Change in the Ottoman Empire
Modernization of the Ottoman Empire
(Osmanlı Modernleşmesi)
by Kemal H. Karpat
İmge, 163 pp., 2008, ISBN: 978-975-533-357-1
Question: How to make things work in an already expansive and expanding empire? Answer: With a well balanced mixture of social hierarchy, regional autonomy, religious segregation, bureaucracy and a hell of a lot of luck. An organic structure such as an empire cannot be rock solid if it wants to stand against the winds of change. But it has to be solid enough to have a working social policy and the best working models of monarchic social structures are often carefully crafted hierarchies. Religion is important as it draws certain lines around an otherwise unruly crowd of people, the populace. It draws on culture, and feeds on divine satisfaction. Bureaucracy, on the other hand, is inevitable. On the upside it feeds the chain of command with enough work to leave room for free time to leisurely plot. On the downside it weighs on this large social body of work, making it less agile, less flexible. And luck, should the empire in its lifetime run out of it, may just bury it. Luck keeps change at the gates of empires built up on conservative values. As long as change comes in a little bit here, a little bit there, it can be endured, even welcomed. However once out of luck, change, dammed off on the outskirts with delayed modernization, may break the walls and come rushing in. Depending on its pace, it may make, or break an empire.
Kemal H. Karpat, in his book Modernization of the Ottoman Empire writes about just that. He trails the onset of changes in one of the largest empires in history. He takes us back to the foundations of the social structure and works his way up the hierarchy, bringing us up to date with how modernization started taking its toll on the empire.
With change comes adaptation. However if you are not ready to adapt, or do not want to, then what has been built over generations may crumble to dust overnight. The Ottomans were well aware of it. Thus, to avoid total annihilation, they worked hard to adapt to the changing world until the speed of change started spinning out of control. Once your acts become mere reactions you are already behind. Karpat talks us through the intricate social and legal measures taken within the Ottoman Empire to fight off the inevitable.
At the onset, Modernization of the Ottoman Empire seems like a cold cut academic book. However, it tackles such a specific and controversial period in the Ottoman Empire that the sterile approach becomes very welcome as you advance into the book. Furnished with charts and numeric data, Karpat’s even-handed approach, his competent grasp of the history of the Empire – helping him provide much welcome background information before he advances in describing the modernization period – not only makes the book readable, but also establishes a trust between the reader and the writer, one much needed when such an important history is in question. His research is as spotless as the scalpel of a surgeon, and his cuts and twists and turns as precise. Once the book is finished, he stitches the annals of history so skilfully that not a sign of the intrusion is detectable.
