Download PDF | Pál Fodor - The Unbearable Weight of Empire - The Ottomans in Central Europe - A Failed Attempt at Universal Monarchy (1390-1566)-Hungarian Academy of Sciences (2016).
178 Pages
This book seeks to understand why the Ottoman Empire was constantly at war, why it persistently attacked Hungary for more than a hundred years and why Ottoman leadership regarded Hungary, or more broadly, Central Europe as the most important of its frontlines in the early sixteenth century. Ihe study's primary aim is to offer a more realistic picture of the role of the Hungarian/ Central European frontier in Ottoman politicomilitary planning, In doing so, the book attempts to show how the conflict in this region affected the fate of the Ottoman Empire in the long run and how a series of erroneous decisions on the part of the Ottoman court led to the failure of its universalist imperial programme. In addition, the author challenges some trends in recent historiography of the Ottoman Empire that go too far in entangling Ottoman and European history.
INTRODUCTION
On account of their particular situation, Hungarian Ottomanists have always given special attention to the expansionism and political ambitions of the Ottomans in Europe — above all in Central Europe. Two main motives lay behind their interest. First, they sought answers to one of the basic questions of Hungarian national history: Was it inevitable that Hungary should be (partially) occupied by the Ottomans and suffer the irreversible damage of centuries of military conflict? Second — and this is closely related to the first question — they sought to understand why the Ottoman Empire persistently attacked Hungary for more than a hundred years, launching its occupation of the country in the early sixteenth century."
Over the past thirty years, I too have examined these two interconnected issues on several occasions. The results of my initial efforts were published in a book in Hungarian in 1991. The monograph comprised two major chapters: 1. Torék politikai térekvések Magyarorszdgon, 1520-1541 (Ottoman political aims in Hungary, 1520-1541); and 2. Magyarorszag és Bécs az oszmén hédité ideolégidban (The place of Hungary and Vienna in the Ottoman ideology of conquest).” The first chapter was published in English in the same year and in Turkish some time later,’? while the second chapter — again as a separate article — was published in German (prior to the publication of the book).* To a greater or lesser extent these publications have been integrated into Ottomanist discourses, although they have not always received fair treatment (for instance, some authors have cited the documents published and analysed by me as unknown archival sources).
For several reasons, I subsequently returned to the subject-matter on numerous occasions, In 1994, Géza David and I co-authored a study on the Ottoman—Hungarian peace talks of 1512-14, which we published in a volume edited by us on various aspects of Ottoman—Hungarian relations in the sixteenth century.’ In 1996, another colleague and I published Hieronymus Laski’s report on his negotiations in Istanbul in late 1527 and early 1528. The report is widely viewed as one of the most important documents of Ottoman—Hungarian relations in the period.® In the same volume, I published a detailed analysis of the situation and political aspirations of the Ottoman Empire in the 1520s.’ In 2004, I examined Ottoman—Hungarian relations once again, doing so this time from the initial period until the mid-sixteenth century.
My aim was to give a comprehensive account of the ambitions and opportunities of both sides as well as the external and internal dynamics of the relationship.’ Although this study was also published in English,’ it remained just as unnoticed as that of 1996 (owing in part to the fact that the English version of the book was simply not distributed). The same fate awaited another article published only in Hungarian (and so nonexistent as far as international scholarship is concerned), which dealt with Ottoman imperial policy from the occupation of the Hungarian capital Buda (in 1541) until the mid-1550s."° In contrast, a collective volume that I co-edited with Géza David on the parallel developments of border defence systems by the Habsburgs and Ottomans in Hungary was given a favourable reception. This latter volume was published by Brill in 2000."" In addition, I have published several articles of varying length on the influence of world political developments on the Ottoman advance in Hungary; these too have received scant attention, perhaps in part because of the difficulty of accessing them."
In this volume I publish a reworking of three earlier studies, each of which has been thoroughly revised. The first chapter arose from the merging and updating of two articles: The Simurg and the Dragon... (2004) and Bécsbe vezeté ut... (The Road Leading to Vienna) (1996). In many respects, the chapter may be considered new and independent work, for in the course of the rewriting process I sought to study and integrate the vast amount of literature that has been released since 1996 and to reflect on the facts that have come to light and on the most recent conceptual issues. The second chapter consists of a study originally published in Hungarian in 2005; it too has been reworked and expanded to complement the first chapter. In this way I could extend the chronological arc to the history of Ottoman policy in Central Europe and of Ottoman— Hungarian relations from the beginnings until the second third of the sixteenth century.
There have been quite a few considerations behind my decision to prepare and publish this volume. The first consideration relates to the nature and operative mode of Ottoman politics and warfare. More than ever, I share the view that Hungary in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries came to occupy a special place in Ottoman policy and imagination. Hungary assumed the status of archenemy of the Ottomans in much the same way that the Ottoman Empire had become the archenemy of the Hungarians as early as the beginning of the fifteenth century. As the only power capable of resistance, Hungary came to symbolise the whole of Christendom in the eyes of the Ottomans, who after 1453 viewed the country in some sense as the successor to Byzantium.” And so it is quite understandable that its attack and defeat became the first and most important condition for Ottoman world domination and the renovation of the Roman Empire, which became, after the conquest of the Near East, the principal aim of Ottoman power politics.
By the 1520s the two powers were no longer in the same class in terms of military strength and material resources, and there are indications that some Ottoman leaders and military groups thought little of their Hungarian adversaries. Still, Ottoman forces departing for the battle of Mohacs exhibited a strong fear of Hungarian fighting power.’* In knowledge of the military actions of the Ottomans in Central Europe in the first half of the sixteenth century and the underlying imperial ideology, one would have to be blind not to see that the Ottoman leadership regarded Hungary as one of, if not the most important of their “frontlines”. Yet the Hungarian (or more broadly, Central European) front and Ottoman—Hungarian and Ottoman—Habsburg rivalries are often presented as mere secondary factors in discussions of Ottoman frontier zones and imperial strategy” or — horribile dictu — they are completely ignored. A striking example of this is Giancarlo Casale’s book The Ottoman Age of Exploration. Not to mention that probably there was no such age in Ottoman history,* how can one take seriously a work that claims to analyse the “grand strategy” of the Ottomans in the sixteenth century
but fails even to mention the Habsburg Empire or the wars in Hungary?!’ Moreover, even works of fundamental importance are sometimes simply ignored in scholarly literature.'* During the past decade and a half, Gabor Agoston, to whose excellent works I make frequent reference below, has done much to ensure that the Central European region receives the attention it deserves — both inside and outside Hungary. Even so, the challenges are still great in this area. My primary aim, therefore, is to offer a more realistic picture of the role of the Hungarian or Central European frontline in Ottoman politico-military planning. Thus, this book seeks to show how the conflict in this region sealed the fate of the Ottoman Empire and how a series of erroneous decisions on the part of the Ottomans led to the failure of their universalist imperial programme. In doing so, the book also tries to provide clues as to how these developments contributed to a profound internal transformation of the empire.
The second consideration is linked with the paradigmatic change that has occurred in Ottomanist historiography over the past twenty to twenty-five years. When I wrote my first papers on the subject, both Western and Turkish mainstream historians regarded the development of the Ottoman Empire as a “unique and isolated phenomenon’, one that could not be compared with anything else and which followed its own civilisational and institutional logic. Indeed, in many regards, the Ottoman Empire was considered to have been an exotic political and cultural entity. Accordingly, historians at the time were of the view that the relationship between (Christian) Europe and the (Muslim) Ottoman Empire was above all one of hostility. However, in consequence of the so-called “imperial (or post-colonial) turn’, we have seen dramatic changes in recent historiography.’ Rather than emphasise the “otherness” of the once isolated Ottoman Empire, historians have tended more recently to narrate its history as an inseparable part of early modern European (or even Eurasian) history.
The unique features and status of the Ottoman Empire have been downplayed, while more attention has been given to “facts” — however obscure — that point to the empires entanglement and well-connectedness and to transcultural commonalities. Nowadays many historians even argue that the Ottoman Empire was not only a passive recipient (or “victim”) of European (more recently, Eurasian) political, technological and cultural changes, but also an active shaper of such changes.” Indeed, according to a recent train of thought (filled with Neophyte zeal), the Ottoman Empire even “contributed to what has been categorised and defined as the Renaissance”.
Attached to this new view of history, which seems to be particularly strong in the United States and among Turkish historians with ties to the United States, we find the label “early modern/modernity’, which provides the wider global framework and acts like a magic wand to solve all the problems arising from the change in paradigm. In 2004 Suraiya Faroghi described in his book — now regarded as a turning point in Ottomanist historiography —how the Ottoman elite and, by extension, the context of the empire were early modern in the period 1540-1774.” Ever since, her growing number of followers have sought, in all areas, to uncover the elements — and offer them up for a comparative history of the empires — that in their view linked the Ottomans with others around them and which can be utilised to prove the global embeddedness of the Ottomans.
It is not my task here to cover exhaustively this issue, but I should note that the concept is both obscure and, as Peter Burke has rightly concluded in a recent article, overused, for it has been seized on everywhere as a seemingly useful means for writing global history. To illustrate the problem, Burke uses the metaphor of thestuffed suitcase’:“There is a limit to the amount of work which concepts can be made to do, the intellectual weight they can be made to bear. At some point they crack under the strain, or to use less metaphorical language, they come to be used in such different, indeed contradictory senses that they hinder analysis rather than helping it. To vary the metaphor, the problem with the concept of modernity is that it is part of an intellectual suitcase into which too much has been stuffed. The lid won't shut. We need to unpack and begin again.’”
I profoundly agree with Burke; and this is precisely the problem when speaking about the early modernity of the Ottoman Empire. The term is used indiscriminately, but everyone applies it in a slightly different sense, whereby its meaning and characteristics differ on each occasion.” A similar confusion affects the periodisation: most often the beginning of the period is set in the mid-fifteenth century, but some authors have (perhaps inadvertently) placed the beginning in the fourteenth century while others have put it in the eighteenth century; and as for when the period ended, there are differences between authors of 80-100 years.” All of this has not prevented the Ottomanists from “revealing” in their respective areas of expertise and with growing zeal the features of early modernity they view as corresponding to European ones. In doing so — and this is the real problem — they have gradually “Europeanised” the Ottoman Empire. A background factor in this process has sometimes been a sense of good will aimed at resolving today’s political problems: the minimisation of the significance of earlier hostilities and the questioning of the validity of the block paradigm may offer useful historical arguments for promoting Turkeys current European integration and for addressing cultural and religious tensions arising between Western Europes indigenous populations and the immigrant Muslim communities.”°
I do not claim that it is illegitimate to offer comparisons of the various empires; nor do I deny that the relationship between the Ottomans and Europe was certainly a more complex one than incessant warfare. Indeed, like John Elliott, I believe the Ottomans played a decisive and constitutive role in the formation of (early) modern Europe (I will return to this point later on).’” Still, before our imagination runs away with us, we need to clarify several basic issues. For instance, what exactly did “Western” historiography mean by modernity — or more recently, early modernity — when the concept emerged in the 1950s.
Here I am not thinking primarily about the absence in the Ottoman Empire of the various defining elements usually listed (Renaissance art, the Reformation, book printing, explorations, etc.), Rather, what seems to have been missing in the region (the “East”) was the intellectual grounding that was needed in order to accept (and, more importantly, shape) the Renaissance. Although, as we know, the Arabs (Muslims) were the main mediators of the classical Greco-Roman tradition to medieval Europe, they did not take on or mediate the literature, poetry and aesthetic forms of antiquity (or the languages bearing such elements) in which the classical image of man was made manifest. Yet the true novelty of the Renaissance and of humanism (today known as early modernity) was the new image of man grounded in classical antiquity: the idea that man can use the instrumental mind to gain awareness of his abilities, including his ability to direct his own destiny.
Where do we see anything like this in Ottoman culture? Another question is the extent to which the Ottoman worldview was influenced by the rational philosophy of the Muslim Ibn Rushd (Averroés) whose ideas led to the birth of the European double truth doctrine, an indispensable element of the Renaissance.” If the Ottomans had been so keen to participate in the shaping of the Renaissance, then why did they ignore the Greek writings that had fallen into their possession and why did they allow the documents to migrate to the “Latins” where they served as sources for the new era? The heart of the problem also becomes evident when one looks at the outcomes of Ottoman history.*° If the Ottomans — whether in response to external influences and through the adaptation of early modernity or as the result of internal changes — had kept pace with the Western countries and had developed their state and society in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in a manner similar to the English (this point is made by Baki Tezcan),*! then how would one explain that the same reforms and methods which transformed the English (the West) into rulers of the world made the Ottoman Empire into a kind of colony of the West?
Leaving aside such theoretical considerations, we also see that the “facts” summoned to prove the interconnectedness and commonalities of the Ottomans and the world around them, stand on a very flimsy base or are simply products of an “imaginative mind”. I could cite many examples of far-fetched comparisons that push the boundaries of common sense. For instance, it is inconceivable to me how anyone can speak of state formation in the sixteenth—seventeenth century in the case of an empire** that had been a strong, organised and efficient, albeit changing, entity since the fifteenth century. And, it seems, one is expected to do so simply because the sixteenth—seventeenth century was the era of state formation in Europe after the demise of the limited monarchies of the previous period.
It is similarly nonsensical, in my view, to speak of “constitutionalism” or of “proto-democratisation” in the seventeenth century, a period of unbridled lawlessness and arbitrary rule in Ottoman history.” Baki Tezcan’s book is also a cautionary tale about the distortions that may arise when superficial similarities are extrapolated into structural correspondences. Others, too, have been inclined to attribute the same kind of importance to an isolated event as they do to multiple facts or long-term organisational structures or attitudes. Briefly put, many among the new wave of historians find it difficult to distinguish between essential and non-essential information. Historians with at least some knowledge of sixteenth-century Ottoman history are equally perplexed to read that the Ottoman ruling elite of the time “was a class ... primus inter pares” or that religious divisions were not so important for that elite — even while every major analysis has shown that the Ottoman ruling group in the era of Siileyman was more of an “oligarchy” than it ever had been before or became afterwards, with Islam constituting the most important cohesive bond.
And how should we respond to those who describe the Ottoman Empire as a “multiplicity of centers” when the centrality of the capital city Istanbul in all fields was unmatched.” It may be true that from the 1540s onwards manuscript newspapers (avvisi) were produced in Istanbul, whereby the imperial capital became — principally by way of the renegades and dragomans —a part of the pan-European system of communication, but it is also evident that these men had merely a small or negligible effect on Ottoman society, and that even though they disposed of an excellent intelligence service, the leaders of the empire often displayed a frightening ignorance of crucial political issues.*° At this point, it is worth noting that respect for the facts has also been on the decline. Even in prestigious publications, one can read that the first siege of Vienna took place in 1524 or that Charles V was elected emperor in 1521.” It is difficult to find words to describe the complete lack of knowledge displayed on a few pages of Daniel Goffman’s acclaimed book;*® at any rate, it clearly undermines one’s confidence in the author's otherwise erudite narration of the “Greater Western World”.
Enough of the negative examples! By mentioning them, my intent was not to deny that important new results have arisen from the“imperial or European turn’ in Ottoman historiography. ‘The integration of Ottoman history into European or universal history was both desirable and long overdue. Concerning the question of whether Ottoman history was generally wellconnected, my answer too would be affirmative. However, if we are asking whether the Ottoman world participated fully in the early modern development of Europe, my answer is a firm no. In even clearer terms: the “Europeanisation” of Ottoman politics and social history coupled with the depiction of the empire as a kind of idealised prototype for today’s post-national global ambitions, seems to me to be a highly dangerous route, for under certain conditions it can even lead to the falsification of history, As my colleague Géza David and I remarked a decade and a half ago in connection with the new concept of the “frontier” and the North African frontier states, the apologetic idealisation “can lead ... to historical constructions which have little to do with one-time historical reality”?
Similar caution has been shown by Alan Mikhail and Cristine M. Philliou who, while recognising the advances in knowledge brought about by the “imperial turn’, have also underlined the following: “Early modernity has become a repository and testing ground for our post-national ambitions and desires.’ In my view, those Ottomanist historians who have been seduced by the concept of early modernity should give due consideration to the authorduo's wise counsel on how the Ottoman Empire is best treated as an entity in its own right and, at the same time, as a part of the global system: “Difference — specificity not freakishness — must come before similarity. The crucial point is that the Ottoman Empire was not like any other empire. ... This, of course, ... does not mean it is beyond comparison. Quite the contrary. ... We should ... begin ... to examine the positive processes going on in the space ‘between’ — not the assumed void, but an arena of intense contestation between a panoply of forces, actors, and places.”""
This, indeed, is the aim of my book. The goal is to describe — from the initial period until the last third of the sixteenth century —the relationship that evolved between the Ottoman Empire (with its unique structures and modes of operation) and Hungary, a part of the respublica christiana that came into the possession of the Habsburg dynasty. An examination of the series of events underway in this “intermediate space” will also enhance our understanding of the Ottoman Empire's fate and destiny and the various power and human factors at play. A further aim is to demonstrate how, among the multiple connections of the Ottoman world, warfare and diplomacy (closely connected as they are) as well as trade retained their primacy throughout the period and how these factors were assigned greater importance than cultural and intellectual interaction and exchange.”
At first sight this book may seem to be an ordinary (but hopefully not boring) political history or event history analysis, but in reality it intends to be more than that. It is also a structural historical and strategic historical study, and I seek to give a picture of the subject-matter spanning various “ages”. In doing so, I also reflect on the issues arising in Ottoman studies out of the “empire for ages’ approach, This term was coined by Mikhail and Philliou to relate how uniform Ottoman history was slowly fragmenting, as an increasing number of “separate” eras were being carved out of it (“age of the beloved’, “age of the exploration’, etc.), leading to its being debated according to a sometimes merely perceived or retrospectively constructed rationale. In my approach I am careful to put proper emphasis on long-term structures spanning “ages, thereby underscoring the importance of continuity in Ottoman history.
Finally, addressing several concrete issues, I must acknowledge that some results of the comparative (early modernist) studies can be combined with the “traditional” or structuralist approach. Suraiya Faroghi drew attention to the fact that foreign policy — the development of relations with the outside world — has never been the exclusive prerogative of rulers or dynasties. In this respect, the Ottoman Empire was no exception, and the empire's foreign policy decisions often emerged from struggles between various factions (and households) of the elite.” I agree in full with this conclusion and offer evidence in this book that even in the centralised Ottoman state, the opinions of the central and provincial elites had to be taken into account before strategic decisions were made and great military ventures embarked upon. This was true if for no other reason than that the empire was both a land-based and maritime polity, where tensions naturally arose between rival groups among the ruling elite with conflicting interests. I also agree with Faroghi that sometimes decisions were based on expediency, perhaps after the arguments of one or the other faction had been adopted. ‘This underscores the view — now widely held — that the so-called political households played an important and growing role in the Ottoman political system.” At the same time, I think it is wrong to cast doubt on the existence and significance of certain systembased “imperatives”; it seems to me that such imperatives — for instance, the long-term institutional structures and the closely associated mentality — could not be evaded by decision-makers and were factors exerting a strong influence on the decisionmakers themselves. In agreement with Faroghi and despite contrary opinions, I regard the Ottoman system — and Ottoman foreign policy—to have been decisively influenced by such factors as the strong legitimacy of the ruler and the dynasty, the strong cohesion of the ruling elite and the state apparatus, their dynastic loyalty, and their commitment to defend the interests of the state.*° All this was of enormous advantage to the Ottoman Empire in the period under discussion when the estates and then the foreign and religious policies of the denominations and churches severely limited royal power in the main European rivals. It is no accident that the enemies of the Ottomans regarded the empire as far more efficient and purpose-driven than other states, However, as we shall see, even this did not suffice to ensure the accomplishment of the principal goals.
One final observation: my views published at the beginning of my career on the subject-matter have changed in only one essential aspect: my judgment of the imperial campaign of 1520-21. I once believed that at this time the Ottoman plans for conquest were limited to Hungary as even that appeared as too much of a challenge. More recently, however, the evidence has persuaded me that world domination became a goal of Ottoman policy immediately after Sileyman’s accession to the throne. In my book, I present events in this light.
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