A History of Modern Europe - From the Renaissance to the Present

Declining Power, Disappearing State: The Ottoman Empire and Poland 427

est tax farmers, engendered peasant resistance. As in the cases of China
and Japan, Ottomans and the scholar class (tilama) showed little interest
in Western ideas or technology. The single printing press in the empire,
which dated only from the 1720s, was shut down sixty years later; no
newspaper was published until 1828, and that in Cairo, not Istanbul. The
classical literary tradition, as in China and Japan, continued to hold sway.
The long decline of Ottoman power in Europe began when the Turks were
turned back at the gates of Vienna in 1683. Austria’s subsequent conquest
of Hungary and Transylvania was confirmed by the Treaty of Carlowitz in

1699. However, the Turks continued to control the Black Sea by virtue of
      holding Constantinople and the straits. Major Ottoman defeats left the
      way open for continued Russian expansion. Although the Ottomans took
      advantage of inter-European wars to maintain their peripheral territories,
      in the 1760s this began to change. In 1774, following the destruction of
      the Turkish fleet in the Black Sea, the Ottoman Turks granted Russia the
      right to oversee Turkish authority in the Danubian principalities and to
      serve as the official protector of Christians living within its empire. In the
      meantime, in Morocco, Algiers, Tripoli, and Tunis, which remained nom­
      inally part of the Ottoman Empire, local dynasties set up shop. Yet we
      should not exaggerate the decline of the Ottoman Empire, which remained
      a power capable of effectively defending its interests well into the nine­
      teenth century.

The Partitions of Poland

While the Ottoman Empire survived, Poland did not endure as an inde­

pendent state (at least until the end of World War I). Poland was, for all

intents and purposes, a republic. It had a king who was elected by citizens,

a Senate (which included bishops and other important personages), and

an elected Chamber of Deputies (the Sejm). The Sejm, which met every two

years but which the king could convene in an emergency, elected the king for

life and retained the right to pass laws, approve taxes, and ratify treaties.

The king could not travel out of the country without the approval of the

Sejm. Moreover, the “liberum veto” (“I freely forbid”) accentuated the influ­

ence of the wealthiest nobles, who sometimes combined forces to block

legislation. The rise of even more powerful aristocrats who owned vast

estates exacerbated the impact of the “liberum veto” within the Sejm, pre­

venting reforms that might have strengthened Poland.

During the first decades of the eighteenth century, the kingdom, its pop­

ulation reduced by wars and bubonic plague to only 6 million people,

became increasingly dependent on Russia. Indeed, Poland’s eclipse made

possible Russia’s gains in Ukraine. The War of Polish Succession (1733­

1735) began when Russia attempted to impose its candidate on the Polish

throne over the opposition of the Polish nobles. Because of France’s interest

in maintaining Sweden, the Ottoman Empire, and Poland as checks against