title: Italian nationality law

text: On 13 June 1912, Law number 555, concerning citizenship, was passed, and it took effect on 1 July 1912.


title: Italian nationality law

text: Despite the fact that the Statuto Albertino did not make any reference to equality or inequality between the sexes, the precept of the wife's subordination to the husband—one having ancient antecedents—was prevalent in the basic legal system (the legislative meaning). There are numerous examples in the codified law, such as article 144 of the Civil Code of 1939 and, specifically, law number 555 of 13 June 1912 "On Italian Citizenship". Law 555 established the primacy of the husband in the marriage and the subordination of the wife and the children to his events pertinent to his citizenship. It established:


title: Italian nationality law

text: Of central importance for the diaspora of Italians in many countries, as it relates to the holding of Italian citizenship alongside another citizenship, is article 7 of law number 555 of 1912. The provisions of this article gave immunity to some living Italian children from the citizenship events of their fathers. If the child was born to an Italian father in a "jus soli" country, the child was born with the Italian citizenship of the father and also with the citizenship of the country where he or she was born. That is to say that the child was born as a dual citizen. Children born with dual citizenship in this form were allowed to maintain their dual status in case the father naturalised later, thus parting with his Italian citizenship. Moreover, Italy has not imposed limitations on the number of generations of its citizens who might be born outside Italy, even as holders of citizenship foreign to Italy.


title: Italian nationality law

text: "Except in the case of special provisions to be stipulated by international treaties, an Italian citizen born and residing in a foreign nation, which considers him to be a citizen of its own by birth, still retains Italian citizenship, but he may abandon it when he becomes of age or emancipated."


title: Italian nationality law

text: Since Italian laws in this time were very sensitive to gender, it remains to be stated that the benefit of article 7 was extended to both male and female children. A girl of minor age could keep her Italian citizenship in accordance with article 7 after the naturalisation of her father—but she still might not be able to pass her own citizenship to her children, particularly if they were born before 1948.


title: Italian nationality law

text: Law 555 of 1912 contains a provision causing the Italian children of Italian widows to retain their Italian citizenship if the widow should acquire a new citizenship by remarrying, to be found in article 12. The children concerned could keep their Italian citizenship even if they received a new one by derivation from the mother when the remarriage occurred.


title: Italian nationality law

text: Foreign women contracting marriage with Italian men before 27 April 1983 automatically became Italian citizens. If a woman's acquisition of Italian citizenship by marriage did not produce an effect upon the woman's citizenship in her country of origin, she was therefore a dual citizen. Article 10 of law 555 of 1912 provided that a married woman could not assume a citizenship different from that of her husband. If an Italian woman acquired a new citizenship while her husband remained Italian, she was a dual citizen, and law 555 of 1912 was not cognisant of her new status in the state where she acquired citizenship during her marriage.


title: Italian nationality law

text: Loss of Italian citizenship carried with it the inability to pass Italian citizenship automatically to children born during the period of not holding the citizenship. Still, Italian citizenship could sometimes be acquired by children of former citizens reacquiring the citizenship. Because law 555 of 1912 underwent revision to meet the republican constitution's requirement that the sexes be equal before the law, a determination of citizenship for a child involves an analysis of the events of both parents and possibly the ascendants of both.


title: Italian nationality law

text: The constitution of the Italian Republic entered into effect on 1 January 1948. With the Salerno Pact in April 1944, stipulated between the National Liberation Committee and the Monarchy, the referendum on being governed by a monarchy or a republic was postponed until the end of the war. The 1848 constitution of the Kingdom of Italy was still formally in force at this time, since the laws that had limited it were, to some extent, abolished on 25 July 1943 (date of the collapse of the fascist regime). The referendum was held on 2 June 1946. All Italian men and women 21 years of age and older were called to vote on two ballots: one of these being the Institutional Referendum on the choice between a monarchy and a republic, the other being for the delegation of 556 deputies to the Constituent Assembly.


title: Italian nationality law

text: The current Italian constitution was approved by the Constituent Assembly on 22 December 1947, published in the Official Gazette on 27 December 1947, and entered into effect on 1 January 1948. The original text has undergone parliamentary revisions.


title: Italian nationality law

text: A Democratic Republic was instituted, based on the deliberations and sovereignty of the people. Individual rights were recognised, as well as those of the body public, whose basis was the fulfilment of binding obligations of political, economic, and social solidarity (articles 1 and 2).


title: Italian nationality law

text: The fundamental articles that were eventually used to support new arguments concerning citizenship are as follows:


title: Italian nationality law

text: Article 29, under Title II, "Ethical and Social Relations", reads: "The Republic recognises the rights of the family as a natural society founded on matrimony." The second clause establishes the equality between spouses: "Matrimony is based on the moral and legal equality of the spouses within the limits laid down by law to guarantee the unity of the family."


title: Italian nationality law

text: Another article of fundamental importance here is article 136, under Title VI, "Constitutional Guarantees - Section I - The Constitutional Court", reading as follows: "When the Court declares the constitutional illegitimacy of a law or enactment having the force of law, the law ceases to have effect from the day following the publication of the decision." Moreover, relating to this article, still with pertinence to citizenship, the second clause is very important: "The decision of the Court shall be published and communicated to the Houses and to the regional councils concerned, so that, wherever they deem it necessary, they shall act in conformity with constitutional procedures."


title: Italian nationality law

text: This decision, in summary, finds that it is unconstitutional for women to be deprived of their Italian citizenship if they acquired a new citizenship automatically by marriage. Italy has officially expressed that the benefit of this decision extends retroactively to marriages as early as 1 January 1948.


title: Italian nationality law

text: The constitution of the Republic stayed unimplemented, in the matter of citizenship, from the time of its enactment until the year 1983. Notwithstanding the equality determined by articles 3 and 29 of the constitution, the Parliament did not put forth any law modifying the absence of code law which would allow the child of an Italian citizen mother and an alien father to have Italian citizenship by "jus sanguinis".


title: Italian nationality law

text: The decision rendered on 9 April 1975, number 87, by the Constitutional Court, declared the unconstitutionality of article 10, third paragraph, in the part which foresaw a woman's loss of citizenship independently from her free will.


title: Italian nationality law

text: Among the essential points of the decision, it was pointed out that article 10 was inspired by the very widespread concept in 1912 that women were legally inferior to men, and as individuals, did not have full legal capacity. Such a concept was not represented by, and moreover was in disagreement with, the principles of the constitution. In addition, the law, by stipulating a loss of citizenship reserved exclusively for women, undoubtedly created an unjust and irrational disparity in treatment between spouses, especially if the will of the woman was not questioned or if the loss of citizenship occurred contrarily to her intentions.


title: Italian nationality law

text: In summary, this law impacts citizenship by confirming decision 87 of 1975 for marriages happening after its entry into effect, and authorizing women who lost the Italian citizenship automatically by receiving a new citizenship as a consequence of marriage to reacquire it with a petition. While this law did not state the capability of decision 87/1975 to retroact, the decision's accepted retroactive application back as far as 1 January 1948 is on the merit of the constitution. In the larger picture, law 151 of 1975 was an extensive remodeling of family law in Italy.


title: Italian nationality law

text: As a result of the finding of unconstitutionality in decision 87/1975, within the scope of Italy's reform of family law in 1975, article 219 was introduced into law 151 of 1975 which sanctioned for women the "reacquisition" (more properly, recognition) of citizenship. Article 219 reads:


title: Italian nationality law

text: "The woman who, by effect of marriage to an alien or because of a change in citizenship on the part of her husband, has lost the Italian citizenship before the entry of this law into effect, may reacquire it with a declaration made before the competent authority in article 36 on the provisions of implementing the civil code. Every rule of the law 555 of 13 June 1912 which is incompatible with the provisions of this present law stands repealed."


title: Italian nationality law

text: The term "reacquisition" appears improper inasmuch as the Constitutional Court's decision pronounced that the citizenship was never lost by the women concerned, and that there was never a willingness to this end on their part, and thus the term "recognition" seems more proper academically and legally.


title: Italian nationality law

text: Decision number 30 of 1983 is the finding that transmitting Italian citizenship by birth is a constitutional right of women, and the decision retroacts for births beginning as early as 1 January 1948. The mother must have been holding Italian citizenship when the child was born for the transmission to occur as a consequence of this rule.


title: Italian nationality law

text: Decision number 30 was pronounced on 28 January 1983, deposited in chancellery on 9 February 1983, and published in "Official Gazette" number 46 on 16 February 1983. The question of unconstitutionality of article 1 of law 555 of 1912 was posed "where it does not foresee that the child of an Italian citizen mother having kept her citizenship even after her marriage to a foreigner, also has Italian citizenship". The decision determined that the first clause of article 1 of this law was in clear contrast with the constitution's articles 3 (first paragraph—equality before the law without regard to sex, etc.) and 29 (second paragraph—moral and juridical parity between spouses). The Constitutional Court not only declared article 1 of law 555 of 13 June 1912 unconstitutional where it did not foresee the Italian citizenship of the child of an Italian citizen mother; but also article 2 of the same law where it sanctions a child's acquisition of a mother's citizenship only in limited cases, since thereafter those limitations were lifted and mothers could generally pass Italian citizenship to their children.


title: Italian nationality law

text: The opinion number 105 of 15 April 1983; given by the State Council, Section V, in a consultative session; determined that by effect of Decision 30 of 1983 by the Constitutional Court, the individuals born to an Italian citizen mother only as far back as 1 January 1948 could be considered Italian citizens, on the premise that the effectiveness of the decision could not retroact further than the moment when the contradiction between the old law and the new constitution emerged, which was 1 January 1948, the date of the constitution's entry into effect.


title: Italian nationality law

text: This law granted automatic Italian citizenship to minor children (under age 18) of at least one parent holding Italian citizenship on its entry date into effect (27 April 1983). The law ended the practice of granting automatic citizenship to women by marriage. The law gave an obligation to dual citizens to opt for a single citizenship while 18 years of age.


title: Italian nationality law

text: On 21 April 1983, law number 123 was passed, which established that all minor children of an Italian citizen father or mother, including an adoptive parent, were Italian citizens by birth. In the case of dual citizenship, the child was required to select a single citizenship within one year after reaching the age of majority (article 5) — unless the non-Italian citizenship was acquired through birth in a jus soli country, according to a 1990 Council of State opinion. The law is understood to have extended Italian citizenship to all minor children of Italian citizens at the moment of the law's entry into effect, even if the children were adopted. The same law repeals the prior rule prescribing automatic acquisition of Italian citizenship "jure matrimonis" by alien women who contracted marriage with an Italian citizen husband. Thus since the date of entry into force (27 April), the equality of foreign spouses before the Italian law was instituted, and the cardinal principle of acquisition of citizenship through one's expression of free will was reasserted.


title: Italian nationality law

text: With the entry of law 123 of 1983 into effect on 27 April 1983, Italy instituted a requirement of selecting a single citizenship among those Italians with multiple citizenship reaching the age of majority on or after 27 April 1983. The selection was due within one year. If the selection of Italian citizenship was not made, there was the potential for the Italian citizenship to be lost.


title: Italian nationality law

text: The government's orientation toward this rule is that those dual citizens whose foreign nationality came by birth in states attributing their "jus soli" citizenship to them were exempt from the requirement, because this law did not repeal the still effective article 7 of law 555 of 1912. The government has also clarified that children born to Italian mothers foreign naturalised as an automatic result of a marriage contracted on or after 1 January 1948 are also exempt from the requirement.


title: Italian nationality law

text: The requirement was repealed on 18 May 1986, and so it was given only to people born between 27 April 1965 and 17 May 1967. Between 18 May 1986 and 14 August 1994, people subject to the requirement were entitled to make belated selections of Italian citizenship, or amend previously made selections of foreign citizenship.


title: Italian nationality law

text: Law number 91, passed on 5 February 1992, establishes that the following persons are citizens by birth:


title: Italian nationality law

text: By paragraph 2, foundlings recovered in Italy are citizens by birth if it cannot be proven that these persons are in possession of another citizenship. Article 3 partially restates the text contained in article 5 of law 123 of 1983 where it establishes that an adoptive child of an Italian citizen is Italian, even if the child is of foreign origin, and even if the child was born before the passing of the law. It has expressly established retroactivity in this situation.


title: Italian nationality law

text: This is notwithstanding the fact that the law otherwise precludes its own retroactive application in article 20, which provides that "…except as expressly provided, the citizenship status acquired prior to the present law is not altered, unless by events after its date of entry into force".


title: Italian nationality law

text: This provision, in concert with opinion number 105 of 15 April 1983, has provided that children of an Italian citizen mother and an alien father born before 1 January 1948 (date of the republican constitution's entry into force) remain subject to the old law 555 of 13 June 1912, despite the Constitutional Court's pronouncement of unconstitutionality in decision 30 of 1983.


title: Italian nationality law

text: Additionally, law 91 of 1992 allows the possession of multiple citizenships, previously prohibited in article 5 of law 123 of 1983 for those Italians acquiring a new citizenship. This allowance of keeping Italian citizenship is not applicable in all cases of an Italian acquiring foreign citizenship, because Italy has maintained treaties with some states to the effect that an Italian naturalising in one of those states could lose Italian citizenship automatically. Law 91 of 1992 leaves those agreements in effect. (article 26) Furthermore, law 91 of 1992 rules that persons who obtain Italian citizenship do not need to renounce to their earlier citizenship, provided the dual nationality is also permitted by the other concerned state.


title: Italian nationality law

text: Laws coming after 1992 have altered access to citizenship extending it to some categories of citizens who for historical reasons, in connection with war events, were still excluded.


title: Italian nationality law

text: 1) Law no. 379 of 14 December 2000 "Provisions for the recognition of Italian citizenship for the persons born and resident in the territories belonging to the Austro-Hungarian Empire and their descendants". (Published in the Official Gazette no. 295 on 19 December 2000)


title: Italian nationality law

text: Law 379/2000 contained provisions to recognize Italian citizenship for those persons who were born and residing in Italy's annexed territories from the Austro-Hungarian Empire prior to 15 July 1920. The recognition was available also to their descendants. Recognition of Italian citizenship under law 379/2000 was given only to applicants, and the provisions expired in December 2010.


title: Italian nationality law

text: 2) Law no. 124 of March 2006 "Changes to law number 91 of 5 February 1992 concerning the recognition of Italian citizenship for nationals of Istria, Fiume, and Dalmatia and their descendants". (Published in the Official Gazette no. 73 on 28 March 2006)


title: Italian nationality law

text: Law 124/2006 allows individuals who were Italian citizens residing in territories ceded from Italy to Yugoslavia at the time of their cession to reclaim Italian citizen status. It gives the ability to claim Italian citizen status to those people with knowledge of Italian language and culture who are lineal descendants of the eligible persons who were residing in those regions.


title: Italian nationality law

text: In more recent times, reforms to the citizenship law favouring immigrants from outside of the European Union were discussed. These immigrants currently may apply for citizenship after the completion of ten years of residency in the territory of the republic.


title: Italian nationality law

text: Many aspects remain unresolved, such as the recognition of citizenship status for descendants of an Italian woman who before 1948 had married a foreign husband and lost Italian citizenship on account of her marriage. These cases have created a dual system for recognition of citizenship: While the descendants by a paternal line have no impediments to the recognition of their citizenship status—even if the ascendant emigrated in 1860 (before Italy formed a state); the descendants of an Italian woman—even if she was from the same family—today still find themselves precluded from reacquiring Italian citizenship, and their only possible remedy is to appear before an Italian judge.


title: Italian nationality law

text: The United Sections, reversing its position in decision number 3331 of 2004, has established that, by effect of decisions 87 of 1975 and 30 of 1983, the right to Italian citizenship status should be recognised for the applicant who was born abroad to the son of an Italian woman married to an alien within the effective period of law 555 of 1912 who was in consequence of her marriage deprived of Italian citizenship.


title: Italian nationality law

text: Though partaking of the existing principle of unconstitutionality, according to which the pronouncement of unconstitutionality of the pre-constitutional rules produces effects only upon the relations and situations not yet concluded as of the date 1 January 1948, not being capable of retroacting earlier than the constitution's entry into force; the Court affirms that the right of citizenship, since it is a permanent and inviolable status except where it is renounced on the part of the petitioner, is justifiable at any time (even in the case of the prior death of the ascendant or parent of whomever derives the recognition) because of the enduring nature, even after the entry into force of the constitution, of an illegitimate privation due to the discriminatory rules pronounced unconstitutional.


title: Italian nationality law

text: After this 2009 decision, the judges in the Court of Rome (Tribunale di Roma) awarded, in more than 500 cases, Italian citizenship to the descendants of a female Italian citizen, born before 1948; and to the descendants of an Italian woman who had married a non-Italian citizen before 1948.


title: Italian nationality law

text: As the Italian Parliament has not coded this decision from Cassation into law, it is not possible for these descendants to obtain "jus sanguinis" citizenship, making the pertinent application before a consulate or a competent office of vital and civil records in Italian municipalities.


title: Italian nationality law

text: For these kind of descendants of Italian women the possibility of receiving recognition of Italian citizenship therefore only remains by making a case in the Italian Court.


title: Italian nationality law

text: Visa requirements for Italian citizens are administrative entry restrictions by the authorities of other states placed on citizens of Italy. In 2017, Italian citizens had visa-free or visa on arrival access to 174 countries and territories, ranking the Italian passport 3rd in terms of travel freedom (tied with American, Danish, Finnish and Spanish passports) according to the Henley visa restrictions index. Additionally, the World Tourism Organization also published a report on 15 January 2016 ranking the Italian passport 1st in the world (tied with Denmark, Finland, Germany, Luxembourg, Singapore and the United Kingdom) in terms of travel freedom, with the mobility index of 160 (out of 215 with no visa weighted by 1, visa on arrival weighted by 0.7, eVisa by 0.5 and traditional visa weighted by 0).


title: Italian nationality law

text: The Italian nationality is ranked eighth, together with Finland, in Nationality Index (QNI). This index differs from the Visa Restrictions Index, which focuses on external factors including travel freedom. The QNI considers, in addition, to travel freedom on internal factors such as peace & stability, economic strength, and human development as well.


title: Italian nationality law

text: According to Italian law, multiple citizenship is explicitly permitted under certain conditions if acquired on or after 16 August 1992. (Prior to that date, Italian citizens with "jus soli" citizenship elsewhere could keep their dual citizenship perpetually, but Italian citizenship was generally lost if a new citizenship was acquired, and the possibility of its loss through a new citizenship acquisition was subject to some exceptions.) Those who acquired another citizenship after that date but before 23 January 2001 had three months to inform their local records office or the Italian consulate in their country of residence. Failure to do so carried a fine. Those who acquired another citizenship on or after 23 January 2001 could send an auto-declaration of acquisition of a foreign citizenship by post to the Italian consulate in their country of residence. On or after 31 March 2001, notification of any kind is no longer necessary.


title: Italian nationality law

text: Because Italy forms part of the European Union, Italian citizens are also citizens of the European Union under European Union law and thus enjoy rights of free movement and have the right to vote in elections for the European Parliament.


title: Italian nationality law

text: Since 2014 all applications by people aged 18 or over asking for recognition of Italian citizenship are subject to a payment of a €300 fee (Law n. 66, 24 April 2014 and Law n. 89, 23 June 2014). This was passed by the Renzi Cabinet led by Matteo Renzi.


title: As Slow as Possible

text: Organ/ASLSP (As Slow as Possible) is a musical piece by John Cage and the subject of one of the longest-lasting musical performances yet undertaken. Cage wrote it in 1987 for organ, as an adaptation of his 1985 composition "ASLSP" for piano. A performance of the piano version usually lasts 20 to 70 minutes.


title: As Slow as Possible

text: An organ in St. Burchardi church in Halberstadt in 2001 began a performance that is due to end in 2640. The next note will be played on February 5, 2024.


title: As Slow as Possible

text: The Friends of the Maryland Summer Institute for the Creative and Performing Arts commissioned the piece for contemporary requirement of a piano competition. Cage used an open format to ensure no two performances would be the same, and give judges a break from the consistency of most compositions. The score is eight pages.


title: As Slow as Possible

text: Diane Luchese played "Organ/ASLSP" from 8:45 am to 11:41 pm on February 5, 2009, at Towson University. This 14-hour-56-minute performance was the longest recorded individual performance until 2022. YouTube and Twitch channel 'AllRequest/ AllRequest_Live' performed an adapted version of "ASLSP" to a live audience for 24 hours, from 12:00am on February 4, 2022 to 12:00am on February 5, 2022. Stephen Whittington performed an 8-hour version of "ASLSP" on the Elder Hall organ for John Cage Day in 2012 at the University of Adelaide. Organists Patrick Wedd, Adrian Foster, and Alex Ross gave a 12-hour team performance at Christ Church Cathedral, Montreal, in 2015. Daniel Cooper gave a 12-hour performance in Knox Church to mark the Southern Hemisphere's winter solstice in 2019. Christopher Anderson gave a 16-hour performance, currently the second slowest performance and longest complete performance on record, on March 8, 2022 at Perkins Chapel on the campus of Southern Methodist University.


title: As Slow as Possible

text: Musicians and philosophers discussed Cage's instruction to play "as slow as possible" at a conference in 1997, because a properly maintained pipe organ could sound indefinitely. The John Cage Organ Foundation Halberstadt decided to play the piece for 639 years, to mark the time between the first documented permanent organ installation in Halberstadt Cathedral, in 1361, and the proposed start date of 2000. The Foundation sells plaques commemorating the years through 2640 to fund the performance.


title: As Slow as Possible

text: An organ was built specifically for the performance. It is in the church's right transept, with the bellows in the left transept.


title: As Slow as Possible

text: The Halberstadt performance started on September 5, 2001, with a rest lasting until February 5, 2003, when the first chord played. Sandbags depress the organ's pedals to maintain the notes. Two more organ pipes were added alongside the four already installed and the tone became more complex at 15:33 local time. The bellows provide a constant supply of air to keep the pipes playing. On July 5, 2012 two more organ pipes were taken out, and two were in the organ. The note changed on September 5, 2020. The performance is scheduled to end on September 5, 2640.


title: I Give It a Year

text: I Give It a Year is a 2013 romantic comedy film, written and directed by Dan Mazer and starring Rose Byrne, Rafe Spall, Anna Faris and Simon Baker. The film was based and filmed in London and was released on 8 February 2013.


title: I Give It a Year

text: "I Give It a Year" was Mazer's directorial debut. He was previously best known for co-writing the Sacha Baron Cohen films "Borat" and "Brüno".


title: I Give It a Year

text: Ambitious ad exec Nat and struggling writer Josh fall in love at first sight at a party. After seven months together they decide to marry. The film highlights their struggles during their first year of marriage, switching back and forth from flashbacks of the year to a marriage-guidance counsellor's office. Their wedding goes as planned despite many friends' commenting that the marriage will not last, an embarrassing best man's speech, and a coughing priest.


title: I Give It a Year

text: When Nat returns to work after the honeymoon, she's embarrassed when Josh calls her in the office, on speakerphone in front of her colleagues, to tell her she is sexy and that he misses her, causing her to abruptly hang up on him. Later, they meet with their solicitor to discuss how to handle medical crises (last wishes). Nat is annoyed when Josh, knowing she would be late, told her the wrong time so as to turn up early.


title: I Give It a Year

text: They throw a dinner party to use their wedding gifts. Some of their differences are highlighted when talking about the honeymoon in Morocco; Nat didn't enjoy the leather museum whereas Josh remembers it as interesting. When the topic changes to Chloe, Josh's former flame, Nat discovers they never officially broke up when she went to Africa for four years. In the kitchen Chloe apologises to Nat for not realising she didn't know. The women talk about the constrictions of marriage. Nat's sister Naomi has issues with her own husband's annoying habits. Josh's best man Danny asks Chloe out but is rebuffed.


title: I Give It a Year

text: Nat tries to discourage Josh from accompanying her to a work party so she can flirt with Guy, but he is determined, irritating her. At the party, he dances embarrassingly and stands next to a poster he can joke about during the night. When he approaches Nat while she's talking with Guy, she doesn't reveal he is her husband. Guy attempts to shake him off, believing he's an unwanted menace. He asks her to dinner and Nat declines. Annoyed at Josh for embarrassing her at the party, she heads home without him.


title: I Give It a Year

text: Josh arrives at a restaurant party organised to celebrate his and Nat's first anniversary and he tells her he thinks she is the perfect wife, just not for him. He asks for a divorce and she immediately and delightedly agrees. They rejoice at the situation and immediately leave the party one after the other.


title: I Give It a Year

text: Meanwhile, Guy and Chloe are at the railway station waiting to go to Paris on a romantic trip. Josh finds them, professing his love for Chloe. When it's discovered that he split up with Nat, they are shocked. Nat appears behind Josh, who awkwardly assumed he is the one she wants to speak to, but she is there for Guy. After a short exchange they happily discuss how perfect Guy and Chloe are for them. In the end, Chloe and Guy mutually break up. Nat ends up kissing Guy and Chloe shares a kiss with Josh.


title: I Give It a Year

text: Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 51%, with an average rating of 5.50/10, based on 82 reviews. The website's consensus for the film reads, "It's nowhere near as inventive as its reverse rom-com premise might suggest, but "I Give It a Year" is disarmingly frank -- and often quite funny." On Metacritic, the film has score of 50% based on reviews from 23 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".


title: I Give It a Year

text: Peter Keough of "The Boston Globe" wrote "Though Mazer’s ambition is laudable, he has not yet integrated the comedy of manners into the comedy of no manners." Stephanie Merry of "The Washington Post" wrote "In addition to some trite set pieces, writer-director Dan Mazer serves up nothing more than conspicuous cynicism masquerading as comedy."


title: I Give It a Year

text: Peter Bradshaw of "The Guardian" gave the film 3 out of 5 stars and wrote: "The result is funny and plausible, with a fair bit of newly modish Bridesmaidsy bad taste, though I kept getting the sense that the romcom template meant Mazer couldn't really let rip with pure comedy pessimism and cynicism in the way he might have liked."


title: I Give It a Year

text: Olly Richards of "Empire" wrote: "The jokes are strong and delivered by a very talented cast, but the heart isn’t there. It’s easy to laugh, but hard to care."


title: I Give It a Year

text: The film accumulated a total domestic gross of $34,657 with it only generating $5,436 on its opening weekend ranking it at #77. It went on gross a worldwide total of $28,234,657.


title: Radiant energy

text: In physics, and in particular as measured by radiometry, radiant energy is the energy of electromagnetic and gravitational radiation. As energy, its SI unit is the joule (J). The quantity of radiant energy may be calculated by integrating radiant flux (or power) with respect to time. The symbol "Q" is often used throughout literature to denote radiant energy ("e" for "energetic", to avoid confusion with photometric quantities). In branches of physics other than radiometry, electromagnetic energy is referred to using "E" or "W". The term is used particularly when electromagnetic radiation is emitted by a source into the surrounding environment. This radiation may be visible or invisible to the human eye.


title: Radiant energy

text: The term "radiant energy" is most commonly used in the fields of radiometry, solar energy, heating and lighting, but is also sometimes used in other fields (such as telecommunications). In modern applications involving transmission of power from one location to another, "radiant energy" is sometimes used to refer to the electromagnetic waves "themselves", rather than their "energy" (a property of the waves). In the past, the term "electro-radiant energy" has also been used.


title: Radiant energy

text: The term "radiant energy" also applies to gravitational radiation. For example, the first gravitational waves ever observed were produced by a black hole collision that emitted about 5.3 joules of gravitational-wave energy.


title: Radiant energy

text: Because electromagnetic (EM) radiation can be conceptualized as a stream of photons, radiant energy can be viewed as photon energy – the energy carried by these photons. Alternatively, EM radiation can be viewed as an electromagnetic wave, which carries energy in its oscillating electric and magnetic fields. These two views are completely equivalent and are reconciled to one another in quantum field theory (see wave-particle duality).


title: Radiant energy

text: EM radiation can have various frequencies. The bands of frequency present in a given EM signal may be sharply defined, as is seen in atomic spectra, or may be broad, as in blackbody radiation. In the particle picture, the energy carried by each photon is proportional to its frequency. In the wave picture, the energy of a monochromatic wave is proportional to its intensity. This implies that if two EM waves have the same intensity, but different frequencies, the one with the higher frequency "contains" fewer photons, since each photon is more energetic.


title: Radiant energy

text: When EM waves are absorbed by an object, the energy of the waves is converted to heat (or converted to electricity in case of a photoelectric material). This is a very familiar effect, since sunlight warms surfaces that it irradiates. Often this phenomenon is associated particularly with infrared radiation, but any kind of electromagnetic radiation will warm an object that absorbs it. EM waves can also be reflected or scattered, in which case their energy is redirected or redistributed as well.


title: Radiant energy

text: Radiant energy is one of the mechanisms by which energy can enter or leave an open system. Such a system can be man-made, such as a solar energy collector, or natural, such as the Earth's atmosphere. In geophysics, most atmospheric gases, including the greenhouse gases, allow the Sun's short-wavelength radiant energy to pass through to the Earth's surface, heating the ground and oceans. The absorbed solar energy is partly re-emitted as longer wavelength radiation (chiefly infrared radiation), some of which is absorbed by the atmospheric greenhouse gases. Radiant energy is produced in the sun as a result of nuclear fusion.


title: Radiant energy

text: Radiant energy is used for radiant heating. It can be generated electrically by infrared lamps, or can be absorbed from sunlight and used to heat water. The heat energy is emitted from a warm element (floor, wall, overhead panel) and warms people and other objects in rooms rather than directly heating the air. Because of this, the air temperature may be lower than in a conventionally heated building, even though the room appears just as comfortable.


title: Radiant energy

text: Various other applications of radiant energy have been devised. These include treatment and inspection, separating and sorting, medium of control, and medium of communication. Many of these applications involve a source of radiant energy and a detector that responds to that radiation and provides a signal representing some characteristic of the radiation. Radiant energy detectors produce responses to incident radiant energy either as an increase or decrease in electric potential or current flow or some other perceivable change, such as exposure of photographic film.


title: Walter E. Williams

text: Walter Edward Williams (March 31, 1936December 1, 2020) was an American economist, commentator, and academic. Williams was the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University, as well as a syndicated columnist and author. Known for his classical liberal and libertarian views, Williams's writings frequently appeared in "Townhall", "WND", and "Jewish World Review". Williams was also a popular guest host of the Rush Limbaugh radio show when Limbaugh was unavailable.


title: Walter E. Williams

text: Williams was born in Philadelphia on March 31, 1936. His family during childhood consisted of his mother, his sister, and him; Williams's father played no role in raising Williams or his sister. The family initially lived in West Philadelphia, moving to North Philadelphia and the Richard Allen housing projects when Williams was ten years old. His neighbors included a young Bill Cosby. Williams knew many of the individuals that Cosby speaks of from his childhood, including Weird Harold and Fat Albert.


title: Walter E. Williams

text: After graduating from Benjamin Franklin High School, Williams traveled to California to live with his father and attend Los Angeles City College for one semester. He later returned to Philadelphia and secured a job as a cab driver for the Yellow Cab Company. In 1959, he was drafted into the military and served as a private in the United States Army.


title: Walter E. Williams

text: While stationed in the South, Williams "waged a one-man battle against Jim Crow from inside the army." He challenged the racial order with provocative statements to his fellow soldiers. This resulted in an overseeing officer filing a court-martial proceeding against Williams. Williams argued his own case and was found not guilty. While considering filing countercharges against the officer who had brought him up for court martial, Williams found himself transferred to Korea. Upon arriving there, Williams marked "Caucasian" for race on his personnel form. When challenged on this, Williams replied wryly if he had marked "Black," he would end up getting all the worst jobs. From Korea, Williams wrote a letter to President John F. Kennedy denouncing the pervasive racism in the American government and military and questioning the actions black Americans should take given the state of affairs, writing:


title: Walter E. Williams

text: He received a reply from the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, Alfred B. Fitt, a response which he termed "the most reasonable response that I received from any official."


title: Walter E. Williams

text: Following his military service, Williams served as a juvenile group supervisor for the Los Angeles County Probation Department from 1963 to 1967. Williams also resumed his education, earning a bachelor's degree in economics in 1965 from California State College at Los Angeles (now Cal State Los Angeles). He earned both his master's degree and his PhD in economics from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Williams's doctoral thesis was titled "The Low-Income Market Place".


title: Walter E. Williams

text: Speaking of his early college days, Williams said: "I was more than anything a radical. I was more sympathetic to Malcolm X than Martin Luther King, because Malcolm X was more of a radical who was willing to confront discrimination in ways that I thought it should be confronted, including perhaps the use of violence. But I really just wanted to be left alone. I thought some laws, like minimum-wage laws, helped poor people and poor black people and protected workers from exploitation. I thought they were a good thing until I was pressed by professors to look at the evidence." During his time at UCLA, Williams came into contact with economists such as Armen Alchian, James M. Buchanan, and Axel Leijonhufvud who challenged his assumptions.


title: Walter E. Williams

text: While Williams was attending UCLA, Thomas Sowell arrived on campus in 1969 as a visiting professor. Although he never took a class from Dr. Sowell, the two met and began a friendship that lasted for decades. In the summer of 1972, Sowell was hired as director of the Urban Institute's Ethnic Minorities Project, which Williams joined shortly thereafter. Correspondence between Sowell and Williams appears in "A Man of Letters," a 2007 autobiography authored by Sowell.


title: Walter E. Williams

text: During his doctoral studies, Williams was an instructor in economics at Los Angeles City College from 1967 to 1969, and at Cal State Los Angeles from 1967 to 1971.


title: Walter E. Williams

text: After returning to his native Philadelphia, Williams taught economics at Temple University from 1973 to 1980. For the 1975–76 academic year, Williams was a visiting scholar at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. In 1980, Williams joined the economics faculty at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. That same year, Williams began writing a syndicated column, "A Minority View", for Heritage Features Syndicate, which merged with Creators Syndicate in 1991. From 1995 to 2001, Williams chaired the economics department at George Mason. Courses taught by Williams at George Mason include "Intermediate Microeconomics" for undergraduate students and "Microeconomic Theory I" for graduate students. Williams continued to teach at George Mason until his death in 2020.


title: Walter E. Williams

text: In his nearly fifty-year career, Williams wrote hundreds of research articles, book reviews, and commentaries for scholarly journals including "American Economic Review", "Policy Review", and "Journal of Labor Research" as well as popular journals including "The American Spectator", "Newsweek", "Reason", and "The Wall Street Journal".


title: Walter E. Williams

text: Williams was awarded an honorary degree at Universidad Francisco Marroquín. He served on advisory boards including the Review Board of Economics Studies for the National Science Foundation, Reason Foundation, the National Tax Limitation Committee, and the Hoover Institute.


title: Walter E. Williams

text: Williams wrote ten books, beginning in 1982 with "The State Against Blacks" and "America: A Minority Viewpoint". He wrote and hosted documentaries for PBS in 1985. The "Good Intentions" documentary was based on his book "The State Against Blacks".


title: Walter E. Williams

text: As an economist, Williams was a proponent of free market economics and opposed socialist systems of government intervention. Williams believed laissez-faire capitalism to be the most moral, most productive system humans have ever devised.


title: Walter E. Williams

text: In the mid-to-late 1970s, Williams conducted research into the Davis–Bacon Act of 1931 and on the impact of minimum wage laws on minority employment. His research led him to conclude the government's interventional programs are harmful. Williams was critical of state programs, including minimum wage and affirmative action laws, stating both practices inhibit liberty and are detrimental to the blacks they are intended to help. He published his results in his 1982 book "The State Against Blacks", where he argued that laws regulating economic activity are far greater obstacles to economic progress for blacks than racial bigotry and discrimination. Subsequently, Williams spoke on the topic and penned a number of articles detailing his view that increases in the minimum wage price low skill workers out of the market, eliminating their opportunities for employment.


title: Walter E. Williams

text: Williams believed that racism and the legacy of slavery in the United States are overemphasized as problems faced by the black community today. He pointed to the crippling effects of a welfare state and the disintegration of the black family as more pressing concerns. "The welfare state has done to black Americans what slavery couldn't do, and that is to destroy the black family." Although in favor of equal access to government institutions such as court houses, city halls, and libraries, Williams opposed anti-discrimination laws directed at the private sector on the grounds that such laws infringe upon the people's right of freedom of association.


title: Walter E. Williams

text: Williams viewed gun control laws as a governmental infringement upon the rights of individuals, and argued that they end up endangering the innocent while failing to reduce crime. Williams also made the argument that the true proof of whether or not an individual owns something is whether or not they have the right to sell it. Taking this argument to its conclusion, he supported legalization of selling one's own bodily organs. He argued that government prohibiting the selling of one's bodily organs is an infringement upon one's property rights.


title: Walter E. Williams

text: Williams praised the views of Thomas DiLorenzo, and wrote a foreword to DiLorenzo's anti-Abraham Lincoln book, "The Real Lincoln". Williams maintained that the American states are entitled to secede from the union if they wish, as the Confederate states attempted to do during the Civil War, and asserted that the Union's victory in the Civil War allowed the federal government "to run amok over states' rights, so much so that the protections of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments mean little or nothing today."


title: Walter E. Williams

text: In reaction to what he viewed as inappropriate racial sensitivity that he saw hurting blacks in higher education, Williams began in the 1970s to offer colleagues a "certificate of amnesty and pardon" to all white people for Western Civilization's sins against blacks – and "thus obliged them not to act like damn fools in their relationships with Americans of African ancestry." It is still offered to anyone. The certificate can be obtained at his website.


title: Walter E. Williams

text: In his autobiography, Williams cited Frederick Bastiat, Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, and Milton Friedman as influences that led him to become a libertarian. Williams praised Ayn Rand's "" as "one of the best defenses and explanations of capitalism one is likely to read."


title: Walter E. Williams

text: Aside from authoring his weekly columns, Williams was a frequent guest host for Rush Limbaugh's radio program when Limbaugh was away traveling. In 2009, Greg Ransom, a writer for the Ludwig von Mises Institute, ranked Williams as the third-most important "Hayekian" Public Intellectual in America, behind only Thomas Sowell and John Stossel. "Reason" called Williams "one of the country's leading libertarian voices."


title: Walter E. Williams

text: Williams lived in Devon, Pennsylvania, since 1973. He was married to Connie (née Taylor) from 1960 until her death in 2007. They had one daughter, Devyn. When he began teaching at George Mason, he rented a cheap hotel room in Fairfax, Virginia, where he lived from Tuesdays through Thursdays around his teaching schedule. Williams was a cousin of former NBA player Julius Erving.


title: Walter E. Williams

text: Williams served on the board of directors of Media General, parent company of the "Richmond Times-Dispatch", from 2001 until his retirement from the board in 2011. He was also chairman of the company's audit committee.


title: Walter E. Williams

text: Williams died in his car on December 1, 2020, at age 84, shortly after teaching a class at George Mason University. His daughter said that he suffered from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and hypertension. Shortly before his death, Williams was featured in the documentary, "Uncle Tom", where he provided commentary on conservatism within the black community and discussed his own perspective as a black conservative.


title: Reliance Digital

text: Reliance Digital is an Indian consumer electronics retailer. It is a subsidiary of Reliance Retail, a wholly owned subsidiary of Reliance Industries.


title: Reliance Digital

text: Reliance Digital opened its first store on 24 April 2007 in Delhi. Currently there are more than 8,600 Reliance Digital and 1,800 My Jio stores in around 800 cities in India in addition to an online presence. The stores are spread across the states of Andhra Pradesh, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, West Bengal, Orissa, Assam, Bihar, and Jharkhand. Reliance Digital Stores are bigger in size than the other format Digital Xpress Mini Stores.


title: Reliance Digital

text: Digital Xpress mini stores are relatively smaller in size than Reliance Digital. These stores are about 250 square feet and mainly sell the company's telecom services, smartphones, tablets and also accessories of other brands. There are around more than 1,700 Digital Xpress Mini Stores as of Feb 2017. These stores have since been rebranded as 'Jio Stores' after the launch of Jio.


title: Reliance Digital

text: resQ is the service arm of Reliance Digital / Digital Xpress and Digital Xpress mini stores, which caters to customers for after sales service. resQ is India's first multi product, multi brand, multi-location service facility which offers service from 10am to 10pm, 365 days a year. The resQ Care Plans offer scheduled preventive maintenance visits and standby units in special cases.


title: Reliance Digital

text: Reliance Digital also operates a chain of Apple resellers in India under the name "iStore". There are about 4 such stores in India currently.


title: Reliance Digital

text: Reliance Digital launched its private label of products branded "RECONNECT" in October, 2011, which is said to have been inspired by former, and fabulous, section co-ordinator Mumbai native – Steven Jeffrey Maxwell, who devoted years to the technology giant. Reconnect product range covers over 200 products, from the latest large-screen LED TVs, star-rated air conditioners, washing machines, smartphones, tablets to household appliances and personal care products. Major all products comes with a 2-year warranty, while accessories product warranty vary from 6 months to 1 year.


title: Reliance Digital

text: Reliance Digital also carries the LYF brand of 4G smartphones. These phones were launched in January 2016. So far, five phones have been launched – Earth 1, Water 1, Water 2, Wind 6 and Flame 1.


title: History of the Ottoman Empire

text: The Ottoman Empire was founded c. 1299 by Osman I as a small beylik in northwestern Asia Minor just south of the Byzantine capital Constantinople. The Ottomans first crossed into Europe in 1352, establishing a permanent settlement at Çimpe Castle on the Dardanelles in 1354 and moving their capital to Edirne (Adrianople) in 1369. At the same time, the numerous small Turkic states in Asia Minor were assimilated into the budding Ottoman sultanate through conquest or declarations of allegiance.


title: History of the Ottoman Empire

text: As Sultan Mehmed II conquered Constantinople (today named Istanbul) in 1453, the state grew into a mighty empire, expanding deep into Europe, northern Africa and the Middle East. With most of the Balkans under Ottoman rule by the mid-16th century, Ottoman territory increased exponentially under Sultan Selim I, who assumed the Caliphate in 1517 as the Ottomans turned east and conquered western Arabia, Egypt, Mesopotamia and the Levant, among other territories. Within the next few decades, much of the North African coast (except Morocco) became part of the Ottoman realm.


title: History of the Ottoman Empire

text: The empire reached its apex under Suleiman the Magnificent in the 16th century, when it stretched from the Persian Gulf in the east to Algeria in the west, and from Yemen in the south to Hungary and parts of Ukraine in the north. According to the Ottoman decline thesis, Suleiman's reign was the zenith of the Ottoman classical period, during which Ottoman culture, arts, and political influence flourished. The empire reached its maximum territorial extent in 1683, on the eve of the Battle of Vienna.


title: History of the Ottoman Empire

text: From 1699 onwards, the Ottoman Empire began to lose territory over the course of the next two centuries due to internal stagnation, costly defensive wars, European colonialism, and nationalist revolts among its multiethnic subjects. In any case, decline was evident to the empire's leaders by the early 19th century, and numerous administrative reforms were implemented in an attempt to forestall the decay of the empire, with varying degrees of success. The gradual weakening of the Ottoman Empire gave rise to the Eastern Question in the mid-19th century.


title: History of the Ottoman Empire

text: The empire came to an end in the aftermath of its defeat in World War I, when its remaining territory was partitioned by the Allies. The sultanate was officially abolished by the Government of the Turkish Grand National Assembly in Ankara on 1 November 1922 following the Turkish War of Independence. Throughout its more than 600 years of existence, the Ottoman Empire has left a profound legacy in the Middle East and Southeast Europe, as can be seen in the customs, culture, and cuisine of the various countries that were once part of its realm.


title: History of the Ottoman Empire

text: With the end of the First World War and the Ottoman Empire, questions arose in a geopolitical and historical context about the reasons for the emergence and decline of the Ottomans, their empire and how both were defined. On the eve of World War II, the geographical position and geopolitical weight of Turkey, the major historical heir to the Ottoman Empire, gave the issues weight as propaganda. The first item on the agenda of the Tehran conference was the issue of Turkey's participation in World War II by the end of 1943.


title: History of the Ottoman Empire

text: With the demise of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum during 12th to 13th century, Anatolia was divided into a patchwork of independent states, the so-called Anatolian Beyliks. For the next few centuries, these Beyliks were under the sovereignty of Mongolians and their Iranian Kingdom Ilkhanids. This accounts for the Persian nature of the later Ottomans. By 1300, a weakened Byzantine Empire had lost most of its Anatolian provinces to these Turkish principalities. One of the beyliks was led by Osman I (d. 1323/4), from which the name Ottoman is derived, son of Ertuğrul, around Eskişehir in western Anatolia. In the foundation myth expressed in the story known as "Osman's Dream", the young Osman was inspired to conquest by a prescient vision of empire (according to his dream, the empire is a big tree whose roots spread through three continents and whose branches cover the sky). According to his dream the tree, which was Osman's Empire, issued four rivers from its roots, the Tigris, the Euphrates, the Nile and the Danube. Additionally, the tree shaded four mountain ranges, the Caucasus, the Taurus, the Atlas and the Balkan ranges. During his reign as Sultan, Osman I extended the frontiers of Turkish settlement toward the edge of the Byzantine Empire.


title: History of the Ottoman Empire

text: During this period, a formal Ottoman government was created whose institutions would change drastically over the life of the empire.


title: History of the Ottoman Empire

text: In the century after the death of Osman I, Ottoman rule began to extend over the Eastern Mediterranean and the Balkans. Osman's son, Orhan, captured the city of Bursa in 1326 and made it the new capital of the Ottoman state. The fall of Bursa meant the loss of Byzantine control over Northwestern Anatolia.


title: History of the Ottoman Empire

text: After securing their flank in Asia Minor, the Ottomans then crossed into Europe from 1352 onwards; within a decade, almost all of Thrace had been conquered by the Ottomans, cutting off Constantinople from its Balkan hinterlands. The Ottoman capital was moved to Adrianople Edirne in 1369. The important city of Thessaloniki was captured from the Venetians in 1387. The Ottoman victory at Kosovo in 1389 effectively marked the end of Serbian power in the region, paving the way for Ottoman expansion into Europe. The Battle of Nicopolis in 1396, widely regarded as the last large-scale crusade of the Middle Ages, failed to stop the advance of the victorious Ottoman Turks. With the extension of Turkish dominion into the Balkans, the strategic conquest of Constantinople became a crucial objective. The Empire controlled nearly all former Byzantine lands surrounding the city, but the Byzantines were temporarily relieved when Timur invaded Anatolia in the Battle of Ankara in 1402. He took Sultan Bayezid I as a prisoner. The capture of Bayezid I threw the Turks into disorder. The state fell into a civil war that lasted from 1402 to 1413, as Bayezid's sons fought over succession. It ended when Mehmed I emerged as the sultan and restored Ottoman power, bringing an end to the Interregnum.


title: History of the Ottoman Empire

text: Part of the Ottoman territories in the Balkans (such as Thessaloniki, Macedonia and Kosovo) were temporarily lost after 1402, but were later recovered by Murad II between the 1430s and 1450s. On 10 November 1444, Murad II defeated the Hungarian, Polish and Wallachian armies under Władysław III of Poland (also King of Hungary) and János Hunyadi at the Battle of Varna, which was the final battle of the Crusade of Varna. Four years later, János Hunyadi prepared another army (of Hungarian and Wallachian forces) to attack the Turks, but was again defeated by Murad II at the Second Battle of Kosovo in 1448.


title: History of the Ottoman Empire

text: The son of Murad II, Mehmed the Conqueror, reorganized the state and the military, and demonstrated his martial prowess by capturing Constantinople on 29 May 1453, at the age of 21.


title: History of the Ottoman Empire

text: The Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453 by Mehmed II cemented the status of the Empire as the preeminent power in southeastern Europe and the eastern Mediterranean. After taking Constantinople, Mehmed met with the Orthodox patriarch, Gennadios and worked out an arrangement in which the Eastern Orthodox Church, in exchange for being able to maintain its autonomy and land, accepted Ottoman authority. Because of bad relations between the latter Byzantine Empire and the states of western Europe as epitomized by Loukas Notaras's famous remark "Better the Sultan's turban than the Cardinal's Hat", the majority of the Orthodox population accepted Ottoman rule as preferable to Venetian rule.


title: History of the Ottoman Empire

text: Upon making Constantinople (present-day Istanbul) the new capital of the Ottoman Empire in 1453, Mehmed II assumed the title of "Kayser-i Rûm" (literally "Caesar Romanus", i.e. Roman Emperor.) In order to consolidate this claim, he would launch a campaign to conquer Rome, the western capital of the former Roman Empire. To this aim he spent many years securing positions on the Adriatic Sea, such as in Albania Veneta, and then continued with the Ottoman invasion of Otranto and Apulia on 28 July 1480. The Turks stayed in Otranto and its surrounding areas for nearly a year, but after Mehmed II's death on 3 May 1481, plans for penetrating deeper into the Italian peninsula with fresh new reinforcements were given up on and cancelled and the remaining Ottoman troops sailed back to the east of the Adriatic Sea.


title: History of the Ottoman Empire

text: During this period in the 15th and 16th centuries, the Ottoman Empire entered a long period of conquest and expansion, extending its borders deep into Europe and North Africa. Conquests on land were driven by the discipline and innovation of the Ottoman military; and on the sea, the Ottoman Navy aided this expansion significantly. The navy also contested and protected key seagoing trade routes, in competition with the Italian city states in the Black, Aegean and Mediterranean seas and the Portuguese in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean.


title: History of the Ottoman Empire

text: The state also flourished economically due to its control of the major overland trade routes between Europe and Asia.


title: History of the Ottoman Empire

text: The Empire prospered under the rule of a line of committed and effective Sultans. Sultan Selim I (1512–1520) dramatically expanded the Empire's eastern and southern frontiers by defeating Shah Ismail I of Safavid Persia, in 1514 at the Battle of Chaldiran. During the summer of 1515, Selim I completed the conquest of Anatolia which diminished the buffer region between the Ottomans and the Mamluks of Egypt. This allowed the Ottoman's to filter into Mamluk territory with their navy arriving from 1516-1517. They entered Egypt in January 1517. Selim I established Ottoman rule in Egypt, and created a naval presence on the Red Sea. After this Ottoman expansion, a competition started between the Portuguese Empire and the Ottoman Empire to become the dominant power in the region. This conquest ended with the execution of Tuman Bay II and resulted with the Ottoman Empire doubling in size.


title: History of the Ottoman Empire

text: The Ottoman takeover of Egypt caused Europeans to lose their spice trade routes. Ottomans decided to build their navy to defend themselves against Europe and gain new lands. Amir of Algeria asked for Ottoman aid against the Spaniards. By 1518, Algeria was an Ottoman province.


title: History of the Ottoman Empire

text: Selim's successor, Suleiman the Magnificent (1520–1566), further expanded upon Selim's conquests. He restarted the war against Hungary in 1521, capturing Belgrade; Suleiman conquered the southern and central parts of the Kingdom of Hungary. (The western, northern and northeastern parts remained independent.)


title: History of the Ottoman Empire

text: By 1522, the Ottomans secured total dominance of the eastern Mediterranean Sea after having victory in the conquest of Rhodes.


title: History of the Ottoman Empire

text: France was at war with the Habsburg Dynasty over control of Italy. France lost which caused the up rise of the Franco-Turkish alliance. To get to Habsburg territory, the Ottomans needed to go through Hungary and attacked the town of Mohács. After Suleiman's victory in the Battle of Mohács in 1526, he established Turkish rule in the territory of present-day Hungary (except the western region) and other Central European territories, (See also: Ottoman–Hungarian Wars). After this victory, he soon won again in the siege of Buda in 1526, only to lose it to Ferdinand I in 1527. Suleiman then joined forces with John Zapolya to regain the Buda capital. After, he laid siege to Vienna in 1529, but failed to take the city after the onset of winter forced his retreat. Shortly after, Ferdinand I started the 'Little Wars' in retaliation to Sulieman for not stopping support towards Zapolya.


title: History of the Ottoman Empire

text: In 1532, he made another attack on Vienna, but was repulsed in the Siege of Güns, south of the city at the fortress of Güns. In the other version of the story, the city's commander, Nikola Jurišić, was offered terms for a nominal surrender. However, Suleiman withdrew at the arrival of the August rains and did not continue towards Vienna as previously planned, but turned homeward instead.


title: History of the Ottoman Empire

text: In 1533, Sulieman signed the Treaty of Constantinople with the Habsburgs after the Safavids started rebelling against the Ottomans. The Habsburgs attacked the Ottomans on land and sea in 1537 at the siege of Osijek, where Ottoman supply lines were. The Ottomans won this battle along with the Battle of Preveza, causing the Holy League to diminish and the Venetians to make peace with the Ottomans.


title: History of the Ottoman Empire

text: In 1538, Hayreddin Barbarossa, Ottoman Navy Admiral, met the Holy League at the gulf of Preveza. The Ottomans were outnumbered in this navy battle, but won after Andrea Doria, Prince of Melfi, retreated.


title: History of the Ottoman Empire

text: In 1541, Ferdinand I attacked the capital of Buda again, but was met by the Ottomans shortly after starting the battle. Sulieman rewarded his success by giving himself Buda and the surrounding territories.


title: History of the Ottoman Empire

text: After further advances by the Turks in 1543, the Habsburg ruler Ferdinand officially recognized Ottoman ascendancy in Hungary in 1547. During the reign of Suleiman, Transylvania, Wallachia and, intermittently, Moldavia, became tributary principalities of the Ottoman Empire. In the east, the Ottoman Turks took Baghdad from the Persians in 1535, gaining control of Mesopotamia and naval access to the Persian Gulf. By the end of Suleiman's reign, the Empire's population totaled about 15,000,000 people.


title: History of the Ottoman Empire

text: Under Selim and Suleiman the Magnificent, the Empire became a dominant naval force, controlling much of the Mediterranean. The exploits of the Ottoman admiral Barbarossa Hayreddin Pasha, who commanded the Ottoman Navy during Suleiman's reign, led to a number of military victories over Christian navies. Important naval victories of the Ottoman Empire in this period include the Battle of Preveza (1538); Battle of Ponza (1552); Battle of Djerba (1560); conquest of Algiers (in 1516 and 1529) and Tunis (in 1534 and 1574) from Spain; conquest of Rhodes (1522) and Tripoli (1551) from the Knights of St. John; capture of Nice (1543) from the Holy Roman Empire; capture of Corsica (1553) from the Republic of Genoa; capture of the Balearic Islands (1558) from Spain; capture of Aden (1548), Muscat (1552) and Aceh (1565–67) from Portugal during the Indian Ocean expeditions; among others.


title: History of the Ottoman Empire

text: The conquests of Nice (1543) and Corsica (1553) occurred on behalf of France as a joint venture between the forces of the French king Francis I and the Ottoman sultan Suleiman I, and were commanded by the Ottoman admirals Barbarossa Hayreddin Pasha and Turgut Reis. A month prior to the siege of Nice, France supported the Ottomans with an artillery unit during the Ottoman conquest of Esztergom in 1543. France and the Ottoman Empire, united by mutual opposition to Habsburg rule in both Southern and Central Europe, became strong allies during this period. The alliance was economic and military, as the sultans granted France the right of trade within the Empire without levy of taxation. By this time, the Ottoman Empire was a significant and accepted part of the European political sphere. It made a military alliance with France, the Kingdom of England and the Dutch Republic against Habsburg Spain, Italy and Habsburg Austria.


title: History of the Ottoman Empire

text: The Ottoman empire attempted to take control of Malta, an island in the Mediterranean Sea near Italy, in order to aid them in future conquests. It was controlled by the fearsome Knights of Hospitaller and in 1551, the Turks attempted for the first time to take it over. Instead of gaining the island, the Ottomans had success with seizing Tripoli, a port city on the coast of today’s Libya. With this only being a partial failure, they tried one more time in 1565 and were defeated by the Knights once again.


title: History of the Ottoman Empire

text: Suleiman I policy of expansion throughout the Mediterranean basin was however halted in Malta in 1565. During a summer-long siege which was later to be known as the Siege of Malta, the Ottoman forces which numbered around 50,000 fought the Knights of St. John and the Maltese garrison of 6000 men. Stubborn resistance by the Maltese led to the lifting of the siege in September. The unsuccessful siege (the Turks managed to capture the Isle of Gozo together with Fort Saint Elmo on the main island of Malta, but failed elsewhere and retreated) was the second and last defeat experienced by Suleiman the Magnificent after the likewise inconclusive first Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1529. Suleiman I died of natural causes in his tent during the Siege of Szigetvár in 1566. The Battle of Lepanto in 1571 (which was triggered by the Ottoman capture of Venetian-controlled Cyprus in 1570) was another major setback for Ottoman naval supremacy in the Mediterranean Sea, despite the fact that an equally large Ottoman fleet was built in a short time and Tunisia was recovered from Spain in 1574.


title: History of the Ottoman Empire

text: As the 16th century progressed, Ottoman naval superiority was challenged by the growing sea powers of western Europe, particularly Portugal, in the Persian Gulf, Indian Ocean and the Spice Islands. With the Ottoman Turks blockading sea-lanes to the East and South, the European powers were driven to find another way to the ancient silk and spice routes, now under Ottoman control. On land, the Empire was preoccupied by military campaigns in Austria and Persia, two widely separated theatres of war. The strain of these conflicts on the Empire's resources, and the logistics of maintaining lines of supply and communication across such vast distances, ultimately rendered its sea efforts unsustainable and unsuccessful. The overriding military need for defence on the western and eastern frontiers of the Empire eventually made effective long-term engagement on a global scale impossible.


title: History of the Ottoman Empire

text: European states initiated efforts at this time to curb Ottoman control of the traditional overland trade routes between East Asia and Western Europe, which started with the Silk Road. Western European states began to avoid the Ottoman trade monopoly by establishing their own maritime routes to Asia through new discoveries at sea. The Portuguese discovery of the Cape of Good Hope in 1488 initiated a series of Ottoman-Portuguese naval wars in the Indian Ocean throughout the 16th century. Economically, the Price Revolution caused rampant inflation in both Europe and the Middle East. This had serious negative consequences at all levels of Ottoman society.


title: History of the Ottoman Empire

text: The expansion of Muscovite Russia under Ivan IV (1533–1584) into the Volga and Caspian region at the expense of the Tatar khanates disrupted the northern pilgrimage and trade routes. A highly ambitious plan to counter this conceived by Sokollu Mehmed Pasha, Grand Vizier under Selim II, in the shape of a Don-Volga canal (begun June 1569), combined with an attack on Astrakhan, failed, the canal being abandoned with the onset of winter. Henceforth the Empire returned to its existing strategy of utilizing the Crimean Khanate as its bulwark against Russia. In 1571, the Crimean khan Devlet I Giray, supported by the Ottomans, burned Moscow. The next year, the invasion was repeated but repelled at the Battle of Molodi. The Crimean Khanate continued to invade Eastern Europe in a series of slave raids, and remained a significant power in Eastern Europe and a threat to Muscovite Russia in particular until the end of the 17th century.


title: History of the Ottoman Empire

text: In southern Europe, a coalition of Catholic powers, led by Philip II of Spain, formed an alliance to challenge Ottoman naval strength in the Mediterranean. Their victory over the Ottoman fleet at the Battle of Lepanto (1571) was a startling blow to the image of Ottoman invincibility. However, historians today stress the symbolic and not the strictly military significance of the battle, for within six months of the defeat a new Ottoman fleet of some 250 sail including eight modern galleasses had been built, with the shipyards of Istanbul turning out a new ship every day at the height of the construction. In discussions with a Venetian minister, the Ottoman Grand Vizier commented: "In capturing Cyprus from you, we have cut off one of your arms; in defeating our fleet you have merely shaved off our beard". The Ottoman naval recovery persuaded Venice to sign a peace treaty in 1573, and the Ottomans were able to expand and consolidate their position in North Africa. However, what could not be replaced were the experienced naval officers and sailors. The Battle of Lepanto was far more damaging to the Ottoman navy in sapping experienced manpower than the loss of ships, which were rapidly replaced.


title: History of the Ottoman Empire

text: By contrast, the Habsburg frontier had settled into a reasonably permanent border, marked only by relatively minor battles concentrating on the possession of individual fortresses. The stalemate was caused by a stiffening of the Habsburg defences and reflected simple geographical limits: in the pre-mechanized age, Vienna marked the furthest point that an Ottoman army could march from Istanbul during the early spring to late autumn campaigning season. It also reflected the difficulties imposed on the Empire by the need to support two separate fronts: one against the Austrians (see: Ottoman wars in Europe), and the other against a rival Islamic state, the Safavids of Persia (see: Ottoman wars in Near East).


title: History of the Ottoman Empire

text: Changes in European military tactics and weaponry in the military revolution caused the Sipahi cavalry to lose military relevance. The Long War against Austria (1593–1606) created the need for greater numbers of infantry equipped with firearms. This resulted in a relaxation of recruitment policy and a significant growth in Janissary corps numbers. Irregular sharpshooters (Sekban) were also recruited for the same reasons and on demobilization turned to brigandage in the Jelali revolts (1595–1610), which engendered widespread anarchy in Anatolia in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. With the Empire's population reaching 30,000,000 people by 1600, shortage of land placed further pressure on the government.


title: History of the Ottoman Empire

text: However, the 17th century was not an era of stagnation and decline, but a key period in which the Ottoman state and its structures began to adapt to new pressures and new realities, internal and external.


title: History of the Ottoman Empire

text: The Sultanate of women (1533–1656) was a period in which the political influence of the Imperial Harem was dominant, as the mothers of young sultans exercised power on behalf of their sons. This was not wholly unprecedented; Hürrem Sultan, who established herself in the early 1530s as the successor of Nurbanu, the first valide sultan, was described by the Venetian baylo Andrea Giritti as "a woman of the utmost goodness, courage and wisdom" even though she "thwarted some while rewarding others". But the inadequacy of Ibrahim I (1640–1648) and the minority accession of Mehmed IV in 1646 created a significant crisis of rule, which the dominant women of the Imperial Harem filled. The most prominent women of this period were Kösem Sultan and her daughter-in-law Turhan Hatice, whose political rivalry culminated in Kösem's murder in 1651.


title: History of the Ottoman Empire

text: This period gave way to the highly significant Köprülü Era (1656–1703), during which effective control of the Empire was exercised by a sequence of Grand Viziers from the Köprülü family. On 15 September 1656 the octogenarian Köprülü Mehmed Pasha accepted the seals of office having received guarantees from the Valide Turhan Hatice of unprecedented authority and freedom from interference. A fierce conservative disciplinarian, he successfully reasserted the central authority and the empire's military impetus. This continued under his son and successor Köprülü Fazıl Ahmed (Grand Vizier 1661–1676). The Köprülü Vizierate saw renewed military success with authority restored in Transylvania, the conquest of Crete completed in 1669 and expansion into Polish southern Ukraine, with the strongholds of Khotyn and Kamianets-Podilskyi and the territory of Podolia ceding to Ottoman control in 1676.


title: History of the Ottoman Empire

text: This period of renewed assertiveness came to a calamitous end when Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa Pasha in May 1683 led a huge army to attempt a second Ottoman siege of Vienna in the Great Turkish War of 1683–1699. The final assault being fatally delayed, the Ottoman forces were swept away by allied Habsburg, German and Polish forces spearheaded by the Polish king Jan at the


title: History of the Ottoman Empire

text: The alliance of the Holy League pressed home the advantage of the defeat at Vienna and, thus, fifteen (15) years of see-sawing warfare, culminated in the epochal Treaty of Karlowitz (26 January 1699), which ended the Great Turkish War. For the first time, the Ottoman Empire surrendered control of significant European territories (many permanently), including Ottoman Hungary. The Empire had reached the end of its ability to effectively conduct an assertive, expansionist policy against its European rivals and it was to be forced from this point to adopt an essentially defensive strategy within this theatre.


title: History of the Ottoman Empire

text: Only two Sultans in this period personally exercised strong political and military control of the Empire: the vigorous Murad IV (1612–1640) recaptured Yerevan (1635) and Baghdad (1639) from the Safavids and reasserted central authority, albeit during a brief majority reign. Mustafa II (1695–1703) led the Ottoman counterattack of 1695–96 against the Habsburgs in Hungary, but was undone at the disastrous defeat at Zenta (11 September 1697).


title: History of the Ottoman Empire

text: During this period threats to the Ottoman Empire were presented by the traditional foe—the Austrian Empire—as well as by a new foe—the rising Russian Empire. Certain areas of the Empire, such as Egypt and Algeria, became independent in all but name, and later came under the influence of Britain and France. Later, in the 18th century, centralized authority within the Ottoman Empire gave way to varying degrees of provincial autonomy enjoyed by local governors and leaders.


title: History of the Ottoman Empire

text: However, Russian expansion presented a large and growing threat. Accordingly, King Charles XII of Sweden was welcomed as an ally in the Ottoman Empire following his defeat by the Russians at the Battle of Poltava in 1709 (part of the Great Northern War of 1700–1721.) Charles XII persuaded the Ottoman Sultan Ahmed III to declare war on Russia, which resulted in the Ottoman victory at the Pruth River Campaign of 1710–1711. Following the Austro-Turkish War (1716–1718), the subsequent Treaty of Passarowitz signed on 21 July 1718, brought a period of peace between wars. However, the Treaty also revealed that the Ottoman Empire was on the defensive and unlikely to present any further aggression in Europe.


title: History of the Ottoman Empire

text: During the Tulip Era (1718–1730), named for Sultan Ahmed III's love of the tulip flower and its use to symbolize his peaceful reign, the Empire's policy towards Europe underwent a shift. The Empire began to improve the fortifications of its cities in the Balkan peninsula to act as a defence against European expansionism. Cultural works, fine arts and architecture flourished, with more elaborate styles that were influenced by the Baroque and Rococo movements in Europe. A classic example is the Fountain of Ahmed III in front of the Topkapı Palace. The famous Flemish-French painter Jean-Baptiste van Mour visited the Ottoman Empire during the Tulip Era and crafted some of the most renowned works of art depicting scenes from daily life in the Ottoman society and the imperial court.


title: History of the Ottoman Empire

text: Upon the death of Peter the Great in 1725, Catherine, Peter's wife succeeded to the throne of the Russian Empire as Czarina Catherine I. Together with Austria, Russia, under Empress Anne, Catherine I's niece, engaged in a war against the Ottoman Empire from 1735 until 1739. The Treaty of Belgrade signed on 18 September 1739, ended this war and resulted in Ottoman recovery of Belgrade and other territories from Austria, but the loss of the port of Azov to the Russians. However following the Treaty of Belgrade, the Ottoman Empire was able to enjoy a generation of peace as Austria and Russia were forced to deal with the rise of the Prussians under King Frederick the Great.


title: History of the Ottoman Empire

text: This long period of Ottoman peace and, indeed, stagnation is typically characterized by historians as an era of failed reforms. In the latter part of this period there were educational and technological reforms, including the establishment of higher education institutions such as the Istanbul Technical University. Ottoman science and technology had been highly regarded in medieval times, as a result of Ottoman scholars' synthesis of classical learning with Islamic philosophy and mathematics, and knowledge of such Chinese advances in technology as gunpowder and the magnetic compass. By this period, though, the influences had become regressive and conservative. In 1734, when an artillery school was established with French teachers in order to impart Western-style artillery methods, the Islamic clergy successfully objected under the grounds of theodicy. Not until 1754 was the artillery school reopened on a semi-secret basis. Earlier, the guilds of writers had denounced the printing press as "the Devil's Invention", and were responsible for a 53-year lag between its invention by Johannes Gutenberg in Europe in c. 1440 and its introduction to the Ottoman society with the first Gutenberg press in Istanbul that was established by the Sephardic Jews of Spain in 1493 (who had migrated to the Ottoman Empire a year earlier, escaping from the Spanish Inquisition of 1492.) However, the printing press was used only by the non-Muslims in the Ottoman Empire until the 18th century. In 1726, Ibrahim Muteferrika convinced the Grand Vizier Nevşehirli Damat İbrahim Pasha, the Grand Mufti, and the clergy on the efficiency of the printing press, and later submitted a request to Sultan Ahmed III, who granted Muteferrika the permission to publish non-religious books (despite opposition from some calligraphers and religious leaders.) Muteferrika's press published its first book in 1729, and, by 1743, issued 17 works in 23 volumes (each having between 500 and 1,000 copies.)


title: History of the Ottoman Empire

text: Other tentative reforms were also enacted: taxes were lowered, there were attempts to improve the image of the Ottoman state, and the first instances of private investment and entrepreneurship occurred.


title: History of the Ottoman Empire

text: Following the period of peace, which had lasted since 1739, Russia began to assert its expansionistic desires again in 1768. Under the pretext of pursuing fugitive Polish revolutionaries, Russian troops entered Balta an Ottoman-controlled city on the border of Bessarabia and massacred its citizens and burned the town to the ground. This action provoked the Ottoman Empire into the First Russo-Turkish War of 1768–1774. The Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca of 1774 ended the First Russo-Turkish War and allowed that the Christian citizens of the Ottoman-controlled Rumanian provinces of Wallachia and Moldavia would be allowed freedom to worship. Russia was made the guarantor of their right to Christian worship.


title: History of the Ottoman Empire

text: A series of wars were fought between the Russian and Ottoman empires from the 18th to the 19th century. By the late 18th century, a number of defeats in several wars with Russia led some people in the Ottoman Empire to conclude that the reforms of Peter the Great had given the Russians an edge, and the Ottomans would have to keep up with Western technology in order to avoid further defeats.


title: History of the Ottoman Empire

text: Ottoman military reform efforts begin with Selim III (1789–1807) who made the first major attempts to modernize the army along European lines. These efforts, however, were hampered by reactionary movements, partly from the religious leadership, but primarily from the Janissary corps, who had become anarchic and ineffectual. Jealous of their privileges and firmly opposed to change, they created a Janissary revolt. Selim's efforts cost him his throne and his life, but were resolved in spectacular and bloody fashion by his successor, the dynamic Mahmud II, who eliminated the Janissary corps in 1826.


title: History of the Ottoman Empire

text: The Serbian revolution (1804–1815) marked the beginning of an era of national awakening in the Balkans during the Eastern Question. Suzerainty of Serbia as a hereditary monarchy under its own dynasty was acknowledged "de jure" in 1830. In 1821, the Greeks declared war on the Sultan. A rebellion that originated in Moldavia as a diversion was followed by the main revolution in the Peloponnese, which, along with the northern part of the Gulf of Corinth, became the first parts of the Ottoman empire to achieve independence (in 1829). By the mid-19th century, the Ottoman Empire was called the "sick man" by Europeans. The suzerain states – the Principality of Serbia, Wallachia, Moldavia and Montenegro – moved towards "de jure" independence during the 1860s and 1870s.


title: History of the Ottoman Empire

text: During this period, the empire faced challenges in defending itself against foreign invasion and occupation. The empire ceased to enter conflicts on its own and began to forge alliances with European countries such as France, the Netherlands, Britain and Russia. As an example, in the 1853 Crimean War, the Ottomans united with Britain, France and the Kingdom of Sardinia against Russia.


title: History of the Ottoman Empire

text: During the Tanzimat period (from Arabic: تنظيم "tanẓīm", meaning "organisation") (1839–76), the government's series of constitutional reforms led to a fairly modern conscripted army, banking system reforms, the decriminalisation of homosexuality, the replacement of religious law with secular law and guilds with modern factories. In 1856, the "Hatt-ı Hümayun" promised equality for all Ottoman citizens regardless of their ethnicity and religious confession; which thus widened the scope of the 1839 "Hatt-ı Şerif" of Gülhane.


title: History of the Ottoman Empire

text: Overall, the Tanzimat reforms had far-reaching effects. Those educated in the schools established during the Tanzimat period included Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and other progressive leaders and thinkers of the Republic of Turkey and of many other former Ottoman states in the Balkans, the Middle East and North Africa. These reforms included guarantees to ensure the Ottoman subjects perfect security for their lives, honour and property; the introduction of the first Ottoman paper banknotes (1840) and opening of the first post offices (1840); the reorganisation of the finance system according to the French model (1840); the reorganisation of the Civil and Criminal Code according to the French model (1840); the establishment of the "Meclis-i Maarif-i Umumiye" (1841) which was the prototype of the First Ottoman Parliament (1876); the reorganisation of the army and a regular method of recruiting, levying the army and fixing the duration of military service (1843–44); the adoption of an Ottoman national anthem and Ottoman national flag (1844); the first nationwide Ottoman census in 1844 (only male citizens were counted); the first national identity cards (officially named the "Mecidiye" identity papers, or informally "kafa kağıdı" ("head paper") documents, 1844); the institution of a Council of Public Instruction (1845) and the Ministry of Education ("Mekatib-i Umumiye Nezareti", 1847, which later became the "Maarif Nezareti", 1857); the abolition of slavery and slave trade (1847); the establishment of the first modern universities ("darülfünun", 1848), academies (1848) and teacher schools ("darülmuallimin", 1848); establishment of the Ministry of Healthcare ("Tıbbiye Nezareti", 1850); the Commerce and Trade Code (1850); establishment of the Academy of Sciences ("Encümen-i Daniş", 1851); establishment of the "Şirket-i Hayriye" which operated the first steam-powered commuter ferries (1851); the first European style courts ("Meclis-i Ahkam-ı Adliye", 1853) and supreme judiciary council ("Meclis-i Ali-yi Tanzimat", 1853); establishment of the modern Municipality of Istanbul ("Şehremaneti", 1854) and the City Planning Council ("İntizam-ı Şehir Komisyonu", 1855); the abolition of the capitation (Jizya) tax on non-Muslims, with a regular method of establishing and collecting taxes (1856); non-Muslims were allowed to become soldiers (1856); various provisions for the better administration of the public service and advancement of commerce; the establishment of the first telegraph networks (1847–1855) and railways (1856); the replacement of guilds with factories; the establishment of the Ottoman Central Bank (originally established as the "Bank-ı Osmanî" in 1856, and later reorganised as the "Bank-ı Osmanî-i Şahane" in 1863) and the Ottoman Stock Exchange ("Dersaadet Tahvilat Borsası", established in 1866); the Land Code ("Arazi Kanunnamesi", 1857); permission for private sector publishers and printing firms with the "Serbesti-i Kürşad Nizamnamesi" (1857); establishment of the School of Economical and Political Sciences ("Mekteb-i Mülkiye", 1859); the Press and Journalism Regulation Code ("Matbuat Nizamnamesi", 1864); among others.


title: History of the Ottoman Empire

text: The Ottoman Ministry of Post was established in Istanbul on 23 October 1840. The first post office was the "Postahane-i Amire" near the courtyard of the Yeni Mosque. In 1876 the first international mailing network between Istanbul and the lands beyond the vast Ottoman Empire was established. In 1901 the first money transfers were made through the post offices and the first cargo services became operational.


title: History of the Ottoman Empire

text: Samuel Morse received his first ever patent for the telegraph in 1847, at the old Beylerbeyi Palace (the present Beylerbeyi Palace was built in 1861–1865 on the same location) in Istanbul, which was issued by Sultan Abdülmecid who personally tested the new invention. Following this successful test, installation works of the first telegraph line (Istanbul-Adrianople–Şumnu) began on 9 August 1847. In 1855 the Ottoman telegraph network became operational and the Telegraph Administration was established. In 1871 the Ministry of Post and the Telegraph Administration were merged, becoming the Ministry of Post and Telegraph. In July 1881 the first telephone circuit in Istanbul was established between the Ministry of Post and Telegraph in the Soğukçeşme quarter and the Postahane-i Amire in the Yenicami quarter. On 23 May 1909, the first manual telephone exchange with a 50 line capacity entered service in the Büyük Postane (Grand Post Office) in Sirkeci.


title: History of the Ottoman Empire

text: The reformist period peaked with the Constitution, called the "Kanûn-u Esâsî" (meaning "Basic Law" in Ottoman Turkish), written by members of the Young Ottomans, which was promulgated on 23 November 1876. It established the freedom of belief and equality of all citizens before the law. The empire's First Constitutional era, was short-lived. But the idea of Ottomanism proved influential. A group of reformers known as the Young Ottomans, primarily educated in Western universities, believed that a constitutional monarchy would give an answer to the empire's growing social unrest. Through a military coup in 1876, they forced Sultan Abdülaziz (1861–1876) to abdicate in favour of Murad V. However, Murad V was mentally ill and was deposed within a few months. His heir-apparent, Abdülhamid II (1876–1909), was invited to assume power on the condition that he would declare a constitutional monarchy, which he did on 23 November 1876. The parliament survived for only two years before the sultan suspended it. When forced to reconvene it, he abolished the representative body instead. This ended the effectiveness of the "Kanûn-ı Esâsî".


title: History of the Ottoman Empire

text: The Christian millets gained privileges, such as in the Armenian National Constitution of 1863. This Divan-approved form of the "Code of Regulations" consisted of 150 articles drafted by the Armenian intelligentsia. Another institution was the newly formed Armenian National Assembly. The Christian population of the empire, owing to their higher educational levels, started to pull ahead of the Muslim majority, leading to much resentment on the part of the latter. In 1861, there were 571 primary and 94 secondary schools for Ottoman Christians with 140,000 pupils in total, a figure that vastly exceeded the number of Muslim children in school at the same time, who were further hindered by the amount of time spent learning Arabic and Islamic theology. In turn, the higher educational levels of the Christians allowed them to play a large role in the economy. In 1911, of the 654 wholesale companies in Istanbul, 528 were owned by ethnic Greeks.


title: History of the Ottoman Empire

text: The Crimean War (1853–1856) was part of a long-running contest between the major European powers for influence over territories of the declining Ottoman Empire. Britain and France successfully defended the Ottoman Empire against Russia.


title: History of the Ottoman Empire

text: Most of the fighting took place when the allies landed on Russia's Crimean Peninsula to gain control of the Black Sea. There were smaller campaigns in western Anatolia, the Caucasus, the Baltic Sea, the Pacific Ocean and the White Sea. It was one of the first "modern" wars, as it introduced new technologies to warfare, such as the first tactical use of railways and the telegraph. The subsequent Treaty of Paris (1856) secured Ottoman control over the Balkan Peninsula and the Black Sea basin. That lasted until defeat in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878.


title: History of the Ottoman Empire

text: The Ottoman Empire took its first foreign loans on 4 August 1854, shortly after the beginning of the Crimean War.


title: History of the Ottoman Empire

text: The war caused an exodus of the Crimean Tatars. From the total Tatar population of 300,000 in the Tauride Province, about 200,000 Crimean Tatars moved to the Ottoman Empire in continuing waves of emigration. Toward the end of the Caucasian Wars, 90% of the Circassians were exiled from their homelands in the Caucasus and settled in the Ottoman Empire. Since the 19th century, the exodus to present-day Turkey by the large portion of Muslim peoples from the Balkans, Caucasus, Crimea and Crete, had great influence in molding the country's fundamental features. These people were called "Muhacir" under a general definition. By the time the Ottoman Empire came to an end in 1922, half of the urban population of Turkey was descended from Muslim refugees from Russia. Crimean Tatar refugees in the late 19th century played an especially notable role in seeking to modernise Turkish education.


title: History of the Ottoman Empire

text: The rise of nationalism swept through many countries during the 19th century, and it affected territories within the Ottoman Empire. A burgeoning national consciousness, together with a growing sense of ethnic nationalism, made nationalistic thought one of the most significant Western ideas imported to the Ottoman Empire. It was forced to deal with nationalism both within and beyond its borders. The number of revolutionary political parties rose dramatically. Uprisings in Ottoman territory had many far-reaching consequences during the 19th century and determined much of Ottoman policy during the early 20th century. Many Ottoman Turks questioned whether the policies of the state were to blame: some felt that the sources of ethnic conflict were external, and unrelated to issues of governance. While this era was not without some successes, the ability of the Ottoman state to have any effect on ethnic uprisings was seriously called into question.


title: History of the Ottoman Empire

text: In 1804 the Serbian Revolution against Ottoman rule erupted in the Balkans, running in parallel with the Napoleonic invasion. By 1817, when the revolution ended, Serbia was raised to the status of self-governing monarchy under nominal Ottoman suzerainty. In 1821 the First Hellenic Republic became the first Balkan country to achieve its independence from the Ottoman Empire. It was officially recognised by the Porte in 1829, after the end of the Greek War of Independence.


title: History of the Ottoman Empire

text: The Tanzimat reforms did not halt the rise of nationalism in the Danubian Principalities and the Principality of Serbia, which had been semi-independent for almost six decades. In 1875, the tributary principalities of Serbia and Montenegro, and the United Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia, unilaterally declared their independence from the empire. Following the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878, the empire granted independence to all three belligerent nations. Bulgaria also achieved independence (as the Principality of Bulgaria); its volunteers had participated in the Russo-Turkish War on the side of the rebelling nations.