“Twins in Spite of Themselves”: Spanish and Ottoman Empires’ “Issues of Decline” in XVIIIth Century

Abstract

Spanish and Ottoman empires had more similarities that could be found at first glance. Both experienced the take-off as leading force in Europe and Asia respectively, being for a while the most fearful and powerful states during XVI, faced economic and political blunders in XVII century and slightly ended with stagnation in XVIII century (as conventional wisdom says). Using comparative method and cultural analysis, article tries to answer a question – how unique or regular was that issues which stroke Spain and Ottoman Empires, how deeply they were engaged in so called decline narrative, created in XIX century European historiography and is it possible to create common trend for empire`s stagnation using not only historical sociology method (sociology of revolution used by Jack Goldstone and Teda Skocpole) and world-system analysis provided by Immanuel Wallerstein, with emphasis on history of ideas or begriffsgeschichte by Reinhardt Kosseleck. Main results are going to provide a more correct view on the status of Spanish and Turkish Empires during the XVIII century. Despite that Ottomans and Spaniards had obvious differences in political distribution, economic capabilities, warfare tactics and external actions, almost simultaneous decline was based on clear and exact reasons: lack of industrialization (production with high surplus value), hush incorporation of Ottoman and Spanish Empires into World-Economy, lack of defending tariffs, ineffective fiscal system and policy, devastating and lasting wars, decreasing price for agricultural products, down warding Kondratieff cycle, rigid political and social units, which constrain strict political actions. These gaps made the Empire’s decline possible notwithstanding those problems which they had previously. Oppositely, major European states (England, France, Prussia) had made reversed actions, which took a long time, but made European “take-off” inevitable, assured their economical breakaway to further domination over the Ottomans and Spaniards as well.