Under their fluctuating rule an Ottoman Empire was indeed to survive, with varying fortunes, for a further three and a half centuries. But it was an empire in the continual throes of a decline which, despite periods of respite and glimpses of momentary recovery, was to prove irreversible.

It does not seem very convincing to view a major world empire, with the most modern arms at its disposal, as merely the helpless victim of circumstances beyond its control. Even less attractive are "stage theories," which assume that at a given point in time the Ottoman Empire, its economy included, passed from the stage of "florescence" into that of "decay."

Most of the textbooks consider the period of Murad III (1574-1595) and particularly the murder of the Grand Vizier Sokullu Mehmed Pasha in 1579 as the beginning of the internal decay of the Ottoman Empire. The debacle of Vienna in 1683 the following defeats in the hands of the Holy League and the subsequent Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699 are mostly dealt with in a relatively detailed way, …

This was a factor in one of the major long-term weaknesses of the Ottoman Empire, namely the relatively small size of its Turkish population, which limited its ability to colonize conquered regions. … In no meaningful sense was Anatolia the empire's metropolis. This might seem strange to Europeans, who are and always were much inclined to use the words Ottoman and Turkish interchangeably when describing the empire.

Ottoman empire

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