Ottoman public debt
Vanity Fair caricature of Sir Vincent Henry Penalver Caillard by Spy
The Ottoman public debt was a term which dated back to 24 August 1855, when the Ottoman Empire first entered into loan contracts with its European creditors shortly after the beginning of the Crimean War.
The Empire entered into subsequent loans, partly to finance railway construction and partly to finance deficits between revenues and the lavish expenditure of the Imperial court. Some financial commentators have noted that the terms of these loans were exceptionally favourable to the French and British banks which facilitated them, whereas others have noted that the terms reflected the imperial administration's willingness to constantly refinance its debts.
The Ottoman government declared a sovereign default on its loan repayments with the Ramazan Kararnamesi (Decree of Ramadan) on 30 October 1875. Six years later, as part of the Muharrem Kararnamesi (Decree of Muharrem) on 15 October 1881, which reduced the overall public debt, the Ottoman Public Debt Administration (OPDA) was established. This made the European creditors bondholders, and assigned special rights to the OPDA for collecting various tax and customs revenues within the Ottoman Empire.
After the taking of its first loans, the Empire had taken further loans out in 1858, 1860, 1862, 1863, 1865, and every year between 1869 and 1874. But economic trouble loomed. The Panic of 1873 depressed the economy, and poor harvests followed. Palace intrigues diverted political attention from the debt crisis.
“Ottoman public debt” enters the record as vanity Fair caricature of Sir Vincent Henry Penalver Caillard by Spy. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Ottoman, public and debt can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ottoman public debt” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.