Westernization of the Ottoman Empire ••• 175from Western governments, banks, or investors. Few of his heirs matched
this boast.WESTERNIZATION OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRELess impressive results came from efforts by Mehmet Ali's contemporaries to
reform the Ottoman Empire. The first was Sultan Selim III (r. 1789-1807), a
transitional figure among the westernizing reformers. Historian Stanford
Shaw divides the Ottoman government's attempt at internal reform into
three phases. In the first, such reformers as the Koprulu viziers tried to re¬
store the administrative and military system to what it had been when the
empire was at its height. When this effort failed, some eighteenth-century
sultans and viziers adopted a selective westernizing policy, chiefly in the
army, but failed to check Russia's advance into the Balkans or Napoleon's oc¬
cupation of Egypt. In the third phase of Ottoman reform, mainly in the
nineteenth century, the state tried to westernize many imperial institutions
in an effort (only partly successful) to halt the secession or annexation of
its territories.
The Nizam-i-Jedid
Selim III feared European designs on his country; he was also aware of its
internal problems, with some provinces in open revolt, a war with Austria
and Russia in progress, and a serious shortfall in tax revenues. In response,
he planned a full-scale housecleaning, a nizam-i-jedid (new order) that
would reform the whole Ottoman government. But with the military threat
so imminent, Selim concentrated on creating the westernized elite army to
which that name is usually applied. The nizam soldiers, some recruited
from Istanbul street gangs, had to be trained secretly. Selim knew that the
janissaries—and their friends—would object once they found out. He was
right. The janissaries feared that an effective fighting force, trained by Eu¬
ropean instructors and using modern arms, would unmask them as para¬
sites of the state. They would not let their privileges be jeopardized by
military reform, however necessary. They revolted, killed the new troops,
locked up Selim, and started a bloody civil war. Selim could have built his
army and stopped the Russians if he had implemented the comprehensive
reform scheme he had originally proposed. But his plan was bolder than he
was. Selim therefore seems to stand between the phase of selective western¬
ization and the nineteenth-century effort to reshape the entire Ottoman
Empire along European lines.