ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with two pivotal wars in Ottoman history,known to the Russians as Catherine II’s First and Second Turkish Wars, rightly celebrated (at least the first one) in St Petersburg and Moscow as the triumph of her southern strategy to acquire access to the Black Sea. For the Ottomans, it is the moment of greatest collapse and humiliation after Karlowitz, and inaugurates the military reform period we describe generally as the New Order of the two sultans Selim III (1789-1807) and Mahmud II (1808-39). Among historians of Europe, this period is generally regarded as stimulating an international relations debate around the ‘Eastern Question’, on the future of the Ottoman Empire.
