408 chapter 9
2 Selim III and the Reform Debate
There is no doubt that a vision such as Resmi’s regarding the Ottoman state and
its place in the international system made it easier for advocates of Western-
style reforms to exert their influence, and the acquaintance of Resmi and other
officials and intellectuals with the European courts, to which they were sent
as envoys, further enhanced this trend. In chapter 8, we saw Ebubekir Ratıb
Efendi’s (1750–99) early views as reflected in his correspondence with his
pupil, the young prince Selim. After Selim’s rise to the throne, Ratıb Efendi was
sent as ambassador to Vienna (1792); the monumental account of his embassy,
known as as Büyük Layıha, is his most famous and important work, and a sub-
stantial change in its author’s views can easily be discerned.53
This enormous and detailed account of Austrian government and manners
bears elements of the older “administration manual” tradition (e.g. Hezarfen’s
work) but, as Carter Findley notes, it also “resembles French works of the pe-
riod that have terms like état général or tableau in their titles, followed by the
kind of taxonomic layout that such a title would seem to imply”.54 In the first
part, which deals with the army, Ratıb Efendi takes up the well-known argu-
ment, seen for instance in the works of de Bonneval and others (including
Ratib Efendi himself in his correspondence with Selim), that the Europeans
first imitated the Ottomans. He states that it was in the third quarter of the sev-
enteenth century that European, and especially Austrian and Prussian, forces
started to exploit the science of engineering and follow a scientific organiza-
tion of the army; he focuses on the Austrian Count Lacy’s reforms (1766–74)
as a “new order” (nizam-ı cedid). He stresses that the Ottomans were the first
to lay down military regulations (nizam u kavanin) and argues that only after
they saw the Ottomans’ superior discipline in the 1683 siege of Vienna did the
Austrians begin to imitate their enemies, and they were allegedly particularly
impressed by the Ottoman method of recruiting peasants (Osmanlunın ebna-yı
reaya ve evlad-ı Türkten acemi oğlanı devşirdiklerine kıyasladır). However, later
sultans neglected to preserve these regulations or impose new ones when they
were required.
Ratıb Efendi then proceeds to give very analytical descriptions, in eleven
chapters, of the structure, education, regulations, reserves, and logistics of the
53 Ratıb Efendi – Arıkan 1996. Cf. also Unat 1968, 154–162; Stein 1985; Findley 1995; Ermiş
2014, 122ff. On Ratıb Efendi see also Karal 1960; Uzunçarşılı 1975; Yeşil 2011a and 2014; and
chapter 8, above.
54 Findley 1995, 45ff. It seems that Ratıb Efendi was greatly helped by Ignatius Mouradgea
d’Ohsson, whose Tableau général de l’Empire othoman has a very similar structure;
cf. Beydilli 1984.