The Ottoman Culture of Defeat

In 1853, Tsar Nicholas I described the Ottoman Empire as a ‘sick man’ giving rise to the epithet of ‘the Sick Man of Europe’ (p. 7). From 1821, the Greek War of Independence, the Ottomans progressively lost most of their European territories in the Balkans. In North Africa, their autonomous provinces were seized by the French (Algeria in 1830, Tunisia in 1881), by the British (Egypt in 1882) and the Italians (Libya in 1911), who also wrestled from them the Dodecanese Islands in the Aegean. The Crimean War demonstrated how much the Ottomans relied on external support – largely British – to fend off avaricious Russia, and it cost them the island of Cyprus in consequence. How the mighty had fallen from the glorious days of 1683 when they besieged Vienna, only stopped by a Pan-European alliance!