Is tbis true ya think?

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
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"The fall of the Ottomans was related with European interference only in as much as they picked a fight with Austria and lost"
 
Not to mention that Austria wasnt the one who caused the downfall of the Ottomans, it was more the Ottomans just choosing the losing side in World War One.
 
Not to mention that Austria wasnt the one who caused the downfall of the Ottomans, it was more the Ottomans just choosing the losing side in World War One.

Well that's what caused the final collapse. The seeds of the Ottomans' downfall had been sown long before the guns of August commenced firing.
 
Well that's what caused the final collapse. The seeds of the Ottomans' downfall had been sown long before the guns of August commenced firing.


Which I still lay the blame largely at the Ottoman's own feet for this, due to their inept bueracracies and unadaptable courtier government style.
 
Define 'interference'. Did the European powers spend three centuries scheming and plotting to undermine the foundations of the Ottoman Empire? No. But European industry, European military technology and trade brought about the fall of the Ottomans, and a lot of it wasn't even intentional (except the Russians, natch).

It certainly wasn't the Austrians. The Ottomans could have gone on fighting the Austrians for generations. It was more the whole set of conditions that followed when 19th-century Europe put you into the 'they' category.
 
The Russians rolled up their traditional buffers in the Crimea and the Southern Caucasus, and brought direct war to the Ottoman heartlands. Look at the effects on the Ottoman polity of Russian victories at the end of the 18th century, and then at Unkiar Skelessi (sp ?)

This weakening then impacted in the provinces where you had a change from provincial rulers quasi-independent during their lifetimes (Ali, the Lion of Janina) to nationalist independence fighters (Kara George and Obrenovic in Serbia)

Russia gave a pseudo-intellectual basis to this, and the promise of great support to which the other great powers had to respond in kind in order to counter Russian influence (eg Britain and France with Greece)

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
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