Talk:Decline and modernization of the Ottoman Empire

Duplicate article?
This article looks as failed version of Fall of the Ottoman Empire - the first paragraphs are word by word the same. Pavel Vozenilek 00:24, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Wrong link
The link for the "treaty of berlin - 1885" map actually leads to "Image:The ottoman empire and its successors (1923) - san stefano.png", which is also wrong because the Treaty of San Stefano was in 1878. --89.190.200.137 21:37, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

More information
Do you have any more information on this? March 27, 2007 —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.81.167.126 (talk) 02:24, 28 March 2007 (UTC).

This whole article is pretty wierd. It is entirely focused on the sultans. Perhaps this is a traditional way of looking at Ottoman history, but I think it is a very incomplete way. When a country is in decline, it is being attacked by other countries. There ought to be a list of other countries attacking the Ottoman empire. The view presented in this article is entirely from the inside looking out, and there ought to also be a view from the outside looking in.

I've been prowling Wikipedia for awhile, and the articles on the Ottoman empire are of lower quality than most articles.

I don't know why "stagnation" and "decline" are divided the way they are. I would have thought that Greek Independence would be part of the decline, not the end of stagnation.

76.199.0.218 (talk) 16:32, 2 January 2008 (UTC) Ralph Johnson, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

1840s
No mention of the 1840s? Faro0485 (talk) 22:57, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

no mention of the russo-turkish war of 1828-1829?
that was a pretty big deal... Schindler91589 (talk) 14:30, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

WWI?
Do we need to mention WWI in this article? Kavas (talk) 16:06, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Period of duration
Thanks for the valuable contributions to this article, except that the article covers 19th century instead of 18th century. It seems one editor (who seems to be inactive now) in 2005 used the Battle of Navarino in 1827 and the Second Constitutional Era in 1908 as the milestones. Actually the decline period begins by Battle of Vienna in 1683 (documented in 1699 by the Treaty of Karlowitz) and ends in 1789 (or 1792). So the text of the article actually belongs to a later era. Although I am ready to move the contents, I'd like to take a second opinion. Nedim Ardoğa (talk) 10:56, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

So... who's wrong?
How can we possibly have an extensive article (Ottoman Decline Thesis) devoted solely to detailing the many, many, many point-by-point ways that the Ottoman Empire never declined, tooootal myth, all decent modern scholarship holds it was peachy keen up to the New Imperialism which was apparently just an unavoidable Act of God... and then also have our main article on the period titled Decline...? Does that article need a ton more caveats and less stridency that it currently has? or this page needs a move and complete rebuild? — Llywelyn II   03:31, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

Also note Talk:Ottoman Decline Thesis, in which apparently every single poster is talking about how ridiculous, cherry-picking, and poorly reasoned the article is... although no one so far just wants to simply blank the entire page. The valid points need to be spread out across the actual articles on Ottoman history, sure. — Llywelyn II   03:39, 13 May 2022 (UTC)


 * Both articles are POV and problematic - this one because it outlines the concept of decline as a theoretical fait accompli and does not clearly and neutrally outline that there are quite different and contrasting perspectives on what could be termed a period of stagnation and decline. At the same time the "Ottoman Decline Thesis" take a descriptive phrase deployed in a couple of dozen papers and makes it out to be some sort of common name for an established point of understanding. I count 64 papers mentioning this thesis/paradigm as a specific framing versus a much broader literature (2,810 loose count) on the decline in general. It is my sense that much of the thesis/paradigm material should simply be part of the main decline article as its set of contrasting/dissenting voices. Iskandar323 (talk) 08:03, 13 May 2022 (UTC)


 * "every single poster is talking about how ridiculous, cherry-picking, and poorly reasoned the article is"
 * I would take the words of modern scholarship over the words of random editors. I don't see the issue with the article, it has plenty of references, bibliography, etc. Seems well-established. Obviously, you will never have 100% consensus in academia, but again I don't see the issue. Rousillon (talk) 19:31, 14 May 2022 (UTC)
 * As per these criticisms, in my (very much non-expert) opinion, it would be better to merge the two articles here. This would make it easier to incorporate all viewpoints in one place (rather than have each article effectively being a POV fork of the other) and a wider range of editors in one place. Please feel free to remove my merge tags if they were placed inappropriately. QueenofBithynia (talk) 21:30, 14 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Hey all, I know I am a bit late to this discussion as my previous comments were posted some time ago on the other page, and I see that discussion on the subject has largely died down as of late. However I would like to politely disagree with the suggestion to merge the two articles as upon closer examination it is evident that they are exploring two separate topics. The "Ottoman Decline Thesis" article is regarding a (now obsolete) historiographical view of the Ottoman Empire as exclusively existing in a state of perpetual decline from around the end of Suleiman's reign in the 1560s, all the way to 1922. The now obsolete thesis in question does not merely observe that the Ottoman Empire experienced problems and wanes in its military and economic fortunes relative to its rivals, but rather as noted in the article, views more than half of the empire's history just being in a state of "decline" from some abstract peak around the 1600s.
 * Contrastingly, this "Decline and Modernisation" article is related to the major fiscal and military failures of the early 19th century Ottoman state, and the attempts by its military administrative bureaucracy to modernise the state and combat these issues via various reforms. I understand that the similar naming may cause some confusion, but it is apparent that these two articles are addressing different topics, so merging them together would generate more confusion. One of them is discussing a historiographical trend, and this article is discussing a specific historical period (the 19th century) and the challenges the empire faced during this period and how it attempted to mitigate them. Adam Neuser (talk) 15:31, 7 January 2023 (UTC)