Ottoman Empire Reforms

Term Paper # 99829

History > Middle Eastern
History > Religion

This paper looks at the Tanzimat reforms of reformist sultans in the Ottoman Empire, with a focus on Mount Lebanon.

990 words () | 3 sources | MLA | 2007 United States

Paper Summary:

The paper relates that in the mid 1800s, reformist sultans in the Ottoman Empire developed and issued the Tanzimat, a set of policy reforms. The paper discusses the political environment and policy system that the Tanzimat was designed to address. The paper discusses the general direction of the reformist agenda and highlights the application of that agenda in the Mount Lebanon province in order to assess the success of the Ottoman reforms and their subsequent impact on policy administration in the modern Middle East.

Outline:
Local Administration in the Ottoman Empire
Implementation of the Tanzimat in Mount Lebanon

From the Paper:

"In the mid 1800's, reformist sultans in the Ottoman Empire developed and issued the Tanzimat, a set of policy reforms that were designed to alter the established governing institutions of the empire and halt the empire's slow decline in relation to emerging border nations across Europe. The essential direction of the reforms was to centralize and secularize policy administration throughout the empire in order to ensure that individual citizens were treated fairly and equally, and that the empire remained united and strengthened. In order to achieve this, reformist sultans realized that local institutions had to be controlled so that they were not taking advantage of their distance from the capital to manipulate subjects and policy in order enrich a few local citizens. Their attempt at reform was, at its foundation, the same movement toward rationalizing and realigning policy administration that occurred in the nations of Europe in and around the 18th Century, so that the elements of the modern state could emerge throughout the scattered empire."

Sample of Sources Used:

Abkarius, Iskander. The Lebanon in Turmoil, Syria and the Powers in 1860: Book of the Marvels of the Time concerning Massacres in the Arab Country. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1920).
Hourani, Albert. Ottoman Reform and the politics of the Notables. In A. Hourani, P. Khoury, and M. Wilson, (Eds.) The Modern Middle East: A Reader. (London: I.B. Tauris & Co., 1993).
Inalcik, Halil. "Application of the Tanzimate and Its Social Effects." Revised English version of "Tanzimat'in Uygulanmasi ve Sosyal Tepkileri." Belleten, no. 28 (1964): 623-49.