1839-1861 1871-1878






The Ottoman Empire 1861-1871



In 1861 Sultan Abdulmecid died; he was succeeded by his brother ABDULAZIZ. The latter, although he travelled to Paris, London and Vienna in 1867, was much less committed to reform.
The reform politicians ALI and FUAD PASHA, as influential ministers, continued to enact economic, judicial and administrative reforms, such as the 1864 LAW OF VILAYETS which regulated the administration of provinces. In 1861 the IMPERIAL OTTOMAN BANK had been founded to administrate the foreign loans and to avoid state bankrupcy. In 1868 the IMPERIAL OTTOMAN LYCEE was founded in Galatasaray, a bilingual school (French and Turkish) open to both Muslim and Christian students, the curriculum oriented on Western (French) curricula. The death of Fuad Pasha (1869) and Ali Pasha (1871) marked the end of a reform period which, under Abdulaziz, lost in vitality. The defeat of France in the Franco-German War 1870-1871 discredited France's image; as most Tanzimat reforms had been based on French institutions, the reform movement experienced an image loss, too.

In 1863 the Ottoman Postal Service began issuing postage stamps. However, the postal services of Austria (1867-), Russia (1863-), Italy (1861), France (1885-), Germany (1870-), Britain (1885-) and Rumania (1896-) established post offices in the Empire's major trade centers, a clear indication in the lack of trust in the Ottoman facilities. The dates given indicate the dates when the various foreign postal services overprinted stamps for the purpose of being used in the Ottoman Empire.

In the year 1865, the majority of the Circassians (a Muslim people living north of the Caucasus mountains, whose resistance against Russian rule had failed) immigrated into the Ottoman Empire, where they settled in villages scattered all over Rumelia, Anatolia and Ottoman Arabia.


see also History of Rumelia, 1815-1879






EXTERNAL
FILES 		Abdulaziz from Ottoman Web Site
DOCUMENTS Medal : Reception of Sultan Abdul Aziz to the City of London, 1867, from Medal Web, Collection Benjamin Weiss
REFERENCE Jason Goodwin, Lords of the Horizons, 1999, 352 pp.
Bernard Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, Oxford : University Press, (1961) 1969, 524 pp.
Article : Turkey, in : The American Annual Cyclopaedia and Register of Important Events 1864 pp.775-777 [G]



This page is part of World History at KMLA
First posted on April 22nd 2002, last revised on September 1st 2007

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