Empires and resistance: the rise and fall of Great Powers
A conference to be held on Saturday 8th May 2004,
at the Institute of Historical Research, Senate House, Malet St, London, WC1E 7HU
9.30am - 4.00pm
Dragan Plavsic, "The Ottoman Empire: a 'state of putrefaction'"
In the nineteenth century, the Ottoman Empire was perennially derided as "the sick man of Europe". Yet three centuries earlier, it had been a mighty and prosperous empire famed and feared across Europe and Asia. What lay at the root of this calamitous decline? In 1853 Karl Marx described the Ottoman Empire as a "state of putrefaction", yet it was to survive the revolutionary trials and tribulations of the nineteenth century, its definitive collapse coming only in the wake of defeat in the First World War. Why did "the sick man of Europe" linger for so long on his death-bed?