Ottoman Algeria
The regency of Algiers, was a vassal state of the Ottoman Empire in North Africa lasting from 1515 to 1830, when it was conquered by the French. Situated between the regency of Tunis in the east and the Sharifian Empire in the west, the Regency extended its borders from La Calle to the east to Trara in the west and from Algiers to Biskra, after spread to the present eastern and western borders of Algeria; the Regency was governed by beylerbeys, pashas and deys, was composed of various beyliks under the authority of beys: Constantine in the east, Medea in the Titteri and Mazouna Mascara and Oran in the west. Each beylik was divided into various outan with at their head the caïds directly under the bey. To administer the interior of the country, the administration relied on the tribes said makhzen; these tribes were responsible for securing order and collecting taxes on the tributary regions of the country. It was through this system that, for three centuries, the State of Algiers extended its authority over the north of Algeria.
However, society was still divided into tribes and dominated by maraboutics brotherhoods or local djouads. Several regions of the country thus only recognised the authority of Algiers. Throughout its history, they formed numerous revolts, tribal fiefs or sultanates that fought with the regency for control. Before 1830, out of the 516 political units, a total of 200 principalities or tribes were considered independent because they controlled over 60% of the territory in Algeria and refused to pay taxes to Algiers. From 1496, the Spanish conquered numerous possessions on the North African coast, captured since 1496: Melilla, Mers El Kébir, Bougie, Algiers, Shershell and Tenes. Around the same time, the Ottoman privateer brothers Oruç and Hayreddin—both known to Europeans as Barbarossa, or "Red Beard"—were operating off Tunisia under the Hafsids. In 1516, Oruç moved his base of operations to Algiers and asked for the protection of the Ottoman Empire in 1517, but was killed in 1518 during his invasion of the Kingdom of Tlemcen.
Hayreddin succeeded him as military commander of Algiers. Oruç, Hayreddin Barbarossa's brother, captured Algiers in 1516, apart from the Spanish Peñón of Algiers. Following the death of Oruç in 1518 at the hand of the Spanish in the Fall of Tlemcen, Barbarossa requested the assistance of the Ottoman Empire, in exchange for acknowledging Ottoman authority in his dominions. Before Ottoman help could arrive, the Spanish retook the city of Algiers in 1519. Barbarossa recaptured the city definitively in 1525, in 1529 the Spanish Peñon in the capture of Algiers. Hayreddin Barbarossa established the military basis of the regency; the Ottomans provided a supporting garrison of 2,000 Turkish troops with artillery. He left Hasan Agha in command as his deputy when he had to leave for Constantinople in 1533; the son of Barbarossa, Hasan Pashan was in 1544, when his father retired, the first governor of the Regency to be directly appointed by the Ottoman Empire. He took the title of beylerbey. Algiers became a base in the war against Spain, in the Ottoman conflicts with Morocco.
Beylerbeys continued to be nominated for unlimited tenures until 1587. After Spain had sent an embassy to Constantinople in 1578 to negotiate a truce, leading to a formal peace in August 1580, the Regency of Algiers was a formal Ottoman territory, rather than just a military base in the war against Spain. At this time, the Ottoman Empire set up a regular Ottoman administration in Algiers and its dependencies, headed by Pashas, with 3 year terms to help considate Ottoman power in the Maghreb. Despite the end of formal hostilities with Spain in 1580, attacks on Christian and Catholic shipping, with slavery for the captured, became prevalent in Algiers, were the main industry and source of revenues of the Regency. In the early 17th century, Algiers became, along with other North African ports such as Tunis, one of the bases for Anglo-Turkish piracy. There were as many as 8,000 renegades in the city in 1634. Hayreddin Barbarossa is credited with tearing down the Peñón of Algiers and using the stone to build the inner harbor.
A contemporary letter states: "The infinity of goods, merchandise jewels and treasure taken by our English pirates daily from Christians and carried to Allarach and Tunis to the great enriching of Mores and Turks and impoverishing of Christians" Privateer and slavery of Christians originating from Algiers were a major problem throughout the centuries, leading to regular punitive expeditions by European powers. Spain, France, all led naval bombardments against Algiers. Abraham Duquesne fought the Barbary pirates in 1681 and bombarded Algiers between 1682 and 1683, to help Christian captives. In the mid-1700s Dano-Norwegian trade in the Mediterranean expanded. In order to protect the lucrative business against piracy, Denmark–Norway had secured a peace deal with the states of Barbary Coast, it involved paying an annual tribute to the individual rulers and additionally to the States. In 1766, Algiers had dey Baba Mohammed ben-Osman, he demanded that the annual payment made by Denmark-Norway should be increased, he should receive new gifts.
Denmark–Norway refused the demands. Shortly after, Algerian pirates hijacked three Dano-Norwegian ships and allowed the crew to be sold as slave
Mediterranean Sea
The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and completely enclosed by land: on the north by Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa and on the east by the Levant. Although the sea is sometimes considered a part of the Atlantic Ocean, it is identified as a separate body of water. Geological evidence indicates that around 5.9 million years ago, the Mediterranean was cut off from the Atlantic and was or desiccated over a period of some 600,000 years, the Messinian salinity crisis, before being refilled by the Zanclean flood about 5.3 million years ago. It covers an approximate area of 2.5 million km2, representing 0.7 % of the global ocean surface, but its connection to the Atlantic via the Strait of Gibraltar-the narrow strait that connects the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea and separates Spain in Europe from Morocco in Africa- is only 14 km wide. In oceanography, it is sometimes called the Eurafrican Mediterranean Sea or the European Mediterranean Sea to distinguish it from mediterranean seas elsewhere.
The Mediterranean Sea has an average depth of 1,500 m and the deepest recorded point is 5,267 m in the Calypso Deep in the Ionian Sea. The sea is bordered on the north by Europe, the east by Asia, in the south by Africa, it is located between latitudes 30° and 46° N and longitudes 6° W and 36° E. Its west-east length, from the Strait of Gibraltar to the Gulf of Iskenderun, on the southwestern coast of Turkey, is 4,000 km; the sea's average north-south length, from Croatia's southern shore to Libya, is 800 km. The sea was an important route for merchants and travellers of ancient times that allowed for trade and cultural exchange between emergent peoples of the region; the history of the Mediterranean region is crucial to understanding the origins and development of many modern societies. The countries surrounding the Mediterranean in clockwise order are Spain, Monaco, Slovenia, Croatia and Herzegovina, Albania, Turkey, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco. In addition, the Gaza Strip and the British Overseas Territories of Gibraltar and Akrotiri and Dhekelia have coastlines on the sea.
The Ancient Greeks called the Mediterranean ἡ θάλασσα or sometimes ἡ μεγάλη θάλασσα, ἡ ἡμέτερα θάλασσα, or ἡ θάλασσα ἡ καθ'ἡμᾶς. The Romans called it Mare Mare Internum and, starting with the Roman Empire, Mare Nostrum; the term Mare Mediterrāneum appears later: Solinus used it in the 3rd century, but the earliest extant witness to it is in the 6th century, in Isidore of Seville. It means'in the middle of land, inland' in Latin, a compound of medius, -āneus; the Latin word is a calque of Greek μεσόγειος, from μέσος and γήινος, from γῆ. The original meaning may have been'the sea in the middle of the earth', rather than'the sea enclosed by land'; the Carthaginians called it the "Syrian Sea". In ancient Syrian texts, Phoenician epics and in the Hebrew Bible, it was known as the "Great Sea" or as "The Sea". Another name was the "Sea of the Philistines", from the people inhabiting a large portion of its shores near the Israelites. In Modern Hebrew, it is called HaYam HaTikhon'the Middle Sea'. In Modern Arabic, it is known as al-Baḥr al-Mutawassiṭ'the Middle Sea'.
In Islamic and older Arabic literature, it was Baḥr al-Rūm'the Sea of the Romans' or'the Roman Sea'. At first, that name referred to only the Eastern Mediterranean, but it was extended to the whole Mediterranean. Other Arabic names were Baḥr al-šām'the Sea of Syria' and Baḥr al-Maghrib'the Sea of the West'. In Turkish, it is the Akdeniz'the White Sea'; the origin of the name is not clear, as it is not known in earlier Greek, Byzantine or Islamic sources. It may be to contrast with the Black Sea. In Persian, the name was translated as Baḥr-i Safīd, used in Ottoman Turkish, it is the origin of the colloquial Greek phrase Άσπρη Θάλασσα. Johann Knobloch claims that in Classical Antiquity, cultures in the Levant used colours to refer to the cardinal points: black referred to the north, yellow or blue to east, red to south, white to west; this would explain both the Turkish Akdeniz and the Arab nomenclature described above. Several ancient civilizations were located around the Mediterranean shores and were influenced by their proximity to the sea.
It provided routes for trade and war, as well as food for numerous communities throughout the ages. Due to the shared climate and access to the sea, c
Ottoman Tunisia
Ottoman Tunis refers to the episode of the Turkish presence in Ifriqiya during the course of three centuries from the 16th century until the 18th century, when Tunis was integrated into the Ottoman Empire as the Eyalet of Tunis. Including all of the Maghrib except Morocco, the Ottoman Empire began with the takeover of Algiers in 1516 by the Ottoman Turkish corsair and beylerbey Oruç Reis; the first Ottoman conquest of Tunis took place in 1534 under the command of Barbarossa Hayreddin Pasha, the younger brother of Oruç Reis, the Kapudan Pasha of the Ottoman Fleet during the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent. However, it wasn't until the final Ottoman reconquest of Tunis from Spain in 1574 under Kapudan Pasha Uluç Ali Reis that the Turks permanently acquired the former Hafsid Tunisia, retaining it until the French occupation of Tunisia in 1881. Under Turkish rule from Algiers, soon the Ottoman Porte appointed directly for Tunis a governor called the Pasha supported by janissary forces. Before long, Tunisia became in effect an autonomous province, under the local Bey.
This evolution of status was from time to time challenged without success by Algiers. During this era the governing councils controlling Tunisia remained composed of a foreign elite who continued to conduct state business in the Ottoman Turkish language. Attacks on European shipping were made by Barbary pirates from Algiers, but from Tunis and Tripoli, yet after a long period of declining raids, the growing power of the European states forced its termination after the Barbary Wars. Under the Ottoman Empire, the boundaries of Tunisia contracted. In the 19th century, the rulers of Tunisia became aware of the ongoing efforts at political and social reform in the Ottoman capital; the Bey of Tunis by his own lights but informed by the Turkish example, attempted to effect a modernizing reform of institutions and the economy. Tunisian international debt grew unmanageable; this was the reason or pretext for French forces to establish a Protectorate in 1881. A remnant of the centuries of Turkish rule is the presence of a population of Turkish origin the male descendants were referred to as the Kouloughlis.
In the 16th century, control of the western Mediterranean was contested between Turk. Both were confident due to consequent expansion. In 1492, Spain had completed her centuries-long reconquista of the Iberian peninsula, followed by the first Spanish settlements in America. Spain formulated an African policy: a series of presidios in port cities along the African coast. For their part, the Ottoman Turks had fulfilled their long-term ambition of capturing Constantinople in 1453 successfully invaded further into the Balkans, conquered Syria and Egypt. Turkish corsairs became active from bases in the Maghrib. Spain captured and occupied several ports in North Africa, including Mers-el-Kebir, Oran and Bougie. Among these agreements were ones with Algiers, which included Spanish occupation of the off-shore island Peñón de Argel, with Tlemcen, a city about 40 km. inland, with Tunis, whose Spanish alliance lasted on-and-off for decades. Near Tunis, the port of Goletta was occupied by Spanish forces who built there a large and strong presidio.
The Hafsid dynasty had since 1227 ruled Tunisia, enjoying prestige when it was the leading state of the Maghrib, or surviving in ill-favored times. Extensive trade with European merchants continued over some centuries, an activity which led to state treaties, yet the Hafsids harbored corsairs who raided merchant shipping. During the 15th century the Hafsids employed as bodyguards a Christian force of hundreds, nearly all Catalans. In the 16th century the Hafsid rule grew weak, limited to Tunis, yet the cross-cultural Hafsid alliance with Spain was not as unusual as it might seem, given the many Muslim-Christian treaties—despite recurrent hostilities. Indeed, during the early 16th century, France allied with the Ottomans against the Spanish King Carlos; as an indirect result of Spain's Africa policy, a few Muslim rulers encouraged Turkish forces to enter the region to counter the Spanish presence. Yet the Hafsid rulers of Tunis came to see the Turks and their corsair allies as a greater threat and entered a Spanish alliance, as did the Sa'dids of Morocco.
Nonetheless many Maghriban Muslims preferred Islamic rule, the Hafsid's decades-long Spanish alliance was not popular, indeed anathema to some. On the other hand, the Saadi dynasty sultans of Morocco played off Iberian against Turk, thus managing to remain both Muslim ruled and independent of the Ottoman grasp. In this naval struggle, the Ottoman Empire supported many corsairs, who raided European commercial shipping in the Mediterranean; the corsairs would make Algiers their principal base. The "architects of Ottoman rule in the Maghrib" were Aruj and his younger brother Khizr "Khayr al-Din". Both were called Barbarossa; the Muslim brothers hailed from obscure origins in the Greek island of Mytilene. After acquiring fighting experience in the eastern Mediterranean, the two brothers arrived in Tunis
William Bainbridge
William Bainbridge was a Commodore in the United States Navy. During his long career in the young American Navy he served under six presidents beginning with John Adams and is notable for his many victories at sea, he commanded several famous naval ships, including USS Constitution and saw service in the Barbary Wars and the War of 1812. Bainbridge was in command of USS Philadelphia when she grounded off the shores of Tripoli in North Africa, resulting in his capture and imprisonment for many months. In the latter part of his career he became the U. S. Naval Commissioner. William Bainbridge was born in Princeton, New Jersey, eldest son of Dr. Absalom Bainbridge and Mary Taylor, his father, a loyalist during the American Revolution, served as a surgeon in the British Army and was convicted of high treason by the State of New Jersey and filed for damages with the American Loyalist Claims Commission. William had two brothers: Joseph, who became a Navy captain, John T.. He was raised by his maternal grandfather, John Taylor, Esq. of Middleton, New Jersey as his father left for England in 1783 and his mother remained behind due to her ill health.
In his teens William Bainbridge was of athletic and manly build and had an energetic and adventurous spirit. He was trained as a seaman in ships in the Delaware River considered the best'school' for seamanship because of the great skill required to navigate that river. Bainbridge served aboard the small merchant ship Cantor in 1792. In 1796 after returning from Brazil, Bainbridge served aboard the merchant ship Hope, a small vessel of 140 tons with four nine-pound guns. While he was in port in the Garonne River at Bordeaux preparing for his fourth voyage, the captain of a nearby ship, under mutiny hailed Bainbridge and asked for help. For his courage and in recognition of his navigational and seaman skills he was made commander of that ship in 1796 at the age of nineteen. After leaving France that same year he sailed to the Caribbean. While in port at St. Johns, Bainbridge refused to stop; the English vessel fired guns in response where Bainbridge and his crack crew turned about and with only two guns to a broadside, inflicted enough damage that forced the enemy ship to strike colors and surrender.
Bainbridge saw service in several wars and commanded a number of famous early U. S. Navy vessels including USS George Washington, USS Philadelphia and USS Constitution becoming a member of the board of naval commissioners during the latter part of his long naval career. With the organization of the United States Navy in 1798, Bainbridge was included in the naval officer corps and in September 1798 was appointed commanding Lieutenant of the schooner USS Retaliation, he was ordered to patrol the waters in the West Indies along with Captain Williams of USS Norfolk, both of whom were under the command of Murray, in command of the frigate USS Montezuma. On November 20, 1798, Lt. Bainbridge surrendered Retaliation without resistance to two French frigates, with 44 guns and l'Insurgente bearing 40 guns, after he mistook them for British warships and approached them without identifying them. Bainbridge and his crew were taken aboard Volontier where the two French frigates continued in their pursuit of other nearby American vessels.
During the flight to capture the Americans, Bainbridge offered words of caution to the French commander of L' Insurgente, Captain St. Laurent, about American strength. Retaliation was the first ship in the nascent United States Navy to be surrendered. Bainbridge was not disciplined for this action. In March 1799, Bainbridge was appointed Master Commandant of the brig USS Norfolk of 18 guns and ordered to cruise against the French. In 1800 during the months before the First Barbary War broke out, Bainbridge was given the ignominious task of carrying the tribute which the United States still paid to the Dey of Algiers to secure exemption from capture for U. S. merchant ships in the Mediterranean. Upon arrival in the 24-gun USS George Washington, he allowed the harbor pilot to guide him directly under the guns of the fort overlooking the harbor. Upon his arrival the Dey demanded that Bainbridge use his ship to ferry the Algerian ambassador and tributary gifts to Constantinople, that he fly the Algerian flag during the journey.
With George Washington under the guns of the fort and surrounded by the Dey's warships and military personnel Bainbridge reluctantly complied for fear of imprisonment and raised the Algerian flag on his masthead and delivered gifts of animals and slaves to Constantinople. President Jefferson found that bribing the pirate Barbary states did not work, decided to use force. On May 21, 1803, Bainbridge was placed in command of USS Philadelphia, tasked with enforcing a blockade of Tripoli. Bainbridge mistakenly ran the ship aground on an uncharted reef on October 21, 1803. Bainbridge made the situation worse by putting on all sail before sounding around the boat to determine the actual situation, resulting in driving the ship hard onto the bank. All efforts to refloat her under five hours of cannon fire from Tripolitan gunboats, inaccurate fire that with no shots coming near the powerful frigate, Bainbridge decided to surrender. Bainbridge surrendered his powerful frigate to a small gunboat despite never receiving accurate fire, if he had chosen to wait until high tide his ship would have floated free of the sandbank.
Before doing so he ordered all small arms throw
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman Empire known in Western Europe as the Turkish Empire or Turkey, was a state that controlled much of Southeast Europe, Western Asia and North Africa between the 14th and early 20th centuries. It was founded at the end of the 13th century in northwestern Anatolia in the town of Söğüt by the Oghuz Turkish tribal leader Osman I. After 1354, the Ottomans crossed into Europe, with the conquest of the Balkans, the Ottoman beylik was transformed into a transcontinental empire; the Ottomans ended the Byzantine Empire with the 1453 conquest of Constantinople by Mehmed the Conqueror. During the 16th and 17th centuries, at the height of its power under the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent, the Ottoman Empire was a multinational, multilingual empire controlling most of Southeast Europe, parts of Central Europe, Western Asia, parts of Eastern Europe and the Caucasus, North Africa and the Horn of Africa. At the beginning of the 17th century, the empire contained numerous vassal states; some of these were absorbed into the Ottoman Empire, while others were granted various types of autonomy during the course of centuries.
With Constantinople as its capital and control of lands around the Mediterranean basin, the Ottoman Empire was at the centre of interactions between the Eastern and Western worlds for six centuries. While the empire was once thought to have entered a period of decline following the death of Suleiman the Magnificent, this view is no longer supported by the majority of academic historians; the empire continued to maintain a flexible and strong economy and military throughout the 17th and much of the 18th century. However, during a long period of peace from 1740 to 1768, the Ottoman military system fell behind that of their European rivals, the Habsburg and Russian empires; the Ottomans suffered severe military defeats in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, which prompted them to initiate a comprehensive process of reform and modernisation known as the Tanzimat. Thus, over the course of the 19th century, the Ottoman state became vastly more powerful and organised, despite suffering further territorial losses in the Balkans, where a number of new states emerged.
The empire allied with Germany in the early 20th century, hoping to escape from the diplomatic isolation which had contributed to its recent territorial losses, thus joined World War I on the side of the Central Powers. While the Empire was able to hold its own during the conflict, it was struggling with internal dissent with the Arab Revolt in its Arabian holdings. During this time, atrocities were committed by the Young Turk government against the Armenians and Pontic Greeks; the Empire's defeat and the occupation of part of its territory by the Allied Powers in the aftermath of World War I resulted in its partitioning and the loss of its Middle Eastern territories, which were divided between the United Kingdom and France. The successful Turkish War of Independence against the occupying Allies led to the emergence of the Republic of Turkey in the Anatolian heartland and the abolition of the Ottoman monarchy; the word Ottoman is a historical anglicisation of the name of Osman I, the founder of the Empire and of the ruling House of Osman.
Osman's name in turn was the Turkish form of the Arabic name ʿUthmān. In Ottoman Turkish, the empire was referred to as Devlet-i ʿAlīye-yi ʿOsmānīye, or alternatively ʿOsmānlı Devleti. In Modern Turkish, it is known as Osmanlı Devleti; the Turkish word for "Ottoman" referred to the tribal followers of Osman in the fourteenth century, subsequently came to be used to refer to the empire's military-administrative elite. In contrast, the term "Turk" was used to refer to the Anatolian peasant and tribal population, was seen as a disparaging term when applied to urban, educated individuals. In the early modern period, an educated urban-dwelling Turkish-speaker, not a member of the military-administrative class would refer to himself neither as an Osmanlı nor as a Türk, but rather as a Rūmī, or "Roman", meaning an inhabitant of the territory of the former Byzantine Empire in the Balkans and Anatolia; the term Rūmī was used to refer to Turkish-speakers by the other Muslim peoples of the empire and beyond.
In Western Europe, the two names "Ottoman Empire" and "Turkey" were used interchangeably, with "Turkey" being favoured both in formal and informal situations. This dichotomy was ended in 1920–23, when the newly established Ankara-based Turkish government chose Turkey as the sole official name. Most scholarly historians avoid the terms "Turkey", "Turks", "Turkish" when referring to the Ottomans, due to the empire's multinational character; as the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum declined in the 13th century, Anatolia was divided into a patchwork of independent Turkish principalities known as the Anatolian Beyliks. One of these beyliks, in the region of Bithynia on the frontier of the Byzantine Empire, was led by the Turkish tribal leader Osman I, a figure of obscure origins from whom the name Ottoman is derived. Osman's early followers consisted both of Turkish tribal groups and Byzantine renegades, many but not all converts to Islam. Osman extended the control of his principality by conquering Byzantine towns along the Sakarya River.
It is not well understood how the early Ottomans came to dominate their
Dahije
The Dahije or Dahijas were the renegade Janissary officers who took power in the Sanjak of Smederevo, after murdering the Vizier Hadži Mustafa Pasha of Belgrade on 15 December 1801. The four supreme dahije leaders were Kučuk Alija, Mula Jusuf and Mehmed-aga Fočić. Rebels against the Ottoman sultan, they were defeated by the Serbs in the initial phase of the First Serbian Uprising, called "Uprising against the Dahije"; the renegade janissary leaders were called dahije, from Ottoman Turkish dayı, meaning "uncle". The lesser janissary commanders were called kabadahije, referring to the Turkish phrase "kabadayı", a colloquial phrase for bullies. In 1788, during the Austro-Turkish War, Koča's frontier rebellion saw eastern Šumadija occupied by Austrian Serbian Free Corps and hajduks, subsequently, most of the Sanjak of Smederevo was occupied by the Habsburg Monarchy; the Siege of Belgrade from 15 September to 8 October 1789, a Habsburg Austrian force besieged the fortress of Belgrade. The Austrians held the city until 1791 when it handed Belgrade back to the Ottomans according to the terms of the Treaty of Sistova.
With the return of the sanjak to the Ottoman Empire the Serbs expected reprisals from the Turks due to their support to the Austrians. Sultan Selim III had given complete command of the Sanjak of Smederevo and Belgrade to battle-hardened Janissaries that had fought Christian forces during the Austro-Turkish War and many other conflicts. Although Selim III granted authority to the peaceful Hadži Mustafa Pasha, tensions between the Serbs and the Janissary command did not subside. In 1793 and 1796 Sultan Selim III proclaimed firmans. Among other things, taxes were to be collected by the obor-knez. Selim III decreed that some unpopular janissaries were to leave the Belgrade Pashaluk as he saw them as a threat to the central authority of Hadži Mustafa Pasha. Many of those janissaries were employed by or found refuge with Osman Pazvantoğlu, a renegade opponent of Sultan Selim III in the Sanjak of Vidin. Fearing the dissolution of the Janissary command in the Sanjak of Smederevo, Osman Pazvantoğlu launched a series of raids against Serbians without the permission of Sultan Selim III, causing much volatility and fear in the region.
Pazvantoğlu was defeated in 1793 by the Serbs at the Battle of Kolari. In the summer of 1797 the sultan appointed Mustafa Pasha on position of beglerbeg of Rumelia Eyalet and he left Serbia for Plovdiv to fight against the Vidin rebels of Pazvantoğlu. During the absence of Mustafa Pasha, the forces of Pazvantoğlu captured Požarevac and besieged the Belgrade fortress. At the end of November 1797 obor-knezes Aleksa Nenadović, Ilija Birčanin and Nikola Grbović from Valjevo brought their forces to Belgrade and forced the besieging janissary forces to retreat to Smederevo. By 1799, the janissary corps had returned to the sanjak, as they were pardoned by the Sultan's decree. On 15 December 1801 Vizier Hadži Mustafa Pasha of Belgrade was killed by Kučuk-Alija, one of the four leading dahije; this resulted in the Sanjak of Smederevo being ruled by these renegade janissaries independently from the Ottoman government, in defiance to the Sultan. The janissaries imposed "a system of arbitrary abuse, unmatched by anything similar in the entire history of Ottoman misrule in the Balkans".
The leaders divided the sanjak into pashaluks. They suspended the Serbian autonomy and drastically increased taxes, land was seized, forced labour was introduced, many Serbs fled the janissaries in fear; some Ottoman sipahi and Mustafa Pasha's men plotted, agreed with Serbian knezes to rise against the Dahije, on a given day. Ammunition was smuggled from the Habsburg Monarchy, some given out to the Serbs, some hid on the Avala; this first attempt to remove the Dahije, erupting a day early in 1802 in Požarevac, was stopped, the Dahije continued ruling the pashalik. The tyranny endured by the Serbs caused them to send a petition to the Sultan, which the dahije learnt of; the dahije started to fear. To forestall this they decided to execute leading Serbs throughout the sanjak, in the event known as the "Slaughter of the Knezes", which took place in late January 1804. According to contemporary sources from Valjevo, the severed heads of the murdered leaders were put on public display in the central square to serve as an example to those who might plot against the rule of the dahije.
This enraged the Serbs, who led their families into the woods and started murdering the subaşi, employed by the dahije, attacking Ottoman forces. The dahije sent out the most diplomatic, with a strong force to frighten and calm them down, in order to avoid escalation into armed conflict which would be hard for the janissaries to manage, but to no avail. On 14 February 1804, in the small village of Orašac near Aranđelovac, leading Serbs gathered and decided to undertake an uprising, choosing Karađorđe Petrović as their leader; the Serbs, at first technically fighting on the behalf of the Sultan against the janissaries, were encouraged and aided by a certain Ottoman official and the sipahi. For their small numbers, the Serbs had great military successes, having taken Požarevac, Šabac, charged Smederevo and Belgrade, in a quick succession; the Sultan, who feared that the Serb movement might get out of hand, sent the former pasha of Belgrade, now Vizier of Bosnia, Bekir Pasha, to assist the Serbs, but in reality to keep them under control.
Alija Gušanac
United States
The United States of America known as the United States or America, is a country composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area and is smaller than the entire continent of Europe's 3.9 million square miles. With a population of over 327 million people, the U. S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D. C. and the largest city by population is New York City. Forty-eight states and the capital's federal district are contiguous in North America between Canada and Mexico; the State of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The State of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean; the U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The diverse geography and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries.
Paleo-Indians migrated from Siberia to the North American mainland at least 12,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century; the United States emerged from the thirteen British colonies established along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the colonies following the French and Indian War led to the American Revolution, which began in 1775, the subsequent Declaration of Independence in 1776; the war ended in 1783 with the United States becoming the first country to gain independence from a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, with the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, being ratified in 1791 to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties; the United States embarked on a vigorous expansion across North America throughout the 19th century, acquiring new territories, displacing Native American tribes, admitting new states until it spanned the continent by 1848. During the second half of the 19th century, the Civil War led to the abolition of slavery.
By the end of the century, the United States had extended into the Pacific Ocean, its economy, driven in large part by the Industrial Revolution, began to soar. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the country's status as a global military power; the United States emerged from World War II as a global superpower, the first country to develop nuclear weapons, the only country to use them in warfare, a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. Sweeping civil rights legislation, notably the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, outlawed discrimination based on race or color. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union competed in the Space Race, culminating with the 1969 U. S. Moon landing; the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the world's sole superpower. The United States is the world's oldest surviving federation, it is a representative democracy.
The United States is a founding member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States, other international organizations. The United States is a developed country, with the world's largest economy by nominal GDP and second-largest economy by PPP, accounting for a quarter of global GDP; the U. S. economy is post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge-based activities, although the manufacturing sector remains the second-largest in the world. The United States is the world's largest importer and the second largest exporter of goods, by value. Although its population is only 4.3% of the world total, the U. S. holds 31% of the total wealth in the world, the largest share of global wealth concentrated in a single country. Despite wide income and wealth disparities, the United States continues to rank high in measures of socioeconomic performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP, worker productivity.
The United States is the foremost military power in the world, making up a third of global military spending, is a leading political and scientific force internationally. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a world map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America in honor of the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci; the first documentary evidence of the phrase "United States of America" is from a letter dated January 2, 1776, written by Stephen Moylan, Esq. to George Washington's aide-de-camp and Muster-Master General of the Continental Army, Lt. Col. Joseph Reed. Moylan expressed his wish to go "with full and ample powers from the United States of America to Spain" to seek assistance in the revolutionary war effort; the first known publication of the phrase "United States of America" was in an anonymous essay in The Virginia Gazette newspaper in Williamsburg, Virginia, on April 6, 1776. The second draft of the Articles of Confederation, prepared by John Dickinson and completed by June 17, 1776, at the latest, declared "The name of this Confederation shall be the'United States of America'".
The final version of the Articles sent to the states for ratification in late 1777 contains the sentence "The Stile of this Confederacy shall be'The United States of America'". In June 1776, Thomas Jefferson wrote the phrase "UNITED STATES OF AMERICA" in all capitalized letters in the headline of his "original Rough draught" of the Declaration of Independence; this draft of the document did not surface unti
