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The Nizam-i Cedid (Ottoman Turkish: نظام جديد, romanized: Niẓām-ı Cedīd, lit. 'new order') was a series of reforms carried out by Ottoman Sultan Selim III during the late 18th and the early 19th centuries in a drive to catch up militarily and politically with the Western powers. The New Order regime was launched by Selim III and a coalition of reformers. Its central objectives were the creation of a professional army along European lines, a private treasury to finance military spending, and other administrative reforms. The age of the New Order can be generally said to have lasted from 1789 to 1807, when Selim III was deposed by a Janissary coup.
While the term "New Order" eventually came to encompass all of Selim III's reforms, the name was used contemporaneously to refer only to the reform's central innovation: the New Order Army. That army was largely a failure in its own time but reflected an important step in the stages of Ottoman attempts at reform.[1]
Selim III's desire for an army necessitated far-reaching changes in the bureaucracy and structure of the Ottoman Empire and profoundly reorganised contemporary Ottoman politics.
The New Order, according to the historian Stanford Shaw, reflected a profound shift in Ottoman thinking on how to confront the West. Hitherto, Ottomans had conceived of beating the West by returning to the glory days of the 16th century, but the Nizam-i Djedid reforms were premised on the idea that Western ideas and processes had to be adopted to restore Ottoman global prestige.