Talk:Ottoman decline thesis

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Very one-sided and subjective, sounds more like an opinion piece than an encyclopedia article. Is the situation similar in other articles in WikiProject Ottoman Empire? Definitely needs to be rewritten. Nozulani (talk) 18:11, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

I don't see how it's one-sided and subjective when it's based very thoroughly in the academic literature. Can you explain? Chamboz (talk) 19:28, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

It's one-sided because it gives impression that the decline has been rejected by virtually all mainstream scholars, when in fact several eminent scholars have supported it at least in part, the late Halil İnalcık and Donald Quataert to name two. You wouldn't guess that from the current edit. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 159.18.221.196 (talk) 02:25, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

Uh, no. Here's a quote from Donald Quataert:

Here, in brief, is the decline paradigm regarding the Ottoman Empire. Let me be clear: I believe this paradigm to be incorrect and misleading.

Donald Quataert, "Ottoman History Writing and Changing Attitudes towards the Notion of 'Decline,'" History Compass 1 (2003), 1.

It's true that İnalcık retained more elements of the decline thesis than most other scholars, but he was also the man who popularized the notion of transformation: İnalcık, Halil. "Military and Fiscal Transformation in the Ottoman Empire, 1600–1700." Archivum Ottomanicum 6 (1980): 283–337.

Even were İnalcık still alive, it would still be fair to say that there is no mainstream scholar who supports the decline thesis. Chamboz (talk) 12:28, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

Straw man argument

This article reads like a straw man argument, i.e., it suggests a specific formulation of the "decline" hypothesis which is easy to dispute, and then disputes it. But who is actually talking (or still talking) about the decline of the Ottoman Empire on its own? There was no decline of the empire itself, but there definitely was a decline compared to the countries of Europe who continued to improve (in technology, economy, science, military etc.) while the Ottoman empire did not. The empire conquered Muslim countries which previously were at the forefront of science and technology, but stopped inventing new science and technology and was late to adopt ideas coming from the west (even such monumental ideas as the printing press and clock technology). Also, the empire, by giving the Sultan absolute power to seize anyone's property or life (a power that did not exist in Europe at the time), made Capitalism impossible and hurt the economy and the military of the empire. Corrupt and counter-productive ideas such as slavery, which were abandoned in Europe, were never abandoned in the Ottoman empire (see Slavery in the Ottoman Empire). None of this is a "decline" of the Ottoman empire per se - the empire did not become any worse - it just didn't improve (or improved slowly), and declined **compared** to its European neighbors and enemies. Nyh (talk) 08:40, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

The purpose of this article is to reflect the significant historiographical shift in the field of Ottoman history which has taken place since the 1970s. The vision of Ottoman history which it critiques (in line with mainstream scholarship of modern times) is therefore that of the mid-twentieth century, so you're right when you say that nobody is still talking about the decline of the Ottoman Empire on its own - that's the whole point of the article, to note that fact and explain why. Chamboz (talk) 14:36, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

One-sided article

Chamboz, I side with Nozulani and Nyh's comments: this article seems quite one-sided. Or, rather, it makes an elaborate argumentation in orderto disprove a theory, called the "Ottoman decline thesis", that it hereby labels as such (I don't think Bernard Lewis or any of the so-called "20th century scholars" you mentioned ever called it a thesis). Without claiming to have an extensive knowledge of the question, I think you are using a lot of argumentative strategies that are reminiscent of other elaborate contre-argumentative/apologetics strategies (such as conveying a false feeling of unity from a dissassembled set of thinkers i.e. the abovementioned strawman argument, claiming that the history of thought goes one way i.e. using whig history) that are out of place in an encyclopedia (and would rather remind me of some politically engaged literature). As far as I am concerned, the Ottoman decline is a fact of history (as indicated by the fact that it lost gradually large swathes of its territory over 3 centuries, before eventually disappearing!), although you could of course discuss its causes, and I am pretty confident most specialists of International Relations would feel the same.... — Preceding unsigned comment added by Énéwiki (talk • contribs) 15:34, 3 September 2018 (UTC)

To reproduce the quotations from reference #1 and from elsewhere in the article:

• Hathaway, Jane (2008). The Arab Lands under Ottoman Rule, 1516–1800. Pearson Education Ltd. pp. 7–8. ISBN 978-0-582-41899-8. One of the most momentous changes to have occurred in Ottoman studies since the publication of Egypt and the Fertile Crescent [1966] is the deconstruction of the so-called 'Ottoman decline thesis' – that is, the notion that toward the end of the sixteenth century, following the reign of Sultan Suleyman I (1520–66), the empire entered a lengthy decline from which it never truly recovered, despite heroic attempts at westernizing reforms in the nineteenth century. Over the last twenty years or so, as Chapter 4 will point out, historians of the Ottoman Empire have rejected the narrative of decline in favor of one of crisis and adaptation
• Kunt, Metin (1995). "Introduction to Part I". In Kunt, Metin; Christine Woodhead (eds.). Süleyman the Magnificent and His Age: the Ottoman Empire in the Early Modern World. London and New York: Longman. pp. 37–38. students of Ottoman history have learned better than to discuss a "decline" which supposedly began during the reigns of Süleyman's "ineffectual" successors and then continued for centuries.
• Tezcan, Baki (2010). The Second Ottoman Empire: Political and Social Transformation in the Early Modern Period. Cambridge University Press. p. 9. ISBN 978-1-107-41144-9. Ottomanist historians have produced several works in the last decades, revising the traditional understanding of this period from various angles, some of which were not even considered as topics of historical inquiry in the mid-twentieth century. Thanks to these works, the conventional narrative of Ottoman history – that in the late sixteenth century the Ottoman Empire entered a prolonged period of decline marked by steadily increasing military decay and institutional corruption – has been discarded.
• Woodhead, Christine (2011). "Introduction". In Christine Woodhead (ed.). The Ottoman World. p. 5. ISBN 978-0-415-44492-7. Ottomanist historians have largely jettisoned the notion of a post-1600 'decline'
• Ehud Toledano (2011). "The Arabic-speaking world in the Ottoman period: A socio-political analysis". In Woodhead, Christine (ed.). The Ottoman World. Routledge. p. 457. ISBN 978-0-415-44492-7. In the scholarly literature produced by Ottomanists since the mid-1970s, the hitherto prevailing view of Ottoman decline has been effectively debunked.
• Sajdi, Dana (2007). "Decline, its Discontents, and Ottoman Cultural History: By Way of Introduction". In Sajdi, Dana (ed.). Ottoman Tulips, Ottoman Coffee: Leisure and Lifestyle in the Eighteenth Century. London: I.B. Taurus. p. 27. Regardless of what one may think of an individual revisionist work, or a particular method or framework, the cumulative effect of the scholarship has demonstrated the empirical and theoretical invalidity of the decline thesis, and offered a portrayal of an internally dynamic Ottoman state and society. It has also established the comparability of the Ottoman empire to other - mainly European - societies and polities, and concomitantly revised the existing scheme of periodization.

Quotes such as these are not hard to find in works on Ottoman history. This article was written to reflect the secondary sources. It's imperfect, of course, there are plenty of ways in which the article could be improved, but you can't contest the existence of an "Ottoman decline thesis" or claim that Ottoman decline "is a fact of history" without ignoring actual historical scholarship. Critiques of the article should be situated in the modern academic literature on Ottoman history. Your comment does make me think that the history of the concept of decline and its application to the history of Islamic/Ottoman civilization is not being explained well enough in the article, that's one area that needs improvement. Chamboz (talk) 16:03, 3 September 2018 (UTC)

To build on this - what I encourage you to do is to let me know where the article left you confused and what aspects of it you found to be unclear. That would give me, and anyone else who happens to be familiar with Ottoman historiography, a better idea of where it's missing the mark when approached by an audience unfamiliar with the field, and thus a sense of what needs the most improving. Chamboz (talk) 16:28, 3 September 2018 (UTC)

Which of these sources support the patently absurd claim tha the Ottoman empire did not ever decline? ForeverStainedWithAutism (talk) 14:39, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

Nobody made the claim that the Ottoman Empire did not ever "decline" in very specific respects relative to its rivals during the 19th century. What the cited historians evidently reject is the notion that the Ottoman Empire was in some sort of prolonged "state of decline" throughout its history. This is an obsolete view of the empire's history. We do not view the 1600-1914 history of the empire as being in a "state of decline", for the same reason we don't view the 600-1453 history of the Eastern Roman Empire as a "state of decline" either. Adam Neuser (talk) 19:27, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

Incorrect, the article currently states that the Ottoman Empire did not decline at all. ForeverStainedWithAutism (talk) 18:36, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

Merged sections of the article

An editor has recently dropped a huge amount of text into this article from a different page (increasing its size by almost 30%), apparently in an attempt to merge the two articles. Merging some sections of the articles may be a good idea, but I think the way this was done was problematic: the new text isn't integrated into the article at all and most of it doesn't even address the actual topic (the decline thesis as a historiographical concept within Ottoman history). Instead it's just a collection of musings on various aspects of Ottoman history post-16th century. I think most of it would need to be removed or heavily reworked in order to fit into the article. This article is about the historiographical concept of the decline thesis, so it's very inappropriate for the first thing confronting the reader after the introduction to be a random collection of comments on the Ottoman economy (though some parts of this text could potentially be integrated into the section of the article discussing the relationship between the decline thesis and the Ottoman economy). Sorry to whomever added this text, but I feel that I've got to revert it. Chamboz (talk) 05:14, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

Biased

I have to agree with the critics above, it's absolutely one sided, the article clearly supports the "non decline" theory, and is trying to disqualify the decline thesis, this is not exact science, a lot of scholars agree with the decline thesis, the time in which one argument was presented is not a serious factor, so if in XIX century the decline thesis was more accepted, and nowadays this is supposedely not the case, this not show that the thesis is "wrong". Sorry for the possible mistakes in my english spelling.

Ridiculous article

Most of this article seems to try to explain that the Ottoman Empire never declined (if so, where is it today?) despite the fact it gradually lost territory and wars and was wracked by internal political instability throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. If this article is to be believed the Ottomans are the only empire to have never suffered a decline, and its enormous lost of territory over the centuries is not indicative of anything. Wordbearer88 (talk) 00:57, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

The entire bias nature of this article needs to be rewritten from the ground up and get rid of the 1984-style propaganda that the Ottoman Empire never declined as every other empire has in history.

One of the main issues with the article - which is dismissed as some nationalist ignorance/agenda by 'politically correct' scholars - is that many, many historians and teaching curricula in universities have not accepted the views of those historians who have published some books with a POV. That the OE was looked at as "the sick man of Europe" has a foundation beyond mere European snobbery. If it never declined it would not have fallen. That it is easy to over-simplify this is not the point.50.111.8.23 (talk) 16:10, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

Despite the obvious Neo-Ottomanic bias, the new "thesis" has a point: During the decline Ottomans progressed, "discovering" things that existed within a few miles distance from their borders. e.g. typing press and steam engines. Also they discovered that moon can be obserced with a telescope (19th century).

Yup. We should hash this out at some point. RfC? — LlywelynII 03:35, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

Marx and Oriental Despotism

I'm not sure about the inclusion of the footnote at the end of this article. Particularly the statement, "'Oriental despotism' was a term deployed in Marxist historical analyses." The term "Oriental Despotism" comes from Plato, and, while Marx himself did use the term, it did not feature heavily in his analysis (his primary focus was on modes of production not political structures.) Some Marxian historians will refer to the "Asiatic Mode of Production" when analyzing the Ottoman Empire; however this is a rather contentious subject.

Also, the note itself is overly-long and written in an extremely biased manner. It presents the views of Zachary Lockman as fact rather than opinion. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Piknmen (talk • contribs) 08:06, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

So... who's wrong?

How can we possibly have an extensive article (Ottoman Decline Thesis) devoted solely to detailing the many, many, many point-by-point ways that the Ottoman Empire never declined, tooootal myth, all decent modern scholarship holds it was peachy keen up to the New Imperialism which was apparently just an unavoidable Act of God... and then also have our main article on the period titled Decline...? Does that article need a ton more caveats and less stridency that it currently has? or this page needs a move and complete rebuild?

I assume it's this article that's ridiculously overstated and POVy... but at the same time I don't doubt that plenty of Western scholars want to have decent careers being contrarian and pretending the Ottoman state wasn't nearly as bad and poorly managed as it actually was. In any case, please direct comments and replies to Talk:Decline and modernization of the Ottoman Empire, because one of the two articles needs to be rehashed from the ground up. — LlywelynII 03:34, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

I'm just puzzled at responses like this. The "decline thesis" is a term of art, referring to a certain historiographical/methodological point of view. All the quotes from the literature above, by major figures in Ottoman studies, recognize the existence of the thesis, and assert that contemporary scholarly literature has rejected the thesis and moved on. Then we get silliness like the comment to which I'm replying, that assert that the reject this thesis is to "pretend[…] that the Ottoman state wasn't as bad… as it actually was." The editors of Wikipedia need to ignore this nonsense amateurism (and pretty rank bigotry) and recognize that in the field of Ottoman scholarship, this "Ottoman decline thesis" was a thing (and still is for some of the amateurs writing here) and that it has, after many scholarly labors, been decisivly rejected. If some want to maintain it, then write another article, but this article, imperfect as it is in its nascent state is utterly uncontoversial among experits in the field. Fulan52 (talk) 18:41, 23 April 2023 (UTC)

Clarification on what is and what is not meant by the term "decline"

Disclaimer: I am not the author of this wikipedia article. I just noticed that over the past few days there has been some confusion on the talk page over what contemporary historians mean by "decline" and why they no longer take it to be a valid understanding of Ottoman (or any empire's) history. I thought rather than respond to each individual comment, it would be better to start a brief new section on it here.

When the majority of contemporary Ottoman historians such as Dana Sajdi, Toledano Ehud, Jane Hathaway and Baki Tezcan etc critique the "decline thesis," they are not saying that the Ottoman Empire never declined in terms of its overall territory, or relative economic power in comparison to its rivals. Rather, they are critiquing the prevailing tendency of certain mid-20th century historians to characterise entire portions of any empire's complex and dynamic history as "periods or states of decline/stagnation." The reason for this is that this is not how historical empires work. For example, whilst it would be okay to describe the Eastern Roman Empire as declining in military power vis à vis the early Ottoman sultanate, it would not make sense to describe the Roman Empire from the reign of Justinian to Constantine XI as a "period of decline" simply because they collectively lost more territory than they gained. It's important to be specific with regard to what is meant. Likewise, it would be fine to describe the early 19th century Ottoman military as declining and modernising relative to Russia or France, there is a whole page on this period. However, it would be inaccurate to view the entire Post-Suleiman era as a state of stagnation and decline leading to an inevitable collapse, as was once prevalent.

Therefore, I politely oppose the suggestion to either remove this page or the page linked above. I do not think either is necessary because they are discussing two entirely different subjects. I would instead recommend that those claiming the original author has engaged in "1984-style propaganda" or has been "extremely biased" to present evidence of this. As so far, I'm not convinced that citing what most [1] historians agree on a certain thesis constitutes a form of bias. Rather, it would be better to perhaps provide particular examples of where the author has in fact misrepresented or decontextualised the views of particular historians, so that they can be individually addressed. All the best. Adam Neuser (talk) 16:57, 16 May 2022 (UTC)

I can only reiterate the reservations that other editors have voiced regarding the way this article has been written. The first is its voice and tone, which as the tag suggests, is written so tendentiously as though it's a graduate student's end-of-the-semester seminar paper. It's inappropriate, and the topic is nowhere as controversial as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion that it deserves 60,000 bytes worth of text deconstructing what, as someone else has said, is essentially a strawman. On which point: that Ottoman scholars have spilled so many gallons of ink to demonstrate that the empire really wasn't in decline may speak to more of their own defensiveness to resurrect its reputation. Fair enough. The imperial turn in historiography has also extended the same courtesy to other empires once thought decrepit and rickety (e.g., the Habsburgs). But even I know that this position is not as universally held by scholars as as this article makes it out to be; it's just that the empire's most strident defenders have been the most vocal in restoring the Ottomans' place in history. Like all matters in historiography, arguments will seesaw until they find an equilibrium one day. But the flaws in this article really lie in its own strident tone: there's no nuance (like a newspaper op-ed), it speaks in absolutes and implicitly treats anyone who disagrees with its thesis as something akin to a climate denier. I can foresee some version of this article presenting the "decline thesis" and a much more pared down version (relegated to perhaps 2-3 paragraphs) where scholars have taken objection to it and offered their own interpretation on the empire's final centuries, but that would mean rewriting it in toto. Marshal Bagramyan (talk) 22:01, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for your detailed elaboration Marshal. To begin with, I disagree with framing the cited Ottoman historians (such as Ehud Toledano, Baki Tezcan, Dana Sajdi, Jane Hathaway etc) as categorically denying that the Ottoman Empire experienced any kind of decline in particular respects during specific periods of its history relative to its rivals. Every empire undergoes traumatic events and challenging periods. Rather, upon reading the citations presented on both the Talk Page and within the article, it becomes apparent that what has been overturned is a now obsolete historiographical view of the empire that situates it within an abstract state of perpetual, undefined downward diminution from around 1600 to 1922. There is nothing wrong with stating (for example) that the relative military power of the Ottoman Empire waned in comparison to the Russian Empire throughout the early 19th century. But even if we clearly specify what was in decline, it again becomes problematic insofar as the term implies a continuous downward trend, which would be inaccurate even for the 19th century. As discussed extensively within the article, it was this type of nuance that was previously absent from early to mid 20th century analyses of the empire's history-instead opting to narrativise entire swathes of Ottoman History as being in a "state of decline," leaving little room for any other narrative.

Most historians of any empire would unambiguously agree that "perpetual decline" is an unhelpful description for several centuries of history and is devoid of nuance. As noted above, it would be equally absurd for the Roman Empire from the reign of Justinian to Constantine XI to be described as a "period of perpetual decline" simply because they collectively lost more territory than they gained. You mentioned the Habsburg Empire, which is another great example of this. It would be incredibly reductive to describe the Austro-Hungarian Empire from 1866-1918 as existing in a "perpetual state of decline." Whilst Vienna may not have had the same authority over other German states as it did previously, she still massively centralised her own authority and like the Ottoman Empire, her overall ability to influence the lives of her subjects was never greater than in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, despite territorial losses, fiscal problems, revolutions and the ascendance of other Great Powers such as Russia and Germany.

Furthermore, I find the suggestion that historians might be individually or collectively engaged in a defensive restoration of the empire's historical reputation to be unfair. It is easy to assume the motives of a large number of diverse specialists without needing to critically engage with their rejection of a now obsolete paradigm and their reasons for doing so. Whilst the article does indeed speak in absolutes in some instances, such as reiterating Toledano's observation that reliance on non-specialists has meant that the decline thesis "maintains a presence in popular history," I do not find this to be a tendentiously presented view. Simply put, there was a popular historiographical view of the empire's history, and it is now rejected by most historians in favour of a more nuanced narrative of crisis and adaptation. I see little reason to seesaw this, or play devil's advocate until equilibrium is reached when there already appears to be an evident consensus that it was a prevalent but oversimplified historiographical view that has been replaced with more balanced alternatives.

Given your extensive contributions to other Ottoman wikipedia articles (of which I am highly appreciative), I shall trust your judgement here and will leave the tags in for now, despite our disagreement. Whilst there are certainly some areas where the article could be improved and made more concise, I just wanted to lay out the main reasons for why I do not think that it needs to be re-written wholesale and have it labelled as biased. That said, if you or user:chamboz do revisit this or the other Ottoman historiographical articles at some point in the future and need a hand then feel free to give me a shout. Take care. Adam Neuser (talk) 23:25, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

Thank you. I hear what you're saying and, as I've said, I'm very familiar with the most recent shifts in the historiography. I don't mean to cast aspersions on scholars, but I've noticed a slight defensiveness among some Ottomanists who've wanted to recast the empire as one far more benevolent than earlier historians made it out to be. Fair enough. The Ottomans did get a bad rap while it was still around (deservedly, as many would argue) and after it long disappeared. But there is such a thing as taking things to the opposite extreme, and there have been grumblings and quite vocal disagreements on how efforts to portray the Ottomans as "just like any other empire" to admire and behold go some ways in whitewashing the Ottomans' own misdeeds. This article reads like something along those lines.

I'm not advocating for its outright demolishing, but it would be much simpler I think to start from scratch in order to provide readers a much more readable (and less shouty) presentation of the subject. Marshal Bagramyan (talk) 01:00, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

"it [doesn't] deserve[] 60,000 bytes worth of text deconstructing what, as someone else has said, is essentially a strawman." But all the agita above suggests that it is nota straw man. This alleged defensiveness is no more than exasperation that this archaic approach is still defended. Reading this "talk" subverts my growing appreciation for Wikipedia. There is a lot of fine and reliable scholarship in its 'pages' but then I read this "debate" and think the lunatics are way too active in the asylum. Fulan52 (talk) 18:49, 23 April 2023 (UTC)

So why did it fall, then? The article needs to include some clarifications.

As many editors have pointed out on this talk page, the impression the article gives is that the Ottoman empire never declined, it was just fine until it suddenly and inexplicably fell (due to a Dolchstoß, perhaps?). Reading this talk page, I see defenders of the current state of the article say that it is not trying to argue that the empire never declined. They admit that it did decline during some period, except that that happened later than previously assumed, in some respects and in comparison with some countries. Fine, but maybe they should consider the possibility that the current state of the article does give rise to such a 'misunderstanding', as expressed in the numerous objections of this talk page, and that it should be changed to avoid the 'misunderstanding'. Of course when you call the thesis that you are arguing against 'the Ottoman decline thesis', the most natural interpretation will be that you are arguing against the thesis that, well, there was an Ottoman decline. Ever. And, indeed, the article does not at any point admit that an actual decline ever happened at all, it just lists ways and periods in which it didn't happen. If the real point of the article is that the decline happened later, was relative and wasn't all-encompassing, then the text of the article should explain that clearly.

The argument that you can't describe any long period as a period of decline is basically a general argument in favour of not seeing the forest for the trees. Yes, there are shorter periods of rise and decline also within larger periods characterised by upward and downward trends. The former in no way negates the latter. 62.73.69.121 (talk) 11:05, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

The Ottoman Empire's fall can be traced back to the events that occurred in the 19th century. By then, the Ottoman state was economically underdeveloped and technologically backwards. For example, the British Empire's daily coal production was equal to yearly coal production of the Ottomans. Also, the 19th volatile political landscape disfavored the Ottoman Empire. The rise of nationalism with the French Revolution inspired independence movements among Christian subjects in the Balkans. The Ottoman Empire spent enormous financial and military resources in a failed attempt to quell the revolts caused by separatist organizations. At the same time, the imperial powers of Europe, namely Britain, France and Russia wanted to expand their spheres of influence in the Near East. Under those conditions, the Ottoman Empire took three mighty blows to its hegemony: 1) The Russo-Turkish War of 1878, 2) The First Balkan War, 3) The First World War. The last one definitely ended the rule of Ottoman dynasty.

From another point of view, it is also possible to link the Ottoman Empire's decline to previous events such as the lose of significance of the Silk Road with the Age of Colonialism, the defeat at Vienna or the degeneration of the Timariot system, all of which occurred before the 19th century. In fact, it is very easy to find papers about this if your search on Google Scholar, such as this one. The Encyclopedia of Islam puts the stagnation period at the 17th century and the decline at 18th century.[2] I'd suggest you to read the memoirs of Osman Aga of Temesvar. It tells a story of captivity of an Ottoman soldier during the War of Holy League. It also has an interesting description of a siege battle between the Austrian and Turkish forces. Wallis sabiti (talk) 00:59, 13 January 2024 (UTC)