19 - Ottoman War Aims

Summary

Ottoman war aims might be difficult to discern in the current historiography of the period of Bonaparte’s invasion of Alexandria and Cairo in 1798, which generally heralds his arrival as the inauguration of the modern age for a Middle East awakening from its medieval slumber. On closer examination, and orienting one’s hypothetical gaze from Istanbul rather than from Paris or London, it is possible to see desperation in Istanbul, with the sultan and his people facing repeated disastrous losses against its near constant enemy Russia on its northern borders, combined with major economic crises and countryside unrest. In that context, the war aims of the Ottoman court could be characterised as the survival and reconstruction of relationships between the imperial centre and far-flung, long-independent provincial families, with a renewed focus on recentralising the long autonomous northern and southern extremities of the Empire.