ΠΑΝΕΠΙΣΤΗΜΙΟ ΘΕΣΣΑΛΙΑΣ

2ο Διεθνές Συνέδριο Οικονομικής και Κοινωνικής Ιστορίας

Οι "Αγορές" και η Πολιτική
Ιδιωτικά συμφέροντα και δημόσια εξουσία (18ος-20ός αιώνας)

Βόλος, 10-12 Φεβρουαρίου 2012

To σκεπτικό του συνεδρίου Οργανωτές και χορηγοί Συμμετέχοντες Το πρόγραμμα του συνεδρίου Το πρακτικά του συνεδρίου

Περιλήψεις

Ali Yaycioglu Business of Governance: Military and Fiscal Entrepreneurs in the 18th Century Ottoman World

This paper examines several notable families and individuals in the Ottoman Balkans and Anatolia who consolidated military and fiscal enterprises in the long 18th century (1699-1820) and participated in governance mechanisms of the decentralized Ottoman Empire. Conventionally, the 18th century Ottoman Empire has been depicted as a process of conflict between the centre and the provincial powers. The present paper challenges this dichotomous perspective and illustrates certain aspects of how provincial entrepreneurs and the imperial elite established coalitions and partnerships. These partnerships were based on contractual agreements of fiscal and military service, as well as political alliances. From the early 18th century on, several provincial families and individuals, who had not had any formal ties with the empire before, began to sell their services as tax collectors, administrators, military recruiters etc., to the empire. Most of these families and individuals acquired their offices and statuses not as bureaucrats or servants of the state, but as its contractors by competing in the market of administrative services. Meanwhile, the provincial institutions of the Empire were gradually transformed, from a system based on the services of the prebend/fief holders to a system where most of the offices and services could be granted (farmed out) to the private (or semi-private) entrepreneurs based on short or long term, formal or informal contracts. By the end of the 18th century, while these entrepreneurial individuals, families or networks came to control the Ottoman provincial administration, the imperial agents were marginalized in provincial governance. This commercialization, privatization, and localization in Ottoman governance challenged the traditional ideal and discourse of the Ottoman imperial authority on justice of governance. As a result, the traditional top-down, vertical system, directed from the Sultan’s authority at his servants was gradually replaced by a new system structured as horizontal bonds of networks connecting provincial and central elites as partners. In the early 19th century, this alternative system triggered a constitutional crisis through which the public and private interests were re-defined in favour of the new partners of the empire.


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