Economic reasons behind the decline of the Ottoman empire

Abstract

This study addresses the economic reasons of the decline and fall of the Ottoman Empire. On the contrary to the previous researches, by undertaking both global and domestic developments, the paper examines the decline of the empire from an economical point of perspective. Although international developments such as industrialization in European countries, pressure on the Ottomans in terms of integrating with the world economy, global economic factors like depressions and wars, as well as domestic factors such as weaknesses of the central government in rural areas, traditional style of governing and structure of economic institutions along with demographic characteristics of the empire had great influence on the decline, the main reason is found to be the inability of the empire to adapt itself to the both internal and external changes and not being resilient which resulted in significant economical trauma.