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Tax Revolts During the Tanzimat Period (1839–1876) and Before the Young Turk Revolution (1904–1908): Popular Protest and State Formation in the Late Ottoman Empire

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 June 2013

E. Attila Aytekin*
Affiliation:
Middle East Technical University

Abstract

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Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Donald Critchlow and Cambridge University Press 2013 

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References

NOTES

1. Some of the well-known works produced within the modernization paradigm are: Shaw, Stanford and Shaw, Ezel, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey (Cambridge, 1976)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lewis, Bernard, The Emergence of Modern Turkey (New York, 2002).Google Scholar

2. Some representative works that use the world-system perspective to understand Ottoman history are: Quataert, Donald, Social Disintegration and Popular Resistance in the Ottoman Empire, 1881–1908: Reactions to European Economic Penetration (New York, 1983)Google Scholar; Kasaba, Resat, The Ottoman Empire and the World Economy: The Nineteenth Century (Albany, N.Y., 1988)Google Scholar; Wallerstein, Immanuel and Kasaba, Resat, Incorporation into the World-Economy: Change in the Structure of the Ottoman Empire, 1750–1839 (Binghamton, N.Y., 1980).Google Scholar

3. One exception is the criticism that the world-system-inspired approaches was subjected to in relation to the so-called çiftlik debate. See Aytekin, E. Attila, “Historiography of Land Tenure and Agriculture in the Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Empire, ” Asian Research Trends, New Series 4 (2009): 119.Google Scholar

4. Even otherwise good and innovative studies reproduce this notion of Tanzimat. For example, see Makdisi, Ussama, The Culture of Sectarianism: Community, History, and Violence in Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Lebanon (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2000).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5. The classical example of this approach that reduces post-Tanzimat unrest to (conservative) reaction to reform is an article by Halil İnalcık, arguably the foremost Ottomanist historian. In this article, although İnalcık recognizes the social-reformist aspect of some of the uprising in the Balkans, he nevertheless generalizes post-Tanzimat unrest as conservative resistance of the privileged strata of the old regime, such as notables,Christian çorbacıs, Muslim landlords, and ulema. Halil İnalcık, “Tanzimat’ın Uygulanması ve Sosyal Tepkiler, ” in Tanzimat’tan Cumhuriyet’e Türkiye Ansiklopedisi, vol. 6 (İstanbul, 1985), 1536–44.

6. Corrigan, Philip, Ramsay, Harvie, and Sayer, Derek, “The State as a Relation of Production, ” in Capitalism, State Formation, and Marxist Theory, ed. Corrigan, Philip (London, 1980), 125, 2122.Google Scholar

7. The state-formation approach is against both the reductionist approaches, which elevate the metaphor of base-superstructure to a theoretical model, and the Althusserian correction to it. Sayer argues against those versions of Marxism that consider relations of production to consist solely of economic relations and, together with productive forces, to form the “base.” According to him, Marx himself includes “superstructural” elements into “production relations.” In Marx’s analysis of the feudal mode of production, for example, it is clear that the relations of personal dependence are essential relations of production. Jurisdiction can be conceived in similar terms, too. See Sayer, Derek, The Violence of Abstraction: The Analytic Foundations of Historical Materialism (Oxford, 1987), 63, 7275.Google Scholar

8. Corrigan et al., “The State as a Relation of Production,” 15.

9. Corrigan, Philip and Sayer, Derek, The Great Arch: English State Formation as Cultural Revolution (Oxford, 1985).Google Scholar

10. Ibid., 195.

11. Ibid., 30ff.

12. Corrigan et al., “The State as a Relation of Production,” 17.

13. Corrigan and Sayer, The Great Arch, 41.

14. Deringil, Selim, The Well-Protected Domains: Ideology and the Legitimation of Power in the Ottoman Empire, 1876– (London, 1998).Google Scholar

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16. Corrigan et al., “The State as a Relation of Production,” 18

17. Corrigan, Philip and Sayer, Derek, “How the Law Rules, ” in Law, State, and Society, ed. Fryer, Bobet al. (London, 1981).Google Scholar

18. Aytekin, E. Attila, “Agrarian Relations, Property, and Law: An Analysis of the Land Code of 1858 in the Ottoman Empire, ” Middle Eastern Studies 45 (2009): 935–51 (936–37)CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19. For the standard account of Ottoman officialdom, see Findley, Carter, Ottoman Civil Officialdom: A Social History (Princeton, 1989).CrossRefGoogle ScholarFor a prosopographical study of high-level bureaucrats, see Bouquet, Olivier, Les pachas du sultan: Essai sur les agents superieurs de l’Etat ottoman (1839–1909) (Paris, 2007).Google Scholar

20. See Michel Foucault, “Governmentality,” in The Foucault Effect.

21. Corrigan and Sayer, The Great Arch, 21.

22. Uzun, Ahmet, Tanzimat ve Sosyal Direnişler (İstanbul, 2002), 23.Google Scholar

23. Ibid., 26.

24. Ibid., 16.

25. Ibid., 31.

26. C.DH 1810. Hereafter, unless otherwise noted, all archival references are to Prime Ministry Ottoman Archives, Istanbul.

27. Uzun, Tanzimat ve Sosyal Direnişler, 47.

28. Ibid.

29. A.MKT.NZD 4/45; A.MKT.UM 51/10; A.MKT.UM 103/55. By that time, the title of sipahi (prebendal cavalryman) had become anachronistic.

30. A.MKT.UM 103/55.

31. A.MKT.UM 189/36.

32. A.MKT.UM 279/10.

33. C.DH 1523.

34. I.DH 28069.

35. I have discussed the agrarian unrest in Vidin and Canik in detail in Aytekin, E. Attila, “Peasant Protest in the Late Ottoman Empire: Moral Economy, Revolt, and the Tanzimat Reforms, ” International Review of Social History 57, no. 2 (2012): 191227CrossRefGoogle Scholar

36. Inalcik, Halil, Tanzimat ve Bulgar Meselesi, 2nd ed. (Istanbul, 1992), 47.Google Scholar

37. Ibid., 50–52. See also Arbuthnot, G., Herzegovina; or Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels (London, 1862), 122.Google Scholar

38. FO 195/296 04.09.1850, from Bennett to Neale; FO 195/296 08.09.1850 from Bennett to Neale. [The National Archives, London.]

39. Yolalıcı, Emin, XIX. Yüzyılda Canik (Samsun) Sancağı’nın Sosyal Ekonomik Yapısı (Ankara, 1998), 116–17.Google Scholar

40. Şahin, Canay, “Ondokuzuncu Yüzyıl’da Samsun’da Çiftlik Sahibi Hazinedarzadeler ile Kiracı-Köylüler Arasındaki Arazi ve Vergi İhtilafı Üzerine Bazı Gözlemler ve Sorular, ” Kebikeç 24 (2007): 7588(78).Google Scholar

41. Ibid., 79.

42. HR.MKT 98/85.

43. Şahin, “Ondokuzuncu Yüzyıl’da Samsun,” 85.

44. Özbek, Nadir, “‘Anadolu Islahatı,’ ‘Ermeni Sorunu’ Ve Vergi Tahsildarlığı, 1895–1908, ” Tarih ve Toplum Yeni Yaklaşımlar 9 (2009): 5985, 61–62.Google Scholar

45. Ibid., 66.

46. Ibid., 52–53.

47. Özbek, Nadir, “Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nda Gelir Vergisi: 1903–1907 Tarihli Vergi-i Şahsi Uygulaması, ” Tarih ve Toplum Yeni Yaklaşımlar 10 (2010): 4380(51).Google Scholar

48. For a fuller discussion of this issue, see Aytekin, E. Attila, “Cultivators, Creditors, and the State: Rural Indebtedness in the Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Empire, ” Journal of Peasant Studies 35 (2008): 292313 (305–8).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

49. Corrigan and Sayer, The Great Arch, 91

50. Abou-El-Haj, Rifa’at Ali, “Geçiş Dönemleri Üzerine Bir Not, ” in Tarih, Sınıflar ve Kent, ed. Şen, Besime and Doğan, Ali Ekber (Ankara, 2010), 3133.Google Scholar

51. Şahin, “Ondokuzuncu Yüzyıl’da Samsun,” 79.

52. The Ottoman Balkans was of course one of the theaters of the Eastern Question. Yet one should not exaggerate the role of imperialist politics in the emerging Balkan nationalism and the subsequent independence of Balkan states. The economic and social dynamics of the region, especially the class structure, played an important part in pre-nationalist uprisings and the later nationalist ressitance to the Ottoman central state.

53. Quataert, Donald, Ottoman Manufacturing in the Age of the Industrial Revolution (Cambridge, 1993).Google Scholar

54. Gürsel, Seyfettin, “Osmanlı Dış Borçları, ” in Tanzimat’tan Cumhuriyet’e Türkiye Ansiklopedisi (Istanbul, 1985): 672–87.Google Scholar

55. Nadir Özbek, “The Politics of Welfare: Philantrophy, Voluntarism, and Legitimacy in the Ottoman Empire, 1876–1914” (Ph.D. diss., State University of New York at Binghamton, 2001).

56. Deringil, Selim, “Legitimacy Structures in the Ottoman State: The Reign of Abdulhamid II (1876–1909), ” International Journal of Middle East Studies 23 (1991): 345–59; and Deringil, Well-Protected Domains.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

57. Zafer Kars, H., 1908 Devrimi’nin Halk Dinamiği (İstanbul, 1984), 21.Google Scholar

58. Ibid., 112–16; Aşatoviç Petrosyan, Yuriy, Sovyet Gözüyle Jöntürkler(Ankara, 1974), 223.Google Scholar

59. Ibid., 22.

60. Kansu, Aykut, 1908 Devrimi (İstanbul, 1995), 9091; Kars, Halk Dinamiği, 22, 38.Google Scholar

61. Kars, Halk Dinamiği, 73.

62. Ibid., 73; Kansu, 1908 Devrimi, 38.

63. Ibid.; Özbek, “Gelir Vergisi,” 64.

64. Kansu, 1908 Devrimi, 38; Özbek, “Gelir Vergisi,” 65.

65. Kansu, 1908 Devrimi, 43–44, 52, 53, 54, 71, 90.

66. Özbek, “Gelir Vergisi,” 63, 65, 67.

67. Kars, Halk Dinamiği, 64.

68. Ibid., 24ff.

69. Ibid., 143.

70. Kansu, 1908 Devrimi.

71. Kars, Halk Dinamiği.

72. Ibid., 64ff., 146.

73. Steinmo, Sven, “The Evolution of Policy Ideas: Tax Policy in the 20th Century, ” British Journal of Politics and International Relations 5, no. (2003): 206–36 (209–10).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

74. Özbek, “Gelir Vergisi,” 61.

75. Ibid., 66–67.

76. Ibid., 71–72.

77. Steinmo, “The Evolution of Policy Ideas,” 210.

78. Petrosyan, Sovyet Gözüyle, 234.

79. Kars, Halk Dinamiği, 12–13.

80. Agrarian workers and porters joined shopkeepers in Bingazi protests against the personal tax in 1905. Özbek, “Gelir Vergisi,” 64.

81. Kars, Halk Dinamiği, 166.

82. Ibid., 147.

83. He criticizes Kansu for generalizing the rebels under the name “people” and for simply seeing the revolts, especially the one in Erzurum, as a revolutionary uprising against the established order. Özbek, “Gelir Vergisi,” 76.

84. Kars, Halk Dinamiği, 36.

85. Ibid., 64.

86. Ibid.

87. Özbek, “Gelir Vergisi,” 136.

88. Kansu, 1908 Devrimi, 61, 74, 59, 67, 78.

89. Petrosyan, Sovyet Gözüyle, 234.

90. Kansu, 1908 Devrimi, 40.

91. Kars, Halk Dinamiği, 46–47.

92. Even the name of the organization is not clear. It was either Canveren or Canverir. See ibid., 40–41.