From a “Civilized” to an “Islamic” Empire: Ottoman Grand Strategy during the Long Nineteenth Century, 1815–1923

The Ottoman experience has so far mostly been overlooked in writing the history of the transformation of global governance from what Eric Weitz calls the Vienna System to the Paris System, although every single turning point in this transformation involved the Ottoman territories. The Ottoman Empire of the Tanzimat reforms, which envisioned its membership in the club of the civilized empires of Europe, and thus endorsed the Eurocentric imperial world order of the Vienna system, gradually turned into an “Islamic” empire, ultimately declaring Jihad against three other empires in WWI. The experiences of the Ottoman elites in preserving, expanding or ending a non-Western (and thus non-white or non-Christian) empire, and their engagement with the globally circulating notions of civilization, empire, and geopolitics teaches us invaluable lessons about the roots of modern world order and its continuing problems. The Ottoman experience shows the contradictions between the power of geopolitical thinking, especially around the notions of Islam versus the West, imperial legitimacy established in the Vienna system and globalization of the liberal norms. While explaining how geopolitics and the legitimacy crisis of the imperial world order help transform the image of the Ottoman Empire into an Islamic Empire in a period of intense globalization, this paper will emphasize the legacies of this Ottoman experience for contemporary times.