How much of the Balkans did the Ottomans actually conquer?

Maoistic

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You're stereotyping way too much.

The 'average middle and upper class Latin American mestizo and criollo' (criollo hasn't been an actual ethnic term in a hundred years because criollo literally means Spaniard born in the colonies) gets defensive about that if they are conservative since, just like in the rest of the world, education until very recently talked about the greatness of the local Empires. Education standards have more or less changed and everyone here is told of how conquistadores destroyed rich native civilisations now.

The narrative of the Black Legend is far more pervasive in Europe and North America than in Latin America, and if you ask a Latin American about the Spanish Inquisition, they'll probably know about it but pay less attention to that than to what happened to local cultures.

At no point did I say that torture methods were particularly horrible, but they are more grisly than the encomienda system in narrative if not in numbers.

Even left-leaning centrists get defensive about it, not just conservatives and liberals (right-wingers). It's only the more leftist socialists that don't and they aren't really a dominant part of the demographic I mentioned. And yes, the Spanish Inquisition is actually more emphasised. What is true is that a good number of left-leaning centrists engage in Black Legend historiography, combine the Spanish Inquisition with the Native American genocide and cry about why Protestant England or Holland didn't colonise Latin America instead of Catholic Spain.

And actually, lots of Latin Americans continue to consider themselves criollos or similar.
 
While the ottoman empire is generally seen as bad in the Balkans. Is it also seen as bad in muslim/ish countries how do Albania and Bosnia view it? Something i found weird when i was watching a BBC documentary on the ottomans and the presenter was asking turks about the empire, left wing (old people from kemal time i don't know turkish politics so they may be kemalist for all i know, they kept praising him) hated the empire believing it did nothing good, it was a waste of time. (Sorry little side rant) I have no problems when people dislike their history being of pakistani ethnicity theirs alot to hate about pakistans history. However, i hate this specific argument by turks who dislike the empire, that the empire did nothing good and it was waste, motherfucker the only reason you have istanbul and european land is because of them and yet you see yourself as European, also turkey only exist in part of the ottomans conquering anatolia, turks were mostly nomadic herders. Just give time either a christain power or a resurgent arab power would have taken the Turkish beyliks. Any other reason i can understand but this i hate this specific reason. But now you have the AKP people who praise the empire. So how does turkey view the empire? Pakistanis oddly like the empire even though we were never ruled by them and indian muslims with the hindus and sikh played a crucial role in destroying it.
 
Education standards have more or less changed and everyone here is told of how conquistadores destroyed rich native civilisations now.
Which is just another narrative to be honest, which misses the part where natives aren't one single entity and where tens of thousands of native soldiers engaged with the Spanish in those conquests.
 
Question here no doubt the destruction of americans civ was bad, but one thing i always found hard to sympathies for is the human sacrifice, while thats one of the few things a kinda agree with the conquistadors is fuck that shit, the human sacrifice in some society was too ingrained to stop so it brings to a weird situation as i deplore both sides, for how they act. Im not trying to justify the actions of the europeans but i would like to remind the often forgotten point societies such as the Aztec were not nice nor good, but that doesn't justify what happened to the population.
 
I ask this because for all the narratives of Ottoman conquest, rule and brutality, the Balkans remain predominantly with their European cultural identities. The peoples of the Balkans don't identify as Turkish or Arabic, they don't speak said languages either and Islam is a very insignificant minority overall

The reason for this (or part of the reason for this) is actually within your question.

Romantic-era ultra-nationalists who would evolve into far-right monarchists and fascists in the 20th century.

The Ottoman political, economic, and cultural impact on the Balkans was incredibly sweeping. You can find a short overview of Turkish influence (through the transmission of not only words but even grammatical particles and suffixes) on the Serbian language in this article, which also discusses the bilingualism that defined many areas in rural and urban Serbia with mixed Serbian-Turkish populations. Although the article does go on to talk about attempts to edit the Turkish side out of literary Serbo-Croatian these efforts honestly don't have that much popular impact. There's Serb-nationalist songs from the Yugoslav Wars where they sing about annihilating Europe's Muslims and still use Turkish loans in the lyrics. If we want to talk about religion, Islam was and is a lot more influential than you think. Rather than being an insignificant minority, Balkan Muslims still number in the millions, and include such politically significant groups as the Bosniaks (who also remain a significant minority in Serbia's Sandzak region), the Albanians (who can be spotted in Albania, Macedonia, and Kosovo sporting such Turkish names as Enver and Talaat) and over 1.5 million ethnic Turks in Bulgaria, 340k of whom departed the country after the end of communism. There's almost no field of Balkan life which remained unaffected by Turkish rule.

Now, how does such influence exert itself? Through conquest, and not vassalage. This graduate thesis (I'd like to find a more respectable source but I lost my reference doc a while back) is focused on the power structure within the 1700s Ottoman Empire, but Chapter 2 (page 40 of the PDF) gives a rundown on Ottoman administration in earlier centuries. The common trait of both time period, however, is that the Ottomans did not use unaltered Balkan administrative systems as intermediaries between Istanbul and the village, but instead co-opted/destroyed those systems to create new intermediary institutions with more Ottoman influence. As this book also explains, the power of the Ottoman state and its functionaries over the Balkans was closely tied to the ability to hold and redistribute land, with such institutions as the timar giving a legal basis for the process by which Ottoman functionaries profited from Balkan land and labor. Of course, when I say "Ottoman functionary" I don't necessarily mean a Turk. The existence of Slavic and Greek nobles within the Ottoman structure is well-attested and actually goes way back to the very founding of the Ottoman Empire, when Osman and Orhan (then only the Beys of a small fiefdom, now regarded as the first and second Sultans of the Empire) conducted marriage alliances with Byzantine notables to secure land and intervene in Byzantine politics. But while a Balkan noble living within the Ottoman provinces (these go through various names-- at first they are beylerbeyliks, then eyalets, then sancaks) could be a high-ranking official or even a Grand Vizier (@Koprulu Mustafa Pasha), they could never be a king or a prince. In the pre-1800s Ottoman society, political sovereignty rested with the Padishah in Istanbul. In fact, the rise of Balkan "viceroys" or "vassals" in the 1800s (The Principalities of Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria, and Eastern Rumelia) are associated with the rapid decay of Ottoman authority in the Balkans in the face of internal and external stresses (Atalomos also mentions this on his post in this thread's page 1). Even in the face of that decay, however, it's worth noting how influential Ottoman land-use techniques remained in "independent" Serbia under Milan Obrenovic.

I guess that the closest the Ottoman Empire at its prime (pre-1800s) gets to using "vassalage" (ruling through cooperation with locally-based and autonomous systems) as an administrative technique is in their use of ecclesiastical control. Under the millet system, most of the previously autocephalous Orthodox chrcuhes were steadily folded into the Patriarchate of Constantinople, the Greek-dominated proxy-church through which the Ottomans kept an eye on the Slavic/Vlach Orthodox (for more info on Ottoman-facilitated Greek influence in the Balkans, check out this). As with the rise of autonomous viceregal territorial units, the re-creation of autocephalous Slavic Orthodox churches in Serbia and Bulgaria is associated with the 1800s decay of Ottoman authority over the Balkans and the machinations of foreign powers.

But for all this, you're right in saying that the Balkan states are now "European" and majority-Christian. That's how they are today.

The reason for that is massive ethnic cleansing, in which millions of Balkan Muslims (ethnic Turks, converted Slavs, and everything in between) were killed or forced to flee. Today, they live in Turkey as the Muhacir ("immigrant," "refugee") people. The first wave of Muhacir migration (which also included Circassians from the Caucasus) may have been up to 10 million people. Many of the Muhacirs are Pomaks, a term which refers to Bulgarian Muslims specifically. In other words, the creation of ethnically homogenous Christian nations in the Balkans wasn't a simple process of removing a superficial layer of Ottoman influence. It was a deeply traumatic process by which societies were forcibly remade, more comparable to tearing out an organ than picking off a scab. The blame for the initiation of this process lies more with local actors than with the foreign powers that egged them on-- the national elites of the new Balkan states successfully created ideals of "Serbness" and "Greekness," and made adherence to those ideals essential for political and social advancement. But the thing about this process is that although it tries to project a superficial image that the Ottoman conquest wasn't that impactful and never dulled the edges of Serb/Greek/Macedonian/Bulgarian national unity, dig a little deeper and you'll find that that image is a myth, and one that was destructive for nearly everyone involved regardless of religion.
 
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The reason for that is massive ethnic cleansing, in which millions of Balkan Muslims (ethnic Turks, converted Slavs, and everything in between) were killed or forced to flee. Today, they live in Turkey as the Muhacir ("immigrant," "refugee") people. The first wave of Muhacir migration (which also included Circassians from the Caucasus) may have been up to 10 million people. Many of the Muhacirs are Pomaks, a term which refers to Bulgarian Muslims specifically. In other words, the creation of ethnically homogenous Christian nations in the Balkans wasn't a simple process of removing a superficial layer of Ottoman influence. It was a deeply traumatic process by which societies were forcibly remade, more comparable to tearing out an organ than picking off a scab. The blame for the initiation of this process lies more with local actors than with the foreign powers that egged them on-- the national elites of the new Balkan states successfully created ideals of "Serbness" and "Greekness," and made adherence to those ideals essential for political and social advancement. But the thing about this process is that although it tries to project a superficial image that the Ottoman conquest wasn't that impactful and never dulled the edges of Serb/Greek/Macedonian/Bulgarian national unity, dig a little deeper and you'll find that that image is a myth, and one that was destructive for nearly everyone involved regardless of religion.

I do agree with and applaud your point, that Ottoman Europe was very much Ottoman culturally and that said culture still has gigantic effects on the region today, but have to dispute the implication that if not for nationalism it would all be majority Muslim. Only the Silistra region had a Muslim majority and that barely (55%). The trick IIRC is that it was concentrated in villages—conversion was a very familial affair, it wasn’t whole regions just up and converting.

Ottoman Europe was a diverse, multicultural thing; the tragedy of nationalism was breaking that down for strict divisions based on half-baked “national identities.” When people mock Macedonian (Slavic) nationalism for the sham it often is they forget that all of the other Balkan nationalisms were similarly “made up.”
 
I do agree with and applaud your point, that Ottoman Europe was very much Ottoman culturally and that said culture still has gigantic effects on the region today, but have to dispute the implication that if not for nationalism it would all be majority Muslim. Only the Silistra region had a Muslim majority and that barely (55%). The trick IIRC is that it was concentrated in villages—conversion was a very familial affair, it wasn’t whole regions just up and converting.

Good clarification, and yeahhh I can see how the latter part of my post implies that. What I was trying to say was that while Muslims may not have been a majority in most places, there were (and are) certainly a lot of them.
 
Good clarification, and yeahhh I can see how the latter part of my post implies that. What I was trying to say was that while Muslims may not have been a majority in most places, there were (and are) certainly a lot of them.

Yeah, you’re totally right. Your whole post is incredibly impressive!
 

This is not a bad post overall - in fact, it's fairly well-written - but I want to contest a few points.
the power of the Ottoman state and its functionaries over the Balkans was closely tied to the ability to hold and redistribute land,

Correct. In fact, the decline of Ottoman authority up to 1800 is strongly associated to the rise of Chiftliks. In which the Ottoman government gradually lost the ability to hold and redistribute land - and lost it in a particularly nasty and counter-productive way.
Even in the face of that decay, however, it's worth noting how influential Ottoman land-use techniques remained in "independent" Serbia under Milan Obrenovic.

Not very influential at all? As the article itself makes clear, the Ottoman land regime was completely abolished in Serbia.

In fact, the radical differences between the Serbian system of free peasant smallholders (as showcased in Serbia) and the Ottoman system of serfdom (as preserved in Bosnia under Habsburg custody) was one of the key factors that set the stage for WWI.
I guess that the closest the Ottoman Empire at its prime (pre-1800s) gets to using "vassalage" (ruling through cooperation with locally-based and autonomous systems) as an administrative technique is in their use of ecclesiastical control.

Yes and no. There were a couple of regions which had a certain degree of autonomy within the Ottoman state. For example, Mademochoria and Zagori in Greece. Some autonomies were destroyed across the centuries, some survived until fairly late.
But for all this, you're right in saying that the Balkan states are now "European" and majority-Christian. That's how they are today.

The Balkans states that are majority-Christian today (Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria...) were also majority-Christian in 1800.

As for "European", I partially agree...in that it's a largely meaningless term, which heavily depends on context.
The reason for that is massive ethnic cleansing, in which millions of Balkan Muslims (ethnic Turks, converted Slavs, and everything in between) were killed or forced to flee. Today, they live in Turkey as the Muhacir ("immigrant," "refugee") people. The first wave of Muhacir migration (which also included Circassians from the Caucasus) may have been up to 10 million people. Many of the Muhacirs are Pomaks, a term which refers to Bulgarian Muslims specifically. In other words, the creation of ethnically homogenous Christian nations in the Balkans wasn't a simple process of removing a superficial layer of Ottoman influence. It was a deeply traumatic process by which societies were forcibly remade, more comparable to tearing out an organ than picking off a scab. The blame for the initiation of this process lies more with local actors than with the foreign powers that egged them on-- the national elites of the new Balkan states successfully created ideals of "Serbness" and "Greekness," and made adherence to those ideals essential for political and social advancement. But the thing about this process is that although it tries to project a superficial image that the Ottoman conquest wasn't that impactful and never dulled the edges of Serb/Greek/Macedonian/Bulgarian national unity, dig a little deeper and you'll find that that image is a myth, and one that was destructive for nearly everyone involved regardless of religion.

1. The Christian states in the Balkans are not ethnically homogenous to this day.

2. 10 million? This figure can't correct, unless you're describing everything that happened in the Balkans and the Caucasus between 1770 and 1913 as the first wave of migration. And even then, it might be a bit of a stretch.

3. Organ analogies and all...your post reflects a certain trend within modern historiography. The mass violence committed by Balkan nations in their struggle against Ottoman violence is put on the spotlight, sensationalized, and sometimes even weaved into racist narratives against the nations of the region. The equally severe (or greater) mass violence committed by the Ottoman state in that same fight is completely ignored.

The truth is that the aftermath of Ottoman victories against the Bulgarians (, Serbs, Greeks)...looked much like the aftermath of Balkan nationalist victories. And when they didn't look alike, it's because the Ottoman one tended to be even more destructive.
So where exactly, is the difference between supposedly homogenous, repressive Balkan nationalism and supposedly multiethnic, tolerant Ottoman imperialism? IMO, that difference is actually very hard to define. The Ottoman Empire was an active and enthusiastic participant in the region's mass violence, and a major accomplice in its own demise. It was not some kind of peaceful lamb carved apart by savage Balkan nationalism.
 
Not very influential at all? As the article itself makes clear, the Ottoman land regime was completely abolished in Serbia.

On page 4, the article discusses how Obrenovic leased land/other sources of income within the muqata'a legal category to his political allies and demanded free labor from the peasants-- both practices with Ottoman antecedents-- through the later 1810s. Those practices were steadily rolled back as political pressure on Obrenovic from other Serbs (revolts, protests) intensified, but only in 1833-34 (a full thirty years after the original Serb revolt in 1804) was the feudal system replaced with a legal framework for private property. The "Conclusion" section of the article further states that, far from being easy, the process of replacing the land regime was lengthy and slow, and was not over until a good portion of modern Serb history had already elapsed. I think that's an adequate basis for claiming that the land regime remained important during a time when a lot of other features of Serbia were in flux.

2. 10 million? This figure can't correct, unless you're describing everything that happened in the Balkans and the Caucasus between 1770 and 1913 as the first wave of migration. And even then, it might be a bit of a stretch.

You're right, it's not correct. 10 million is the ceiling-estimate for the entire long nineteenth century, and although it's a nice number to hyperbolize with it's hard to know where exactly it, or any other number pertaining to the Muhacirs, comes from (you get a cumulative number by adding up all the sub-migrations, but then estimates for those vary due to lack of data, and so on).

Chalk this up to bad editing.

Yes and no. There were a couple of regions which had a certain degree of autonomy within the Ottoman state. For example, Mademochoria and Zagori in Greece. Some autonomies were destroyed across the centuries, some survived until fairly late.

This is true, and we might as well add Mani and Hydra to the list of autonomous zones. Even then, though, I don't think we can consider these zones "vassals." Going by OP's definition, "vassal" seems to imply some form of viceregal authority through subordinate monarchs, which might have been present in Wallachia and Moldavia but was absent elsewhere. I get that the definition of vassalage that I toss in doesn't include the subordinate-monarch requirement but shhhhh

3. Organ analogies and all...your post reflects a certain trend within modern historiography. The mass violence committed by Balkan nations in their struggle against Ottoman violence is put on the spotlight, sensationalized, and sometimes even weaved into racist narratives against the nations of the region. The equally severe (or greater) mass violence committed by the Ottoman state in that same fight is completely ignored.

Yeah, I won't deny that my post ignores Ottoman atrocities. Even if out-of-control Janissaries get blamed for much of it, even after the abolition of the Janissary corps the "professional" Ottoman army was using Darfur-style tactics in 1870s Bulgaria. In that part of the post, I was trying to dispute the OP's claim that Ottoman culture seemed absent by saying that it was previously much more apparent, and that portions of it were purposely edited out over the centuries. That required me to put the spotlight on Balkan-nationalist violence, but violence going one way does not preclude violence going the other. The Ottoman capacity for bigotry, institutional discrimination, misrule, and mass violence is well-attested, it's not like Gladstone was freaking out over nothing.
 
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and over 1.5 million ethnic Turks in Bulgaria, 340k of whom departed the country after the end of communism
They were most certainly not 1.5 million ethnic Turks in Bulgaria in 1989. The real number was between 800 and 900 thousand.


But for all this, you're right in saying that the Balkan states are now "European" and majority-Christian. That's how they are today.
Not one non-forged source is available that doesn't show that Bulgaria, Serbia and Greece were majority Christian when they became independent.

The reason for that is massive ethnic cleansing, in which millions of Balkan Muslims (ethnic Turks, converted Slavs, and everything in between) were killed or forced to flee. Today, they live in Turkey as the Muhacir ("immigrant," "refugee") people. The first wave of Muhacir migration (which also included Circassians from the Caucasus) may have been up to 10 million people.
This number is pure fantasy. Even if every single Muslims had left the Balkans and the Caucasus, it would not have been enough. Also consider that the largest single exodus was a population exchange initiated by Turkey.


Many of the Muhacirs are Pomaks, a term which refers to Bulgarian Muslims specifically.
Considering that only a minority of Pomaks actually left, many seems an exaggeration.
 
Considering that only a minority of Pomaks actually left, many seems an exaggeration.
I think the main group that left was the Turkic speaking population around the Black Sea, right? At least 19th century show large amount of them while today's minority are elsewhere, but Turkish is still an important minority language, weren't Pomaks mostly Bulgarian speakers?
 
I think the main group that left was the Turkic speaking population around the Black Sea, right? At least 19th century show large amount of them while today's minority are elsewhere, but Turkish is still an important minority language, weren't Pomaks mostly Bulgarian speakers?
Most Turks who left were those in majority Bulgarian territories, especially in the cities. Where they were a majority population they mostly remained. But this doesn't include the Black Sea coast which was mostly populated by Greeks, with some Gagauz and Bulgarian minorities.

As for Pomaks, they are Bulgarian speaking by definition. Some of them did emigrate, but I believe that most remained, considering that most of the settlements were they lived during Ottoman times are still populated by them.
 
AFAIK it comes down to a mix of relatively recent population movements, the light touch of the millet system, and the Ottoman method of enforcing religious supremacy to explain why there aren’t so many Muslims/Turks in ex-Ottoman Europe as you’d expect.
That the Ottomans did not (mostly) resort to forced conversions does not make the millet system light by any reasonable standard.

Quite a lot of European Muslims fled or were forcibly extradited to Turkey during the final decades of the Ottoman Empire. The nationalistic revolutions were terrifying to these populations, many of whom were actively targeted by the revolutionaries. Many of the revolutionaries were not much better than armed thugs anyway, especially when not part of foreign Great Power meddling, meaning that Muslims were acceptable targets for disproportionate violence.
The same could be said of the Ottoman Army and its auxiliary militias, which were generally stronger than any revolutionaries and who were certainly terrifying to the Christian population. Also violence against Christians did not start as retaliation against revolutionaries. Without resorting to ancient Indeed, it has been stated that the depredations of the Circassians which were settled mostly in Bulgarian lands to control them better was one of the main reasons for the April uprising, which in turn led to the 1877-78 Russian-Turkish war.

The millet system in the centuries before the age of nationalism hampered conversion effectively as it allowed the Orthodox and other Christian populations to continue practice of their faith without direct repression, which allowed their cultures to stay similar as well.
Treating Christians as a discriminated minority certainly contributed to conversions.

Lastly, the Ottoman methods of promoting Islam involved less of a focus on conversion and more of a focus on imperial superiority IMO. The devshirme system was arguably an effective propagandistic and political tool but hardly served to endear Islam to the nation’s Christian population.
I don't see how it was propagandistic, except if the purpose was to instill fear and hatred towards the Ottomans.

As for European (Great Power) bias against the Ottoman Empire, you’re completely correct. During the 19th century the GPs came to feel that they were suffering the Ottomans to exist and began to play up the Empire’s flaws as part of their own imperial ambitions.
Some Great Powers wanted to destroy the Ottoman Empire, others wanted to protect it. The later were stronger than the former (basically just Russia) in the 19th century.


EDIT: There are significant populations of Muslims/Turks in certain narrow regions of the Balkans, especially in the southern parts. Some of these are under active cultural suppression. One example is in Western Thrace where they are stubbornly referred to as the “Muslim minority” despite being clearly specifically Turkish and have governmental interference in their religious leadership IIRC.
It's a considerable exaggeration that Muslims (unlike non-Greek Orthodox, which are under active cultural suppression). For one, the Muslims in Greece are not all Turks, but also Pomaks and Romani.
 
There were attempts of converting the Tatars of Kazan by abducting the Tatar Children and baptize them.
If there were such attempts, they lasted for a very short time. Otherwise the Tatars would have been assimilated a long time ago.

And there are abduction of people by British as well namely the Slave trade. There are more slaves taken to America by the British than the Ottomans ever taking kids in the Janissary Corps.
And there was massive slave trade of slaves taken by Ottoman raiders or by their vassals.


I honestly am surprised that people view the Ottomans as absolute evil considering that some states did more horrible things. And I am not even talking about the Inquisition...
No one is viewing the Ottomans as absolute evil. The objection is to the constant attempt to whitewash them - something no one would dream of doing of any European Empire.

Considering those 'kidnapped' children in the Corps had a chance to become the second man in the empire aka Grand Vizier they were to say better off in the Empire. For its time of course.
This is a good example of the whitewashing I was talking about.
 
Wow a thread on this website that isn't about the ottoman empire being the most evil thing in existence, oppressive, should be split between Armenia and greece cause reasons. The balkans was the most advanced place on the planet pre-ottoman, and that the greeks can always defeat the ottomans in war.

Britain starves millions to death in india, no one cares.

Portuguese and Spain slave trade speaks enough.

French Colonial rule.

Belgium in the congo.

While the ottomans no doubt did shitty things, its hard to ignore the shitty stuff other people did aswell plus the hypocracy.
The ottomans did cause problems for the balkans yet people refuse to recognise the problems the other europeans caused to africa and Asia.
The ottomans feel like the external boogy man in all history as they can be used as a punching bag easily, as to explain problems.
You've been reading the wrong forum if you imagine that anyone is defending the European Empires. On the contrary, the Ottoman Empire is the only one whose crimes are routinely excused or trivialized here.
 
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Probably barking up the wrong tree here, but are we open to at least considering that part of the negative folk memories held regarding the Ottomans in the Balkans may be influenced by the later emergence of nationalist ideologies?
Not really. In Bulgarian literature for example it's only well after development of nationalism that any ambiguity about the Ottoman time developed. The earlier you go, the closer you get to what is the archetypal folk memory.


Narratives of the Devshirme dominate despite the practice being abolished in the early 18th century (and largely discontinued by the mid 17th), whereas the growing misrule that characterised the Ottoman Empire from the mid 18th to mid 19th centuries remain relatively unexplored, despite its crucial role in the formation of independent Balkan States.
The narrative of the Devshirme does not dominate, it's simply more noteworthy due to horrifying it sounds (well not to it apologists who are distressingly many, including people on this forum like @Koprulu Mustafa Pasha). The topic of the decline of the Ottoman Empire is well explored in historiography.

It isn't that Ottoman Rule was beneficial for Balkan Christians (while not being as horrible as some contemporaries, the Ottoman State still represented a negative force for most, as is the case with almost all pre-modern states), but that the role of the Ottomans as a unique horror is the result in part of selective memory.
No, it's not selective memory. It is simply the fact that the Ottomans controlled the Balkans, not any of the other imperial powers of its time.

Of course, it goes without saying that the foundation of Christian National States in the Balkan as Ottoman rule was beaten back often resulted in catastrophe for the Muslim populations of the area.
Not as much as the Ottoman rule was a catastrophe for the Christians in the Balkans and Anatolia.
 
Is “spaghetti posting” actionable here? If so I’ll edit my post.

That the Ottomans did not (mostly) resort to forced conversions does not make the millet system light by any reasonable standard.

Were the Christians told to convert or die, forced into slavery, or else just killed for being Christian? No, which is what I meant by “light.”

The same could be said of the Ottoman Army and its auxiliary militias, which were generally stronger than any revolutionaries and who were certainly terrifying to the Christian population. Also violence against Christians did not start as retaliation against revolutionaries. Without resorting to ancient Indeed, it has been stated that the depredations of the Circassians which were settled mostly in Bulgarian lands to control them better was one of the main reasons for the April uprising, which in turn led to the 1877-78 Russian-Turkish war.

The Ottoman Army committed horrible acts against its Christian populations—I promise I’m not denying that, and I’d agree that the scale at which the Ottomans could act outweighed the revolutionaries. However, there were definitely terrible crimes committed by people associated with revolutionary causes in the Balkans and many acted like thuggish paramilitaries to subdue dissent.


Treating Christians as a discriminated minority certainly contributed to conversions.

Definitely.

I don't see how it was propagandistic, except if the purpose was to instill fear and hatred towards the Ottomans.

IMO it demonstrated the superiority of the Ottoman state and the Islamic faith over its Christian populations—propaganda for the Ottomans’ Muslim population.

Some Great Powers wanted to destroy the Ottoman Empire, others wanted to protect it. The later were stronger than the former (basically just Russia) in the 19th century.

Germany was allied to the Ottomans and yet Bismarck is quoted as having told them in 1877 peace negotiations that they were only being preserved to keep the balance of Europe.



It's a considerable exaggeration that Muslims (unlike non-Greek Orthodox, which are under active cultural suppression). For one, the Muslims in Greece are not all Turks, but also Pomaks and Romani.

I was referring specifically to the Muslim minority defined by the Treaty of Lausanne. They are kept under a tight leash by the Greek government, who has on occasion prevented them from choosing their preferred religious leader.
 
Were the Christians told to convert or die, forced into slavery, or else just killed for being Christian? No, which is what I meant by “light.”
Slavery was not uncommon in the Ottoman Empire and local Christians were occasionaly enslaved - there are foreign sources mentioning Bulgarians captured during the Russian Turkish war of 1877-78 being sold as slaves in Istanbul and of course the devshirme was a form of slavery. Otherwise you are mostly correct, but it's at best confusing to describe this as light.



The Ottoman Army committed horrible acts against its Christian populations—I promise I’m not denying that, and I’d agree that the scale at which the Ottomans could act outweighed the revolutionaries. However, there were definitely terrible crimes committed by people associated with revolutionary causes in the Balkans and many acted like thuggish paramilitaries to subdue dissent.
I haven't denied this. Though at least in the case of the Bulgarian revolutionaries they became such only in the later part of their existence, after their cause was basically lost.

Germany was allied to the Ottomans and yet Bismarck is quoted as having told them in 1877 peace negotiations that they were only being preserved to keep the balance of Europe.
Of course they were kept for pragmatic reasons. Very little international diplomacy is done by sentimental motives. This doesn't contradict my assertion.

I was referring specifically to the Muslim minority defined by the Treaty of Lausanne. They are kept under a tight leash by the Greek government, who has on occasion prevented them from choosing their preferred religious leader.
I still think this does not rise to the case of cultural suppression. For example, the Pomaks are even allowed public usage of their language (if only with the inadequate Greek alphabet and in a distorted dialect), which is something the Christian speakers of Bulgarian could only dream of.
 
Slavery was not uncommon in the Ottoman Empire and local Christians were occasionaly enslaved - there are foreign sources mentioning Bulgarians captured during the Russian Turkish war of 1877-78 being sold as slaves in Istanbul and of course the devshirme was a form of slavery. Otherwise you are mostly correct, but it's at best confusing to describe this as light.

I agree, I didn’t say it right. There wasn’t chattel slavery going on systematically (like in America) is probably the best way for me to put it.

I haven't denied this. Though at least in the case of the Bulgarian revolutionaries they became such only in the later part of their existence, after their cause was basically lost.

True. And I’m more familiar with Macedonian history than Bulgarian, where the Bulgarian cause was always more hopeless.


Of course they were kept for pragmatic reasons. Very little international diplomacy is done by sentimental motives. This doesn't contradict my assertion.

Fair enough, but I’d argue that none of the GPs would have preferred to keep the Ottomans around if they didn’t see it as necessary.


I still think this does not rise to the case of cultural suppression. For example, the Pomaks are even allowed public usage of their language (if only with the inadequate Greek alphabet and in a distorted dialect), which is something the Christian speakers of Bulgarian could only dream of.

The Turks of Western Thrace seem to be denied their Turkishness and autonomy in religious matters. Those are both elements of cultural suppression.

As for the Christian speakers of Bulgarian, I assume you’re referring to the “dopii” in Greek Macedonia?
 
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