Surrenders of the Ottoman Empire
As surrenders of the Ottoman Empire ( Ottoman قاپيتولاسيون Kapitülâsyon ; also Ahdnâme /عهدنامهfrom Arabic عهد ʿAhd 'promise, word' and Persian نامه nāme , 'letter, letter'), agreements are initially usually referred to in the area of trade with various European countries. The term comes from the text that is divided into chapter capitule .
history
The first surrender was agreed in 1352 with the Republic of Genoa , followed in the 1380s by the Republic of Venice , under Mehmed II (r. 1451–81) the Republic of Florence , under Bayezid II. ( R. 1481–1512) Naples . As early as 1517, France had the Porte confirming the trade agreements concluded with the Egyptian Mamluk dynasty. The surrender agreed within the framework of the Franco-Ottoman alliance in 1536 was long considered the first, but was never ratified. England had initially used Venice as a middleman and entered direct trade with the Ottoman Empire around 1580. In the 17th century the Dutch provinces also agreed to trade privileges; until then the trade had taken place via the Genoese trading post on Chios and the Polish port of Lwów.
The trade capitulations gave European trade in the Ottoman Empire considerable advantages over local merchants, especially with regard to customs duties. The surrenders were not contracts between equal partners, but were drafted in the form of privileges of the sultan . The European states promised tribute or military aid for trade rights in the Ottoman Empire. However, the form of the contracts meant that the Ottoman merchants had no commercial advantages in European countries. In the long term, this meant that the economic position of the Ottoman Empire against European competition deteriorated.
Effects
The economic and military development deficit meant that in the 18th and especially the 19th centuries the agreements with European states, which were still sometimes referred to as surrenders, had negative consequences for the Ottoman Empire. In the 18th century, the trade disadvantages of Ottoman merchants resulted in more and more local Christian merchants formally calling themselves translators and placing themselves under the protection of a European state. In doing so, they benefited from the trading rights, but were also partially withdrawn from the influence of the state. The Russian Empire alone had around 120,000 Orthodox Greeks as “protected patrons” around 1808. Even during the Tanzimat era , the weakness of the Ottoman Empire meant that it had to conclude unequal trade agreements. This applies in particular to the Ottoman-English Treaty of 1838. In the Peace of Paris of 1856, the Sublime Porte was incorporated into the European system of power, the state was supported in a conditional modernization, but the capitulations remained.
Repeal
For Turkey the period of European special rights ended with the entry into the First World War in 1914 and the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923. They still existed in semi-colonial Egypt. There the twelve capitular powers maintained the so-called mixed courts of justice for the Egyptians under their protection until 1949 . Only then did this right fall to the Egyptian state .
literature
- Klaus Kreiser, Christoph K. Neumann: Small history of Turkey . Federal Agency for Civic Education , Bonn 2006, ISBN 3-89331-654-X .
- Alexander Schölch: Economic penetration and political control by the European powers in the Ottoman Empire (Constantinople, Cairo, Tunis) In: Geschichte und Gesellschaft , Issue 1, 1975, pp. 404–446.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Halil İnalcık, Donald Quataert: An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, 1300-1914 . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge UK 1994, ISBN 978-0-521-34315-2 , pp. 372-376 .
- ↑ Neumann: A special empire (1512–1596) . In: Little History of Turkey , p. 134.
- ^ Neumann: The short 18th century . In: A Little History of Turkey , p. 280.
- ^ Neumann: The Ottoman Empire in its existential crisis . In: Little History of Turkey , p. 303 f.
- ↑ Schölch: Economic penetration and political control , p. 409, p. 411.