Ottomanism, Pan-Islam, and Turkism ••• 195policies. By 1914 the Nationalist leaders were in exile. Only after World War
I would the Egyptians build up enough resentment against British rule to
form a truly national and revolutionary movement.
OTTOMANISM, PAN-ISLAM, AND TURKISMThe rise of Turkish nationalism was hampered by the fact that until the
twentieth century no educated Ottoman, even if Turkish was his native
tongue, cared to be called a Turk. The Ottoman Empire, though Western¬
ers called it Turkey, was definitely not a Turkish nation-state. It contained
many ethnic and religious groups: Turks, Greeks, Serbs, Croats, Albanians,
Bulgarians, Arabs, Syrians, Armenians, and Kurds, to name but a few. Its
rulers were Sunni Muslims, but it included Greek Orthodox, Armenian
Christian, and Jewish subjects organized into millets (which functioned
like nations within the state), as well as many smaller religious groups. Its
inhabitants were either Osmanlilar, who belonged to the ruling class, or
re'aya, who did not, with nothing in between.
Early Nationalism in the Ottoman Empire
Nationalism, in the modern sense, first arose among the Greeks and the Serbs
(peoples exposed to Western or Russian influences) and then spread to other
subject Christians. As independence movements proliferated in the Balkans,
the Ottoman rulers worried more and more about holding their empire to¬
gether and countering the Russians, who openly encouraged Balkan revolts.
Westernizing reforms were their first solution, but these raised more hopes
than could be met and did not create a new basis of loyalty. The reformers es¬
poused the idea of Ottomanism (loyalty to the Ottoman state) as a frame¬
work within which racial, linguistic, and religious groups could develop
autonomously but harmoniously. To this the New Ottomans of the 1870s
had added the idea of a constitution that would set up an assembly repre¬
senting all the empire's peoples. The constitution was drafted in 1876—the
worst possible time, with several nationalist rebellions going on in the Bal¬
kans, war raging against Serbia and Montenegro (two Balkan states that had
already won their independence), the Ottoman treasury nearly bankrupt,
Russia threatening to send in troops, and Britain preparing to fight against
the Turks to protect the Balkan Christians and against the Russians to defend
the Ottoman Empire (a policy that sounded as weird to people then as it
sounds now). Moreover, the New Ottomans had seized power in a coup, put