sense of religious mission.

The Ottomans were devout Muslims and their Sultan served as both
as religious and political leader.

There are many reasons as to why the empire was as successful as it was, but some of them
include its very strong and organized military and its centralized political structure. These early,
successful governments make the Ottoman Empire one of the most important in history.

Decline of the Ottoman Empire

Starting in the 1600s, the Ottoman Empire began to lose its economic and military dominance to
Europe.

The prosperity of the Middle Eastern provinces declined. The Ottoman economy was disrupted
by inflation, caused by the influx of precious metals into Europe from the Americas and by an
increasing imbalance of trade between East and West.

Major Reasons of Decline Ottoman Empire

It was too agrarian.

While the industrial revolution swept through Europe in the 1700s and 1800s, the Ottoman
economy remained dependent upon farming. The empire lacked the factories and mills to keep
up with Great Britain, France and even Russia, according to Michael A. Reynolds, an associate
professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. As a result, the empire’s economic
growth was weak, and what agricultural surplus it generated went to pay loans to European
creditors. When it came time to fight in World War I, the Ottoman Empire didn’t have the
industrial might to produce heavy weaponry, munitions and iron and steel needed to build
railroads to support the war effort.

It wasn’t cohesive enough.

At its apex, the Ottoman Empire included Bulgaria, Egypt, Greece, Hungary, Jordan, Lebanon,
Israel and the Palestinian territories, Macedonia, Romania, Syria, parts of Arabia and the north
coast of Africa. Even if outside powers hadn’t eventually undermined the empire, Reynolds
doesn’t think that it could have remained intact and evolved into a modern democratic nation.
“The odds probably would have been against it, because of the empire’s tremendous diversity in
terms of ethnicity, language, economics, and geography,” he says. “Homogenous societies
democratize more easily than heterogenous ones.”

The various peoples who were part of the empire grew more and more rebellious, and by the
1870s, the empire had to allow Bulgaria and other countries to become independent, and ceded
more and more territory. After losing the losing the 1912-1913 Balkan Wars to a coalition that
included some of its former imperial possessions, the empire was forced to give up its remaining
European territory.
Its population was under-educated.