empire in 1918. Contrary to common European perception, the Sublime
Porte (i.e. the Ottoman Empire) did not remain motionless throughout this
process. The empire had reacted promptly to the political rise of Western
Europe. A process of Westernization had started as early as 1789, overcoming
the resistance by the traditional forces in Ottoman society. However, its
military weakness in the face of its European neighbours, evidenced by
disasters such as the loss of Greece and other possessions elsewhere, led the
Sultan Abdu ̈lmecid and his minister Mustafa Reshid Pasha (Res ̧id Pas ̧a) to
start a ‘reorganization’ in what have been called the Tanzimat years (1839–76).
New measures taken at this period were the promulgation of legislation in
1839 declaring the equality of all the subjects before the law—one of the
principles of early nationalism (Chapter 3)—the creation of a parliamentary
system, the modernization of the administration partly through centraliza-
tion based in Constantinople, and the spread of education (Deringil 1998).
Regarding antiquities, the most obvious result of the wave of Europeaniza-
tion was the organization of the relics collected by the Ottoman rulers from
- The collection wasWrst housed in the church of St Irini. It was
composed of military paraphernalia and antiquities (Arik 1953: 7; O ̈zdogan
1998: 114; Shaw 2002: 46–53). The opening of the museum could be read as a
counterbalance to the Western hegemonic discourse, making Graeco-Roman
antiquities ‘native’ by integrating them into the history of the modern Otto-
man imperial state. Thus, the empire claimed symbolically to civilize nature
reinforcing the Ottoman right to the territories claimed by European phil-
hellenes and the biblical lands (Shaw 2000: 57; 2002: 59). The small collection
at St Irini eventually germinated into the Ottoman Imperial Museum,
oYcially created in 1868 and opened six years later. In 1869 an order had
been issued for ‘antique works to be collected and brought to Constantinople’
(O ̈nder 1983: 96). Some sites such as the Roman Temples of Baalbek in
Lebanon were studied by Ottoman oYcials displaced there as a result of the
violence which had erupted between Druses and Maronites in 1860 (Makdisi
2002: para. 23). Baalbek was not used as a metaphor of the imperial decline, as
Europeans had done until then referring to the Ottomans, but as a represen-
tation of the Empire’s own rich and dynamic heritage (ibid. para. 28). In 1868
the Education Minister, Ahmet Vekif Pasha, decided to give the post of director
of the Imperial Museum to Edward Goold, a teacher in the Imperial Lyceum of
Galatasaray. He would publish, in French, aWrst catalogue of the exhibition
(www nd-e). In 1872 the position went to the headmaster of the Austrian High
School, Philipp Anton Dethier (1803–81). Under his direction the antiquities
were moved to C ̧ inili Ko ̈s ̧k (the Tiled Pavilion), in the gardens of what had
been until 1839 the Sultan’s Palace—Topkapi Palace. Dethier also planned the
enlargement of the museum, created a school of archaeology and was behind
Europe and the Ottoman Empire 111