Ottoman Empire: Nineteenth-Century Transformations || Introduction

Research Foundation of SUNY

IntroductionAuthor(s): Çaglar KeyderSource: Review (Fernand Braudel Center), Vol. 11, No. 2, Ottoman Empire: Nineteenth-Century Transformations (Spring, 1988), pp. 119-123Published by: Research Foundation of SUNY for and on behalf of the Fernand Braudel CenterStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40241088 .

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Introduction

Çaglar Keyder

collection brings together papers delivered at the "Ottoman Empire and the World-Economy" conference, organized by the

Fernand Braudel Center in November, 1984.* The Ottoman incorporation into the world-economy has been an area of interest for the Fernand Braudel Center since its inaugural conference when Halil Inalcik delivered a paper on "The Impact of the Annales School on Ottoman History" (Inalcik, 1978). The first issue of Review contained an article by Huri Islamoglu and Çaglar Keyder (1978), proposing an agenda for Ottoman history that would reflect the methodology and the concerns of the "world- systems approach." Immanuel Wal- lerstein, by himself (1979), and with Re§at Kasaba (1983), wrote pro- grammatic papers setting out the questions of research to be pursued. The "Ottoman Empire and the World-Economy" conference was con- ceived as a means to pursue the agenda and to broaden the scope of the inquiry.

The papers published in this special issue of Review do not all share the assumptions and findings of the work done in Binghamton, but they all begin with similar concerns. Briefly, the attempt is to situate the Ottoman economy and society within the nineteenth-century im-

* In addition to the authors of this volume, Perry Anderson, Ilkay Sunar, and Imman- uel Wallerstein also participated in the conference. The conference was funded by the In- stitute of Turkish Studies and by the State University of New York at Binghamton (the Fernand Braudel Center, the Southwest Asian/North African Studies Program, and the Department of History).

REVIEW, XI, 2, SPRING 1988, II9-23 119



120 Çaglar Keyder

perialist system while elaborating upon the impact of greater economic integration on structures and processes of the Ottoman social formation. The reader will find that many of the investigations reported here are revisionist in the sense of challenging some of the received wisdom of radical historiography. The collection is divided into three parts which, despite the overlap, can roughly be labeled as methodology, political economy, and politics.

The two articles in the first part try to locate the Ottoman Empire in comparative perspective. In the first article §evket Pamuk main- tains that the nineteenth-century model of economic domination with increasing trade and foreign investment is too crude a device to apply to all the periphery; a differentiation in terms of the degree of economic openness may yield a useful categorization allowing for an ap- preciation of the distinctive features of each country. His finding suggest that due to imperialist rivalry, and to the continuity of the state form and the agrarian structure, the Ottoman Empire experienced a smaller degree of economic integration than other medium-sized peripheral countries (especially Latin American ones), but that it compared fa- vorably with Asian countries and especially with cases such as China, characterized by an even more superficial penetration of its socio- economic structures. My own paper discusses various approaches to peripheral class analysis. In the specific Ottoman example, attention has focussed on the class identification of the bureaucracy and on the relationship between the peripheral bourgeoisie and the state. An inter- pretation of nineteenth-century bureaucratic reformism provides a van- tage point to broach this problem. Hence, this paper is implicitly comparative in its review of the major models of state power and bour- geois revolutions as these concepts apply to the political development of peripheral social formations.

The papers in Part II are addressed to a well known theme of under- development literature: that greater incorporation into the world- economy causes a restructuration of the local economy with a destruction of local industry and crafts, with a loss in value and importance of traditional trade, and with the formation of a subordinate body of merchants who serve imperialist interests in intermediating between local producers and foreign traders. The authors do not contest the general model and its implications; nonetheless they propose impor- tant modifications and caveats based on research in Ottoman history.



INTRODUCTION 121

Donald Quataert takes issue with the widely shared attitude toward data purportedly showing the destruction of local industry. Such sta- tistics were drawn from inconsistent sources, anecdotes, and impres- sionistic accounts, and tended to self-perpetuate. On the other hand, while certain crafts and domestic industry were indeed destroyed, a new type of industry was boosted where cheap female labor, domestic piece work, and export orientedness were prevalent. A history of Ot- toman manufacturing in the nineteenth century will have to take account of these developments, which were much more complex than suggested in the pictures of uniform destruction.

Faruk Tabak challenges another aspect of the prevailing wisdom according to which inter- and intra-regional trade in the Empire lost its importance during the nineteenth century while long-distance export trade gained. The former was overland trade conducted with car- avans, while the latter benefited from the new sea-going technology. In the Arab provinces, most merchants engaged in traditional trade were Moslems while, according to the accepted model, Christian mi- norities handled the intermediation between Moslem producers and European buyers. Tabak finds that minority merchants did capture maritime export trade, but local trade conducted by Moslems, especially of the inter- regional variety, continued to prosper. This was due primarily to a small peasant-dominated agrarian structure which in- sured that local surpluses would be the object of trade oriented to the internal market. Re§at Kasaba's contribution asks a more directly political question: To what degree did Greek merchants in Izmir and in the Aegean littoral act in a "comprador" capacity? This question is ob- viously relevant to understanding the nature of the imperialist relationship: Whether or not this relationship engendered the development of a new class who might plausibly challenge the traditional bureaucracy? The answer implicit in most readings of Ottoman/Turkish history has been that imperialism precluded the development of a Moslem potential bourgeoisie and substituted in its stead Greek and Armenian intermediaries who acted in a subservient capacity to European businessmen. Kasaba shows, however, that the Greek intermediaries developed as a bourgeoisie in their own right and found themselves in conflict with European interests, much like White settlers resenting the colonial power.

The three papers in Part III shift the attention to world history and



122 Çaglar Keyder

to the policies of the Great Powers toward the Empire. The Ottoman Empire found itself at the center of imperial rivalry as Great Britain's hegemony was challenged following the Great Depression of the nineteenth century. As Kostas Vergopoulos reminds us, it was in this junc- tion that "the Eastern Question" was posed. An increased supply of primary goods partly originating in the Balkans touched off an over- production crisis which soon became a crisis of "over-accumulation," leading the imperialist countries to "discover" the Orient as a place to cultivate, to invest, to finance, and to develop as a market. This ac- celerated interest was primarily mediated through the political author- ity which was the beneficiary of the loans with the consequence that the state became the "principal economic power in these societies." A sort of bourgeoisie developed around the state, reinforcing its central- ity and influencing the structuring of capitalism. Thus, imperial rivalry and imperialist finance served to re-define and re-form the Orient during the Great Depression.

Rashid Khalidi recounts the same history as it unfolded on the imperialist front. Here the Eastern Question was played out as a game of co-operation and competition between diplomats and financiers. It was the businessmen, and more specifically railroad financiers, who anticipated the more formal division into "spheres of influence" of the Ottoman realm. Financiers bargained among themselves, with the Porte and the diplomats, and established economic claims which in turn con- stituted the basis for the political negotiation between Quai d'Orsay and the Foreign Office. The Eastern Question was resolved as much in the private offices of investment banks as in the public chambers of the Great Powers. While the War provided the Great Powers with the opportunity to realize their various designs, it also permitted the Unionists, that radical incarnation of Young Turk reformism, to re- organize the Empire relatively free from foreign intervention. Feroz Ahmad's account of the decade of belligerence shows that the leaders of the Committee of Union and Progress were committed to transform the Ottoman society employing a defensive nationalism. Autonomy attained in the period of war and necessity as imposed by war-time shortages led the CUP to organizational innovation, which initially received popular support. Subsequently, however, government economic policies favored a rapacious bourgeoisie getting rich through conces- sions and state contracts. Popular discontent with "war profiteers"



INTRODUCTION 123

proved to be the cost of rapid enrichment. Nonetheless, this was the period of original accumulation leading to the formation of a Repub- lican bourgeoisie.

The papers that follow speak for themselves; it is not my intention to claim that the authors approach the history of Ottoman peripher- alization from a single perspective, or that they represent a well-defined school of thought. In a field that has suffered from uninspired histor- ical writing and gullible theorizing in the modernization mode, the standards of inquiry demonstrated here should prove challenging and welcome. He may only hope that the challenge will be met.

REFERENCES

Inalcik, Halil (1978). "The Impact of the Annales School on Ottoman Studies and New Fin- dings," Review, I, 3/4, Win./Spr., 69- 96.

Islamoglu, Huri & Keyder, Çaglar (1978). "An Agenda for Ottoman History," Review, I, 1, Sum., 31-56.

Wallerstein, Immanuel (1979). "The Ottoman Empire and the Capitalist World-Economy. Some Questions for Research," Review, II, 3, Win., 389-98.

Wallerstein, Immanuel & Kasaba, Re§at (1983). "Incorporation into the World-Economy: Change in the Structure of the Ottoman Empire, 1750-1839," in J-L. Bacqué-Grammont & P. Dumont, eds., Economies et sociétés dans l'Empire Ottoman (fin du XVIIIe-debut du XXe

siècle). Paris: Editions du C.N.R.S., 336-54.



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Ottoman Empire: Nineteenth-Century Transformations || Introduction