Ottoman Policy during the Reign of Abdülhamid II and the Advent of the Young Turks, 1876–1909

Abstract

Abdülhamid II came to the throne of the Ottoman Empire on 31 August 1876 after the successive depositions of Abdtilaziz and Murad V by a coalition of bureaucrats and the army during a period of severe international crisis in the Balkans and of radical structural change at home. On 23 December 1876 the Sultan proclaimed the Kanun-u Esasi (constitution) as he had promised to the ‘reform party’ which brought him to power. The earlier Tanzimat reforms seemed to bear fruit as the Empire’s experiment with parliamentarism commenced in earnest. The Constitution itself was drawn up by a special commission headed by Midhat Pala, the President of the Council of State (Şuray-i Devlet) and the acknowledged head of the reform party, and included such prominent intellectuals and publicists as Namik Kemâl and Ziyâ Bey [Paşa]. As we shall see in this chapter, the reformists also proposed measures against the slave trade and slavery both before and after the proclamation of the Constitution. Aiming to bring about a constitution which would guarantee the ‘individual liberty’ of all Ottoman subjects and their ‘equality in the eyes of law’,¹ Midhat and his colleagues made no exception in the case of slaves. Thus, the constitutional debate provided new impetus to the anti-slavery policy pursued in the Empire.