The challenges of the new order

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The reference to a "new order" is twofold. First and foremost, it is a phenomenon linked to the political events that followed the Napoleonic period, in particular the Congress of Vienna (1815), whose primary objective was to re-establish the pre-1789 balance of power, with the avowed aim of erasing and preventing nationalist, secessionist or unifying movements and any popular uprisings deemed destabilizing to the system thus established. The Ottoman Empire, which managed to steer clear of the main Napoleonic conflicts, did not take part in the congress, but was one of its objects, notably through the issue of defending its territorial integrity against independence and secessionist movements in the Balkans.

However, the Greek rebellion of 1821, which soon took on the proportions of a war of independence, revealed the ephemeral nature of these resolutions. After years of more or less benevolent neutrality, culminating in the Battle of Navarino (1827), the European powers finally intervened on behalf of the insurgents, thus constituting the first departure from the system with the creation of an independent Greece.

The notion of a "new order" is also a reminder of the term used by Selim III to describe his program of fiscal and military reform, the Nizam-ı Cedid. Mahmud Raif Efendi's New Regulations of the Ottoman Empire (1798) was an excellent example. However, this "new order" was also the cause of a reaction led in particular by the janissaries who, feeling threatened by the project of a new army, rose up and obtained the dismissal of Selim III in 1807 and assassinated him the following year, during the counter-revolution that put the young Mahmud II on the throne.

It's easy to see why, despite his desire to continue the work of his cousin Selim III, Mahmud avoided the slightest reference to the "accursed" term that had caused his downfall. The Ottoman political system was then based on a central power and two main counterpowers: the provincial notables(ayan) and the janissary corps(yeniçeriocağı). The ayan owed their power to local political, social and economic capital, notably through agriculture and tax farms. The janissary corps, created as early as the ^14th century as a slave militia, in line with the Ottoman ideal of administrators and soldiers from the devşirme (raising Christian children from conquered territories) had "gentrified", becoming increasingly integrated into urban society and economy, making them even more formidable in the eyes of the palace.

In 1808, Mahmud II signed the "alliance pact"(Sened-i İttifak) with the main a yan, recognizing their status in exchange for their support. Nevertheless, a few years later, he would embark on a policy aimed at reducing the authority and autonomy of these provincial magnates. However, it was not until much later that he finally dared to tackle the janissaries, this time decisively. The "happy event"(Vak'a-i Hayriyye) of June 16, 1826 destroyed the Janissary Corps manu militari, banishing even the memory of the corps and its affiliates.

The destruction of the janissaries took place in the midst of the long conflict between the state and Greek insurgents, from 1821 until the establishment of an independent Greek state in 1830. What had begun as a simple rebellion quickly became tinged with ideology and international politics. While the European powers initially kept their distance from the issue, public opinion in Europe, motivated by philhellenism, quickly came to the defense of the Greek cause. The massacres on the island of Chio (1822) and the fall of Missolonghi (1826) only intensified this phenomenon, exacerbated by the presence of numerous European volunteers who had come to defend, arms in hand, an increasingly idealized Greece.

For the Ottomans, it was the discovery of a solidarity between Europe and the Greek insurgents whose ideological and sentimental underpinnings seemed surprising. The documentation concerning the citadel of Athens - the Acropolis - during the siege of the city by Ottoman troops in 1826 is a particularly good illustration of how the Ottomans were led to discover the importance of a European ideology with which they were hardly familiar. Pressed by European diplomacy to spare ancient monuments to which they themselves attached little importance, the Ottomans were forced to realize that these "old stones" had a symbolic value that denoted a radical change in the way politics and diplomacy were now conducted in this new world order.

This observation provides a transition to the first lectures of 2018-2019, which will begin with the internal upheavals of the 1820s and 1830s, from the destruction of the Janissaries to the Egyptian crisis, and of which the Tanzimat decree (1839) will be a kind of denouement. However, it is also a transition to the central theme of this year's symposium, which will focus on the history of archaeology and, in particular, the "discovery" of Phoenicia in the second half of the ^19th century.

As part of the Turkish and Ottoman History Chair, a study day devoted to the history of Phoenician archaeology in the ^19th century will take place on Tuesday, May 22, 2018. Specialists will come together to discuss the excavations carried out at Sidon, the objects transferred to museums in Istanbul (Imperial Museum, now the Archaeological Museum) and Paris (Louvre Museum), and the key local, Ottoman and French players who played a part in this episode in oriental archaeology: Ernest Renan, Osman Hamdi Bey, Alphonse, Edmond and Joseph-Ange Durighello... Participants include Elisabeth Fontan (Louvre), Hélène Le Meaux (Louvre), Françoise Briquel-Chatonnet (CNRS), Pierre Briant (Collège de France), Hareth Boustany (Lebanese University), Bénédicte Savoy (Collège de France), Henry Laurens (Collège de France). Lebanese artist Akram Zaatari will talk on the 1887 excavations and the Tabnit (Istanbul) and Achmounazar (Paris) sarcophagi.

The lecture on "The Ottoman Empire and Turkey facing the West" will resume in January 2019, probably on Friday 11 from 2:00 to 3:30 pm.