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Ottoman Empire

Decent Essays

By the turn of the twentieth century, the once powerful Ottoman-Islamic Middle Eastern order was rendered unstable by conflicts emanating from its core components to the challenge of European dominance. Its economic order was restructured into different parts of the region. The Capitulations, were transformed into tools of European economic and political control. In an effort to recover Middle Eastern military strength and prevent rebellion and European imperialism, the rulers of Egypt and the Ottoman Empire started to purchase European military technology. But the cost associated with these endeavors exceeded the financial capacities of the two states’ and they were forced to seek loans from European lenders. The economic environment eventually …show more content…

But by 1920, neither that state nor its Islamic institutions held prominence in the Middle East, and its former Arab and Turkish subjects faded into obscurity. In its final century the Ottoman system underwent considerable transformation. The reform movement strengthened the administrative efficiency and the military capability of the empire, but at the same time the reforms were bound to undermine the foundations on which the Ottoman order rested. Despite the administrative changes and the spread of nationalist revolts in the Balkans, the Arab subjects of the empire neither wanted, nor anticipated, its collapse and replacement by a regional Arab state system. The doctrine of Arabism surfaced before the war, but it was not so much a program for political independence so much as a demand for Arab autonomy within an Ottoman framework. Thus, at the outbreak of the war, Ottomanism remained the dominant ideology in the Arabic-speaking provinces. And despite all the attention that Sharif Husayn’s revolt later received, they did not detach the majority of Arabs from their Ottoman loyalties during the war years. But by the end of the war in 1918, Ottomanism was irrelevant. The French occupation of Damascus and the creation of regional states, compelled the Arab elites to focus their attention on developments in their own new states. Arabs that had been formerly occupants of Ottoman provinces, now had to create new identities as Iraqis, Syrians, Palestinians, etc. One element in the post-Ottoman Middle East did remain constant, the individuals who rose to political prominence in the new states were mainly those who had held positions of power and or influence within the Ottoman system, whether they were local notables or prior Ottoman civil servants and

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