426 chapter 9
onwards, although during the course of the eighteenth century the emphasis
seems to have shifted from the stage theory to the nomadism vs. settled life
distinction.
It is usually postulated that the French Revolution played a major role in
the advent of the Tanzimat reforms and the introduction of the Ottoman
Empire to modernity. This view is based on the identification of modernity
with Westernization, on the one hand, and secularization, on the other.88
Numerous studies have explored the ways in which the notions of liberty and
equality (together with nationality) were introduced by various agents, includ-
ing Ottoman ambassadors, enlightened bureaucrats and intellectuals, foreign
officers and refugees, but also Christian subjects of the sultan, and eventually
substituted older notions of the religious state. However, the impact of the rev-
olutionary ideas on Ottoman political thought should not be overestimated.
As Niyazi Berkes notes, there is “no written document showing a favourable
treatment” of these ideas until the 1830s, and even then it is mainly the idea
of modernized Europe that served as intermediary;89 at any rate, viewing the
Ottoman late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as a dualist struggle be-
tween the religion-laden ancien régime and an enlightened secularism is far
too oversimplified a view.90
Ottoman authors did not immediately perceive the French Revolution as a
major challenge, especially so since a ruler’s execution was not in itself some-
thing uncommon in Ottoman history. Until the French threat became visible
in 1797 (with the occupation of the Ionian islands, and even more so with the
invasion of Egypt the next year), the attitude of the Ottoman government to-
wards France remained generally friendly (the reader may remember Selim
III’s correspondence with Louis XVI and the French translation of Mahmud
Raif Efendi’s and Seyyid Mustafa’s propaganda even as late as 1803).91 In the
dispatches of Ebubekir Ratıb Efendi from Vienna (1792), the revolution is de-
scribed as “the rising of the rabble”; although Ratıb Efendi attributes it mainly
to the bad financial situation of France, he also notes that the insurgents had
“tasted freedom” (serbestiyet), and even translates Jacobin arguments claiming
88 See Lewis 1953 and 1961, 53–55; Berkes 1964; and cf. the relevant remarks in the introduc-
tion of the present book. On the influence of the French Revolution on Ottoman thought
see also the studies collected in Baqcué-Grammont – Eldem 1990; ambassadors and other
envoys to Europe apart, channels of information also existed within Istanbul itself (Shaw
1971, 195–198). What follows is partly based on Sariyannis 2016, 50–53.
89 Berkes 1964, 83–85.
90 See Hanioğlu 2008, 2; cf. Mardin 1962.
91 Cf. Kuran 1990.