policies that have been described by the blanket term “Pan-Islamism”. Despite its confused aims and ambiguous implementation, such an ideology intended to inspire devotion amongst the different ethnic groups within Muslim populations. This policy, despite the Sultan’s reluctance to expose himself to public gaze, heavily invested on an elaborate regime im-

65 Fuat DÜNDAR, Crime of Numbers: the Role of Statistics in the Armenian Question (1878-1918), New Brunswick/N.J. 2010.

66 Ahmad FEROZ, Unionist Relations with the Greek, Armenian and Jewish Communities, in: BRAUDE / LEWIS (eds.), Christians and Jews, 401-436.

67 Taner AKÇAM, From Empire to Republic. Turkish Nationalism and the Armenian Genocide, London 2004.

68 Renée HIRSCHON (ed.), Crossing the Aegean: An Appraisal of the 1923 Compulsory Popula-tion Exchange between Greece and Turkey, New York 2003.

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agery.69 It was not by chance that the Sultan recruited exclusively Albanians as his personal guard, while the Hamidian regiments, which he had organized and which were loyal to him personally, consisted of Kurds.70 This does not mean, though, that such strategies did in fact evoke wider loyalty across ethnic lines. At the same time, large parts of the non-Muslim population accepted the legiti-macy of Ottoman power less and less. Helleno-Ottomanism, at least in the form in which it had flourished during the previous decades, had vanished. Many Greek Orthodox still managed to pursue their careers in the administration, but the wealthy bankers who used to finance the Porte had lost their influence after the imposition of the International Debt Administration and the foundation of the Ottoman Bank in 1881.71 Meanwhile, partisans of a more aggressive policy started slowly to gain the upper hand in Greece. The Ottoman Empire had be-gun to wither and the same was true for the concept of Empire itself, which had come to lack its erstwhile appeal. Athens had been transformed from a multieth-nic Ottoman village into a Balkan capital.72 In this change, the Greek city fol-lowed a path similar to that of Belgrade, Sofia and Bucharest. Thessaly and parts of Epirus, obtained in 1881 as a consolation for the total indifference of Bismarck towards the Greek delegation at the Berlin Congress, could not satisfy Greece’s territorial aspirations. The dreams for recapturing Constantinople, however, were abandoned. Athens opted instead for a policy of gradual expan-sion.

At the moment the Young Turks tried to revive the glory of the Ottoman Em-pire, the Greek Orthodox saw the opportunity of transforming it into an egalitar-ian “eastern” Empire with equal representation of all ethnicities.73 It was in this exchange that the imperial model would receive its final blow from the nation state concept. The difficulties besetting the regime and the disappointment of the Christian communities led the four Balkan states to rely only on their own forces, to defy the Great Powers and thus to prove that they were mature and could pursue an independent policy. In essence, the common ground between these states’ populaces, basically Greeks and Slavs, was provided by the shared Ottoman legacy. Not many decades had passed since all of them were part of the same political entity, even the same community in the Rum milleti. Now

69 Selim DERINGIL, The Well-Protected Domains: Ideology and the Legitimation of Power in the Ottoman Empire, 1876-1909, London / New York 2009.

70 Janet KLEIN, The Margins of Empire: Kurdish Militias in the Ottoman Tribal Zone, Stan-ford/Ca. 2011.

71 Haris EXERTZOGLOU, The Development of a Greek Ottoman Bourgeoisie: Investment Patterns in the Ottoman Empire, 1850-1914, in: Dimitri GONTICAS / Charles ISSAWI (eds.), Ottoman Greeks in the Age of Nationalism, Princeton 1999, 89-114.

72 Katherine E. FLEMING, Athens, Constantinople, “Istambol”: Urban Paradigms and 19th Centu-ry Greek National Identity, in: New Perspectives on Turkey 22 (2000), 1-24.

73 Thanos VEREMIS, The Hellenic Kingdom and the Ottoman Greeks: The Experiment of the “Society of Constantinople”, in: Dimitri GONDICAS / Charles ISSAWI (eds.), Ottoman Greeks in the Age of Nationalism, Princeton/N.J. 1999, 181-191.

120 Requiem for the Empire

they cooperated anew, but this time each was based in their own minuscule and clearly demarcated territory. Still, they were able to impose their will on the Ot-tomans only as the components of the old Rum community, the legacy of which was not quite suppressed by the recent national conflicts and passions. There was also something more. Apart from the Turks, there were Albanians, Kurds, Arabs, Armenians, Greeks and Bulgarians serving in the Ottoman army. In the letter by which they declared war against the Empire, the Balkan states invited “their people” to a crusade for the salvation of the Christians from the tyranny of Islam. The Ottomans, on the other hand, invited all citizens of the Empire to fight for its salvation.74 The tables had been turned: The Empire, which in the past had expanded under the banner of a holy war, was now obliged to count on its citizens to defend it. In striking contrast, the national states that had vested their existence with western secular values, turned to a mimicry of medievalist crusades.75 In 1914, the Empire would be dragged into a new and final holy war. Considering the Ottoman Empire’s alliance with Christian Empires, such as Austro-Hungary, the paradox of its involvement in the war is apparent. It soon became clear that no strategy, novel or old, could salvage the Empire, any kind of Empire. The bloodshed in which both Muslims and non-Muslims equally participated opened the way to a new era, full of new expectations. Most of the-se, we have come to realize today, were quite unreasonable.

The end of the Empires and the triumph of nation states in the post First World War period gave birth to a new paradigm in both institutional and cul-tural terms. The very notion of Empire was discredited and came to be consid-ered synonymous with authoritarian rule, the lack of democratic institutions, de-mographic engineering of populations, and cultural and social decline. Only re-cently, for reasons also related to the crisis of the paradigm of nation state domi-nation, have the relations and continuities between empires and nation states at-tracted more attention. It is within this context that the re-integration of the Ot-toman Empire into Balkan politics becomes meaningful. Thus, our research agenda has been significantly modified to accommodate new perspectives. We focus not only on the discontinuities that marked the emergence of nation states. We look also at the continuities, especially in the cultural domain. We do so by studying the mutual influences between the Empire and the nation states in the long decades that they coexisted as neighbors in the region. Finally, by investi-gating the ways in which the transnational/multiethnic imperial context shaped national identities and movements, we have enabled ourselves to ask new ques-

74 Fikret ADANIR, Religious Communities and Ethnic Groups under Imperial Sway: Ottoman and Habsburg Lands in Comparison, in: Dirk HOERDER et al. (eds.), The Historical Practice of Diversity: Transcultural Interactions from the Early Modern Mediterranean to the Postcoloni-al World, Oxford 2003, 54-86.

75 Igor DESPOT, The Balkan Wars in the Eyes of the Warring Parties: Perceptions and Interpreta-tions, Bloomington 2012.

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tions and to avoid increasingly artificial binaries. One last point regarding the different geographies dominated by the Ottoman Empire is related to the need to remove the equally artificial boundaries academic research has tended to create between the Balkans and the Middle East. These scholarly boundaries suggest that their experiences within the same political context were utterly different. In an era that can be understood only through thorough study of transnational pat-terns and networks, however, this last bastion of regionalism seems to collapse. The legacy that the Ottomans left in the different regions they ruled is finally addressed for what it is, namely a transregional, almost global phenomenon.76

76 The first attempt to bridge the gap between the two geographies has been undertaken only recently in Karl KASER, The Balkans and the Near East: Introduction to a Shared History, Vi-enna 2011.