The Foundation of the Ottoman Foreign Ministry

Analysis of the late unreformed state of those offices of the Sublime Porte out of which the Ottoman Foreign Ministry was to develop makes clear, as we have shown in an earlier article, 1 that the possibilities for reform of the traditional bureaucracy were generally limited by two sets of determinants. One set, readily perceptible at what might be termed a macrohistorical level, consists of those largely exogenous forces which dominated the entire later history of the empire. 2 In contrast, the other set derives from the legacy of the old bureaucracy itself. Determinants of this class can be identified only by close examination of that legacy, which in turn had been shaped by the nature of the traditional state, as well as by those patterns of social organization and economic outlook which over the centuries had characterized Ottoman society in general.