The ancestors of the Ottoman Empire were a Turkic tribe from the Amu Darya Valley in Central Asia, which was initially attached to the Turkic sultanate of Roma, and then in the 14th and 16th centuries, it annexed the Sultanate of Roma and the Eastern Roman Empire, rising to become a huge state across Asia, Europe and Africa.
At its height, the empire covered North Africa, the Balkans and most of the Middle East, covering an area of 4.5 million square kilometers and a population of 15 million people. At the same time, the European powers Spain and Britain had a population of only a few million, and their overall strength was much lower than that of the Ottoman Empire, and they could only resist Ottoman expansion by means of group heating.
However, such a "big Mac", by the end of the First World War, has become the object of arbitrary slaughter, in addition to the loss of a large area of land in the past, even the base camp in the Anatolian Peninsula (now turkey) is almost unprotected, almost to the brink of annihilation.
What was it that made the Ottoman Empire experience a roller coaster of contrast?
Boom and bust
Many dynasties in history often go downhill because of a seemingly accidental change, such as the Anshi Rebellion in the Tang Kaiyuan Dynasty. What is even more ominous is that even the contradictions that were previously covered up by the surface of the prosperous world have been fully released and intensified.
The Battle of Vienna in 1683 was widely regarded as an inflection point in the decline of the Ottomans, with 250,000 expeditionary troops destroyed by the combined forces of the Shinra Empire and Poland, losing more than half of them, and no longer able to launch an attack on the heart of Europe.
Later, in the Treaty of Kalovec, the Ottoman Empire redivised its borders with Austria and Venice, and its territory in Europe retreated from north of Hungary to the Danube line in Serbia. Since then, the Ottomans have remained on passive defensive position, shrinking their territory in Europe.
In addition to dealing with the continental countries in the west, Russia to the east of the empire is undoubtedly a more formidable opponent, and the two empires have waged a tug-of-war around Ukraine, Crimea and the Caucasus on the Black Sea coast for more than two hundred years.
What is more complicated is that European powers such as Britain, France and Austria, which not only have bad intentions to divide the Ottomans, but also want to prevent the excessive rise of the Russian Empire, have participated in the Russian-Turkish struggle, so that the Ottomans are sandwiched between the major forces, and they are unable to control their own fate in the later stage.
Failed reforms
A series of military defeats shook the foundations of Ottoman rule, and by the nineteenth century the empire's territories in Europe and North Africa were crumbling. The Balkan countries became independent, and Egypt, Algeria and Tunisia in North Africa also changed their courts and became british, French and Italian control areas.
This terrible situation made some of the imperial elite realize that they had to save themselves through reforms. However, there was an irreconcilable contradiction between the feudal system and the Westernization reform, which was doomed to failure.
Obstructed by vested interests such as army generals and the Pashas (senior Ottoman officials), the reforms could only be superficial and could not be carried out in depth, the control of the state by the central government gradually became nominal, and the empire entered a period of turmoil and stagnation.
Instability of the imperial structure
The Ottoman Empire forcibly combined the various parts by force, and there were many ethnic groups and different cultural beliefs in the territory, and religion was the most important link that maintained the country, and the degree of assimilation was very limited. When the empire is strong, it can still rule effectively, and once it declines, it is easy to have a large-scale rebellion.
Looking at the geographical structure, the main body is the West Asian region centered on the Anatolian Peninsula, separated from the Turkish Strait by the Bar cadres, and only connected to the narrow land in the North African part (before the Suez Canal was excavated), and the land is distributed around the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea, not a closed corner and surrounded by strong neighbors.
The Ottomans had an important income, through the control of eurasian land trade routes to collect huge "tolls", and later European countries replaced land transport by sea, cutting off the imperial financial resources, coupled with the regional uprisings constantly affecting taxes, resulting in the empire's finances can not make ends meet, into a vicious circle of weaker and weaker fighting. In a word, the lag of industrialization has made its own hematopoietic function insufficient, and it has been left behind by European powers.
Final hit
By the eve of World War I, the Empire was in tatters, and the long-term plundering of its territory by Britain, France, and Russia forced the Ottomans to defect to the side of the Allies, mainly Germany and Austria.
After the war, the Allies squeezed the Allied camp, and the Ottoman Empire was no exception. Syria and Lebanon were seized by France, Iraq and Palestine were entrusted by Britain, more than 2,500 islands in the Aegean Sea, more than 2,400 were returned to Greece, and if it were not for the Russian revolution and not participating in the partition, the losses would have been much heavier. Of course, the plan was already agreed upon by the Allied camp.
The Allies had intended to divide to the end, leaving only a small area of Istanbul and its environs. Had it not been for Mustafa Kemal's war of independence for Turkey, the Ottoman Empire would have been nearly wiped out, as Poland had been.
According to one statistic, as many as 40 new states were established in the vast lands of the former Ottoman Empire. The collapse of this behemoth has made the world "bigger".