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This study analyzes the most important phases of the Ottoman Empire’s foreign debt between 1881 and 1914. Examining the three major financial operations of the period – 1881, 1890-92 and 1903 – we can document the way in which foreign loans, as well as increasing the empire’s public spending, served the ends the great European powers imposed upon the Ottoman governing class. At the same time, the choice for foreign loans and deficit spending seemed to be the only path towards some form of modernization of the state open to the Ottoman Empire and so to a role within the European context which, if not equal to that of the great players, might at least be that of a regional power
