HIS101 – Modern World History Module 4 – Case

HIS101 – Modern World History Module 4 – Case

What were the Tanzimat Reforms and were they effective in allowing the Middle East to catch up to the West? 

HIS101 - Modern World History
Module 4 - Case
Challenges in the Middle East and Africa, 1800-1912
         
By the early 18th century, the Ottoman Empire which ruled the  Middle East was in decline. Weak rulers left the way open for power struggles between officials, religious experts, and Janissaries (Guards). Provincial administrators and landholders colluded to drain revenue from the central treasury. The general economy suffered from competition with the West as imported goods ruined local industry. European rivals took advantage of Ottoman weakness. The Austrian Habsburgs pushed the Ottomans from Hungary and the northern Balkans. The strengthened Russian state expanded into the Caucasus and Crimea. The subject Christian peoples of the Balkans challenged their rulers: the Greeks won independence in 1830, Serbia in 1867. By the 1870s, the Ottomans had lost nearly all of the Balkans, and their capital was often threatened by Balkan or Russian armies.
Faced with difficult challenges and the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, Sultan Mahmud II initiated a set of reforms. Mahmud’s successors followed with the Tanzimat, or “reorganization,” a sweeping set of reforms designed to modernize and Westernize the Ottoman Empire. 
Every Islamic people or state had a different experience with Western influence according to its particular circumstances and history---wholesale emulation and adoption of Western ideas and institutions.  This reaction is best exemplified by Muhammad Ali, pasha of Egypt from 1805–1849 and Mahmoud II, whose Tanzimat reforms modernized the Ottoman government, but failed to produce an economically sound or politically powerful state. 
In this Case Study, we will look at the Tanzimat Reforms and their effectiveness.
Read the information in the background material, look for more information, and then write a 3 to 5 page paper answering the following question: 
What were the Tanzimat Reforms and were they effective in allowing the Middle East to catch up to the West?
Case Assignment Expectations:
 In Module 4 Case Assignment, you are expected to:
•	 Describe the purpose of the paper and conclusion.
•	 Answer the case assignment questions clearly and provide necessary details.
•	 Provide a quality argument; that is, no poor sentence structure, no spelling and grammar mistakes or run-on sentences.
•	Provide citations to support your argument and references on a separate page.