6.1: Decline of the Land-Based Empires

The Decline of the Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman Empire declined due to waning military power, British and French colonial conquest, and independence movements by ethnic groups within its borders. Seeking their own geopolitical advantages and influence in the region, the Russian and Austrian governments supported various ethnic groups as they tried to break away from Ottoman rule. What was once one of the largest and most powerful empires in the world became only the country of Turkey by the end of WWI.

The French occupied Ottoman Algeria in 1830 and did not withdraw until 1962.  A French protectorate was established in Tunisia between 1881 and 1883. That did not end until 1956. The British defeated what was once Ottoman Egypt, and set up their own colonial regime in 1882. They did not withdraw from Egypt until 1922. British and French military domination thus weakened Ottoman power and geographical spread.

Tsarist Russia encouraged independence movements in the Ottoman Balkan-Black Sea region. There are at least two major reasons why the Russians did this. First, the Russians and a large number of people in Eastern Europe shared an ethnic identity as Slavs and as Eastern Orthodox Christians. Second, Russia has always needed access to the sea because its Pacific ports are frozen for half of the year. Russia has historically sought control of the Black Sea and the Crimean peninsula in order to sail into the Mediterranean and then outward to the Atlantic. Having allies along these coasts was geopolitically advantageous, so the Tsarist government supported breakaway nations to be formed out of territory that had been under Ottoman control. 

With their independence movement supported by Russia as well as Britain and France, Greece was the first to break away from the Ottoman Empire as an independent nation in 1832. The British Foreign Secretary, Viscount Castlereagh, stated that the British Empire could interfere within another empire's territory, in this case, the Ottoman empire, "...where their own immediate security or essential interest are seriously endangered by the internal transactions of another state." This perspective provided justification for British, French, and Russian geopolitical and territorial ambitions. Other colonial powers such as imperial Japan and the U.S. would follow and expand this self-serving ideology. During the late nineteenth century, it was euphemistically called, "benevolent assimilation."

In addition to assisting Greece, Russia and Britain encouraged the independence of other regions of the Balkan Peninsula that were Slavic and Orthodox Christian: Montenegro, Serbia, and Bulgaria. These states achieved independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1878. The Ottomans passed control of Bosnia and Herzegovina to Austria-Hungary. With these continued territorial losses, the dwindling Ottoman Empire was called the "sick man of Europe" for the last two centuries of its existence.

Prior to British domination of Egypt in 1882, the Egyptians had already been trying to establish their independence from the Ottoman Empire under the governor, Muhammad Ali. From 1805-1848, Ali worked to modernize and industrialize Egypt. In 1854, Ali’s son, Muhammad Sa’id, granted land to French businessman, Ferdinand de Lesseps, to create a canal from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea. The canal took eleven years to build, using forced Egyptian labor. Completed in 1869, this project became the Suez Canal.

Although the Suez Canal Company was an international corporation, its shares did not sell well outside of France and Egypt. In 1875, Sa’id’s son, Ismail, sold Egypt’s shares in the Canal to British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli. The Prime Minister bought these shares with an unsecured £4,000,000 loan from his friend, Baron Lionel de Rothschild, head of a famous international bank. Even though France still owned shares in the Canal, Britain sent military troops to protect its financial interests in the Canal and occupied Egypt as a protectorate in 1882.

In 1888 the Suez Canal was declared a neutral zone under British protection. Figure 6.1.1 is a contemporary satellite view of the Suez Canal today. The Suez Canal can be described as a narrow man-made canal that connects the Mediterranean Sea to the Indian Ocean via the Red Sea. Construction of the Suez Canal started in Port Said at the Mediterranean end in 1859 and was completed after 10 years in 1869. The Suez Canal was vital to British interests as its steamships did not have to sail around Africa to reach India, its most wealth producing colony. With the completion of the canal, the trip from Britain to India took two weeks instead of two months. This further cemented British power in the region, further transforming traditional societies and cultures.

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): Contemporary Satellite view of the Suez Canal, Axelspace Corporation, in the Public Domain

 

During the mid-19th century, disputes arose between European governments over the weakening Ottoman empire and territories that were anticipated to split off. These disputes influenced the 1853-1856 Crimean War with France, Great Britain, the Italian Kingdom of Sardinia, and the Ottomans on one side, and Russia on the other.  The allied group sought to block Russia’s expansion into Ottoman territory. Figure 6.1.2 shows the French army attacking the Russian fort during the Battle of Malakoff on September 7, 1855. Although the rivalry between Russia and Turkic groups was not new, European powers did not want Russia to defeat the Ottomans and take control of the Eastern Mediterranean. As seen in Figure 6.1.2, the French and British became involved in a brutal conflict on the side of the Ottomans to stop Russian expansion and control of important trade routes.

Figure \(\PageIndex{2}\): French army attacking Russian fortification in 1855, William Simpson artist, in the Public Domain.

 

The Crimean War revealed weaknesses of the Russian Empire, which fielded large armies but lagged in technology and naval strength. The Crimean War was the first major war of the industrial era, featuring the use of railways, telegraphs, and modern ordinance like rifles and exploding naval artillery. There were roughly 500,000 casualties with disease as a major factor in the large number of deaths. Battlefield medicine got a start in this war with two British nurses that treated wounded soldiers, Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole. In the 1856 Treaty of Paris following the war, Russia was forced to remove its fleet from the Black Sea. Its expansionist aims were held in check.

The Decline of the Russian Empire

Badly defeated in the Crimean War, the Russian Empire was forced to confront its political, economic, and social weaknesses. It had not industrialized like the western European nations, and serfdom had been in place for centuries. Peasants were tied to the land and were included in property transactions if land was sold.  In an effort to modernize and strengthen his country, Tsar Alexander II declared an end to serfdom in 1861, shortly before President Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Proclamation. Figure 6.1.3 shows Alexander II holding the emancipation act in front of a crowd of peasants. The image in Figure 6.1.3 was created in the late nineteenth century. Feudalism had ended in western Europe long before the nineteenth century, but similar reforms were not implemented in Russia. In response to several peasant uprisings, Tsar Alexander II introduced a series of reforms, including the emancipation of Russian serfs, to restore social and economic stability.

Figure \(\PageIndex{3}\): Tsar Alexander II reading the act of emancipation of the serfs in 1861, in the Public Domain. 

After the formal end to serfdom in Russia, western investors promoted the expansion of industry. Factories and railroads were built in the western part of Russia. These changes, however, did not satisfy reformers who wanted a more equalitarian society. Frustrated reformers turned to revolutionary action, often led by anarchists. Anarchism is similar to socialism in its concept of class struggle, but anarchists believe that all forms of top-down control such as governments, police, and organized religion, should be eliminated immediately, allowing the natural cooperativeness of humanity to thrive in smaller consensus-based entities.  Russian anarchists assassinated the reformist Tsar Alexander II in 1881, on the day he approved a limited form of parliamentary government.  His son, Alexander III, rejected political reforms and was also murdered by anarchists in 1894. His son, Nicholas II, was also not open to any checks on his absolute power.

The inflexibility shown by Tsar Nicholas II toward his people did not bode well in the long run as the Russian people were not willing to relent in their demand for political rights and economic well being. In 1905, the priest, Gregory Gapon, led workers in a peaceful demonstration. They addressed Nicholas II directly, presenting their demands. Part of their petition reads, 

Despotism and arbitrariness are suffocating us, we are gasping for breath. Sovereign, we have no strength left. We have reached the limit of our patience. We have come to that terrible moment when it is better to die than to continue unbearable sufferings. And so we left our work and declared to our employers that we will not return to work until they meet our demands. 

Ongoing conflict of this nature contributed to the Russian Revolution as will be covered in a later chapter.

In the late 19th century, the Tsarist autocracy encouraged anti-Semitism, the idea that Jews were the cause of political, economic, and social problems, and needed to be controlled or subdued. Many Jewish Russians who had lived in territory taken from Poland in the 1790s, were blamed for misfortunes like economic downturns or the deaths of babies or cattle, and attacked in violent pogroms. Although Jews had lived in the region for centuries, the Tsars restricted their ability to own land and to exercise certain professions.

Attacks on Jewish communities and neighborhoods occurred with frightening frequency from the 1880s until the eve of World War One. In 1903, pogroms, or mass killings, went on in Russia in places such as Kishinev and Melitopol (Ukraine). In Odessa in 1905, hundreds of Jews lost their lives in violent attacks. This loss of life received international condemnation and was regarded as proof of Tsarist Russia’s backwardness. In total, tens of thousands of Jews lost their lives in these attacks. When possible, Russian Jews migrated to the United States to escape persecution. Other minority groups also suffered under Tsarist autocratic rule: the Poles, Finns, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, and Romanians. 

The Decline of the Austro-Hungarian Empire

Since the late 13th century, the Habsburg Dynasty ruled Austria and its surrounding regions. During the Protestant Reformation which began during the 16th century, the Habsburgs fought to maintain Catholicism as the official religion of their realm. From their center in Vienna, the Habsburgs controlled regions as far as the Spanish Empire, including the Spanish-American colonies, ​​through strategic marriages. The Spanish line of the Habsburgs died out in 1700, but the Austrian Habsburgs reigned until the end of WWI in 1918.

For centuries, the Habsburg monarchs were designated by the Catholic Church as the Holy Roman Emperors. By the end of the Napoleonic period in 1815, the Habsburg Empire dominated southeastern Europe, up to the borders of the Ottoman and Russian empires.  The Holy Roman Emperors felt a kinship with Orthodox Christians under Ottoman rule—Greeks, Serbs, and Bulgarians. They also supported Catholics of the Ottoman region, such as the Croats, and maintained support for the Catholic Church.

Although the Habsburg Empire was united by religion, like the Ottoman Empire, it was weakened by emerging independence movements by the middle of the nineteenth century. Various ethnic and cultural groups such as the Hungarians, Czechs, Ukrainians, Poles, Slovaks, Romanians, Jews, Slovenes, Croats, Serbs, and Albanians sought their own nationhood. This political aim took full expression during a series of revolutions in 1848. In the midst of this ferment, several regions gained greater autonomy, revolutionaries achieved the abolition of serfdom, and Emperor Ferdinand I abdicated in favor of his nephew, Franz Josef.

Unification of Italy and Germany in 1871 allowed the Hungarians, who became the most numerous minority within the realm, to achieve near-complete independence. In 1867, the Habsburg emperor agreed to establish a “dual monarchy,” the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Administration was divided between Austrian and Hungarian parliaments. This compromise merely spread out the nationalist problem for two kings instead of one. Romanians demanded more autonomy from the Hungarian administration in Budapest, while the Czechs demanded more autonomy from the Austrian government in Vienna.

Review Questions

• Why was the Suez Canal significant?
• What were the main factors uniting and then splitting the Austro-Hungarian Empire?