sultan's crescent

Chapter 91
It is said that the population of the Ottoman Empire was not as good as that of the Greek classical era, but who knew that the classical era was the highest population peak in the Eastern Mediterranean before modern times.

Even not only in the Eastern Mediterranean region, according to historians, the population of the Roman Empire at its peak was about 5000 million, while in the relatively stable Charlemagne era, the population of the whole of Europe was about 500 million to 500 million People, apart from the Asian and African territories of the Roman Empire, there are also a lot of new European territories.

Can Emperor Sai the Great say that the European rulers during this period were all trash, similar to Nero?

Regardless of other factors, a single comparison can be said to be violent.

First of all, the population of Ottoman is indeed not necessarily lower than the population of the heyday of ancient Rome, but according to climatological research, compared with 500 years ago, the precipitation in modern North Africa and West Asia has been greatly reduced. This is the revival of North Africa and West Asia in the Middle Ages Main reason for blocking

We might as well assume that if the population of an area must increase overall, how did the population of the ancient Loulan country increase to become a deserted land in the Thousand Li Gobi?
This is the problem of external factors.

During the last round of Mediterranean economic expansion (the 15th and 16th centuries after the Black Death subsided), the population increased and a large number of coastal plains were reclaimed for concentrated planting of crops such as wheat, resulting in a decline in land fertility and severe soil erosion.

The Little Ice Age, which began at the end of the 16th century, made the Mediterranean climate turn wet and cold, with increased precipitation and depleted coastal plains gradually reduced to poorly drained swamps.

Infectious diseases such as malaria are rampant due to swamps, and small farmers lack the means to develop swamps, leading to the abandonment of coastal plains (partly turned to low-density pastures), and the transfer of agricultural populations to mountainous areas with better sanitation.

The geological conditions of the Mediterranean mountainous area (shallow soil, unstable precipitation, and easy depletion of fertility) have prompted mountain farmers to shift from planting wheat to olives and grapes, coupled with small-scale animal husbandry, and gradually move towards a self-sufficient economy of mixed agriculture and animal husbandry.

Grain crop yields have declined, while Baltic-Eastern European wheat competition has further suppressed the Mediterranean grain industry.

In this way, the decline in total cultivated area, the reduction in scale and complexity of agriculture, and the rampant disease have brought population growth to a standstill in the entire Mediterranean region.

The transfer of population to mountainous areas with inconvenient transportation also means that the ability of the regime to control and register the population in the census has declined, further reducing the number of people on paper.

This process is applicable to both the Ottoman Empire in the east, the Iberian Peninsula, southern France, and Italy in the west.

But areas under Ottoman rule were hit especially hard because:
Most of the land and almost all of the core territory of the Ottoman Empire are located along the Mediterranean coast (it occupied two-thirds of the coastline of the Mediterranean in its heyday), and its political and economic system was basically established during the economic expansion of the Mediterranean in the 15th and 16th centuries.

This meant that the decline of Mediterranean agriculture hit the Ottoman system the hardest.

The decline in food production (plus the impact of American silver) led to severe inflation in Ottoman territory from the late 16th century. The decline in real income dissatisfied bureaucrats, Janissaries, and citizens, and frequent coups and rebellions occurred.

The declining population of the plains and the rising population of the mountains was especially bad news for the empire, whose main mountain herd populations—Walachians and Albanians in the Balkans, Turkic barbarians and Kurds in Asia Minor, Maronite Christians in the Levant Christians and Druze sects, Berber tribes in the Atlas Mountains of North Africa…—basically they are all proper rebels.

If these people speak polite words to the Ottoman Empire, it is estimated that Allah will appear.

The most dangerous of these were the Turkic barbarians of Asia Minor, given their rebellious habits and their inextricable connection with the empire's bitter rivals, the Safavid dynasty of Persia and its heretical Shia red-headed tribes.

Beginning at the end of the 16th century, the Jelali rebellion in Asia Minor was undoubtedly related to the activities of Turkic barbarians. This war, which lasted for nearly a hundred years, led to the waste of land in Asia Minor, ten houses and nine empty houses, and even agriculture such as Cilicia and the Mendelez Valley The hinterland has been reduced to a winter pasture for Turkic barbarians.

Just as troublesome as the rebels in the mountains, there are plain nomads who have expanded with the decline of plain agriculture—the Bedouins in the Arabian desert. This is also the next key target of Sai Dadi. protector of the city

Although the entire Fertile Crescent (Syria + Iraq) region has fallen into a vicious cycle of agricultural decline-intensified nomadic activities-environmental deterioration-agriculture continued to decline since the Mongol invasion and even earlier.

At the same time, the see-saw between the empire and Safavid Persia in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries caused Iraq to be almost completely destroyed.

But this process reached its culmination in the empires of the 17th and 18th centuries.

Especially after tribal herdsmen entered Syria from the hinterland of the Arabian Peninsula in the late 17th century, the fragile balance between the various Bedouin tribes and the Ottoman government was broken, and nomads rushed to the valleys under the walls of Damascus and Aleppo every year.

Because the government could not guarantee the safety of the countryside and roads, farmers in the plains abandoned their farmland and fled into the relatively safe Alawi Mountains and Lebanon Mountains.

By the 19th century, the entire plains of Syria and Iraq, except for a few large cities, were almost completely turned into uncultivated wastelands, which stunned European scholars who came to discover the ancient Mesopotamian civilization.

On the contrary, the inaccessible mountainous area around the plain was a thriving scene of men farming and women weaving, and the local snakes in the mountains—such as the Druze—soon became a headache for the Ottoman government.

Of course, not all Ottoman provinces were equally affected, as the vast empire also had areas that were less affected by the Mediterranean climate - such as Egypt, with its steady irrigation from the Nile, and the northern Balkans/North shore of the Black Sea with a continental climate.

These two areas have thus become Ottoman's granary, and the proportion of their population in the total population of the empire has also continued to increase-this is why Se the Great is worried. Too many Orthodox Christians is not a good thing.

By the way, the most serious period of population decline in Egypt was the Mamluk dynasty. Due to the Black Death and the transfer of Red Sea sweaters, the Ottoman Empire did not actually eliminate the Mamluks after conquering Egypt, so who is Egypt to blame?
Throughout the Eastern Mediterranean, this long process of decline lasted until the middle and late 19th century before being interrupted.

With the introduction of western water conservancy technology and the spread of antimalarial drugs such as quinine, the plains and swamps along the Mediterranean Sea were redeveloped for agriculture.

The peace under the British Empire, especially the opening of the Suez Canal, also increased the demand for grain, accelerated the revival of Mediterranean agriculture and the re-growth of the population-it is a pity that the Ottoman Empire has one leg into the coffin at this time.

Of course, another example can be given. At the peak of Justinian I, Eastern Rome had 3650 million people.

The production conditions he possesses are far stronger than those of the Ottoman Empire. Moreover, Justinian has many Italian regions and southern Iberia in his territory. The production conditions and support capabilities of these regions can be stronger than the extra territory of the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans.

There were 750 million people in Italy in the Roman era, but could Emperor Sai the Great say that Justinian was a waste?

In comparison with the same period, the Mughals in the Little Ice Age started with almost 7 figures for each major famine.

In 1668, a French doctor who was staying in Derry recorded it.

"Among the states that make up the vast territory of the Indian Empire, there are many places that are better than no grass. There are many places that are barren and barren, and few people live, and even a large part of the fertile land is still abandoned because of lack of people. Plow"

The Ottoman Empire, which is roughly located at the same latitude, also suffered from the invasion of the Little Ice Age, but it survived until the 18th century.

If Akbar knew this, he would cry out.Therefore, evaluating a country's administrative capacity should not simply compare numbers, but consider a wider comprehensive impact.

Under the influence of these comprehensive factors, the Ottoman ship finally sailed into the nineteenth century.

Although the situation of sucking blood from all over the empire to supplement the capital has caused the decline of various places, it also brought a benefit.

That is, if there is a capable strongman in the center of the empire to promote reforms, the capital's resources are sufficient to suppress the localities.

And this is the confidence that Selim can carry out his hurricane-like reform plan.

　There are too many references, and I will not list them one by one. I don’t know what you think, but I did my best.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)