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| 1882, Sept |
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| The British occupation of Egypt. Until Dec. 18, 1914, when Britain declared Egypt a protectorate, the legal fiction of Ottoman suzerainty over Egypt was maintained. Britain accepted the established practice of the Ottoman investiture of a new khedive, which included the formal issuance at the time of succession of an Ottoman decree that described his autonomous powers and his obligations to the sultan. | 1 |
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| 1882–1914 |
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| JEWISH IMMIGRATION TO PALESTINE. Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe, many of them fleeing persecution in Russia, began to arrive in Palestine in 1882. The first wave of immigration (known as the First Aliyah, 1882–1904) saw the arrival of some 30,000 settlers and the establishment of 23 new Jewish agricultural settlements. The Second Aliyah (1904–14) brought in about 33,000 settlers imbued with Theodor Herzl's political vision of Jewish statehood. It included David Ben Gurion and other leaders who became the founding fathers of Israel. | 2 |
| With this Zionist effort to encourage immigration, the Yishuv (the Hebrew term for the Jewish community of Palestine) rose dramatically from 24,000 in 1882 to about 75,000 in 1914, increasing its share of the total from 5 to 10 percent. Starting in 1882 the Ottoman government issued orders prohibiting Jewish settlement in Palestine, and after 1892 added restrictions on their purchase of landed property there, but in practice local officials did little to enforce them. | 3 |
| The Jewish settlers directed much of their early colonizing effort toward agriculture, where their socialist ideology gave birth to the kibbutz, an innovative communal settlement in which members pooled their energies in the service of the group. In 1909 the settlers founded the city of Tel Aviv, the first all-Jewish town in the world. Perhaps their most profound achievement was the revival of Hebrew as a spoken language, largely through the untiring efforts of Eliezer Ben Yehuda (1858–1922), who campaigned for its exclusive use as the language of Jewish national rebirth. He compiled a comprehensive historical Hebrew dictionary and coined many new words to bring the language up to date. The schools of the early colonies used spoken Hebrew, helping its rapid development as the common tongue of the diverse Jewish population of Palestine. | 4 |
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| 1885, Sept |
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| Bulgarian annexation of Eastern Rumelia (See 1885, Sept. 18), following a pro-union revolt by Rumelian leaders. The sultan acquiesced in this overthrow of a central provision of the 1878 Berlin settlement. | 5 |
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| 1888 |
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| Completion of the Vienna-Istanbul railway line, which served the Orient Express. The concession for the line was awarded in 1868. | 6 |
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| 1889 |
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| Insurrection in Crete led the Ottomans to strengthen their direct rule and suspend previous arrangements for representative institutions (including the Halepa Pact of Oct. 1878, which provided for an assembly with a Christian majority). | 7 |
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| 1889–1907 |
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| DEVELOPMENT OF THE YOUNG TURK MOVEMENT. The movement was composed of Ottoman officers, bureaucrats, and intellectuals who opposed the regime of Sultan Abdulhamid and were guided by two main aims: the preservation of the empire and the restoration of the 1876 constitution. In July 1908 they succeeded in overthrowing the regime and ruled the empire until the end of World War I. The birth of the opposition movement is dated back to 1889, when students of the military medical school in Istanbul formed a secret society to fight the government. Similar secret societies sprang up in other colleges and among junior officers in the army, despite crackdowns by the authorities. At the same time, opponents of the regime in exile in European capitals and in Cairo published their ideas and smuggled their works into the empire. In 1899 they were joined by a relative of the sultan, Prince Sabaheddin, who from his headquarters in Paris advocated decentralization as the key to the empire's salvation. His approach was opposed by another strand in the movement, represented by Ahmed Riza, which favored a policy of centralization as the only way to prevent the dismembering of the empire. | 8 |
| Much remains obscure about the various groups, their activities, and their links with one another. The best-known group of conspirators within the empire was the Ottoman Freedom Society founded in Salonica in the summer of 1906 by army officers and civilian officials. Branches of it spread rapidly in Macedonia, and in Sept. 1907 the group united with Ahmed Riza's group in Europe under the name of the Committee of Union and Progress. The committee was the leading faction in the Young Turk Revolution. | 9 |
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| 1890–95 |
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| Construction of the modern port of Beirut by a French concessionary company. | 10 |
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| 1894–96 |
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| OTTOMAN-ARMENIAN TROUBLES. The empire's Armenian population (concentrated most heavily in eastern Anatolia) experienced a cultural revival and a growth of Armenian political consciousness during the 19th century. Along with the development of modern schools and contacts with Europe, there was an emergence of revolutionary groups seeking to stir Armenian agitation against Ottoman rule. From around 1890 disturbances and acts of terror increased in eastern Anatolia, and the government employed the Hamidiye irregular troops of Kurdish tribesmen stationed in the area to maintain the peace. In the summer of 1894 things reached a head with an Armenian uprising in the area of Sasun. It was put down brutally by the Hamidiye troops, and the massacres led to a great outcry in Europe. On Sept. 30, 1895, a demonstration of Armenians in Istanbul provoked attacks by Muslims, and a massacre of Armenians in the capital and other towns ensued. Agitation by Armenian revolutionaries continued, especially in the region of Zeytun, culminating in the seizure of the Ottoman Bank in Istanbul by armed Armenians of the Dashnak Party (Aug. 26, 1896). This set in motion large-scale massacres of Armenians in Istanbul. | 11 |
| The failure of the Armenian activists to bring the European powers to intervene on their behalf, and the high costs of the disturbances, led them to reconsider their strategy. Although some years of relative calm followed, the events of 1894–96 left a legacy of hostility between Armenians and Muslims (especially Kurds) in Anatolia and encouraged close to 100,000 Armenians to emigrate to the Caucasus and America. | 12 |
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| 1895, May 25 |
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| Death of Ahmed Jevdet (b. 1822), one of the leading reforming officials in the Ottoman central government. He served in many ministerial posts, directed the drafting of the Ottoman Civil Code (the Mejelle), and wrote a multivolume Ottoman history. | 13 |
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| 1896–97 |
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| Revolt in Crete and war with Greece (See 1897, Feb. 2) (See 1896–97). An insurrection in Crete led to large-scale violence between Muslims and Christians, a proclamation by the rebels of union with Greece, and the invasion of the island by a Greek force (Feb. 1897). Greece went to war against the Ottomans (April 1897) but was soundly defeated and had to ask for European intervention to rescue it from Ottoman advances into its territory. The final settlement established autonomy for Crete under European control, with only symbolic Ottoman presence. The crisis set in motion the flight of thousands of Muslim refugees from Crete and Greece to western Anatolia. Greece finally annexed Crete during the First Balkan War in 1912–13. | 14 |
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| 1897 |
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| Death in Istanbul of JAMAL AL-DIN AL-AFGHANI (b. 1839), the most famous Pan-Islamic activist of the 19th century. Afghani was an Iranian Shi’ite who passed himself off as an Afghan to ensure favorable reception among Sunni Muslims. In a turbulent career that took him to Egypt, India, Afghanistan, Iran, and finally to Istanbul, he worked to awaken Muslims to the threat of European domination, preaching the importance of Muslim solidarity, opposition to Muslim rulers who abetted European penetration, and the need to restore the glory of Islam by reforming it. His inspiring lectures and political agitation stirred people throughout the region and had a profound influence on the development of modern Islamic thought. | 15 |
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| 1898, Oct |
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| Visit of Kaiser William II to Istanbul and Palestine. The trip strengthened the fast-developing ties between the Ottoman Empire and Germany. The Germans became the chief providers of weapons and training to the Ottoman army, and by 1914 accounted for 23.2 percent of foreign capital investments in the empire, including a major stake in the ambitious Baghdad Railway project. | 16 |
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