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> I don't see any statments The whole text, starting from the title, is "making it nice" in the modern tendency of some who like to imply that what was actuall

by acqq 8y ago

> I don't see any statments The whole text, starting from the title, is "making it nice" in the modern tendency of some who like to imply that what was actually vile was "good" or "not so bad." How many boys were taken? The OP text mentions hundreds, but that was after the point which was in Wikipedia specified as the "end of the system" (1) whereas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devshirme https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devshirme "Shaw writes that their number was 30,000 under Suleiman the Magnificent" - that is, that was the size of the army. More important: "Devshirme[a] (Ottoman Turkish: دوشيرمه‎, devşirme, literally "lifting" or "collecting"), also known as the blood tax or tribute in blood,[2] was chiefly the practice where by the Ottoman Empire sent military officers to take Christian boys, ages 8 to 18, from their families in Eastern and Southeastern Europe in order that they be raised to serve the state.[3] This tax of sons was imposed only on the Christian subjects of the empire, in the villages of the Balkans and Anatolia." "The ideal age of a recruit was between 8 and 10 years of age" What's actually "not so bad" in taking the 8-10 years old children away to maintain the army of 30000? Read the argument of the article: "Beyond ‘slave soldiers’" "Essentially, they displayed their ‘slave’ status with pride" --- oh, that makes it OK then? The boys taken from their families when they are 8 to be slave solders for life, but "displayed their ‘slave’ status with pride" somehow is an argument that their status is "misleading, if perceived through the lens of our modern sensibility" (the article tries to argue). Really? ---- 1) Under the title of "Decline": 1638 or 1648 "In an order sent in multiple copies to authorities throughout the European provinces in 1666 a devshirme recruitment target of between 300 and 320 was set for an area covering the whole of the central and western Balkans." That was the "official end" according to Wikipedia: "only 300 and 320." Per year, or per month?

freeflight 8y ago
> The whole text, starting from the title, is "making it nice" in the modern tendency of some of implying that what was actually bad was good. The thing is, it's neither "bad" nor "good", it's just history. And in that context, the Janissaries are quite an interesting case because their history is filled with very extreme ups and downs. > "Beyond ‘slave soldiers’" "Essentially, they displayed their ‘slave’ status with pride" --- oh, that makes it OK then? If you'd read the whole Wiki article, instead of just quoting the passages that support your notion, you'd also realized that their position immensely changed over the centuries. Yes, they started out as a "slave soldier" unit in the thousands, made up of forced converts. But their efficiency on the battlefield quickly made them a very renowned unit, so renowned that over time even Muslim families tried to get their children to be recruited. This went on for a while until the Janissaries became such a powerful institution that they dominated the Ottoman government and could literally dethrone the Sultan, which they actually did, even killing Osman II in 1622. Until in 1826, after centuries of Janissaries running wild, the Sultan Mahmud II decided "enough is enough" and "disbanded" the Janissaries corps in what is nowadays known as the Auspicious Incident [0]. So, while they started out as a forced conversion soldier group, they ultimately turned into something very different. Heck, I'd like to think them destabilizing the Ottoman empire like they did, was their form of revenge. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auspicious_Incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auspicious_Incident
- acqq 8y ago
  > so renowned that over time even Muslim families tried to get their children to be recruited. Being "renowned" and having a pair of examples of some who actually gave away their sons (for whatever benefit they expected, these were hard times) doesn't mean that forcibly taking the boys "as a tax" away from their families makes it less vile. Compare: "I'm sure" that some black Africans "gave" their sons to be slaves to the Western men, so there was "more to the forced slavery of blacks" than our "modern sensitivities" say to us. See? In reality the children were "collected" regularly, by force, by the soldiers coming to the villages and taking the 8-10 year old boys away. And researching the subject, there are also stories among the Christians who were the target that the mothers had to harm their own children, making them disabled and unsuitable for being soldiers only to manage to keep them from being taken away.
  - freeflight 8y ago
    But we are not just talking about "a pair of examples": "In response to foreign threats the Ottoman government chose to rapidly expand the size of the corps after the 1570s. Janissaries spent shorter periods of time in training as acemi oğlans, as the average age of recruitment increased from 13.5 in the 1490s to 16.6 in 1603. This reflected not only the Ottomans' greater need for manpower, but also the shorter training time necessary to produce skilled musketeers in comparison with archers. However, this change alone was not enough to produce the necessary manpower, and consequently the traditional limitation of recruitment to boys conscripted in the devşirme was lifted. Membership was opened up to free-born Muslims, both recruits hand-picked by the commander of the Janissaries, as well as the sons of current members of the Ottoman standing army. By the middle of the seventeenth century, the devşirme had largely been abandoned as a method of recruitment." "In 1449 they revolted for the first time, demanding higher wages, which they obtained. The stage was set for a decadent evolution, like that of the Streltsy of Tsar Peter's Russia or that of the Praetorian Guard which proved the greatest threat to Roman emperors, rather than an effective protection." [0] That's why comparing them to black African slaves completely misses how influential the Jannisaries ended up becoming inside the Ottoman empire. How often did you see black African slaves successfully revolt to increase their wages, among other privileges? How often did black African slaves manage to kill their "slaver leader" and survive to tell the story? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janissaries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janissaries
tarcyanm 8y ago
At the same time, this pales in comparison to what took place under the Spartan agoge system (at least to modern minds): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agoge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agoge

by acqq 8y ago

freeflight 8y ago

> The whole text, starting from the title, is "making it nice" in the modern tendency of some of implying that what was actually bad was good. The thing is, it's neither "bad" nor "good", it's just history. And in that context, the Janissaries are quite an interesting case because their history is filled with very extreme ups and downs. > "Beyond ‘slave soldiers’" "Essentially, they displayed their ‘slave’ status with pride" --- oh, that makes it OK then? If you'd read the whole Wiki article, instead of just quoting the passages that support your notion, you'd also realized that their position immensely changed over the centuries. Yes, they started out as a "slave soldier" unit in the thousands, made up of forced converts. But their efficiency on the battlefield quickly made them a very renowned unit, so renowned that over time even Muslim families tried to get their children to be recruited. This went on for a while until the Janissaries became such a powerful institution that they dominated the Ottoman government and could literally dethrone the Sultan, which they actually did, even killing Osman II in 1622. Until in 1826, after centuries of Janissaries running wild, the Sultan Mahmud II decided "enough is enough" and "disbanded" the Janissaries corps in what is nowadays known as the Auspicious Incident [0]. So, while they started out as a forced conversion soldier group, they ultimately turned into something very different. Heck, I'd like to think them destabilizing the Ottoman empire like they did, was their form of revenge. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auspicious_Incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auspicious_Incident

acqq 8y ago
> so renowned that over time even Muslim families tried to get their children to be recruited. Being "renowned" and having a pair of examples of some who actually gave away their sons (for whatever benefit they expected, these were hard times) doesn't mean that forcibly taking the boys "as a tax" away from their families makes it less vile. Compare: "I'm sure" that some black Africans "gave" their sons to be slaves to the Western men, so there was "more to the forced slavery of blacks" than our "modern sensitivities" say to us. See? In reality the children were "collected" regularly, by force, by the soldiers coming to the villages and taking the 8-10 year old boys away. And researching the subject, there are also stories among the Christians who were the target that the mothers had to harm their own children, making them disabled and unsuitable for being soldiers only to manage to keep them from being taken away.
- freeflight 8y ago
  But we are not just talking about "a pair of examples": "In response to foreign threats the Ottoman government chose to rapidly expand the size of the corps after the 1570s. Janissaries spent shorter periods of time in training as acemi oğlans, as the average age of recruitment increased from 13.5 in the 1490s to 16.6 in 1603. This reflected not only the Ottomans' greater need for manpower, but also the shorter training time necessary to produce skilled musketeers in comparison with archers. However, this change alone was not enough to produce the necessary manpower, and consequently the traditional limitation of recruitment to boys conscripted in the devşirme was lifted. Membership was opened up to free-born Muslims, both recruits hand-picked by the commander of the Janissaries, as well as the sons of current members of the Ottoman standing army. By the middle of the seventeenth century, the devşirme had largely been abandoned as a method of recruitment." "In 1449 they revolted for the first time, demanding higher wages, which they obtained. The stage was set for a decadent evolution, like that of the Streltsy of Tsar Peter's Russia or that of the Praetorian Guard which proved the greatest threat to Roman emperors, rather than an effective protection." [0] That's why comparing them to black African slaves completely misses how influential the Jannisaries ended up becoming inside the Ottoman empire. How often did you see black African slaves successfully revolt to increase their wages, among other privileges? How often did black African slaves manage to kill their "slaver leader" and survive to tell the story? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janissaries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janissaries

tarcyanm 8y ago

At the same time, this pales in comparison to what took place under the Spartan agoge system (at least to modern minds): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agoge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agoge