Destan Episode 22 English Subtitles kayifamilytv
Ottoman relations with states in Europe, Iran, central
Asia, India, and North Africa: relations with Europe
Full Explain
The Ottoman relationship with Europe changed considerably over time. It certainly was one characterized by war: between c. 1463 and 1918, the Ottomans fought at least forty-three wars and thirty-one of them were with the various European states. And yet, during this time of warfare, then, co-operative relationships existed, often hidden by the ideological divisions of the age.
In the sixteenth century, the Pope and other Christian theologians still thought of the broader European world as being divided into the lands of Islam under the Ottomans and the Christian world, the Respublika Christiana. The latter term meant that all Latin Christian states, but not including those of Orthodox Christianity, were part of a
single, theoretically unified community, despite the fact they spoke different languages and were under the rule of different monarchs.
This Respublika Christiana notion was dying in the sixteenth century, alive only in the minds of theologians and a few others, being replaced by the concept of nation states, loyalty to which became more important than vague sentiments of Christian unity. For example, in the sixteenth century, the French king pursued policies to enhance the power of his state, at the expense of the rest of the Christian world. And so Francis I synchronized his foreign policy with that of the Ottomans, but very carefully avoided entering into an official alliance.
One season, when it was battling with the Habsburgs who were also his enemy, Francis allowed the Ottoman fleet to winter on his south coast, the present day Riviera. For that he was roundly but ineffectually vilified. (Recall that during Suleyman the Magnificent’s reign occurred the first negotiations for granting a capitulation to the King of France.) Compare Francis’ caution in dealing with his de facto Ottoman ally and events that occurred a century and a half later.
In 1688, another French king, Louis XIV, felt able to attack a fellow European Christian state, the Habsburg, at the very moment it was fighting the Ottomans. Louis received some mild rebukes but generally his actions were seen as the normal business of state.
His decision marks a turning point in the evolution of the inter-state system, in Ottoman– west European relations, and the final collapse of the respublica Christiana ideal. Louis had shifted his policies abruptly. Just a few years before, he had sent troops to help the Habsburgs against the Ottoman forces at the battle at St.
Gotthard (1664) and similarly had aided Venice in its fight against the Ottomans on Crete. So, 1688 clearly marks the presence of raison d’´etat, the principle that any behavior to protect a state was justified, as well as the more visible role of the Ottomans in the European balance of power, and the disappearance of the respublica Christiana.
Thus, in the Karlowitz negotiations of 1699 and those for the 1730 Peace of Belgrade, the French actively mediated on behalf of the Ottomans to prevent the Habsburgs from becoming too successful and upsetting the European balance of power. As the eighteenth century proceeded, west European–Ottoman relations evolved still further.
The Ottomans signed formal alliances and actively fought in Egypt with one west European state, Britain, against another, France. By the mid nineteenth century, active military co-operation no longer seemed strange and ruing the Crimean war of 1853–1856 the Ottomans, British, and French all fought together against Russia. In 1856, the Ottoman Empire entered the “Concert of Nations,” a formal recognition of their transformation from antagonist to participant in the European state system.
One final word: while in a true sense the Ottoman state operated as one among many, using diplomacy and war in the European political arena, it nonetheless remained unique. As other states on the continent came
to define themselves, they increasingly considered the Ottoman Empire to be an alien body, an “encampment on European soil.” But at the very same moment, some of them were allied with the Ottomans in a war. The legacy survives to the present; in part for this reason, I believe, the European Union continues to struggle with the application of Turkey, an important Ottoman successor state, for full membership (see chapter 10).
Destan Episode 22 English Subtitles kayifamilytv
