Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman Empire (Impero ottomano in Italian) was a state that spanned much of southeastern Europe, West Asia and North Africa from the 14th century to the early 20th century. It grew out of a small principality founded in northwestern Anatolia around 1299 by Osman I, whose name gave the empire its own. His son Orhan captured Bursa in 1326 and made it the capital. On May 29, 1453, Mehmed II conquered Constantinople and ended the Byzantine Empire. After that, Selim I defeated the Mamluks in Egypt and the sultans began to claim the title of caliph. The empire reached its height under Suleiman the Magnificent (1520 to 1566), and by 1683 it covered about 5,200,000 square kilometers.
That same year, the Ottomans were defeated at the Second Siege of Vienna, and the Treaty of Karlowitz of January 26, 1699 made them give up significant territories. Greece became independent in 1829, and Serbia, Romania and Montenegro followed after the Russo-Turkish War of 1877 and 1878. At the same time, the Tanzimat reforms between 1839 and 1876 modernized the army, the law and the administration, and the Ottoman Ministry of Post was established in Istanbul in 1840. However, the cost of modernizing led to bankruptcy in 1875, and in 1881 the empire agreed to let a council of Europeans control its debt.
The Young Turk Revolution of 1908 brought back a constitutional monarchy, but the empire kept losing ground. Italy took its North African territories and the Dodecanese in 1911, and almost all of its European territories were lost in the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913. The Ottomans entered World War I on the side of the Central Powers and signed the Armistice of Mudros on October 30, 1918. Istanbul was then occupied by British, French, Italian and Greek forces. The Turkish War of Independence, led by Mustafa Kemal, ended with the abolition of the sultanate on November 1, 1922, and the last sultan, Mehmed VI, left the country on November 17. The Republic of Turkey was established on October 29, 1923, and the caliphate was abolished on March 3, 1924.
Note
This is another set of expansion pages. I recently designed these pages as part of my attempt to create all of the album pages I need for all of the remaining Italian stamp there were. I’m starting to think I’m being naive in thinking it’s possible to do this. I’m not allowing for errors and oddities. I’m not including stamps used in Italy that were issued by occupying troops – except for the Italian Socialist Republic, which was controled by the Germans. I’m pretty sure I have all of the stamps from Italian post offices abroad. But every time I think I’m almost finished adding pages, I discover some occupied territory where Italians were selling stamps in their name and with the king’s image on them.
For now, I keep plodding along in the hopes it’ll end soon. I’m not even printing the pages yet. I’ll do that later. Then I’ll mount the stamps and scan the pages to repost here. I don’t have many of the stamps for these new albums, just a few of most of them. Some I suspect are quite expensive. So I may never have them. Maybe my heirs will complete the albums. That’s every collector’s dream and false illusion. It never happens. We’re just temporary curators. Our heirs only sell our collections, not continue them.
Contains 0 spots: own 0 – 0 unused, 0 used.
Page is finished.
remaining stamps & stories in sub-album
page |
story |
note |
used |
need |
ordered |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
11 |
|||||
6 |
|||||
22 |
|||||
14 |
|||||
2 |
|||||
9 |
|||||
8 |
|||||
✓ |
✓ |
8 |
|||
8 |
|||||
10 |
|||||
13 |
|||||
11 |