A History of Modern Europe - From the Renaissance to the Present

Declining Power, Disappearing State: The Ottoman Empire and Poland 425

The Dutch (and, as we will see, French) mood seemed to be catching. Dutch
Patriots invaded the Southern Netherlands in October 1789, driving away
the Austrians. But a popular movement appealed to the nobles even less
than did Austrian rule. Backed by the clergy and with the tacit support of
most peasants, the nobles wrested control of the short-lived state from the
urban-based reformers. The return of Austrian troops in 1790 occurred
without resistance.

Declining Power, Disappearing State:
The Ottoman Empire and Poland

The structure of international power in eighteenth-century Europe was
not fundamentally changed by the quest for reform during the 1760s and
1770s. But in the new, more competitive European environment of the late
eighteenth century, two other states that did not have access to the fruits
of international trade and that were unwilling to restructure themselves
lost their power in Europe: the Turkish Ottoman Empire and Poland. The
Ottoman Empire, its power overextended and lacking a centralized struc­
ture of government, began to decline slowly but surely as its territories in the
Balkans and Caucasus were eaten away by Austria and Russia. Poland, in
which reforms had arguably come too late, fell prey to its aggressive abso­
lutist neighbors: Russia, Prussia, and Austria, w hich divided up the state in
three partitions in 1772, 1793, and 1795.

The Decline of Ottoman Turkish Power in Europe

In contrast to other absolute sovereigns, the Ottoman Turkish sultans ruled

indirectly, governing through Islamic or village officials. Indeed, indirect

rule itself may ultimately have hastened the decline of Ottoman abso­

lutism. Like the Spanish Empire at its peak, the Ottoman domains were so

extensive that they defied effective control. Insurrections, including some

by the janissaries, the once-Ioyal court militia now' increasingly subject to

the influence of local elites, challenged the authority of the sultans—

whose government in Constantinople became known as the Porte. Imperial

officials, Muslim and Christian Orthodox alike, became notoriously cor­

rupt, including the Greek-educated Phanariots, who served the sultans by

collecting taxes, w'hile making their families very wealthy. As the system of

indirect rule declined in effectiveness, some local Christian and Muslim

leaders commanded their own military forces, virtually independent of the

sultan’s authority in Constantinople. Sultans awarded large estates to those

who served them well. This was precisely the same phenomenon that the

absolute monarchs of France, Prussia, Russia, and Austria had overcome.

However, the Ottoman Empire did not have a hereditary aristocracy. And

unlike Russia and parts of Central and Eastern Europe, peasants w ithin the