How the Ottoman Empire Became the Sick Man of Europe

19th Century's Great Powers Discussing the Eastern Question

The Ottoman Empire in 1914 was commonly known as "the sick man of Europe," a sign that the once-great power was crumbling.  How did this come about?  Historian Dogachan Dogi of the University of Warwick provided a succinct summary in a 2018 article.

Conventional wisdom holds that the Ottomans enjoyed unrivaled power in Europe from the late 15th century to mid-17th century. However, the failed siege of Vienna in 1683 followed by the Austro-Ottoman War of 1683–1697 which was settled by the Treaty of Karlowitz of 1699 resulted in an undisputed Ottoman defeat, ending Ottoman supremacy in Europe. Yet, the new status quo was not immediately acknowledged by the Ottoman ruling elite who still regarded themselves above the Christian Empires in Europe. 

It was the 1798 French campaign in Egypt and Syria led by Napoleon Bonaparte that forced the Ottomans to come to terms with the new international order. The degree of Ottoman weakness was obvious as the Ottoman military of several hundred thousand men had been defeated numerous times by 25,000 Frenchmen. 

This particular event completely changed the Ottoman foreign policy. The strategy of isolation from Europe in pursuit of more land gains through battles against usually united Christian powers was abandoned and replaced by a will to engage in bilateral diplomacy and search for alliances within Europe. This was later known to be the “policy of balance”  in which the Ottomans tried to exploit the conflicts of European powers for its own gain, to turn European powers against each other and to formulate ad-hoc alliances against common enemies.

Napoleon at the Battle of the Pyramids, 1798

This policy was first utilized against the French just after the humiliating defeats of 1798 as the Ottomans asked for assistance from the British and the Russians, who were also concerned by French aspirations as well as the rapid change in the European balance of power. The first decades of the 19th century were marked with surging social and political troubles as well as the continuation of Ottoman territorial diminution. 

The independence of mainland Greece in 1829 and the loss of Algeria in 1830 were clear signs of this trend. However, it wasn’t until the defeat of the central government against its own Governor of Egypt, Mehmet Ali Pasha in 1833 that the Eastern Question [i.e. If Ottoman Empire is bound to collapse and questions who will take over the land after the collapse?]  became one of the key foreign policy issues for the European Powers. This was mainly due to all European Powers being skeptical of each other’s gains at the expense of the Ottomans as none wanted their counterparts to be overwhelmingly in control of strategic Ottoman territories. The Ottomans were now viewed as the sick man of Europe which led to constant conflict over sharing the inheritance of this dying empire. 

It is of no coincidence that the Ottoman rulers used this dilemma to further its policy of finding European alliances out of a shared interest of containing the power which threatens its lands or influence. The best example of this was the 1856 Crimean War against the Russian Empire where the Ottomans were aided by the British and French who had concerns over an increasingly powerful Russia. The war resulted in a rare Ottoman victory for the era, and the Treaty of Paris that followed contained two crucial articles that the Ottomans had struggled for since their inferiority against the Europeans became apparent to them: being recognized as a European Power and European Powers protecting the territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire.

The Tsar's Cossack Imperial Guard Leads the
Advance into Turkey, 1877

This, however, proved itself to be a temporary success for the Ottoman side as the Russo-Ottoman War of 1877–1878 shifted the status quo again. The heavy Ottoman defeat resulted in the independence of Serbia and Montenegro as well as the loss of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Cyprus. Yet this humiliation was of no match with the real problem the Ottomans found themselves in; rapid and inevitable international isolation as it was apparent that the British and French stayed indifferent to the constant Ottoman retreat. 

The loss of Egypt, Tunisia and Libya in early1880s and the independence of Bulgaria in 1908 was in line with the decline of the Ottomans but the decisive defeat of the Empire suffered in the 1912 Balkan War against a weak coalition of small newly independent states that completely chased the Ottomans out of Europe was not foreseen. Even though Ottomans reclaimed Adrianople, the second capital of the Empire, during the 1913 Balkan War, the European Powers were convinced that the total collapse of the Ottomans was only a matter of time.

Source: "Balance of Power or Balance of Threat: Revisiting Ottoman Alliance Politics before the Great War," Open Political Science, 2018, Vol. 1