The Ottoman Caliphate and the Muslim Subjects of the European Empires

The relationship between the Ottoman Sultan and Muslim subjects of European empires over a century from 1820s to the 1920s exhibited multiple contradictions. Even though, by 1880s, the Ottoman Empire ruled less Muslim subjects than British, French, Russian and Dutch empires, the Ottoman Sultan gradually began to be seen as the Caliph of a imagined global Muslim community. Growing significance of Ottoman Sultan’s caliphate role, which culminated in the post-WWI period Khilafat movement in India, was not necessarily a logical result of Muslim theological principles, nor was it achieved through Ottoman public diplomacy and propaganda. In fact, the Ottoman elite of the 1840 Tanzimat reforms hoped to create a new empire that is inclusive of its Christian and Jewish subjects, and were aware that an emphasis on the Caliphate duties of the Ottoman Sultan would weaken their legitimacy in the eyes of their Christian subjects. Why did the imperial globalization of the late 19th century witness a new and strengthened form of connection between the Ottoman Sultan and Muslim subjects of various Christian empires? What implication did this connection have for the particular evolution of the Muslim question in the minds of British, French, Russian and Dutch colonial officers, as well as for the Muslim political imagination in the transition from the world of empires to the era of nation states? This paper will try to answer these questions from the perspective of global intellectual history, with a focus on re-regionalization and geopolicization of the imperial world order in the late 19th century.