It is a common saying that nothing changes in the East; it is also inaccurate, like most generalizations. Changes came, even to Turkey, through her contact with the West. Change comes very slowly to such a people as are the Turks, and when it does come it leaves behind more bewilderment among the bulk of the nation than is usually the case in Western races. Again, to the outside world the changes which have passed over the Ottoman Empire in recent years have seemed to come suddenly, because the effects had the appearance of precipitancy. Revolt, revolutionary changes, are nothing new in the Ottoman Empire, but till lately have passed more or less unnoticed, probably because their effects were not particularly striking.
Such changes as have taken place occurred almost entirely in the European provinces of the Ottoman Empire, and may be said to have begun during the last century. The European provinces of Turkey always contained factors making for the disruption of the Empire: subject races, alien in everything to their masters, centrifugal forces for a time controlled by military governors whose methods did not as a rule tend to bring about conciliation. The bonds that bound the provinces to the Central Government were none of the strongest before the days when an official’s every step was dictated to him by telegraph from the Porte, and local governors acted with great independence. Military pashas even made war on and concluded peace with each other, after the manner of mediæval dynasts. Some went even further, as did the Pasha of Janina. He started life as a brigand, and made himself pasha by the simple expedient of forging his commission. This trifling misdemeanour was overlooked by the Porte, as he was a strong man, and might be useful to the interests of the Empire, and, moreover, if it came to the worst, could always be disowned. As it happened, Ali Pasha was too strong, or the Central Government too weak, and so he went to lengths to which no other pasha had gone before him.
Ali Pasha’s lifetime fell into those days when Europe was big with revolution against ancient dynasties, and was tiring of time-honoured institutions. No doubt personal vanity, that strong incentive of revolutionaries, reformers, and others in search of notoriety, swayed Ali Pasha. He conducted a foreign policy quite independent of that pursued by the Porte, entered into negotiations with Napoleon or Pitt, as he deemed expedient, and generally acted with complete independence. Incidentally, Ali Pasha helped towards the dismemberment of his sovereign’s Empire by favouring the Greeks in their strivings after freedom; it was probably not his original intention. Ali Pasha very fittingly fell a victim to a conspiracy of those whom he had injured in one way or another.
Another pasha to raise the banner of revolt was Passvan Oglou of Vidin, who, when the Porte sought to depose him, prepared to march on Constantinople, and the Central Government was obliged to make peace with him.
Then, again, the Pasha of Scutari revolted, but the Porte contrived to settle him and the chief of his conspiracy by a breach of Turkish hospitality, by a massacre at a banquet.
The separation of Egypt from the complex of military governorships which constituted the Ottoman Empire, was another indication that the old order was not in keeping with the spirit of the age. The destruction of the Turkish fleet at Navarino, and the massacre of the Janissaries, by which the flower of the Turkish Army was lost, were further signs of the times, and prepared for changes even in Turkish administration, and finally, by the emancipation of Greece, that administration was deprived of some of its best brains, for since that event not even the meanest Greek would accept office under the Porte.