Diplomacy Choices And Policy Changes In The Late Ottoman Empire

The Congress of Berlin in 1878 made the three Empire Union exist in name only. Eastern problems became the focus among European powers once again, which were subsided more than 20 years after the Crimean war. Because of the rise of Germany and the declining of other capitalist countries, such as Britain and French, competition of the Great Powers in Ottoman Empire has been re-constructed and divided. Ottoman Empire adjusted its foreign policy according to the changing international pattern. It expected to maximize their own interests through taking advantages of contradictions between the Great Powers, and even to fulfill the desire for national rejuvenation.This paper analyzes from this point. First of all, it briefly describes the international environment surrounding Ottoman Empire at end of the 19th century. Then it introduces France and the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, which are represented as the traditional Great Powers that have interests in Ottoman territory. Since their international status declined, they can not play a major role in Ottoman affairs. Therefore, in this period, Britain and Germany as two major powers are in charge of Ottoman foreign policy. Then it describes the changing of British policy towards Ottoman during the end of 19^th and the early 20^th. It points out that Ottoman abandoned the traditional pro-British routes because that the United Kingdom supported for Russia, interfered its internal affairs and regarded Ottoman as an "Asian country". All these seriously hurt the immediate interests of the Ottoman Empire, which were unable to accept. At the same time, it illustrates reasons and conditions of large-scale infiltration of German forces in the Near East in this period by analogy. At last, it discusses reasons and consequences about why Ottoman rushed to join the Allies Group, which was lead by Germany, before World War I. It takes the fact that Ottoman rulers were superstitious in Germany powerful military machine and preferred to achieve the national rejuvenation "Prussia Road" by swords as examples. Combining the international background, namely Europe "institutional balance" was collapsing and becoming confrontation among enterprises, it fully analyzes the deep and surface reasons and the subjective and objective reasons that are leading to the collapse of the empire, when it faced to the complex internal and external situation.