Essay One Planning Attempt Two

• No distinction is attached to birth among the Turks

• Merit based system
• Says that this is the reason that the Turks are successful in their undertakings.

• Describes his titles and parents
• Basically says that they don't follow the Quran and now they are going to war against them

• Says that the ottomans sultan created the gun-foundry which Bayazit II enlarged
• Struggled in war against the Holy roman empire for 36 years, way longer than all other wars
• Says the Romans had great artillery, but Sultan Suleyman was able to overtake them

  • by recruiting gunners and artillerymen from all countries with the offer of rich rewards

• Destroyed the old gun foundry and replaced it with a new one
• Viewed as a testament to human strength and intelligence

• Says that the Turks were once formidable not because of numbers but because of their "military and civil institutions, far surpassing those of their opponents"

• Conquest was to them a passion

• Says that the turks are seditous

• Mob assembled rather than an army levied

• Says they have a bad navy

• Control of silk road
• Landmass
• Strong Military power

• Over-expanded
  • Centralized
• Switched to an "Iron Fist" management style of crushing dissidents, encouraging the Persians to ally with the Europeans to crush the Ottomans – Jack
• Government
  • became to Despotic, orthodox, conservative, bureaucratic
  • Internal Plundering by the government
    • High taxes, bribery, property seizures, ect.

• says that the ottomans threats and wars seemed part of an coherent grand strategy and the Europeans were disjointed and sporadic {p4}
• Early 16th century china turned in on itself, but the ottomans did not. In middle staged of expansion
• Ottomans were the greatest muslim threat to Europe becuase of their army and their superior seige train. {p9}
• Applied pressure to europe {p9}
• Had a great navel power, won a bunch of battles, raided a bunch of places with their navy.
• Had an offical fath, culture, and language over an area greater than the romans.
• Were way more advanced in tech and culture
• Large tolererance of other races led to influx of talented people {p10}

• Eventually turned inward
• Hard for army to expand due to immense cost
• Ottoman imperialism wasn't that profitable
• second half of 16th century, showed signs of "strategical over-extenstion" {p11}
• Shi'ite kingdom was prepared to ally with the Europeans against the Ottomans
• Needed good leadership, but after 1566, there was 13 incompetent Sultans in a row.
• Centralized, despotic, "orthodix in its attitude towards initiative, disent, and commerce"

• An idiot sultan could paralyze the Ottoman empire in the way that a pope or Holy Roman emperor could never do for all Europe. {p12}

• Without clear directives from above, the arteries of the bureaucracy hardened, preferring conservatism to change, and stifling innovation.

• Poverty -> internal plundering
  • Lack of expanstion and hence riches combined with the "vast rise in prices" caused janissaries to "turn to internal plunder"
  • Merchants and entrapanuers were met with unpredictable tax rates and "outright seuizure of property"
  • Soldiers raded peasants land, peasants also turned to plundering, eveerything went downhill.
• Shi'ite religions made officials crack down on free thought
  • Printing press was forbidden

  • Economic notions remained primitive

    • Imports desired, but exports were forbidden
    • Didn't like innovation or rise of capitalism
    • Religions didn't like traders.
  • Kept old methods of dealing with plagues, and suffered from more epidemics due to it.

  • Their armed services had become, indeed, a bastion of conservatism.

• Infighting
  • expansion
    • Iron first tactic of crushing others led to them uniting against the ottomans
    • Harder to keep expanding, imperialism was no longer profitable
    • Needed good leadership / new direction, but heavy centralization allowed for a single "idiot" leader to stall the empire completely. This happened thirteen times in a row.
    • This made bureaucracy harden, which led to a culture of conservatism
    • Lack of income lead to infighting and plundering
    • Threat from Shi'ite religions led to cracking down on free thought
      • Stifled innovation + income
        
      • More plagues

These periods of change reveal the problems faced by huge, land based empires around the world

• Grew because of: {486}
  • The shrewdness of its founders and their descendents
  • Control of a strategic link between Europe and asia
  • Army that took advantage of the traditional skills of the turkish cavalryman presented by gunpowder and christian prisoner of war
• Navy was helpful…? Had a weak navy…?
  
• Late 1400s, got christian slaves to use as a valuable resource
• Taxed male children for warriors {p489}

• Crisis of the military state
  • Newer tech -> greater importance of cannons and light weight fire arms
  • late 16th century, influx of silver led to inflation, landholders couldn't report for military duty {490}
  • Canvalrymen reduced / put out of buisness, replaced with janissary corps.
  • Also scholars suffered from reduced income
    
  • Cannot fundementaly alter tax system due to religous law.
  • Government recruited short term soldies which were out of money when the campaign ended

  • Former landholding cavalrymen, short-term soldiers released at the end of a campaign, peasants overburdened by emergency taxes, and even impoverished students of religion formed bands of marauders.

• Economic change and growing weakness
  • Kept sultans confined to the palace so they woudnt start coups
    • led to them not being experienced with the real world
  • Janissaries used their increased power to make privliges in their corps hereditary
• Inflation due to a massive influx of silver hit people with fixed incomes hard
  • Such as, cavalrymen holding land grants
  • Students on fixed scholarships {~493}
• Army was weakening, clear by the middle of the 18th century
• Trade agreements led to the Europeans dominating the Ottomans in seaborne trade {494}
• Tulip period…?
• Central governments weakness allowed smaller leaders to fragment the nation.

• Although no region declared full independence, the sultan's power was slipping away to the advantage of a broad array of lower officials and upstart chieftains in all parts of the empire while the Ottoman economy was reorienting itself toward Europe.

• Inflation
  • Influx of silver led to soldiers and students with fixed salaries starving
  • Only mention of conservatism (probs): coudn't fundamentally change tax system due to religious law
• Formed bands of marauders
• Trade agreements allowed the Europeans to dominate in seaborne Trade
• Central government allowed smaller leaders to fragment the nation