The forgotten revolution of 1876: medrese students and the Ottoman dream of democracy

In May 1876, medrese students (tâlebe-i ulûm), members of the guilds (esnâf), and workers at the Imperial Arsenal headed to the streets to protest corruption, the influence of Russia on Ottoman politics, and declining standards of living. These protests culminated in the overthrow of both the Grand Vizier and the Sultan. The students demanded the creation of a constitution and a legislative assembly to check the executive’s power. At the time, observers described the protests, the overthrow of the government, and the demand for a constitution as revolutionary. Over the subsequent decades, popular dimensions of this movement have been eclipsed, and all of the major social groups who gathered in the streets – the students, the guilds, and the workers – have been forgotten. By the late twentieth century, most scholars of Ottoman history had settled on the notion that the advent of the Ottoman Constitution was a top-down bureaucratic coup rather than a popular-driven phenomenon. Employing untapped newspaper sources, coupled with Ottoman-language primary materials, our article endeavors to reconstruct the revolutionary aspects of the road to the Constitution and to reposition the medrese students as central figures in late Ottoman history.