The Diverse Rule Of The Ottoman Empire In The Balkans From 16th To 18th

Empire is an important part of human history.Before the rise of the wave of national liberation in the 20th century,Empire was the most important bridge connecting different nationalities and regions.The empire ruled the vast territory and combined many nationalities with different cultural beliefs in the same political entity.The rule of the Empire must be diverse.It needs to solve the conflicts caused by the exchange of many heterogeneous ethnic groups in the actual governance process.It needs to use the strategy and means of combining hardness and softness to suppress the separatist forces,pacify the local power groups,and expand its ruling foundation.This unique ruling concept and national temperament have appeared in many classical universal empires.Achaemenid in Persia,and the Roman Empire all had similar ruling characteristics.Their officials and priests adhered to this concept,and gathered many strangers in the vast territory under the banner of an emperor.The study of imperial history is helpful to understand how the ancients dealt with the contradictions between the central and local governments,between the main ethnic groups and the marginal ethnic groups,and to establish an effective consensus.The study of Ottoman history is an important part of the study of imperial history.It has a profound impact on the political situation and national environment of the Middle East,the Balkans and central Europe.The 16th to 18th century was the peak period of the Ottoman Empire's rule over the Balkans.During this period,it completely controlled the whole southeast Europe south of the Danube River.The Greek?Serb?Bulgarian?Bosnian and other Christian groups in the Balkan peninsula were under the rule of the Empire,forced to pay taxes to Sudan?provided for the Imperial Army in the form of "blood tax".During this period,the main sources of revenue,soldiers and ruling elites of the Ottoman Empire came from Asia Minor and the Balkans.Unlike Asia Minor,which began to be Islamization and Turkification as early as the 11th century,Turks from the East failed to convert all the indigenous people into Muslims and their language into Turkic language in the Balkans under the Ottoman Empire.The ethnic situation and social development in the peninsula are complex and diverse,and neither Turks nor Muslims are dominant.There are Greeks living in the south of the Balkans.They live in the developed port cities.They have a group of wealthy businessmen and learned jurists.Bulgarians live in the north of the peninsula.Most of them are engaged in agriculture and occupy the best cultivated land in the peninsula.Their elite class is composed of land nobles and monks of monasteries.Bosnians live in the northeast of the peninsula.They live in the barren mountains and believe in the heretical Christianity which is incompatible with other ethnic groups around.The complex national political situation in the Balkans brought great difficulties to the Ottoman Empire in ruling this region.After the Ottoman Turks crossed the Dardanelles for the first time in the 14th century and conquered the opposite Balkan territory,the imperial government began to explore how to effectively rule the Balkans.Through the efforts of many generations of Sudan and the Vizier,by the 16th century,the Ottoman Empire established a set of diversified governance patterns in the Balkans.In Greece,the central government promoted the continuous Islamization of the local urban landscape through urban transformation?introduction of new immigrants and "Waqf" greatly to increas the proportion of Muslim population in the main local cities,established a new upper City District,and promoted the continuous ottomanization of the urban elite.The imperial government incorporated the handicraft organizations in Greece into the overall social service system of the Empire,and used the unique guild management system to strictly control the production activities of numerous Greek guilds,to ensure the stability of local commodity supply,guide the Greek region to join the broad international trade network through domestic and foreign trade.The imperial government used Janissaries?Timar?Albanese?and some special tax-free groups to maintain public order and ensure social stability in Greek cities and villages.In Bosnia,the imperial government has made the population of Bosnia completely Islamized in the early 18th century by establishing new Islamic cities,releasing the slaves who have been changed their religion?actively guiding the migration?establishing a trade network connecting Sarajevo and Istanbul.The central government allowed the local elites of Bosnia to join the Imperial Center through the Devsirme and jihadi,these elites could provided important assistance to Sudan in controlling the Balkan ethnic groups and expanding abroad.The imperial government bound the position of mufti with the Hafanei faction,which made the local and central government maintain ideological convergence?Using those,the imperial government controlled the appointment and removal of mufti position to ensure the loyalty of local religious elites.In Bulgaria,the imperial government encouraged Turkish immigrants to colonize the Bulgarian region,led the Muslim population in Bulgaria increased.The imperial government used Greek priests to monopolize all levels of teaching posts in Bulgaria,which made the Greek language occupy the living space of Bulgarian language and attacked the local nationalist feelings.In order to suppress the resistance of local elites,the imperial government took measures such as reviewing the publication of Latin literature to broke the local separatist forces.Before the outbreak of nationalism in the 19th century,this diversified means of rule ensured the loyalty of all ethnic groups in the Balkans to the Ottoman Empire,established common identity and interest alliance between the central and local elites of the Balkans...