Ottoman History as World History 9781463225599

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Ottoman History as World History

Analecta Isisiana: Ottoman and Turkish Studies

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A co-publication with The Isis Press, Istanbul, the series consists of collections of thematic essays focused on specific themes of Ottoman and Turkish studies are brought together in Analecta Isisiana. These scholarly volumes address important issues throughout Turkish history, offering in a single volume the accumulated insights of a single author over a career of research on the subject.

Ottoman History as World History

Huri Ìslamoglu

The Isis Press, Istanbul

pteSS 2010

Gorgias Press LLC, 954 River Road, Piscataway, NJ, 08854, USA www.gorgiaspress.com Copyright © 2010 by The Isis Press, Istanbul Originally published in 2007 All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise without the prior written permission of The Isis Press, Istanbul. 2010

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ISBN 978-1-61719-104-6

Printed in the United States of America

Huri ìslamoglu was educated at the Universities of Chicago and Wisconsin, Madison. She has taught at the Middle Eastern Technical University, Ankara, the University of California, Berkeley and New York University. She currently teaches at Bogazici University, Istanbul, and at the Central European University, Budapest. Her publications include State and Peasant in the Ottoman Empire (Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1994); editor, Ottoman Empire and the World Economy (Cambridge, CUP, 1987), co-editor with Peter Perdue of a special issue of The Journal of Early Modern History (December 2001) on Shared Histories of Modernity in China and the Ottoman Empire, editor, Constituting Modernity : Private Property in the East and the West (London: I. B. Tauris, 2004).

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction: A Venture into Ottoman History as World History or A Personal Agenda for Ottoman History

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The Ottoman Empire and the World System Perspective: A Critical View 'Oriental Despotism in World System Perspective' in The Ottoman Empire and the World Economy. Edited by Huri ìslamogluinan. Cambridge: CUP, 1987. pp. 1-24 'The Middle East and North Africa in the World Economy: Gran and Seddon Reconsidered', METU Studies in Development, vol.

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18, no. 3 (1991), pp. 307-42 'Peasants, Commercialisation and Legitimisation Sixteenth Century Anatolia' in Landholding Agriculture in the Ottoman Empire. Edited and Faruk Tabak. New York: SUNY Press,

43 of State Power in and Commercial by CJaglar Keyder 1991. pp. 57-76.

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The Ottoman Empire in Comparative Perspective: Not that Unique after All 'An Agenda for Comparative History: Law and Property as Aspects of State Power,' METU Studies in Development, vol. 19, no. 4(1992), pp. 607-20 'Why European History?' METU Studies in Development, vol. 22, no. 3 (1995), pp. 221-230 'Ottoman and Chinese Modernities Compared: State Transformations and Constitutions of Property in Qing and Ottoman Empires in the 18 th and the 19 th Centuries', Journal of Early Modern History, vol. 5, no. 4 (Fall 2001) pp. 352-386

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Towards a Political Economy of Ottoman Modernity and Beyond 'A History of the Idea of Civil Society' (expanded version of 'Civil Society, history of the idea of' in International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences. Edited by N. J. Smelser and Paul B. Baltes. Oxford : Pergamon, 2001

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'Property as a Contested Domain: A Re-evaluation of the Ottoman Land Code of 1858' (revised version of the article with the same title in New Perspectives on Property and Land in the Middle East. Edited by Roger Owen. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000. pp. 3-61) 'Politics of Administering Property: Law and Statistics in the 19 th Century Ottoman Empire', in Constituting Modernity: Private Property in the East and the West. Edited by Huri islamoglu. London: I.B. Tauris, 2004. pp. 276-319) 'Words that Rule: From Bureaucratic 'Commissions' to Governing "Boards"

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A VENTURE INTO OTTOMAN HISTORY AS WORLD HISTORY OR A PERSONAL AGENDA FOR OTTOMAN HISTORY*

Somewhere along the way I developed an ambition for Ottoman history which is no less than to rescue it from the marginality or at best the exoticism, it has long been condemned to and restore it to its rightful place in world history. This involves making discussions of the Ottoman Empire, for instance, its legal transformation, economic trends, an integral part of universal intellectual agendas and bringing Ottoman history into world historical debates. It would entail a vision of Ottoman history other than that of a magnificent despotism with its inevitable collapse when confronted with European modernity. A new vision would mean seeing Ottoman history as part of the project of modernity underway since the 16 th century and not simply as a victim of modernity. An initiative for Ottoman history could engender such a vision and I will try to outline what I think might be an approach which would enable a re-thinking of Ottoman history. I will do this through a brief digression into intellectual profile. I did not come to Ottoman history through area studies and I am not an Ottomanist in the conventional sense. I began my career as an economist. Recognizing that the economy (as designated by the academic discipline of economics) is an abstraction from historical contexts and rests on assumptions about how people behaved as well as about the nature of social and political relations and institutions, I turned to the study of historical contexts, more precisely, to the history of Europe since the 16 th century which contemporary economic theory largely assumes. I was soon to discover that history-writing, like economics, also rested on assumptions about the nature of society, about its past and future trajectories of development, about its place with respect to other societies. Coming from a region which was not considered to be European and having been a student of Marshal Hodgson at the University of Chicago, I became sensitive to European understandings about differences between European and non-European histories. Modernization perspective which dominated social sciences and history-writing in the 1970s when I was a student, designated Europe as the domain of economic or market development, of liberal constitutional states, rule of law, parliamentary democracy, of rational thought. Non-Europe, by contrast was cast as the

I would like to thank Dr. Alp Yueel Kaya for his invaluable assistance in preparing this volume for publication.

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domain where these features which define modernity were absent and where economic stagnation, despotism and religious thinking prevailed. Modernization perspective accounted for the world historic 'failure' of non-European regions in cultural terms, political (despotism) or religious (Islam or Confucianism). The world system perspective in the 1970s proved to be a little more generous in explaining 'failure', attributing it to European trade which had the effect of dictating to non-European areas kinds of institutions ensuring their dependence on Europe, their underdevelopment. For the world system theorists, non-Europe or the periphery have been little more than a punching bag which European traders or colonizers could shape according to their own exigencies. Following a brief engagement with the world system perspectives in the late 1970s (with Q. Keyder, 'Agenda for Ottoman History', Review, vol. 1, no.l (1977); edited volume on The Ottoman Empire and the World economy. CUP, 1987), my work has tried to break out of both molds and to focus on the specific character transformation in different historical settings, while at the same time placing that transformation in world historical contexts without recourse to perceptions of essential differences. That is, emphasizing commonalities in world history as well as specific paths of development (Articles 1 and 2 in this volume). Initially, I set out to refute the stagnationist assumptions of the modernization perspective (also espoused by Marxian Asiatic Mode of Production formulations) about non-European regions. I chose the Ottoman Empire. Focusing on land and tax registers, and court records, I studied Ottoman agrarian economy in the 16 th and 17 th centuries (State and Peasant in the Ottoman Empire. E.J. Brill, 1994) Conceptually, this work was influenced by the micro-historical approach of the Annates historians in France and results of my work was published in an article in Annates in 1987. An English translation of this article included in this volume as Article 3. Briefly, my research, first, suggested that not only the early modern Ottoman economy was not stagnant, enjoying significant growth in population and agricultural and craft production as well as in regional and interregional trade, but these economic trends were enabled by state institutions which organized trade and distributed land and other resources. Moreover, these 'state' institutions were embodiments of negotiations among different groups including the court of the ruler, traders, peasant-cultivators, herdsmen, various groups with claims to surpluses from economic activity. As such, the ruler no longer approximated to the supreme despot of the popular imagination but was one power actor among others engaging in

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deliberative processes. He exercised state power or was able to order social and economic activity through rules and regulations and to enforce these, to the extent he would fulfill his promise of delivering justice or maintaining social peace among his subjects. I was approaching an understanding of the early modern state which was further crystallized in the next phase of my research which focused on its transformation and the formation of the Ottoman modern state. Secondly, the emphasis on the internal dynamics of the Ottoman empire and on the specific character of social-political relations and institutions as enabling of commercial and productive activity, posed a challenge to tradist perspectives which attributed all change in non-European settings to external trade albeit in ways which ultimately rendered these areas entirely dependent on European trade. This historical perspective also developed into a critical position vis-àvis development theory in the 1970s, most notably, vis a vis the dependency perspective which largely overlooked the internal dynamics of the nonEuropean periphery both prior to European commercial penetration and later during European presence. By contrast, in the courses I had taught on development theory (e.g. 1985-89 at UC Berkeley, History of Development and Underdevelopment), emphasizing the specific histories and development trajectories of the different regions in Latin America, Africa and Asia, pointed to possibilities of development in these regions. Since mid-1980s, my research focused on state transformation and development of market societies in the 19 th century and also in the late 20 t h and early 21 st centuries. In doing this, the focus of my research has been the administrative or regulatoiy practices and on the ways these practices shaped national market societies in the earlier period and transnational or global market societies presently. The starting point of my inquiry has been a critique of liberal assumptions about separation of state and society and about naturalness of market economies. Such assumptions had enjoyed a revival in the 1980s with neo-liberal policies seeking to dislodge national bureaucracies from their central position world-wide in national economic development. My critique, in turn, seeks to transcend the binary conception of state/society which isolates society or the domain of market activity from the state or the political domain and suggests that market societies were man-made having been constituted through legal and administrative measures of central bureaucratic states in the 19 th and until the 1980s. Subsequently, such constitutive activity has increasingly been assumed by non-bureaucratic bodies of governance including independent governing boards in the different economic sectors.

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With respect to the 18 th and 19 th centuries, contrary to Foucaultian perceptions, however, modern administrative measures or institutions did not simply represent environments of control and surveillance, subjugating the individual or society to the will of the modern leviathan. Individual administrative or legal measures or institutions were political fields in which different actors staked their claims. As such civil society was embodied in multiple state practices or institutions which were inclusive of its struggles, conflicts. Increasingly I was moving into a conceptual domain which was beyond concerns for different conceptualizations of Ottoman history and which directly addressed the making of market societies in general. I was asked to write the article on the history of the concept of civil society for the International Encyclopedia of Social and Behavioral Sciences (2001). (Article 7 in this volume). I have further studied the obliteration of the lines between state and civil society in relation to the makings in law of individual ownership in the 19 th century Ottoman Empire (Article 8 in this volume). The theme of civil society embodied in multiple administrative and legal practices was inspired through my reading of 19 th century thinkers, most notably J. Bentham and G.W.Hegel, both concerned with formation of market societies. Yet, this idea became crystallized only in relation to a research project on Ottoman laws or regulations relating to land and property as well as cadastral surveys in the 19 th century, which I initiated in mid-1990s with a group of graduate students at the Middle East Technical University, in Ankara. In broader terms, this research undertaking set out to study Ottoman modernity; here, modernity refers to multiple struggles on the part of individuals, groups, states in a given societal context to cope with the pressures of change and doing so in relation to the existing institutional vocabularies. In this sense, it is possible to talk about shared history of modernity in the Eurasian lands extending from China to the Atlantic ocean. This is distinct from understandings 'modernization' depicting world history as one of continually failing emulations of model of European modern state of being. The shared experience of modernity, in term, includes the makings of increasingly national economic environments largely enabled through the practices of central bureaucratic states and their politics. This had been largely true of the makings of national market economies as well as non-market one, the latter especially after 1920s.The history of the Ottoman empire in the 19 th century was part of such universal history of modernity; it represented a selfconscious effort on the part of bureaucratic-military elites to create a centralized bureaucratic administration and a viable productive economy so that the empire could survive in the competition among states in western Eurasia. Success or failure of the empire to survive in interstate competition was

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largely contingent on the politics of both the makings of the bureaucratic state and the economy and was not due to any innate cultural property or inevitability of European domination. (For the perspective on comparative history premised on the notion of shared histories see Articles 4 and 5 in this volume). More specifically, in relation to the study of Ottoman modernity, critical readings and analysis of 19th century Ottoman laws and regulations, government rulers and of attempted modern cadastration, revealed dramatic ruptures from the earlier administrative measures and institutions; the new measures were defining private ownership and this represented a clear departure from the multiple claims on land which the former rules or regulations defined. Our research, in fact, pointed to the existence of two distinct Ottoman states - early modern and modern- suggesting a shift in power configurations which formed the political substance of the state. Apparent continuities between them were revealing of resistances to bureaucratic domination while the 19 th century state did not represent the decline of the former state with its accommodative and distributive practices representing negotiative political domains. The modern state had its own spaces of politics in the very contexts in which administrative rules and regulations were formulated and enforced. Various commissions responsible for drafting laws, gathering information for surveys and compiling them were such contexts where different interests were mediated and accommodated. Insights from this research has developed into a volume I have recently edited (Constituting Modernity: Private Property in the East and West, 2004), including studies of modern state formation in China, in British India, in England as well as in the Ottoman Balkans and Ottoman Syria (Article 9 in this volume). The emphasis on modernity as a shared experience has led to comparative ventures including a comparison of state transformation in the Qing and the Ottoman Empires and with Peter Perdue, the results of which are published as a special issue, 'Shared Modernities in China and Ottoman Empire', of Journal of Early Modern History (2000). (Article 6 in this volume). Finally, the idea that market societies are made through administrative practice and through law (be it court decisions and the like) and the focus on the politics of governing or politics of regulatory and juridical practice led to my involvement in debates on globalization or the makings of global market environments since the 1980s especially in eastern and central Europe, Turkey, Caucasus, Middle East and North Africa. New global market societies as distinct from national market societies of the 19 th century are no longer constituted through administrative and juridical practices focusing on central bureaucracies. With the shifting of political power away from central bureaucracies, market-making has become the domain of transnational organizations, including corporations and of governments whose actions are

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circumscribed by rules set forth by transnational bodies (including the European Union, World Bank, IMF). Yet, this does not mean that the entire world is at the mercy of globalizing forces, more precisely, that of transnational capital and its increased mobility as a result of phenomenal advances in information and transportation technologies. The entry and modus operanti of global capital is a highly negotiated process and the different ways globalization is taking place is largely shaped through the participation of local actors in the processes of the assimilation of global actors in different regions. Above all, this points to political processes and the different regulations, governing practices that are ordering the 'globalization process' are the domains for such politics. This line of thinking has led to a comparison between the makings of market society through the governing practices as these focused on bureaucratic commissions in the 19 th century Ottoman empire and through those non-bureaucratic governing bodies as these focused on autonomous boards in the post-2000 Turkish Republic (Article 10 in this volume). What does this amount to from the perspective of historical analysis in general, and of Ottoman history in particular. First, it proposes a problem or question-oriented approach to history which addresses world historical developments and seeks to situate different histories in world contexts, emphasizing their shared character. From the perspective of Ottoman history, this presupposes educating Ottoman historians in European and Asian social and economic histories as well as histories of thought and to acquaint them with debates among historians of different regions. A problem-oriented approach also involves the study of 20 t h and 21 st century history and an awareness of present developments. Ideas or agendas about past histories are often shaped by perceptions of the present. In the case of the present-day Middle Eastern societies, which were former Ottoman territories, recent formulations of the Greater Middle East project once again re-cast their histories in terms of absences pitted against the presences of democracy, market society, rule of law with which the Western world was blessed. What is in fact happening is an attempt to rob these societies of their histories of their experience of modernity in the 19th and 20 th centuries. That experience is not to be reduced to one of 'Europeanization' but, as importantly, is part of the universal experience whereby individual societies has become conscious of themselves as societies and have risen to change themselves in a selfconscious manner. It is the understanding of modernity as volition or selfconscious action to change itself which has driven societies since the 19 th century and continues to do so. It remains to historians to generate debates and research projects on the histories of modern transformation in the different non-European regions, to keep alive such a sense of volition continually reminding societies not to lapse into states of self-hatred vacillating between seeking of salvation through emulation of the Europe or total rejection of it.

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Central to the establishment of Western domination over the 'East' is the writing of the history of the 'East' in terms of Western hegemony. This practice is particularly manifest and developed in the case of the Ottoman Empire, which encompassed large areas of the Middle East, North Africa, and the Balkans for nearly four centuries until the outbreak of the First World War. The Ottoman territories, because of their proximity to and long-standing military, diplomatic, commercial and cultural contacts with Western Europe, felt the tremors of European expansion more immediately and intimately than other 'Eastern' world regions. In the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, at the 'historical moment' of direct European penetration of Ottoman lands, there developed a body of beliefs — assumptions about the history and the social structure of the Ottoman Empire. 1 Part of the European Weltanschaung formulated by the Enlightenment writers and by Hegel, this discourse is premised on an essential duality or oppositionality in the historical developments of the East and the West. 2 As such, the West is viewed as the privileged domain of world-history characterized by change and development, and the East as the sous-privileged unchaging therefore the ahistorical domain. On the one hand, this notion embodies a Western self-definition that requires conceptualizing the 'Other' (the East) as its opposite or as a contrastive backdrop to its own development whereby the history of the East becomes that of the West in negation. 3 In practice, it has served as the ideology of Western domination that was conceived as the primary stimulus to change in the otherwise stagnant East. On the other hand, implicit in this dualistic conception of world history is a mode of analysis that is ahistorical. The East and the West are conceived as ideal-type societies locked in their respective cultural and geo-political specificities. In this context, 'historical' analysis is one of contrasting ideal types: dynamic, rational, democratic West versus static, irrational, authoritarian (despotic) East. 4

'See Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, the making of an image (Edinburgh, University Press, 1960) for the European image of the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century. ^For a description of this discourse see Perry Anderson, Lineage of the absolutist state (London, New Left Books, 1974), pp. 397-412; and, more importantly, Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York, Random House, 1979). For an excellent formulation of the Hegelian problematic of the 'self and the 'other' see Said, Orientalism. ^For discussion of ideal-type comparisons as applied to the history and the social structures of the Middle East and North Africa see Bryant S. Turner, Marx and the end of Orientalism (London, George Allen and Unwin, 1978).

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This European world-view finds its concrete expression in the nineteenth-century Orientalist tradition of studying art, history, literature and religion, in the Marxian concept of the Asiatic Mode of Production (AMP) as well as in the developmentalist literature in social sciences of the post-World War II period. In the past two decades the fundamental assumptions of these perspectives on the Ottoman Empire are questioned by an increasing number of scholars. 1 In essence, such questioning represents no less than an attempt at 'decolonizing' Ottoman history, dissociating it from the self-image of the West and restoring the Ottoman Empire its place in world history. It means the rewriting of Ottoman history. The essays in this volume are a part of this attempt at rewriting Ottoman history. In doing this, first they attempt a new conceptualization of Ottoman history and society that primarily derives from the world-system perspective formulated by I. Wallerstein. 2 What the world-system perspective does is to challenge the ahistorical and dichotomous views of world history and seeks to place the historical development of the Ottoman Empire in the context of a 'singular transformation' process — that of the European worldcapitalist system. As such, this perspective rejects the notion of culturally or geo-politically determined ideal types in explaining the historical development of different world regions. Instead it explains the differential development of the Ottoman and the Westren European societies in terms of the 'fluctuating reality' of the world-capitalist system as it expanded to include the Ottoman territories after the sixteenth century. This process termed 'incorporation' describes the transformation of Ottoman structures after they came in contact with world-economic forces. How individual authors conceptualize the transformation of the Ottoman society incumbent on 'incorporation', I will discuss later. Parallel to its conceptual emphasis, the volume includes a significant body of micro-historical research on social-economic structures and trends. This trend in Ottoman historical writing reveals, the influence of the Annales school of historians, most notably of F. Braudel, and is pionneered in

1 Most representative of this literature are: Said, Orientalism; Turner, Marx and the end of Orientalism; Talal Asad (ed.), Anthropology and the colonial encounter (London, Ithaca Press, 1973); the articles in the Review of Middle East Studies (henceforth ROMES), 1 (1975), 2 (1976), 3 (1978); Abdallah Laroui, 'For a ethodology of Islamic studies', Diogenes, 83 (1973), 12-39; Marshall Hodgson, The venture of Islam (3 vols., Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1974). 2], Wallerstein, The capitalist world-system. Essays by Immanuel Wallerstein (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1980); The modern world-system: capitalist agriculture and the origins of the European world-economy in the sixteenth century (New York, Academic Press, 1974). For the application of this perspective to the Ottoman Empire, Wallerstein 'The Ottoman Empire and the capitalist world-Economy: some questions for research', Review, II, 3 (Winter 1979), 389-98. Also the articles by I. Wallerstein, H. Decdeli, and R. Kasaba and by islamoglu and Keyder in this volume.

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the works of Omer L. Barkan and Halil Inalcik. 1 It stands in sharp contrast, however, to the conventional studies of the Ottoman Empire that focus on political-military-cultural institutions.

Ahistorical conceptions of Ottoman history For the nineteenth-century Orientalist tradition, 2 'Islamic' civilization, of which the Ottoman Empire was a part, constituted the object of study. This civilizational unit was then defined in cultural essentialist terms. Not only was a highly heterogeneous entity, the 'Islamic' world, made uniform by the existence of an Islamic geist diverse institutions or cultural expressions were assumed to be concrete manifestations of this primary cultural essence. Initially focusing on the philological deciphering of such cultural forms as literary, philosophical, religious, and legal text, the Orientalists viewed the history of the 'Islamic' civilization as one of 'decline' or 'stagnation' following a 'golden age' in the classical period between the ninth and the twelfth centuries. While decline was explained in terms of a flaw in the Islamic cultural essence, the rise of the Ottoman Empire constituted an anomaly in this unilinear downward path of 'decline'. 3 To accommodate it, on the one hand, the Orientalist emphasis shifted from a textual to an institutional mode of analysis on the other hand, the cultural entity of the 'Islamic' civilization had to be juxtaposed with another nineteenth-century intellectual construct, that of 'Oriental despotism'. The analysis of Ottoman 'despotism' as an antithesis to European monarchy was very much part of the European political discourse since the Renaissance. Beginning with the Englishtenment thinker, especially with Montesquieu, however, the notion of 'despotism' acquired a more general denotation. It came to describe all Asian polities including that of the 'For a discussion of the influence of the Annates School on recent Ottoman historiography see Halil Inalcik, 'Impact of the Annates School on Ottoman studies and new findings', Review, I, 3/4 (Winter/Spring 1978), 69-96. For a discussion of nineteenth-century origins of modern Orientalism see C.J. Adams, 'Islamic religion', Part I, Middle East Studies Association Bulletin, IV, 3 (October 15, 1970). For the founders of academic Orientalism such as Wellhausen, Noldeke, Becker and Snouck Hurgronje see J. W. Fuck, 'Islam as an historical problem in European historiography since 1800', in B. Lewis and P.M. Holt (eds.), Historians of the Middle East (London, Oxford University Press, 1962); V.G. Kiernan, The Lords of Human Kind: Black Man, Yellow Man and White Man in an Age of Empire (Boston, Little Brown, 1969); J. Waardenburg, L'Islam dans le miroir de Voccident (The Hague, Mouton 1962); Talal Asad, 'Two European images of nonEuropean rule' in Asad (ed.), Anthropology and the colonial encounter. •'For a most striking example of the 'decline' thesis see G.E. von Griinebaum, Classical Islam: A history 600-1258 (Chicago, Aldine Publishing Co., 1970). For a critique of this view see David Waines, 'Cultural Anthropology and Islam; the contribution of G.E. von Griinebaum', Review of Middle East Studies, 2 (1976), 113-23.

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Ottoman Empire whereby geographical determinants of social-political structures were emphasized.1 At the same time, the contrasting of political structures, the relationships between the state and society in the East and the West became an indispensable intellectual exercise in the late eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries.2 This was also the theoretical context in which the notion of the AMP was formulated by Marx and Engels. The story of the AMP is familiar and need not concern us here.3 Moreover, the AMP was not a theoretical model generated solely for the analysis of the Ottoman Empire. What needs to be stressed, however, is that the AMP embodies the central assumption of 'Oriental despotism' — that of the existence of a gap between a mammoth state and an unintegrated social structure. Hence, in Marx and Engels' formulations of the AMP, the defining feature of Asian society was the absence of intermediary structures of classes (i.e., landed aristocracy, merchant class) between the hydraulic state and the undifferentiated agrarian base. This meant the absence of any limits to the authority of the state; it meant the absence of 'civil society' and the preponderance of the state. It was explained in terms of Asian geography (climatic aridity) or of the cellular organization of society in self-sufficient village communities. The Asian society without classes and therefore without class conflict was then assumed to be stationary, without history. As such, change could come to the East only from without, more precisely, through Western intervention. That the AMP is theoretically inadequate and empirically inaccurate is amply demonstrated.4 Yet, the assumptions of the AMP about the ' For a discussion of Western political theory of Oriental despotism tracing it from Machiavelli's Prince see Anderson, Lineages, pp. 397-416, 462-72; for Baron de Montesquieu's discussion of despotism, see The spirit of laws (New York, Colonial Press, 1900), pp. 18, 25-8, 57-66, 122 129. Also see Franco Venturi, 'Oriental despotism', Journal for the History of Ideas, 24 (1963), 13362; R. Koebner, 'Despot and despotism: vicissitudes of a politicall term', Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 14 (1951), 275-302. 2 The distinction between the civil society and the state and contrasting of the East and the West in the context of that distinction, found its most explicit formulation in G.W. Hegel, The philosophy of history (New York, Dover Publications, 1956). Also for a formulation of the comparison between East and West in the context of Gramsci's thought see P. Anderson, 'The antimones of Antonio Gramsci', New Left Review, 100 (November 1976-January 1977), 5-80. 3 For a comprehensive summary of Marx and Engels' scattered and fragmentary writings on the AMP and the tracing of the Hegelian ancertry of their formulations see Anderson. Lineages, pp. 464-96. The account given here is based on ¿lis summary. 4 The theoretical inadequacy of the AMP, especially in explaining the existence of highly developed state structure (such as those in the Ottoman Empire, Mughal India, China) in a classless society is discussed in Anderson, Lineages, pp. 481-95 and in Barry Hindess and Paul Hirst, Pre-capitalist mode of production (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975), pp. 178201. Anderson also stresses the empirical shortcomings of the AMP and states that its description of Asian society does not correspond to the specific historical development of any society in Asia. Rejecting the geography-bound explanations of Asian history, Anderson, however, resorts to culturalist explanations of the kind favoured by Orientalists and Modernizationists. In doing so, he ascribes the failure of the Ottoman Empire to 'modernize' or to achieve capitalist development to its specific religious or cultural dispositions (pp. 397-400). Thus, his insistence on the necessity for depicting the specific social-economic structures and state systems in non-Western areas amounts to little more than an attempt at delineating the specific historical stagnation of the Ottoman Empire — an exercise that underlines the uniqueness of Western European development.

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stationariness of the East and its despotic political structure rooted in geography and agrarian social structure are carried over to the post-World War II analyses of Asian societies — those of Soviet Russia and China, as well as the former Ottoman territories of the Middle East and North Africa. 1 In these analyses the AMP serves at times rather too explicitly the ideological function of underlining the superiority of the West vis-à-vis the East. On the one hand, this takes the form of cold-war rhetoric, pure and simple. 2 On the other hand, it serves to legitimate Western colonial penetration of non-Western areas by stressing the beneficial effects of such penetration in the development process. Shlomo Avineri's study of Arab society provides an excellent example of the latter case. 3 Avineri traces the despotic militarism of the contemporary Arab elites and the social-economic underdevelopment of Arab societies to their allegedly stagnant and classless origins under Ottoman despotism. He then proceeds to show how direct Israeli colonization of Palestine has helped to eradicate the past relics of the AMP and to launch this region on the road to modernity. Orientalist descriptions of Islamic polity and society closely approximate to the conceptions of 'Oriental despotism' that dominated the Enlightenment and the nineteenth-century European intellectual discourse. True to their culturalist orientation, however, Orientalists explain the phenomenon of Oriental despotism in terms of Islamic cultural properties and not in terms of geography or social-economic structures. Thus, in this conception Islamic socciety is viewed as a cellular structure in which village communities, tribes, guilds, ethnic and religious groupings constitute separate and autonomous units that are integrated only on the level of religious ideology and institutions. 'Oriental despotism' or the political structure is then superimposed by force on the society and, as such, it is external to the

Two important works are those by Karl A. Wittfogel, Oriental despotism (New York, Vintage Books, 1981) and by Umberto Maletto, Marx and the Third World (London, Macmillan Press, 1977). These authors seek to provide a theoretical consistency to Marx and Engels' formulations. In doing so, Wittfogel, for instance, stresses the class character of the state embodied in a managerial bureaucracy in charge of hydraulic work. He then sees in this geographically determined political structure an 'essential' quality and seeks to explain the absence of Western-style democracies and the rise of 'totalitarian' regimes in modern-day Soviet Russia and in China in terms of their supposed agro-despotic heritage. 2 F o r an excellent critique of Wittfogel stressing this point as well as the theoretical inadequacies of his approach see Hindness and Hirst, Pre-capitalist modes of production dd 207-20. " -i -"Shlomo Avineri (ed.), Karl Marx on colonialism and modernization (New York, Doublead, 1968); 'Modernization and Arab society', Israel, The Arabs an the Middle East, eds. Irving Howe and Carl Gershman (New York, Bantam Books, 1972). For an incisive critique or Avineri's thought and his Hegelian Marxism, see Bryant Turner, 'Avineri's view of Marx's theory of colonialism: Israel', Science and Society, 40 (1976), 385-409; Turner, Marx and the end of Orientalism, pp. 25-38.

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society's integration.1 Underlying this conception of the relations between the repressive state and the 'automistic society' is the assumption that the Islamic society lacked a notion of 'political domination based on general consent'. 2 On the one hand, the rule of the despot was uncontested by different social groupings whose rights and interests were not embodied in a rational body of law and who therefore could not claim a legitimate political existence nor bring about political changes in the existing legal framework. On the other hand, ruler required no legitimation in the eyes of his subjects who were excluded from the polity. His authority lay in the sheer exercise of force and in the flawed Islamic political theory that recognized the legitimacy of the de facto ruler. Once again state and society relations thus defined read the absence of civil society. They also mean the absence of liberalism, humanism, and parliamentarism in Islamic society.3 These absence rooted in Islamic cultural traits (in law, moral code and customs) in turn explain the political and social stagnation of the society, its political instability and disorder as witnessed in the circulation of dynasties and in sporadic revolts, and, finally, in the indifference of the populace to the upheavals on the level of the polity. In describing this story, Orientalist research focuses on the study of repressive political institutions (army, bureaucracy) and on religion-cultural institutions (Islamic law, the religious scholars, sufi orders) that legitimate this repression. The 'decline' or the 'stagnation' of the Islamic Ottoman society is then traced in the history of individual institutions.4 Thus, the 'golden agedecline', problematic is recast in the framework of 'Oriental despotism' whereby the Ottoman golden age in the sixteenth century characterized by

For such a conception of the Ottoman Empire see H.A.R. Gibb and H. Bowen, Islamic society and the West; a study of of the impact of Western civilisation on Muslim culture in the Near East, vol. I, Islamic society in the eighteenth cenutry, Parts 1 and 2 (London, Oxford University Press, 1950 and 1957). For a critique of this work, see R. Owen, 'The Middle East in the eighteenth century—on "Islamic" society in decline: a critique of Gibb and Bowen's eighteenth century— on "Islamic" society in decline: a critique of Gibb and Bowen's Islamic society and the West', ROMES, 1 (1975), 101-12. ^This conception of the relationship between the rulers and their subjects finds its most lucid expression in H.A.R. Gibb, 'Religion and politics in Christianity and Islam', Islam and international relations (London, 1965); and G.E. von Grunebaum, Islam, essays in the nature and growth of a cultural tradition, (The University of Chicago Press, 1946); and in the work of the Dutch Orientalist Snouck Hurgronje: G.H. Bousquet and J. Schacht (eds.) Selected works of C. Snouck Hurgronje (Leiden, Brill, 1957). For an excellent critique of 'Oriental despotism' based on the works of these authors see Talal Asad, 'Two European images of non-European rule'. 'i For discussion of anti-Humanism, absence of 'liberty' and 'progress' as well as of the irrationality of Islamic society see G.E. von Grunebaum, Modern Islam (Berkeley, The University of California Press, 1962). ^For a critique of the institutional mode of analysis see Islamoglu and Keyder 'Agenda for Ottoman history'.

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institutional flourishing was followed by a period of institutional decline owing to a flawed cultural cssence or to Islam.1 Finally, what needs to be stressed is the ideological function of the culturalist view of 'Oriental despotism'. To begin with, the assumption that the Islamic political theory recognized the legitimacy of effective de facto rulers served to legitimate Western colonial rule as long as it was more efficient than the 'corrupt' pre-colonial one. Second and most importantly, the assumption of the absence of structural links between the state and its replacement by a more humane colonial state would in no way impair the functioning of the Islamic society.2 Culturalist and 'stagnationist' assumptions of nineteenth-century Orientalism are recast in the developmentalist (modernizationist) literature of the post-World War II period.3 Central to the developmentalist approach is the Weberian characterization of Islamic society.4 Weber, like Marx before him, sought to explain why rational capitalism did not develop in Islamic society. In doing so, he concentrated on the absence of urban commercial classes which he attributed to the specific character of the Islamic ideological-political structures — Islamic ethics, law and despotism. This 'cultural essentialism' in Weberian garb takes the form of a dichotomous conception of tradition versus modernity in the modernization literature. Modernizationists take the individual nation-states that came into existence after the dissolution of the Ottoman rule in the Middle East and North Africa, and not the Islamic civilization, as their unit of analysis. But, in explaining the economic and the political 'underdevelopment' of these basically political units, they stress the essential Islamic cultural properties (traditionalism) embodied in the attitudes and briefs of individuals and in institutions which inhibit the development of modern (Western) attitudes and institutions. Of the latter, secularist-nationalist world-view, entrepreneurial spirit, and parliamentary democracy are signalled *For the 'decline' thesis as applied to the Ottoman Empire see Gibb and Bowen, Islamic society and the West; Bernard Lewis, The emergence of modern Turkey, 2nd ed. (New York, Oxford University Press, 1968). 2 Asad, 'Two European images of non-European rule'. For an explicit statement of Dutch colonial role in Indonesia, see J. Waardenburg, L'Islam dans le miroir de I'occident; W.F. Wertheim, 'Counter-insurgency research at the turn of the century', Sociologische Gids, 19 (September/Decembre 1972). For a description of the intimate relationship between Orientalist research and French colonialism in Morocco, see Edmund Burke, III, 'The image of the Moroccan state in French ethnological literature: a new look at the origins of Lyautey's Berber policy', in E. Gellner and C. Micaud (eds.), Arabs and Berbers: from tribe to nation (London Duckworth, 1973). o For the Middle East the textbook of the modernization paradigm is Daniel Lerner's Passing of the traditional society (New York, Free Press, 1958); for the nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire, W.R. Polk and R.L. Chambers (eds.), The beginnings of modernisation in the Middle East (Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1968) is a representative collection for a critical review of modernization literature on the Middle East and North Africa see Turner, Marx and the end of Orientalism and also the articles in ROMES. ^Turner, Marx and the end of Orientalism.

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out. 'Modernization' ('westernization'), on the other hand, is viewed as the end-state of development and, to achieve it, institutions and attitudes are to be refashioned or 'reformed' after Western models. In the implementation of 'reforms' modernizationists stress the centrality of Western educated bureaucratic-military elites. More importantly, the theory provides legitimation for the use of force by these elites in the name of an 'ultimate good', that of modernization. Finally, this model of transformation from above is justified in terms of the 'history' (rather the 'non-history') of Islamic society which, not having a bourgeoisie, experienced no political reorganization or revolutions from below and therefore can generate neither indigenous nationalisms nor parliamentary democracies. One widespread reaction to the prevailing conceptions of Ottoman history and society has been to reject the alleged essential oppositionality in the historical developments of the Ottoman Empire and the West. Instead, these critics argue for the generalisability of the Western historical experience to the entire globe, in general, and to the Ottoman Empire in particular. The argument takes several forms. The first is the orthodox Marxist stance, which tends towards a position of quasi-universal feudalism in describing the Ottoman social structure. This view posits a unilinear model of historical development that sees in history a pre-ordained course along the stages of feudalism — capitalism-socialism which every society, each in its own pace, must take. By obscuring the specificity of development paths in different world regions under the undifferentiated rubric of feudalism, this approach, however, falls into the trap of 'ahistoricism' that plagues the modernizationists: 'ideal stages' take the place of Weberian ideal types. 1 A second criticism of the conventional views is one that generalizes the development of capitalism to the Ottoman ('Islamic') society. Inspired by the work of Maxime Rodinson, 2 this approach seeks to demonstrate that the capitalist sector (defined in terms of the existence of merchant and financial capital) was an integral part of Islamic societies throughout their history and that Islam as a culture system was not antithetical to capitalist development. This Rodinsonian view bears much too strongly the marks of reaction to the Weberian-modernizationist paradigm and to the Eurocentric conceptions of 'Islamic' history. This reactive posture then results in the search for 'capitalist' characteristics in lieu of those assumed by the Weberian lore as hindering capitalist development. 3 To begin with, by defining capitalism in

' i his approach is adopted in orthodox Marxist interpretations of Ottoman history. Maxime Rodinson, Islam and Capitalism (Paris, Seuil, 1966). 3See, for instance, Peter Gran, 'Late-eighteenth-to early-nineteenth-century Egypt: merchant capitalism or modern capitalism', in this volume. 2

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terms of the mere presence of capital (merchant and finance), this approach renders capitalism an ahistorical category that can be spotted in nearly all societies one cares to look into. In the second place, this view does not question the validity of the ahistorical category of 'Islamic civilization' as the unit of analysis. A such, Rodinson seeks to refute prevailing conceptions of 'Islamic' history and society on their own terms without questioning the ideological function of their formulations or without leaving the conceptual domain they defined. 1 In brief, what is primarily wrong with the AMP, nineteenth-century Orientalist and modernizationist conceptions of Ottoman ('Islamic') society is that they are ahistorical. The 'history' of the Ottoman Empire is explained in terms of essential (internal) therefore unchanging and ahistorical propertiesculture or geography. Conceptions of cellular social structure underline the stationariness, the ahistorical character of the Ottoman Empire. Historical development then become a function of Western penetration, to which is attached a positive value. As such, these conceptions cannot provide accurate analyses of the historical transformation, of the internal dynamic of the Ottoman Empire in the period both prior to and after Western penetration. Ultimately, their primary concern remains with Western development and in showing how and why the Ottoman Empire departed from the Western pattern. Hence, such questions as why capitalism did not develop or why liberal thought did not flourish in Ottoman lands are central to these discussions; these approaches serve to highlight the uniquences (or the specific dynamic) of Western development as it is brought into focus through contrasting it with its opposite in the East. 2 More importantly, they fulfil an ideological function, that of underlining the superiority of the West vis-á-vis the Ottoman Empire, and therefore wittingly or unwittingly help to justify Western domination in the particular moments of encounter between the West and the Ottoman Empire (or the former Ottoman territories). On the other hand, the critiques of Orientalism, the modernization theory and of the AMP tend either to dismiss the specificity of Ottoman historical development in an attempt to fit it in the theoretical grid of a universal feudalism or repeat the ideological assumptions of their opponents in the midst of empirical bickerings over absence or presences of capitalistic or liberal traits. The world-system perspective seeks to move away from the essentially ahistoricaP and 'Roger Owen, 'Islam and capitalism: a critique of Rodinson', ROMES, 2(1976), 85 93. See n. 4 p. 16. 2 For Wallerstein's critique of the modernization paradigm and his formulation of the worldsystem perspective as a methology in social sciences see 'Modernisation: requiescat in pace'-, 'The rise and future demise of the world capitalist system: concepts for comparative analysis' ; 'A world-system perspective on the social sciences', in The capitalist world-economy. 2

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ideological conceptions of Ottoman history (and from the approach of the latter's critiques) towards new categories of analysis.

The Ottoman Empire and the world-system

perspective

World system perspective on the Ottoman Empire is most succintly formulated by Wallerstein-Decdeli-Kasaba and Islamoglu-Keyder.' In general terms, the world-system perspective explains the differential development of Western Europe and the Ottoman Empire in terms of the historical development of the Europe world-economy beginning in the sixteenth century. In doing so, it stresses the historicity of both the 'underdevelopment' of the Ottoman territories and the capitalist 'development' in Western Europe. Hence, the central question is no longer one of why capitalism did not develop in the Ottoman lands or 'why can't they be like us?' but how capitalist worldeconomy, once it developed in Europe, effected the development of other world regions. More precisely, the world-system perspective 2 seeks to delineate the transformation patterns in the different zones of the world-economy as it expanded through trade and brought about an ever more efficient organization of production through an ever-increasing regional specialization. The three zones of specialization are the core, semi-periphery and the periphery. The trade-induced division of labour between these regions was then matched by the development of different modes of labour organization in the different zones (i.e., free wage labour in the core, shar-cropping in the semi-periphery, 'coerced' cash-crop labour in the periphery) and by the differential strength of state structures (strong in the core and weak in the periphery). What this means is that not every region flourished or developed on an equal footing. On the other hand, the differential development of production systems, labour organizations and of state structures ensured the flow of surplus from the periphery to the core and the maximization of profits in the system, thus giving rise to accumulation of capital in the core and to 'underdevelopment' in the periphery. In this sense, no world region can be said to have been the innately 'privileged' domain of world-history nor is any region innately nonprivileged. Moreover, given the specific nature of the world-capitalist development characterized by the 'unequal' development of different regions, Emmanuel Wallerstein, Hale Decdeli and Rcgat Kasaba, "The Incorporation of the Ottoman Empire into World-Economy" in The Ottoman Empire and the World Economy, ed. Huri islamoglu-inan (Cambridge; Cambridge University, Press, 1987); Huri Islamoglu and faglar Keyder, "Agenda for Ottoman History" in The Ottoman Empire and the World Economy, ed. Huri Islamoglu-inan (Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 1987). 2 For general theoretical formulations of this perspective see the articles by I. Wallerstein in The capitalist world-economy and The Modern world-system.

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one cannot talk about the beneficial effects of Western penetration (colonial or commercial) on non-Western regions. Thus, for instance, it is suggested that the unintegrated social structure and the 'backward' or 'underdeveloped' features such as stagnating peasant economies, enslaved or exploited rural labour, declining imperial commerce and the relative absence of an indigenous (Muslim) merchant class as well as the tenacious hold of religious ideology or 'traditionalism' and a 'weak' authoritarian state structure — that the nineteenth-century writers of the Ottoman Empire observed and their twentieth-century counterparts continue to unearth — were not after all innate to Ottoman or Islamic society. Instead, it is argued, these were 'transformed' structures of a society that was undergoing profound structural changes under the impact of Western penetration. Nor is there the possibility for nonWestern areas to replicate the Western model of development or Western institutions. The so-called 'modern' institutions are peripheral structures that emerged under the impact of Western penetration and as such serve to reproduce the area's 'underdevelopment'. The world-system pespective also stresses the 'historicity' of regions prior to their confrontation with the European world-economy. That is, it seeks to delineate their internal dynamic. In doing so, it differs from the Orientalist and modernizationist approaches in the choice of unit of analysis. Instead of the cultural unit of the 'Islamic' civilization, islamoglu and Keyder and Wallerstein, Decdeli and Kasaba take as their object of study the social system of the 'redistributive world empire' defined in terms of its internal division of labour or its mode of integration. Hence, in contrast to 'cellular' conceptions of the Ottoman social structure in which discrete parts reproduce their own stagnation, the Ottoman world-empire describes an integrated whole. It is characterized by political determination of the economic division of labour whereby the controls of the central state over the production, appropriation, and distribution of the surplus serve to integrate the different economic practices (agrarian economy of peasants, urban craft production, and trade). In identifying the mechanisms of integration, the world-system approach points to the extraction of surplus in the form of taxes and to the organization of trade and markets by the state, islamoglu and Keyder also employ the theoretical construct of the AMP in describing the Ottoman totality. In doing this, they attempt to avoid the main theoretical problem of the conventional AMP formulations — that of explaining the existence of a highly developed state structure in a classless society — by defining the state as the surplus-receiving class and by making the state the locus of both the intra-class conflicts among various claimants to the surplus and the interclass conflict between the merchants and the recipients of the surplus. In her

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discussion of agrarian class relations in Ottoman Anatolia, islamoglu-inan however, contests this class reductionist view of the state that defines the state and its relationship to society simply in terms of the state's role as the extractor of surplus 1 . Instead she argues that the basis of state power lay outside the surplus extraction process and in the political-juridical structures that constituted the basis for the legitimation of that power. Hence, through its political and legal practices, the state intervened in the economy and society and in the social class relations. This analysis seeks to refute the conventional 'Oriental despotism' thesis that views the 'gap' between the political structure and the society and the absence of intermediary structures, except for those mechanisms essential for the tribute collection, as the defining features of Asian society and that poses political power in Asia as absolute and arbitrary and therefore devoid of any legitimating principle. For instance, Sunar describes the internal structure of the Ottoman system as redistributive-patrimonial based on the domestic mode of production of peasants in which both exchange and production were state institutions 2 . Viewing the society as an institution of the state, Sunar, unlike islamoglu and Keyder, does not attribute the integration of the Ottoman system to a class dynamic, instead he focuses on the dynamics of the state structure and stresses the vertical integration of social-economic units into that structure, whereby power and status and not economic class describe the system of social stratification. Central of islamoglu and Keyder's conception of the internal dynamic of the Ottoman structure is the role of merchant capital and of internal trade. 3 Empirical research also points to the primacy of trade and markets inside the Ottoman 'world-empire', islamoglu-inan's research shows that the collection of taxes in kind required an extensive network of urban and rural markets that served the recipients of revenues, who converted either part or the whole of the product tax into cash in these markets. In fact, she argues that surpluses appropriated in the form of taxes constituted the larger part of the marketed surpluses and therefore were the primary determinants of commercial activity within the Empire. Hence, the market involvement of the peasant economy was to a large degree mediated through the mechanism of taxation. Faroqhi's study of cotton and cotton-cloth production in sixteenth-century Anatolia ' Huri Islamoglu-inan "State and Peasants in the Ottoman Empire: a study of peasant economy in north-central Anatolia during the sixteenth century" in ed. Huri Islamoglu-inan, The Ottoman Empire and the World Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). ^Ilkay Sonar, "State and Economy in the Ottoman Empire", in ed. Huri Islamoglu-inan, The Ottoman Empire and the World Economy, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). 3 For a discussion of internal trade also see Suraiya Faroqhi and Huri Islamoglu, 'Crop patterns and agricultural production trends in sixteenth-century Anatolia', Review, II, 3 (Winter 1979), 401-36.

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shows that merchant capital directly penetrated the rural economy, providing the intermediary link between that economy and the larger society 1 . On the one hand, Faroqhi argues that rural cotton manufacturing was carried out in close connection with the market. On the other hand, she shows that, contrary to the conceptions of autarchic village units embodying a unity of handicrafts and agriculture, 2 rural craft production was organized along the lines of a putting out system in which the merchants provided the raw materials and purchased the finished products destined for larger markets beyond the locale of production. At the same time, the merchant class constituted an intermediary structure between the state and the larger society. The central state and its institutions was a major market for the products of both the agrarian economy and the rural and urban craftsmen. More importantly, as Faroqhi shows elsewhere, 3 the central state, through its controls over trade and markets, ensured the flow of goods to designated markets for the provisioning of towns and of those areas where certain goods were not produced. As such, the only mode of state intervention in the society was not through taxation. The state intervened to regulate the circulation of goods within the Empire and this presupposed the existence of a highly complex organization of trade and markets. Hence, on the basis of recent research, it can be argued that, contrary to Weberian formulations and those of their opponents, the problem is not one of the absence or presence of merchant capital or commercial development but that of how these were integrated into the system. In the Ottoman system such integration took place via the political controls of the central state. Most importantly, however, the world-system perspective seeks to show how trade and market structures of the Ottoman Empire were transformed with the expansion of European trade after the sixteenth century. This process, which signalled the eventual dissolution of the Ottoman worldempire, describes its 'incorporation' into the European capitalist system (islamoglu and Keyder, Wallerstein, Decdeli and Kasaba). This meant the transformation of the Ottoman Empire into a raw-material-producing region, i.e., periphery, for the European core markets in exchange for manufactured goods. It also meant the disruption of the political unity of the Empire — that is the undermining of its integrative principle that focused on the state's ability to direct the flow of goods inside the world-empire. In more concrete terms, the increased demand for Ottoman agricultural goods and the 1 Suraiya Faroqhi, "Notes on the production of cotton and cotton cloth in sixteenth and seventeenth century Anatolia" in ed. Huri Islamoglu-Inan, The Ottoman Empire and the World Economy, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). 2 Caglar Keyder's description of Ottoman rural crafts approximates to this conception: 'Protoindustrialization in the Ottoman Empire', Insurgent sociologist (Winter 1980). 3 Suraiya Faroqhi, 'Sixteenth-century periodic markets in various Anatolian sancaks', Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, XXII 1(1979), 32-80.

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consequent high prices of these goods in the European markets attracted the Ottoman merchant capital to these markets and therefore made possible its escape from state controls. As a result, merchant capital was increasingly integrated into the economic division of labour of the European market; internal trade and market networks declined relative to foreign trade (Gen^ 1 ) and trade shifted from inland centres to coastal towns; the indigenous and predominantly Muslim merchant classes were dealt a blow as foreign merchants or their agents—the Christian minorities-gained precedence (Richards). 2 (Hence, it was not so much Islamic ideology as the changes in the structure of trade resulting from the rise of the world-economy that led to the withdrawal of Muslims from commercial activities.) Subsequently, worldempire ceases to be a valid unit of analysis instead the world-capitalist economy that is integrated via the market becomes the proper object of study. Hence, a new periodization is introduced whereby the history of the Ottoman Empire after the sixteenth century is not one of continual decline to be shaken by the sudden Western penetration in the nineteenth century. Its history after the sixteenth century is one of its 'incorporation' into the world-system or of 'peripheralization'. It is in this context of 'peripheralization', or of the transformation in trade and market structures, that the world-system perspective seeks to explain the transformations in the Ottoman agrarian economy and society, in craft production as well as in the state structure. It is thus argued that commodity production for European markets led to the stagnation of the rural economy of independent peasant producers, and commercial production increasingly took place on large estates worked by enserfed peasants ('coerced cash-crop labour') or under exploitative share-cropping arrangements. At the same time, peripheralization signalled de-industrialization or the undermining of Ottoman handicraft industries as cheap European factory-made goods invaded the Ottoman market. Finally, peripheralization meant the 'weakening' of the Ottoman centralized state with the decline in the state's ability to control the production, distribution, and appropriation of economic surpluses, and the rise of rival political nodules (ayans, derebeys) that competed for these surpluses (feudalization). The outcome of this development was the rise, in the nineteenth century, of a 'new' centralized state (the Tanzimat state) that sought to fashion its institutions (as well as its ideology or self-conception) after ' Mehmet Gen?, "A Study of the feasibility of using eighteenth-century Ottoman financial records as an indicator of economic activity", in ed. Huri Islamoglu-lnan, The Ottoman Empire and the World Economy, (Cambridge: Cambridge University, Press, 1987). Alan R. Richards, "Primitive Accumulatin in Egypt, 1798-1882" in Huri Islamoglu-lnan, The Ottoman Empire and the World Economy, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). 2 For a discussion of the decline of the Muslim merchant class also see Peter Gran, Islamic roots of capitalism: Egypt 1760-1840 (Austin, The University of Texas Press, 1979), pp. 3-34, 111-31.

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Western models, so as to make possible its functioning as part of the world inter-system and to respond to global economic processes. In short, the peripheral structure of the Ottoman Empire was one in which the internal integration of the system, its political rationality, was undermined. It was characterized by the appearance of disarticulated structures such as the 'weak' state and the 'foreign' or minority merchants — which, in turn, were integrated into the larger totality of the European capitalist economy.

World-system approach to the study of Ottoman history re-evaluated The world-sytem perspective is, however, criticized for its one-sided and 'economistic' approach to peripheral transformation, that is, for assigning potency and causality to changes in European trade structure in bringing about social-economic as well as political changes in the periphery. 1 It is argued that, while the world-system approach is successful in rejecting the cultural essentialist and therefore the ahistorical stance of the modernization theory, it nevertheless fails to explain the specific local (regional) histories and class relations in pre-capitalist societies, and therefore it cannot account for the divers development patterns in the periphery. 2 Instead it posits a picture of world-capitalist development in which the periphery is a passive recipient of the impulses from the core, and its transformation proceeds along the lines dictated by the exigencies of its location (status) in the world-economic division of labour. On the other hand, explaining the specific development paths in different world regions requires that non-economic structures — state, kinship, religion, law — are taken into account. 3 Research on social-economic change in pre-capitalist societies suggests that these non-economic practices enter the constitutive structure of class relations and make possible the extraction of surplus. Hence, it is argued that the superstructures are the dominant practices in pre-capitalist society as such, they prove to be resilient to economic impulses and, more importantly, they shape the extent and the manner in which the economic factors, including the ' For critical assessments of Wallerstein's work see Robert Brenner 'The origins of capitalist development: a critique of neo-Smithian Marxism', New Left Review, 104 (1977), 25-93; also see the special issue of the symposium on 'The modern world system by Immanuel Wallerstein', Peasant Studies, VI, 1 (January 1977), 2-42. This issue includes articles by John Markoff, Robert A. Dodgshon, Jane Schneider, Domenico Sella, Edward J. Nell. 2 For a critical appraisal of the world-system perspective from the viewpoint of regional analysis see Carol. A Smith, 'Regional analysis in world-system perspective: a critique of three structural theories of uneven development', paper delivered at the conference of the Society for Economic Anthropology, Indian University, Bloomington, Indiana, April 24-29, 1981. I am rateful to Ms Smith for letting me read this paper. Anderson, Lineages, pp. 402-5.

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expansion of world trade, affected changes in production systems, social relations of production, and in class or power structures. 1 Recent research on Ottoman history draws attention to the criticism of the one-sidedness and the 'economism' of the world-system approach. In fact, it points to an urgent need for a theoretical juxtaposition of the two influential social science perspectives of the past decade — those of Immanuel Wallerstein and Barrington Moore. 2 First, studies of the internal dynamic of the Ottoman society point to the presence of specific patterns of transformation at different time periods in different regions during the 'incorporation' process. These patterns do not always conform to those predicted in the general formulations of the world-system perspective; nor are they always best suited to the maximization of profits in the world-economy. When they do conform to these patterns, it is because of the specific configuration of historically evolved structures in that region and not because of unmediated responses to outside economic stimuli. The emphasis on the specificity of development paths in different regions need not, however, signal a narrow parochialism inherent in regional histories or a reversion to essentialist explanations of the development process. Instead, what is to be emphasized is the two side-sidedness of the incorporation process and how the specific structures in a given region were responsible for moulding the particular kind of 'peripheral' transformation that came about once the area was subjected to the influence of global economic processes. Put differently, what is called for is a re-definiton of 'incorporation' as a complex combination of global economic developments and locally specified systems of class interactions and power structures.3 Peter Gran in criticiting the one-sidedness of the world-system perspective, argues for an acentric global system in which participation of individual areas was not determined so much by their structural positions, either as core or periphery, but by the internal dynamic specific to these areas 4 . Studying eighteenth-century Egyptian history, Gran describes this 'internal dynamic' in terms of the indigenous capitalist development of the 1

Robert Brenner, 'Agrarian class structures and economic development in pre-industrial Europe', Past and Present, 70 (1976), 30-5. 2 Barrington Moore Jr, Social origins of dictatorship and democracy (Boston, Beacon, Press, 1967). 3 For recent formulations of this stance in the context of concrete regional analysis see Joel Kahn, Minangkabau social formations (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1980); Katherine Verdery, Transylvanian villagers: three centuries of political, economic and ethnic change (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1983. Also, for a theoretical treatment of the subject, Eric Wolf, 'Crisis and differentiation in capitalism' in Europe and the people without history (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1984). 4 Peter Gran, "Late-Eighteenth-early-nineteenth-century Egypt: merchant capitalism or modern capitalism?", in ed. Huri islamoflu-Inan, The Ottoman Empire and the World Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).

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Egyptian political economy resulting from its integration with that of southern France through the wheat trade. In this context, he underlines the 'capitalist' character of the Egyptian merchant class — by virtue of its participation in the global capitalist market, of its autonomy from the state structure, and finally, of its utilitarian ideology. Put differently, Gran argues that Egypt during this period was not simply the tabula rasa upon which the European economic and also cultural superiority were imposed; it participated in the world-market with its own structures, opened up or resisted European commerce, responding to the dictates of its own internal dynamic. As such, Egypt was an active partner in its relations with Europe and was central (and not peripheral) to the development of global capitalism. But, according to Gran, Egyptian capitalist dynamic was interrupted as the indigenous (capitalist) commercial class was undermined by the rise of 'state commercial capitalism' under Mehmet Ali — a development which Gran equates with 'peripheralization'. Gran's analysis reflects the Rodinsonian tradition of stressing the indigenous 'capitalist' development of 'Islamic' societies based on their commercial development. Stressing the context of 'global capitalism', however, Gran also challenges the narrowly political and Euro-centric periodization of Egyptian history favoured by modernizationists, who take 1798, the year of the French invasion, as the beginning of 'modern' Egyptian history. Gran shows that neither the French invasion nor the rise of Mehmet Ali constituted an eruption sui generis; these developments were part of the transformation of Egyptian society which had been interacting with Europe long before 1798. Authors such as Pamuk and Kurmu§ on 19th-century Ottoman agriculture point to the role of internal structures in determining the course of agrarian transformation 1 . In this context, they question the thesis of the tendency towards the formation of commercial estates (giftlik) worked by 'coerced cash-crop labour' or 'share-cropping' in response to increased European demand. Pamuk's research shows that small peasant holdings predominated especially in Anatolia, and commercial production for export markets took place in that context. Moreover, Pamuk suggests that the power of ayans (local notables) did not derive from large-scale commercial ventures on giftliks but was in the main based on their ability to appropriate surplus in the form of taxes (that formerly due to the central state) and their marketing of these surpluses. To the extent changes did take place in the organization of ^ e v k e t Pamuk, "Commodity production for world-markets and relations of production in Ottoman agriculture 1840-1913" and Orhan Kurmu§, "The Cotton Famine and its effects on the Ottoman Empire" in ed. Huri Islamoglu-inan, The Ottoman Empire and the World Economy, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).

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production and in social relations of production, the nature of such changes was determined by the historically evolved class structures in the different regions of Anatolia and Thrace. This analysis thus underlines the regional variations in the responses of agrarian structures to increased commodity production. On the other hand, Pamuk stresses the role of the state — that never lost its formal independence — in the preservation of the free-holding peasantry. In doing so, tha state not only sought to maintain its fiscal base but also to counteract the rise of a landed class that could challenge its authority. Similarly, Kurmu§ shows that, despite increased European demand for Ottoman raw cotton (especially in the cotton famine during the American civil war) and the British attempts to increase cotton exports from western Anatolia, there was neither a shift to mono-crop production nor any significant changes in the peasant organization of production. In explaining this, Kurmu§ points to the reluctance of the Ottoman government to support British attempts to increase cotton growing and therefore to transform the existing agrarian structures. What is significant is that the government's reluctance, to encourage agricultural production for export was confined to areas where peasant production predominated. Western Anatolia was one such region. In the formerly uncultivated areas such as Adana, however, the Ottoman government was more cooperative (Pamuk). McGowan also questions the thesis of the causal relationship between commercialization of agricultural production and the rise of large estates (igiftliks) and the enserfment of peasantry 1 . He argues that in Ottoman Croatia and Slovania during the eighteenth century, the giftliks never really developed into large estates but consisted of several holdings cultivated by peasant households from which the janissaries or tax-farmers extracted surplus in the form of product tax which they, in turn, marketed. As such, McGowan seeks to show, market demand for agricultural goods and the generalization of taxfarming did not necessarily entail the disruption of peasant organization of production. He stresses elsewhere that, while the tax-farmers might have squeezed more surplus from peasant producers as market demand expanded, because the tax-farmers operated within the administrative-juridical framework of the state, the increased exploitation of the peasantry did not result in the alienation of peasant holdings or in 'enserfment'. 2 Conversely, McGowan shows that in the Middle Danube during the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries enserfment of peasantry did take place without the expansion of 'Bruce Empire 2 Bruce context Turkish

McGowan, "The Middle Danube cul-de-sac" in Huri Islamoglu-lnan, The Ottoman and the World Economy, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). McGowan, 'The study of land and agriculture in the Ottoman provinces within the of an expanding world economy in the 17th and 18th centuries', International Journal of Studies, II, 1 (Spring-Summer 1981), 57-64.

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export trade and as a result of changes in power relations between the peasants and the landlords following the end of Ottoman rule. Similarly, islamoglu-Inan, studying the commercialization trends in Ottoman agriculture in sixteenth-century north-central Anatolia prior to the 'incorporation' of this region into the world market, shows that commercial production in response to increased domestic market demand did not result in the destruction of the peasant household economy. In explaining why commercial farms did not develop or why peasants were not ousted from their lands, she stresses the role of political-juridical structures of the state — which intervened in the production, appropriation, and the distribution of agrarian surpluses — in maintaining the integrity of peasant holdings and in limiting the marketed surpluses to those collected in the form of taxes. Thus, the studies on Ottoman agriculture both prior to and after the incorporation into the world-market point to the role of non-economic structures, most notably that of the Ottoman state, in determining the course of agrarian transformation. Of course, this warrants a discussion of the specific character of the Ottoman state and the modalities of its transformation. Sunar addresses this problem, especially for the period when the Ottoman economy was increasingly integrated into world-economic division of labour 1 . Sunar stresses the relative autonomy of the Ottoman state from the landowning class (or the ayans), on the one hand, and on the other, the political-juridical dependence of the ayans on the state while they were increasingly becoming independent economically. As such, the ayans did not control the state nor could they consolidate land and labour intirely. Sunar also argues that the competitive matrix of the international state system in the nineteenth century provided the space in which the state could act. At the same time, institutional innovations incumbent on the restructuration of the 'old' state as a unit within an inter-state system served to strengthen it vis-à-vis the ayans. Thus, the 'peripheral' transformation of the Ottoman state structure — given the historically evolved class relations in the Empire — resulted in the consolidation of a bureaucracy that allied itself with the merchant class against the landlords. While the state through its free-trade policies and legaladministrative reforms served to legitimate and facilitate the 'peripheralization' process (thereby securing portion of trading surplus), it also employed its newly gained strength against the ayans and for preserving free-holding peasants that constituted its fiscal base. According to Sunar, it is largely this specificity of the 'weakening' of the Ottoman state structure in which the state remained differentiated from a landowning class completely dependent on world

Ifikay Sunar, "State and economy in the Ottoman Empire".

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trade that accounts for the Ottoman Empire managing to retain its political independence. Alan Richards' study of the transformation of agrarian structures in nineteenth-century Egypt reveals a very different picture of 'peripheral' transformation than the one in Ottoman mainlands 1 . This primarily focuses on the difference in the nature of the Egyptian and Ottoman state structures. Richards shows that, in Egypt, Mehmet Ali after severing ties with the Ottoman Empire sought establish a 'world empire'. But his was a 'world empire' that largely depended on state monopolies over export trade and, as such, its survival was premised on Egypt's integration into the world market as an exporter of cotton. Thus, the state directly intervened in the agricultural production process to make possible large-scale production of cotton of the European market. The outcome was the undermining of the peasant subsistence economy allowing a new class of landowners to expropriate peasant holdings and to form large commercial estates, employing the peasants as share-croppers, coerced cash-crop labour or as wage labourers. Later, Richards argues, the landowning class, allied with Christian merchants, came to control the state apparatus, and the struggles for power among different groups of landowners largely describe the history of Egypt in the nineteenth century. What this analysis suggests is that the Egyptian state, increasingly identified wih the interests of the landowning class at the expense of the peasantry, lacked the relative autonomy that Sunar ascribes to the Ottoman state. This led, according to Richards, on the loss of legitimacy of the state (especially when Christian merchants assumed the role of taxcollectors) in the eyes of the large rural masses. The upshot of this development was the peasant uprisings that finally triggered direct colonial intervention by the British. On the other hand, the relative absence of peasant revolts in Ottoman Anatolia, for instance, suggests that the reluctance of the Ottoman state to intervene in the transformation of rural structures on the side of landowners, foreign or native, stemmed at least partly from its concern for legitimacy and not only from fiscal considerations. Another facet of peripheral development, according to the general formulations of the world-system perspective, was the decline in Ottoman handicraft industries and the stagnation of trade inside the world-empire. This took place as the production of agricultural commodities were increasingly directed towards external markets and away from internal ones, on the one hand, and as the imports of manufactured goods undermined the internal demand for domestic manufactures, on the other.

'Alan R. Richards, "Primitive accumulation in Egypt, 1798-1882".

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Geng, inalcik, and £izak§a study the impact of European imports on Ottoman textile industries and on domestic trade in textiles 1 . Gens, on the basis of data on customs, tax-farms, shows that the beginning of decline in Ottoman textile industries and stagnation of domestic trade in 1760 and 1770 coincided with the rise in European imports in this period, inalcik, however, concentrating on imports of British cotton goods, shows that these goods, except for cotton yarn, did not penetrate the Ottoman mass markets until the mid nineteenth century. British exports to the Ottoman Empire in the eighteenth century consisted largely of imitations of fine Indian cotton goods which were used primarily by the Ottoman upper classes. He thus argues that the locally produced cotton cloths dominated the larger Ottoman market well into the nineteenth century, while the British imports displaced the original Indian cotton goods in the limited market for luxury goods. The domestic cotton-weaving enterprises inalcik refers to were primarily cottage industries outside the guild structures. Employing cheap female or child labour, these industries were able to keep the prices below levels that the British factorymade clothes could possibly compete with. At the same time rural weavers were increasingly cut off from markets beyond the locale of production and the large urban markets were supplied by European imports, inalcik's study suggests a possible 'involution' of the Ottoman proto-industrial process. Hence, it appears that it was only in the latter part of the nineteenth century that the Ottoman countryside witnessed a 'union of crafts and agriculture' that the AMP formulations frequently ascribe to it. But, if Ottoman cotton-cloth production proved resilient in the face of competition from British manufactures, Qizakqa indicates that the same was not true in the case of silk-cloth production. Studying the Bursa silk industry that produced for Ottoman upper classes and for European markets, Qizakga shows that in the period between 1550 and 1650 the increased European production of silk cloths, on the one hand, and the imports of British broadcloth, on the other hand, resulted in a decline in the demand for Bursa manufactures both in the domestic and the foreign markets. This, coupled with the rise in the price of raw silk under the impact of increased demand of European industries and the price revolution, rendered the production of silk cloth unprofitable for Bursa manufacturers, who then turned to the production of raw silk for export. Qizakga thus seeks to explain the absence of technological innovations in the Bursa silk industry during this period in ^Mehmet Genf, "A Study of the feasibility of using eighteenth-century Ottoman financial records as an indicator for economic activity"; Halil inalcik, "When and how British cotton goods invaded the Levant-markets"; Murat f izak9a, "Price history and the Bursa silk industry : a study in Ottoman industrial decline, 1550-1650", in ed. Huri Islamoglu-lnan, The Ottoman Empire and the World-Economy, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).

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terms of its market responsiveness, of the forces of supply and demand that rendered it profitable for Ottoman silk manufacturers to invest in new technologies. He further stresses this 'market responsiveness' by pointing to the revival of the Bursa industry in the late seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries when the European and domestic demand patterns were reversed; finally, he points to the definitive decline of Bursa silk manufactures ('deindustrialization') with the increased European demand for raw silk in the nineteenth century. Quataert studying raw-silk production in Bursa in response to the demand of European industries in the nineteenth century stresses the changes in the organization of production and social relations of production as European capital and technology intervened to increase production and efficiency 1 . In doing so, Quataert describes the peripheral transformation of silk production in the Ottoman Empire — a process also studied by Owen in relation to Mount Lebanon 2 . In fact, these two studies show how the specific configuration of social and political structures in the two different Ottoman regions shaped the pattern of their respective peripheral developments. Owen describes the opening of Mount Lebanon to European merchant capital after 1861 when this area was alienated from the Ottoman state structure. As a result, at the instigation of European merchants, silk-reeling factories were established to meet the increased demand of European factories for raw silk. Owen stresses the fact that European merchants did not seek to transform either the techniques or the social and economic relations of production. Instead they relied on local social and economic structures and were content to reap the profits from export trade. Hence, small-scale factories were located in villages where they were staffed by peasant women, while cocoon production was undertaken by peasant households under share-cropping arrangements. This pattern of development stands in sharp contrast to the one in Bursa where the Public Debt Administration (PDA) intervened at all stages of production, introducing new technologies (steam-powered mills), and organizing production in large-scale urban reeling factories that employed wage labour. In this context, Quataert draws attention to the fact that, unlike merchant capital which was primarily interested in trading profits, PDA had assumed the revenue-collection function of the Ottoman state and was interested in increasing the silk tithe. In performing the latter task, PDA had the backing of

Donald Quataert, "A provisional report concerning the impact of European capital on Ottoman port workers 1880-1909", in ed. Huri Islamoglu-lnan, The Ottoman Empire and the World Economy, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). ^Roger Owen, "The Silk-reeling industry of Mount Lebanon, 1840-1914: a study of the possibilities and limitation of factory production in the periphery", in Huri Islamoglu-lnan, The Ottoman Empire and the World Economy, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).

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the Ottoman state. This factor may explain the relative success of the Bursa enterprise in transforming the entire structure of production, especially if one considers the failure of British attempts at modernizing cotton production in western Anatolia in the absence of state cooperation (Kurmu§). Finally, Quataert points to a number of problems that the transformation of Bursa silk production posed for the Ottoman state. Unlike the case of agriculture, where the state could exercise its relative autonomy to prevent direct intervention by European merchant capital and its representative — Christian minority merchants — in the production process, in the case of silk production, Armenians, Greeks and also Europeans came to daminate all levels of production at the expense of Muslims. This development, Quataert suggests, had the effect of impairing the legitimacy of the Ottoman state in the eyes of the Muslim population. The picture of the Ottoman state caught between the requirements of its own legitimacy and those of its new role in the European inter-state system incumbent on its 'peripheralization' also provides the leitmotif of Quataert's study of Istanbul port workers. Quataert shows that European intervention in the building and administration of ports in Istanbul during the period 1888— 1909 brought the Ottoman port workers in direct conflict with foreign investors, whose demands for establishing wage rates and for rationalizing the work force they resisted. In this confrontation, the Ottoman state lent its implicit support to the workers through bureaucratic foot-dragging in implementing the demands of the European company. In doing so, the Ottoman state was expressing its own resistance to European penetration, on the one hand, and seeking to retain its legitimacy in the eyes of the workers, on the other. Hence, Quataert's study is suggestive of two structural specificities of the Ottoman 'peripheralization'. First, is the 'resistance space' that the absence of direct colonization allowed the Ottoman central bureaucracy. Second, is the emergence of a dualistic legal framework: one, the 'new' legality that regulated the relationship between European capital and the Ottoman state; the other, the 'old' legality that regulated the relationship between the state and the various groups through the mediations of specific institutions (in the present context between the port workers and the state through the mediation of guilds). Quataert's analysis points to a contradiction between these two legalities — a contradiction inherent in the 'weakening' of the Ottoman state structure. Finally, Faroqhi studying Ottoman-Venetian political and commercial relations raises a number of important questions about the nature of Ottoman state power and the mechanisms of its legitimation in the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries — in the period prior to the Empire's 'incorporation'

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into the world-system 1 . Most importantly, Faroqhi seeks to refute the prevailing assumptions about Ottoman centralization and the explanations of Ottoman 'decline' that centre around the central state's inability to impose its authority on the provincial administrators. Central to this thesis is the increased participation of provincial administrators in contraband trade with foreign merchants. Faroqhi argues that the organization of state power at a number of different levels allowed the local administrators a degree of autonomy in their dealings with foreign merchants. At the same time, Faroqhi points to a contradiction between this practice, which stressed peaceful relations with foreigners, and the ideology of the state which focused on the gazi principle or expansion into the new territories by means of Holy War. This contradiction, Faroqhi argues, allowed the state a certain degree of flexibility in its functioning.

Some perspectives for future

research

Lastly, a few remarks are in order on the implications of the present volume for future research on Ottoman history. Most importantly, despite the fact that the individual articles concentrate on the study of social-economic structures and that their explanations of Ottoman transformation are essentially 'economistic', these studies point to the inadequacy of our knowledge of the nature of state power, the mechanisms of its legitimation. This, in turn, constitutes a major gap in our understanding of the Ottoman system in which the state was the dominant structure that served to integrate the society and the economy. Of course, the world-system perspective is by no means insensitive to this point. Yet, in viewing the 'weakening' of the 'old' state as a necessary outcome of the incorporation process, this approach simply concentrates on the changes in the state apparatus (army, bureaucracy, etc.) to facilitate the operations of the world-economy (Wallerstein, Decdeli and Kasaba). As a result, the emphasis is on the latter process, that of the unhindered flow of factors of production in the world-market. On the other hand, studies that focus on the internal dynamic of the Ottoman state structure suggest that it was this dynamic that determined the specific mode of 'peripheralization' (Sunar) and point to the complexity of the transformation process which revealed contradictions which frequently blocked the smooth functioning of the world system. This blocking was, however, more than a mere resistance on the part of the pre-capitalist state. In the process, the basis of legitimacy of state power — its organizing principle — was undermined, ' Suraiya Faroqhi "The Venetian presence in the Ottoman Empire, 1600-30."

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transforming it into a hybrid structure torn between the preservation of its right to rule and the requirements of its role in the inter-state system. It is in this context that the 'weakening' of the Ottoman state structure remains to be further specified and conceptualized. In this regard, what needs to be stressed is the theoretical inadequacy of the concept of Oriental despotism' that insidiously creeps into the analyses of the Ottoman state structure (e.g. islamoglu and Keyder). Central 'Oriental despotism' is the assumption of the absence of the separation and therefore of the contradiction between the political society (state) and the civil society. Thus, in contrast to European feudalism, in Eastern despotism the 'state is everything and civil society is primordial or absent. On the other hand, given the identification of the state with coercion, what characterized the relationship between the state and the society was domination without any intermediate structures that had an existence independent of the central state.1 An alternative way of looking at this problem is one that does not take the state as simply the site of 'coercion' but defines it as a combination of coercion and hegemony (or consent). 2 Central to this conception is the assumption that state power requires consensus that both encompasses and conceals coercion. This consensus, in turn, depends on the effectiveness of the ideological-political practices that legitimate state power. At the same time, this approach admits the presence of classes or groups that have independent existences from the state. It is argued that the class that held state power had to reconcile its interests with those of other groups through the forging of ideological unity between the different groups. Viewed in this perspective, the Ottoman ruling class of central 'bureaucrats' can be described as a 'hegemonic' class that was able to reconcile the interests of different groups within the society — merchants, artisans, peasants, tribal groupings, pre-Ottoman ruling groups. 3 The 'hegemonic' ideology had, however, a dual focus. First, was that of Islamic precepts embodied in the §eriat (Islamic Law); these provided the organizing principles (or ideology) of social life. In this respect, principles regulating family relations (marriage, divorce, inheritance), organization of urban life around '.Serif Mardin, 'Power, civil society and culture in the Ottoman Empire', Comparative Studies in Society and History, 11 (1969), 258-81. 2 This conception largely borrows from Gramsci's writings. Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the prison notebooks, trans, and ed. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey N. Smith (New York, International Publishers, 1980), pp. 206-69. Also Chantal Mouffe, 'Hegemony and ideology in Gramsci', Gramsci and Marxist theory, ed. C. Mouffe (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979), pp. 168-209; Perry Anderson, 'The antimonies of Antonio Gramsci'; Christie BuciGlucksmann, Gramsci and the state, trans. David Femback (London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1980). In this context, Talal Asad refers to a process of mutual accommodation between Islamic rulers and their subjects: Asad, 'Two European images of non-European ruler', pp. 109-10.

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vakifs (pious endowments), the crafts guilds as well as the tarikats or mystical orders (that involved the organization of rural as well as urban life) deserve special attention. The second focus of the 'hegemonic 'ideology was the Sultanic law (or ôrf) ; its basic premise was that the ruler was responsible for the welfare of its subjects. 1 Ôrf provided the organizing principle for the relationship between the rulers and the other groups in the society. But the consent to the rulers was mediated through institutions, e.g., tarikats (mystical confraternities), guilds and medreses (institutions of higher learning), organized around the Islamic ideology. This conceptualization, in turn, need not assume a vertical integration of the society. What needs to be stressed and specified is how different institutions cut through class lines or affect the lives of individuals from different social groups, unifying them in a social entity. The linchpin of this complex ideological matrix was the ulema (religious scholars). Firs, the ulema in their capacity as judicial functionaries were responsible for mediating the relationship between the ruling class and the other social groups through the application of the ôrf principles. Secondly, they mediated the relationships within the society in their capacity as vakif administrators, as judges responsible for the application of family law. Finally, the role of the ulema in mediating the hegemonic ideology through the educational system has to be underlined. Thus, the picture is one in which the ulema can be characterized as 'organic intellectuals' whose activities were directed towards the reproduction of dominant social relations. At the same time, the ulema were integrated with the merchants and landowning classes, the interests of whom were reconciled with those of the ruling class. The ideological unity that made possible this reconciliation was to a great extent the result of the ulema's intellectual activities. 2 Peripheralization signalled the undermining of this scheme of legitimation of state power. First, centralization measures in the form of reforms in the army and the administration, enacted to fulfil the requirements of economic integration into the world-market, heralded the formation of a new ruling class of bureaucrats. This class was characterized by its inability to reconcile its interests with those of other classes in the society. This was primarily because its very existence came to depend increasingly on global linkages and interests often in contradiction with the interests of indigenous ' For descriptions of this aspect of 'hegemonic' ideology see Halil Inalcik, 'Ôrf', Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd edn.; 'Adaletnameler', Belgeler, II, 3-4) (1965), 49-145; 'Suleiman the lawgiver and Ottoman law' Archivum Ottomanicum, 1 (1969), 105-38. 2

For an excellent treatment of the role of ulema in the production of 'culture' and the changes in that role during the late eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries in Egypt see Peter Gran, Islamic roots of capitalism, pp. 178-88. Also, Gran explores the relationsihp between the ulema and the mystical orders — the convergence and conflicting of their interests.

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classes. The alliance of the central bureaucracy with 'foreign' merchants or their minority agents is a case in point. Concomitant with this development was the undermining of the universalistic world-view (hegemonic ideology) that forged the interests of different groups. The new role of the central bureaucracy as an agents in facilitating the operations of the world-economy meant the adoption of Western principles in organizing the state and its relationship with the society. 1 These principles, however, came into conflict with the old organizational principle that focused on the role of the sultan as the protector of his subjects. For instance, in order to meet the expenses incurred by the adoption of new reform measures, the central state resorted to more coercive means of surplus extraction (or taxation). 2 Put differently, the concern of the central bureaucracy to legitimate itself within the inter-state system often came into conflict with its concern to legitimate itself inside the Empire (Quataert). In the event that the ruling class which held state power was unable to reconcile this conflict, it resorted to 'coercion'. Hence, it is in this context one could talk about rule without consent or Ottoman 'despotism' that the nineteenth-century writers were so keen in observing. Again, in this historical context one could view the 'weakening' of the Ottoman state structure incumbent on the 'peripheralization' process in terms of the undermining of the hegemony of the Ottoman ruling class and of its alienation from other classes. Another aspect of the disruption of hegemony or rupture of politicalideological mediation between the state and the society was the withdrawal of different social groups into institutions organized around Islamic precepts. At the same time, increasingly, and especially with the adoption of Western institutions (such as schools, court system), the role of Islamic institutions in mediating the 'consent' of the society to the exercise of political authority was impaired. 3 Hence, it can be argued that the severing of the channels of communication between the state and the social forces and the 'weakening' of the latter was part of a historical process; and the 'weakness' or the absence of 'civil society' was not an inherent feature of Ottoman society. 4 To elaborate

For the adoption of new modes of administrative organization, of new regulations during the Tanzimat period see Lewis, Emergence of modern Turkey; Roderic Davidson, Reform in the Ottoman Empire, 1856-1876 (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1963). 2 For changes in the modes of taxation and therefore in the role of the state see Roger Owen, The Middle East in the world economy (New York, Methuen, 1981), pp. 59, 292. 3 For instance, the nineteenth century in Egypt witnessed the decline of al-Azhar University in Cairo as bureaucrats educated in new state schools established by Muhammad Ali increasingly replaced the al-Azhar graduates in the reproduction of culture (P. Gran, Islamic roots of capitalism), pp. 178-88). 4 For a discussion of this absence see §erif Mardin, 'Power, civil society and culture in the Ottoman Empire', For a counter-argument and perceptive comments on popularist tradition in Islamic society deriving their legitimation from Islamic ideology see Asad, 'Two European images of non-European rule', p. 110, n. 17. Asad also questions the arguments about 'Oriental' cynicism in relation to political life.

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further just as the state was losing-its legitimacy in the eyes of the ruled, the latter were losing their status as legitimate subject in the eyes of the new bureaucrats. To this new class the rest of the society came to represent the 'traditional masses' that were to be reformed and hauled into the modern world. The reaction of the society seems to have been one of involution. Classes that were not integrated into the 'peripheral' structure — most important among them were the artisants, urban lower-middle classes, lower bureaucrats — emerged as discrete units that came to express their resistance to the new order in terms of Islamic ideology. 1 The outcome of this development appears to have been the rigidification of Islam as it increasingly represented a defensive posture with its face turned towards an idealized past and no longer a medium for interpreting the present or perceiving the future. In this sense traditionalism 2 was the result of a historical process whereby the hegemonic structure of the Ottoman society was undermined and it was not, as assumed by modernizationists, an inherent feature of the society. In other words, 'traditionalism' was an expression by the society of the need to preserve its identity in an alien modern world. Finally, another face of 'traditionalization' needs to be pointed out. The state-builders during the reform period (1830-76) sought legitimation in Western culture. In this sense this period witnessed a disruption of the 'ideological unity' of the Ottoman society. On the one hand, this manifested itself in the inability of the new bureaucratic class to become hegemonic. On the other hand, it meant the emergence of a dichotomous structure of culture, a pattern that was reflected in the existence of two types of intellectuals—the traditional or the ulema, and the 'modern' or the bureaucrats educated in state schools. 3 Under Abdulhamid II (1876-1908), however, pan-Islamism represented the adoption of a defensive posture on the part of the ruling class — centred around the court — and certain ulema groups at the expense of 'Westernized' elites. 4 Hence, just as the society was 'traditionalizing' to protect itself from the onslaught of the 'Westernizing' Tanzimat state, under Abdulhamid the state structure was 'traditionalizing' to preserve itself in the face of European expansion. In the process, the state was becoming increasingly more rigid and oppressive inside the Empire. One explanation for ' A group of Ottoman intellectuals known as the 'Young Ottomans' are representative of this mode of reaction: §erif Mardin, The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1962). 2 p o r the concept of 'traditionalization' see Abdallah Laroui, The crisis of the Arab intellectual: Traditionalism or historicism (Berkeley, The University of California Press, 1976). 3 For a discussion of the historicity of the distinction between secular and religious culture in the context of 'peripheralization' see Gran, Islamic roots of capitalism, pp. 178-88. 4 For a discussion of pan-Islamic ideology in the context of reaction to Western penetration see Edmund Burke III, Prelude to protectorate in Morocco: Pre-colonial protest and resistance (Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1976), p. 151.

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this may be that Islamic ideology could not provide the ideological unity among different classes in a society the social-political cohesion of which was undermined through the integration of its principal classes (bureaucracy and merchants) into the European world-system. To summarize, this alternative conception of the Ottoman state, its relation to society, the mechanisms of its legitimation and the transformation of these structures under the impact of global economic developments calls for a 'total' history of the Ottoman Empire. Such a history is to go beyond the mere study of the transformation of social-economic structures in response to changes in trade-market structures as the Ottoman Empire was incorporated into the world capitalist economy. It should seek to delineate the specific political-ideological practices and to view them in the context of the socialeconomic dynamic. Among the former, the study of the nature of state power, the legal system (both the §eriat and the orf), the parameters of legitimation of state power, different forms of property, and of the intermediary structures such as the vakijs, medresses, tarikats that mediated the relationship between the state and the larger society — are of particular importance. This means, first, an attempt to free the writing of Ottoman history from the constricting specialization of different disciplines, of different histories — in short, a history without compartments. Secondly, the 'total' history approach brings into focus the specificity of the Ottoman historical development. Recent studies of agrarian structures, crafts production and trade included in this volume point to the centrality of non-economic factors, most importantly of the state structure, in determining the specific mode of Ottoman peripheral transformation. On the other hand, the focus on specific historical development is not for the purpose of delineating the specificity of Ottoman stagnation whereby the study of Ottoman history (rather non-history) provides a contrastive backdrop to the unique dynamic of Western-history. 1 Instead, what is underlined is the specific internal dynamic of Ottoman society and the mechanisms through which this dynamic was transformed and undermined in the course of its 'peripheralization'. In this context, it should be noted that 'peripheralization' was by no means a unilinear process with necessarily predictable outcomes. It is possible to locate the modalities of resistance to the patterns of transformation dictated by the exigencies of the world-market. Given the context of the historically evolved structure of the Ottoman Empire, such resistance focused on the state, which sought to maintain its existence and in the process was transformed itself. Now this transformation was in the 1 Anderson, Lineages, pp. 397-400. Hans-Heinrich Nolte, 'The position of Eastern Europe in the international system in early modern times', Review, VI, 1 (Summer, 1982), 25-84.

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direction of the rise of new bureaucratic elites increasingly alienated from the society; it meant a pattern of 'revolutions from above' 1 and the undermining of the institutions of civil society as the intermediary structures between the state and the society were swept aside in the nome of modernization policies. As such, a cursory glance at these developments reveal a picture that closely approximates to the much-favoured descriptions of 'Oriental despotism'. Yet, to emphasize the historicity of these developments in the context of the history of the world-capitalist system, constitutes a conceptual break with those theorizations that identify them as essential features. At the same time, the emphasis on historicity and specificty means the delineation of contradictions in the transformation process as old structures encountered new ones. Admittedly, to pursue such a course of analysis is more difficult than to assume a model in which the 'good' forces of modernity did, or at least should, sweep aside the 'bad' or the 'traditional'. But this is a hardship which the historians of the Ottoman Empire, as well as those of other regions in the world periphery, should expect to endure. What is at stake is not merely a debate on historical methodology but a way of looking at the present and of evaluating the possibilities for future political action.

' For recent contributions to the discussion of 'revolutions from above', see Ellen Kay Trimberger, Revolutions from above: military bureaucrats and modernisation in Japan, Turkey, Egypt and Peru (New Brunswick, New Jersey, Transaction Books, 1978); Theda Skocpol and Ellen Kay Trimberger, 'Revolution and world historical development of capitalism', Berkeley Journal of Sociology, 22 (1977-8), 101-14.

THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA IN THE WORLD ECONOMY: GRAN AND SEDDON RECONSIDERED

Peter Gran, Islamic Roots of Capitalism: Egypt, 1760-1840, London: University of Texas Press, 1979, pp. 278.

Austin and

David Seddon, Moroccan Peasants: A Century of Change in the Eastern Rif 1870-1970, London: Dawson, 1981, pp. 337.

The study of the Middle East and North Africa more than other area studies, suffers from a failure to develop a coherent theoretical framework for the analysis of social and economic change. That the predominance of Orientalism in the scholarship of these areas accounts, in large part, for the underdevelopment of the field, constitutes the subject of a significant pioneering body of literature in the past three decades. 1 Most significantly, these works reveal that the nineteenth century Orientalist tradition of studying the art, history, literature, and religion of the exotic east penetrated both conventional (Weberian) sociology and historicist (Hegelian) Marxism. This tradition taking the "Islamic society" or "Islamic civilization" as its unit of analysis, concentrates on the study of institutions, viewed as concrete expressions of the civilizational essence. Implicit to Orientalism, however, is a conception of history as a unilinear progression from golden age to decline corresponding, respectively, to a classical period of institutional perfection and subsequent periods of continual degeneration, as institutions are further removed in time from their "ideal" states and the potency of "civilizational essence" is diminished. The latter stage is described by the nations of stagnating or stationary east which, in the Hegelian-Marxist formulations 2 , ended with the brutal yet progressive onslaught of capitalist penetration. From the perspective of modernization theory, that represents a hypostatization of Weberian categories, Eastern stagnation terminates with a refashioning of institutions on Western models. 3 1

See, for instance, Said (1978) and Turner (1978). Avineri is the most eminent contemporary advocate of this position. See, for instance, Avineri (1968; 1972). The "Modernization" approach that refers to the liberal paradigm in development literature current of the 1950s and 1960s is best exemplified for the Middle East in Lerner (1958). For Marx's and Engels' comments on the static East, in the context of India, see Marx and Engels (1972) and for Hegel's views on the a historical nature of Oriental states, see Hegel (1956). 2

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Demonstrating the theoretical inadequacy of the Orientalist paradigm, however, raises the question of its replacement by a theoretically valid alternative in studying the Middle East and North Africa. Those who seek this alternative in Marxism find that "the end of Orientalism ... also requires the end of certain forms of Marxist thought and a creation of a new type of analysis." 1 This is nothing short of an epistomological break in Marxist thought that divides Marx's writings on "Asiatic" societies, theoretically inadequate and ideological in character 2 and his more central theoretical work centered around The Capital. The latter, together with recent debates within the Marxist tradition signal the beginnings of a theoretical breakthrough in the writing of Middle Eastern and North African history. 3 At the same time, any attempt to "rewrite" the history of the Middle East and North Africa involves de-colonization of that thistory which for Western and Western-trained scholars is tantamount to acts of personal decolonization. Orientalist discourse that represents a Western ideological posture towards the East, developed in the nineteenth century, at the "historical moment" of European colonization of non-European lands. Orientalist knowledge was important in providing the guidelines for the forms of political domination in any given region. 4 Yet, Orientalist discourse can not be reduced to a mere response to political exigency. It embodies a Western self-definition as a privileged domain of history which, in turn, posits a view of the "Other" or the non-privileged, ahistorical domain. Such a perception of the Self and the Other, however, requires conceptualizing the Other in complementarity with the Self, the study of Other becomes the study of Self in negation. In this context, historical analysis is one of contrasting ideal types: dynamic, rational, democratic West versus static, irrational, and authoritarian East. Consequently, decolonization of the history of non-Western areas means, first and foremost, dissociating it conceptually from the selfimage of the West and establishing the historicity of these areas on their own terms. The two books reviewed here are formidable attempts in the direction of both personal de-colonization and theoretical re-casting of the histories of Egypt (Gran) and Morocco (Seddon). Studying the internal dynamics of the ^Turner (1978: 85). These refer to Marx's journalistic work on India and to the corcespondance between Marx and Engels. The arguments contained in these writings are summed in detail by Anderson (1974). 3 See, for instance, Amin (1971; 1976; 1978) and also the work of Middle East Studies group in England exemplified in the journal Review of Middle East Studies. The representative works of this new literature can also be found in the journals Economy and Society and The Maghreb Review. 4 For an excellent account of this process for Moroccan history during the colonial period, see Burke (1973). 2

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respective areas, both authors attempt to delienate the processes whereby specific internal dynamics were transformed as each area was incorporated into the world capitalist system. Thus, in contrast to the Modernization approach that treats problems of development (or lack it) in terms of internal characteristics of societies, Seddon and Gran pose them within a global context. At the same time, both authors in exploring the dialectics of integration between the indigenous and global structures venture beyond the territory of economic analysis into that of state formations and cultural/ideological structures. They show that the latter while responding to changes in economic structures maintained their specific characters. This feature is crucial in differentiating among areas in the periphery of the world system and represents a move in the direction of explaining the specificity of political-ideological structures in different regions as well as of pointing to possibilities of change in different societies incumbent on these structures. Both Gran and Seddon are concerned with the specificity of historical development paths in the periphery and with state-society relations as a locus of that specificity. This concern enables their analyses to transcend the boundaries of 'world system' and Marxist debates and qualifies both books as provocative reading some ten years after their publication. I shall discuss each author's contribution separately and try to show how they tackle the problems of change in the societies they study.

Peter Gran: Islamic Roots of Capitalism Islamic Roots of Capitalism is an engrossing and powerfully documented analysis of Egyptian cultural history in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In what follows I will attempt to set forth its theoretical underpinnings. In essence Gran's book aims at refuting the two fundamental assumptions of the Modernization paradigm about "Islamic societies". 1 One, the stultifying effect of "Islamic ethics" on economic activity; two, the absence of commercial classes that had an existence independently of the state. These assumptions lie at the heart of explanations of why autonomous "capitalist" development did not take place in societies where Islam as a religion predominated. Thus, such "internal characteristics" as religious values, attitudes and motives, on the one hand, political forms (e.g., the "despotic" state) on the other, are viewed as obstacles to "modernization" or ' For a discussion of Weberian assumptions related to Islamic societies, see Turner (1978: 399ff).

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"development". Concomitant to this approach is a tendency to treat "development" (or lack of it) as a function of individuals rather than of socialeconomic structures. Gran, however, poses the problem of Egypt's development in a global context and seeks to show how the so-called "internal features" were adjusted and transformed as Egypt was integrated into the world capitalist system. He argues that an autonomous commercial class did exist in Egypt in the eighteenth century and this class through its participation in the world marked assumed a "capitalist" character. Moreover, Islam far from inhibiting the development of a "capitalist" rationality provided the framework within which the "capitalist" culture of the commercial class was formulated. At the same, Gran takes classes rather than individuals as subjects of history and, in his study of culture, emphasizes the material or class base of cultural forms. Thus, Gran's central thesis is that "capitalism" or "modernity" was not simply imposed on Egypt from outside but had indigenous foundations, both economic and cultural. In substantiating this thesis, he focuses on Egypt's role in the world capitalist system during the period between 1760 and 1840 and on the dynamics of commercial classes. Finally, setting the cultural developments in their social context, he attempts an analysis of what he terms the "modern capitalist culture."

Global Capitalism and Egyptian

Society

In conceptualizing Egypt's role in the world capitalist system during the eighteenth century, Gran argues for an acentric global system in which the participation of individual areas was not so much determined by their structural positions, either as core or periphery, but by the internal dynamic specific to these areas. In so doing, he rejects formulations that "emphasize the development of capitalism as self-contained in one or at most few countries or picture a European-centered international division of labour." 1 In either case, acording to Gran, "... the production of the European countries affects what takes place on the periphery, often distribution, and not the other way around. The main dynamics of the Third World countries in these models are the dynamics between them and Europe; internal dynamics like local production are not granted a very important position.

1 Gran (1987). As this article complements and clarifies Gran's ideas on the nature of the world capitalist system embodied in the book, I have taken the liberty — with the author's permission — to include it in this review.

2

Ibid.

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In support of the thesis that capitalist development is not a great linear progression from a single center, Gran cites the relationship between France and Egypt between 1760-1799. Briefly, he explains Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in terms of the distributive crisis of capitalism in France, where the rural producers of the south refused to sell their produce of foodstuffs at prevailing market prices. In Egypt, struggle took place over who was to market the peasant surpluses and where. The Ottoman state prohibited the sale of foodstuffs on European markets and demanded them for the provisioning of Istanbul; Egyptian merchants and the Mamluks (ruling military aristocracy), preferred the profitable French market and engaged in contraband trade. French merchants, however, were handicapped in purchasing Egyptian wheat and rice when, in 1794, the French law prohibited bullion exports. When the Mamluks and Egyptian merchants refused to deliver without payment, the French government, pressured by Marseille merchants, decided on the invasion. On the basis of this example, Gran sets the Napoleonic invasion in the context of the exigencies of political economy in southern France, thus viewing the political economies of southern France and Egyptian Delta as part of a single whole, global capitalism. Second, he attempts to show that France in this period was not yet a great power; it economy was predicated very directly on the Mediterranean and therefore it was not in a position of absolute superiority. Third, Egypt was not the absolute inferior partner, passive in the face of French commercial penetration. While Egyptian merchants and Mamluks needed the lucrative European markets to sell foodstuffs, neither the production nor the distribution of these goods was at the bidding of the purchaser but assumed a complex commercial and political structure within Egypt. That is, the Egyptian "periphery" was not simply the tabula rasa upon which European domination descended forcefully by virtue of its political and cultural superiority, but it was a dynamic partner in its relations with Europe. It participated in the world marked with its own structures, opened up to or resisted European commerce responding primarily to the dictates of its own internal dynamics. Given this conceptualization, Gran argues that the Egyptian commercial sector of the eighteenth century cannot adequately be described as "merchant capital." The latter concept more appropriately described the relation of the commercial sector with state structures in the final period of Europe's transition to capitalism. As such, according to Gran "merchant capital" refers to a pre-capitalist structure that is best suited for the writing of state, better still of national histories. The Egyptian commercial sector in the period of the Industrial Revolution was, however, "capitalistic" par excellence. It was

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"capitalistic" by virtue of its active role in the Industrial Revolution resulting from the integration of the Egyptian political economy with that of southern France and by virtue of its autonomy from state structures. On the basis of this argument, Gran makes a case for the writing of trade histories, transcending nation-sate boundaries, as more appropriate mediums in studying the new conditions heralded by the advent of global capitalism. Thus, Gran's history of Egypt between 1760 and 1840 becomes that of indigenous commercial classes during the period of commercial revival (1760-1799) and of "state commercial capitalism" under Muhammad AM (1815-1837). The autonomy of the indigenous merchant class from state structures in the eighteenth century, is central to Gran's description of the Egyptian commercial sector as "capitalistic". This period was characterized by a decline in Ottoman central authority in Egypt and by the inability of the local political elite of Mamluks to establish its controls over the economy and society. The commercial classes, in turn, manifested their anti-state orientation, first, through maintaining of interregional economies. Trade between the Egyptian Delta and southern France as well as interactions with merchants in the hinterland of the state in the Sudan, Libya, and in the Yemen represented such interregional economies. Thus, Gran argues, though the Egyptian merchants had close ties with the Mamluks through marriage and in their capacity as the latter's bankers, with the expansion of trade they were able to define for themselves an autonomous sphere of activity. More significantly, he points to limits imposed on activities of Egyption merchants when "foreign" merchants or Mediterranean minorities backed by European interests came to dominate European trade after the 1760s. These groups were favoured by the Mamluks, who increasingly turned to European war technology in an effort to maintain their independence from the Ottomans. At the same time, Gran stresses the involvement of the Egyptian commercial class in the production circuit and its domination over artisans whom they provided with raw materials, whose products they marketed and whose incomes the merchants affected by acting as brokers between them and consumers. Gran thus describes the central class relation of the period of commercial revival as one between merchants or "capitalists" and urban labourers. He points to increases in day labour in this period as large segments of the artisanate became underemployed with the shift in demand to European manufactures. Moreover, confronted with European competition, the merchants increased their squeeze on artisans thus resulting in urban unrest. These developments, led to the breakdown of guild organizations that served as mechanisms of control over urban labour and that channeled the class conflict between the merchants and urban workers and artisans. In the context of

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declining local industries, Gran mentions the flow of commercial capital into land and agricultural producting given the increased European demand for agricultural commodities. He however, views this development as a manifestation of the "capitalist" acument of the Egyptian commercial class. In his analysis of the Muhammad Ali period (1815-1837) Gran points to a decline in the 'capitalistic' character of the indigenous commercial class as the commercial sector was increasingly dominated by the Mediterranean minorities in alliance with the emergent state bureaucracy. The latter was composed of Turkish-Albanian military elite, foreign technocrats, and a nascent group of young Egyptian civil servants trained either in Europe or at the new schools opened in Egypt. This bureaucracy constituted the basis of what Gran terms "state commercial capitalism". State ownership of land was established undermining the landed interests of the Mamluks and merchants; direct state controls over agricultural financing replaced merchant-financiers with government officials (drawn from the ranks of village headmen traditionally opposed to merchants) and by "foreign" merchants; finally a monopoly system over export and import trade was established. Moreover, the indigenous commercial class suffered from the establishment of state industries that preserved the artisanal form of production but replaced the merchants with the government as supplier of raw materials and collector of finished goods. Hence, Gran identifies the central class conflict of the Muhammad Ali period as one between the bureaucracy allied with foreign merchants and the indigenous commercial classes. In this context, Gran argues that while the decline of the indigenous commercial classes was relative and the state could buy off the compliance of this class with the vast wealth coming from the sale of cotton on European markets, "state commercial capitalism" represented a real blow to indigenous "capitalist" dynamic through undermining structural conflict between the indigenous commercial classes and urban labourers. The latter were recruited into state factories and most sifnificantly, into the newly established modern army thereby sapping the potential of urban labour struggle which, in Gran's view, was central to the "capitalist" dynamic in the eighteenth century. This conceptualization, in turn, inspires Gran's designation of the period of "state commercial capitalism" as one of retardation of indigenous "capitalist" development or of "peripheralization."

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Culture

Gran's study of cultural-ideological structures in the period between 1760 and 1840 is premised upon the view that "culture is a product of a class in struggle" (p. 181) 1 and "culture formation is part of the processes of integration [into the world system] and reproduction of the [socioeconomic] formation (the historicist moment)" (p. 180). Thus, he shows that the ulama (Islamic scholars) who were responsible for the production and dissemination of culture, formed an integral part of social relations characterized by the dominance of indigenous commercial classes in the eighteenth century. Gran emphasizes the role of the ulama centered around the great mosque university complex of al-Azhar as participants in the commercial revival. The ulama, who controlled liquid assets as holders of wakfs in land and in urban property, invested in trade, extended credit to merchants and had intimate relationships with the guilds. Also the ulama were integrated with the merchant class through relations of patronage whereby the wealthy merchants converted part of their wealth into wakf or sources of revenue for support of religious establishments. Given their class position, the intellectul activities of the ulama, far from being adverse to the new economic and social environment, were directed toward the legitimation of the dominant social relations as well as toward their organization. In the nineteenth century under Muhammed Ali, the ulama shared the fate of the indigenous commercial class and their interests were further impaired by the new administrative measures that sought to regulate the guilds, and confiscated wakf properties. At the same time, the new state schools undermined al-Azhar's monopoly over education. Yet, the ulama continued to dominate the cultural arena though not without a challenge from a new group of intellectuals represented by secular bureaucrats trained in government schools or abroad. Finally, Gran's analysis of cultural forms reveals that the period between 1760-1840 witnessed a revival of traditional Islamic sciences, or a neo-classical revival that provided the medium through which the ulama interpreted and understood the new conditions. Arguing that the "roots of Islamic jurisprudence represented the locus of ideological struggle for legitimizing different social and economic orientations" (p. xvi), Gran depicts two modes of cultural expression that attributed relative weight to particular elements of Islamic jurisprudence corresponding to the ideological orientation of two stages — commercial revival and "state commercial capitalism" — of Egypt's integration into the world system.

'The page numbers cited in the text refer to those in Islamic Roots of Capitalism.

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During the period of commercial revival, Gran takes utilitarianism and realism — "dominant expressions of classical capitalism" (p. 179) — to be the ideology of the dominant Egyptian commercial classes. This ideological orientation was formulated through the medium of selected hadith (sayings of the prophet) that looked favorably on the quest for profit and on commercial activity. At the same time, hadith studies embodied an inductive logic directed toward the accumulation of discrete truths; thus, a proposition was deemed true, if supported by a majority of relevent hadith. This epistomological orientation, Gran argues, was congruent with the particularistic relationship between the "capitalist" merchants and craftsmen or urban labourers, rooted in qualitative distinctions and where domination was achieved through persuasion rather than absolute authority. Appropriately, the salons patronized by the wealthy merchants became the institutions where hadith studies propagated. Yet, Gran also shows that "capitalist" development resulted in social and ideological dislocations among commercial classes as well as among urban craftsmen or labourers. The highly religious atmosphere that permeated this period and the revival of mystical orders testify to this development. Gran argues that the mystical orders provided a spiritual refuge for the new merchant class possessed by a sense of insecurity in the face of mounting threats to its position as the control over European trade came into the hands of "foreign" merchants. At the same time, Gran characterizes the mystical orders as class institutions, cutting across the social divisions within the old society between the merchants, the ulama and the Mamluks. Thus, he suggests that within the breakdown of the old structure and the resultant crisis in dominant ideology, "the Islamic intellectual elite reconstructed itself, using the Sufi tarika (mystical order) as a dam against the new seductive ideology of bourgeois individualism and utilitarianism" (p. 37). Moreover, with the weakening of the guild system that provided the ideological unity of masters and/or merchants and apprentices or workers, the ulama through the medium of mystical orders sought to legitimize the new conditions in the eyes of the urban lower classes. Finally, Gran points to the rise of mystical orders of lower classes in the eighteenth century. The membership of these orders swelled with the increase in the number of day-labourers (in Cairo) that could not be absorbed into the guild system. The popular orders, in turn, generated a counter-ideology to the one formulated in the upper class orders of the ulama. Thus they posed a threat to the domination of commercial classes that was increasingly unable to integrate the society on the ideological level. In his analysis of cultural structures in the reform period, Gran shows that this period witnessed a decline in hadith studies concomitant to the decline of Egyptian commercial classes. The rise to dominance of a

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bureaucratic elite allied with "foreign" merchants, in turn, resulted in the adoption of flqh (law) and kalam (systematic theology) as dominant cultural forms. These forms embodied a rational-deductive orientation (as opposed to the inductive one of hadith), a kind of Aristotalean logic "rooted in polarities and deduction from general principles." 1 This epistomological orientation, Gran argues, was congruent with the organization of production under a bureaucratic state where the central economic fact was the relationship of the state with the peasant or with a subject. This relationship, in turn, required the institutionalization of the absolute authority of the state in general laws. Moreover, Gran argues that revival of Aristotalean logic was imposed by the structural necessities of industrial revolution. That is, it constituted part of a general intellectual response to modern conditions thus representing "an effort to rise above the process of piece-meal ad hoc adaptations to situations as they rose [as was the case with hadith studies], to a more general stance" (p. 132). Similarly, Gran suggests that concentration on argument by analogy in this period was related to the drive of the ruling class to understand and to adopt aspects of Western science and technology. In this context Gran stresses the instrumentality or practical aspects of rationalism embodied in the Aristotalean revival: this was a revival "without Aristotalean logos or theoretical reason ... the real logos was in Europe" (p. 150). Viewed in this perspective, the intellectual task of the ruling class in the periphery becomes one of reception of blueprints which had already been constituted and of their adaptation to local conditions. This orientation, however, encourages neither pure scientific research nor indigenous technological development, instead a deductive approach, dictated by necessity, becomes dominant. Consequently, argument by analogy was perhaps the method through which the existing problem could be confronted. Gran thus seeks to establish the relationship of dominant cultural forms in the reform period with the structure of the indigenous ruling class, on the one hand, and with the integration of that structure into the European economy, on the other. In this dual relationship he identifies an attempt on the part of the Egyptian ruling class through the medium of culture to meet the exigencies of the new reality of capitalist development, that is, of peripheral capitalism. This conceptualization provides the framework for his analysis of the "peripheralization" of culture. As part of this process of "peripheralization", Gran, first, points to the limits, during the reform period, imposed on the role of ulama in the production of culture and on the role of neoclacssicism as the dominant cultural form. Isolated from the masses, the new ruling class of higher ^Gran (1987).

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military officiers and technocrats in alliance with "foreign" merchants required the services of the ulama to reconcile the larger society to changes that were taking place and to legitimize its rule. Thus, while the salons and the mystical orders patronized by the commercial classes experienced a decline as dominant cultural institutions, al-Azhar (which Gran characterizes as an institution of submerged Egyptian commercial classes in conflict with the new ruling class) came to serve as a buffer between the ruling class and the masses. At the same time, the new ruling class sought to create its own cultural institutions — as witnessed in the establishment of the government press, newspapers, and translations bureaus and to constitute its own "intellectuals" either educated in Europe or at the newly opened schools in Egypt in order to staff these institutions and to legitimize its "westernist" stance. This, in turn, resulted in the enactment of the central class conflict of the period as one between the bureaucratic ruling class and the indigenous commercial classes and, on the cultural level, between the ulama and the nascent "westernist" intellectuals. In cultural production, neoclassicism as the "language" of the ulama served the interests of the new ruling class through concentration in the fields of law, language (hence the significance of lexicography for the translation movement as the rulers needed to develop the equivalents of European words and concepts), literature and history. But the study of science and medicine was increasingly removed from the domain of neoclassicism and of the ulama. Gran argues that this was primarily because "it would reopen a path of mobility for socially discontented Egyptian Muslims for legitimizing their heritage" (p. 184). To demonstrate this point, Gran cites the case of two major neoclassical works by Hasan al-Attar — one on medicine and the other on elementary science — which were not published by the state-controlled press, though the same press published works on other topics by the same alim (religious scholar) who was in favour with the regime and enjoyed some measure of power as the director of al-Azhar. Thus, Gran argues that "Cultural production was ... a matter of policy. The publication of neoclassical works in medicine would be ingratiating to the suppressed merchant artisanal milieu; it might even be taken as a sign of weakness. It might not be understood by the Europeans" (p. 166).

Through this process Gran traces the "retardation" of the development of an indigenous capitalist culture in Egypt. He argues that ideologies of utilitarianism and realism formulated through the medium of neoclassicism in the period of the commercial revival, continued to prevail during the reform period. But in the latter period "positivism was more and more clearly the epistomological foundation of upper class intellectual life" (p. 164). Gran

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points to the role of Islamic thought in the rise of positivism in Egypt but he concludes that "in sciences this route was bypassed in favour of a straight adoption of Western European books, despite the existence of impressive contributions from the neoclassical movement which could provide a congruent set of assumptions from the neoclassical movement which could provide a congruent set of assumptions for modern scientific development..." (p. 186). Thus, the Arabic route to positivism that involved neoclassicism was blocked because Egypt's integration into world market signalled the domination of the indigenous commercial classes by a ruling class allied to the foreign bourgeoisie. The latter economically integrated with Europe increasingly adopted European technology and science while the reform period witnessed a decline in Egyptian participation in medicine and science 1 . Finally, in the context of cultural "peripheralization", Gran examines the dialectic between secular and religious culture. He argues that the rise of secular culture is linked to the nature of capitalist development. In industrial Europe secular culture emerged as a separate genre with the rise of the middle class, but in the Middle East where the early development of capitalism was linked with commerce, religious culture was the dominant genre. This, Gran attributes to the relative weakness of the commercial "capitalist" class. At the same time, he traces the development of secular culture, though subjected to the religious culture, in the period of the commercial revival and during the reform period. In the latter period he shows that secular culture made significant progress as witnessed in the study of history (where the work of the fourteenth century historian, Ibn Khaldun, was revived as opposed to historical writing of the earlier period steeped in research in Islamic lore) and of literature where the revival of composition writing (al-insha) was a response to the needs of the nascent clerk class. But Gran emphasizes that progress of secular culture should not be equated with modernity as religious culture in no way impeded the development of capitalist culture as attested by the rise of utilitarianism from within it. Moreover, he shows in his analysis of the eighteenth century literary and historical writings that secular culture could and did develop within the framework of religious culture. Hence, Gran's analysis implies that independent secular culture in Egypt developed in the context of "retardation" of capitalist development and of cultural and economic subjugation to the West. Religious culture, in turn, was the expression of submerged indigenous commercial classes therefore of the indigenous capitalist dynamic. Moreover, Gran points to a tension on the cultural level: the religious or neoclassical culture served the interests of the new ruling class in the reform period through introduction of secular elements, while at the 'On the political economy of medicine, see Gran (1979).

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same time, it represented a potential force for undermining the legitimacy of that class by threatening to obliterate the artifical dichotomy of religious and secular. Consequently, "where a strongly entrenched compradorial bourgeoisie could dispense with neoclassicism as a serious enterprise, it would do so — but neoclassicism would re-emerge when the power of that class waned" (p. 177). This point is particularly significant in view of later developments in Egypt where neoclassicism became "a means of self-assertion and ultimately one of the foundations of nationalism" (p. 94).

Theoretical

Critique

In the opinion of this reviewer Gran's work bears, at times too strongly, the marks of reaction to Modernization approach and to Euro-centric views of non-Western history. This reactive posture, in turn, leads him to seek "capitalistic" characteristics internal to Egyptian society, in lieu of 'traditional' properties that the hypostatized Weberian lore described as obstacles to capitalist development. In this context, Gran studies the Egyptian commercial classes and concentrating on the nature of their economic activity and utilitarian ideology characterizes them as "capitalistic." The decline of this "capitalist" class as it lost its control over trade in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries describes "peripheralization" or "retardation" of Egypt's indigenous capitalist developlent. This conception, enables Gran to argue that Egypt, at least in the eighteenth century, was central to the dynamic of global capitalism and not peripheral to it. Yet, Gran's attempt to show that Egypt could and did at one point in its history achieve indigenous capitalist development (contrary to contentions that this only took place in Europe) involves a number of theoretical problems. First, Gran's designation of commercial classes as "capitalist" and of the commercial revival of the eighteenth century as indigenous "capitalist development" is problematic. If capitalism is defined in terms of the presence of capital (commercial and financial) and of exploitative relations of production between merchants and urban craftsmen or laborers, then it could indeed be spotted nearly in all societies one cares to look into. As such, "capitalism" becomes an ahistorical category and therefore of little use in defining the specific dynamic of any given society. Capitalism as a historical process, however, does not merely refer to "capitalist" forms but to the dynamic of a social totality — with its political (i.e. state), ideological, and economic dimensions within which these forms are located. Yet, Gran in designating the commercial classes in the eighteenth century Egypt as

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"capitalist" refers to their "capitalistic" properties and as such he abstracts them from the context of Egypt's historical development. This, in turn, suggests an inadequate conceptualization of the precapitalist society and the logic of its dissolution. Gran characterizes the Egyptian society prior to the eighteenth century as a weak tributary formation based on the extraction of ground rent by the Ottoman central government and characterized by the presence of a disproportionately large commercial sector. He traces the dissolution of the pre-capitalist structure to the decline in Ottoman central authority which coupled with increased European demand for agricultural commodities resulted in the increased control over land by the local political elite or the Mamluks, on the one hand, the rise of commercial classes allied with the Mamluks, on the other hand. Gran identifies the latter development resulting from increased commercial activity as indigenous "capitalist transformation" while he seems to attribute the interruption of this process to lack of state support of the Egyptian commercial classes as Mamluks and later Muhammad Ali increasingly allied themselves with "foreign" merchants. But why was the "capitalist" commercial class not able to dominate the state and establish its hegemony, and why could it not transform itself into an industrial class instead of investing its capital in land ? These questions cannot be answered in the context of Gran's conceptualization that appears to equate the decline of state authority and the subsequent rise of the commercial classes with indigenous "capitalist" development. If, on the other hand, the Egyptian society as a whole (instead of individual classes) is taken as the subject of history, then the issue is no longer whether or not there was indigenous "capitalist" development but how that society was undermined and transformed through European commercial penetration. Viewed in this perspective, the eighteenth century commercial revival would not represent "capitalist transformation" but signify a "moment" in the history of merchant capital when, with the breakdown of the Ottoman central administration, it escaped the controls of the central state and was articulated with European capitalist economy. Such an approach, however, presupposes a conceptualization of the rationality of the pre-capitalist society as dictated by the logic of the dominant mode of production. In the Ottoman system this rationality was mediated through state controls over the production and distribution of economic surpluses. In Egypt, as Gran's analysis shows, the weakening of Ottoman state controls led to attempts, first by the Mamluks they by Muhammad Ali, to create Ottomanstyle state structures. These undertakings (especially that of Muhammad Ali), though successful in developing coercive apparatuses (e.g. army), were unable to integrate the large segments of society thus resulting in the isolation of

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ruling classes. In Gramscian terms the class that seized state power was unable to coordinate its interests with those of subordinate classes therefore transform itself into a hegemonic class. 1 This development, in turn, can be explained in terms of the contradictoriness or irreconcilability of the interests of the ruling classes allied with "foreign" merchants with those of indigenous classes, particularly the commercial class. In this context, "peripheralization" signals the decline of strong state structures and the rise of weak ones that are committed to the reproduction of relations of domination not in the periphery (such as those between indigenous merchants and urban craftsmen) but of those in the global context defined by the European domination over the periphery — as manifested in the alliance of political elites with "foreign" merchants. At the same time, "peripheralization" describes the undermining of the rationality of the pre-capitalist society whereby it is characterized by the appearance of disarticulated structures (i.e. weak state structures, "autonomous" commercial class) which, in turn, are articulated with the larger totality of the European economy. Gran's study of the Egyptian society is, in fact, an accurate description of this disarticulated reality. Yet, his stance against state histories and concern for showing indigenous "capitalist" development in the eighteenth century (on a par with that in Western Europe) obscures his conception of the dynamics of the dissolution of the Egyptian political economy as a whole. Instead, he focuses on the development trajectories of indigenous classes. This leads, first, to a confusion of the effects of "peripheralization" with indigenous "capitalist" development. Second, "peripheralization" appears to be a function of either military intervention (as in the case of Napoleonic invasion) or internal political developments (i.e. unsupportive state structures). Structural transformations, such as the decline of local industry, the rise of "foreign" merchants allied with the local state structures at the expense of the indigenous merchant class, that are incumbent on the rise of European world economy are merely described but not theorized. This descriptive tendency, in turn, results in an acentric conception of the world system suggesting a kind of arbitrariness in the domination of one area over another. Put differently, description of indigenous capitalist forms overlooks the pattern of unequal development underlying global capitalism. This latter proposition suggests that "spontaneous" development of capitalist relations of production in Europe precluded indigenous capitalist development elsewhere by virtue of European capitalist expansion. But Gran's analysis remains strictly on the level of distribution and ignores the primacy of the 'Cjramsci (1980: 206-69, 3-14). For a clarification of Gramsci's ideas on hegemony, state and ideology, also see Mouffe (1979: 168-209).

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establishment of capitalist relations of production in Europe that made possible expansion of commercial activity and dictated the mode of capitalist transformation in the periphery. Another theoretical problem one encounters in Gran's work is the class reductionist view of culture whereby cultural/ ideological structures have a class belonging or are identified with the conciousness of individual classes. Clearly, much of the difficulty in Gran's conceptualization of culture and ideology stems from the absence of an adequate Marxist theory of culture. 1 Thus, while Gran's study of Egyptian culture dispels the Orientalist conceptions of Islamic culture as static and therefore an obstacle on the way to social-economic change, it runs into thorny problems in connection with the relationship of economic base and culture. These problems are further confounded by Gran's concern to show that "capitalist" cultural elements did exist in Egypt. As in the case of social-economic structures, Gran in his analysis of culture/ideology confines himself to a description of disarticulated structures without theorizing the processes that resulted in the emergence of these structures. Thus, answers to such questions as why the "capitalist" culture/ideology of the Egyptian commercial class declined or why a dichotomous cultural/ideological structure emerged are sought in the rather simplistic mechanics of class struggle. Yet, Gran's detailed research offers invaluable insights into cultural dynamics in the periphery. First there is the suggestion that central to the inability of ruling classes to become hegemonic was the absence of a universalistic worldwiew that constituted a consensus for the exercise of state power. Instead there emerged disarticulated cultural/ideological structures that secured the conditions of existence 2 of a peripheral society characterized by a weak state structure unable to integrate the different social-economic structures. Viewed in this perspective, the primary issue is not the class position/ identity of different cultural/ideological elements (or whether they are "capitalistic" or not) but how these elements secured the conditions of existence of the class structure that characterizes the peripheral society. Conversely, it is important to identify the circumstances in which the existing cultural/ideological structures were unable to secure these conditions, as was the case in eighteenth century Egypt. During the early nineteenth century under Muhammad Ali, Gran points to the emergence of a dichotomous structure of culture whereby the political elite in alliance with "foreign" merchants sought legitimizaton in Western culture while the indigenous ' For a concise description of the state of the art in this field, see Turner (1978: 62-6). 2

For a theoretical elaboration of this type of theory of ideology, see Hindess and Hirst (1975).

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classes continued to express themselves in Islamic forms. In a general sense, this pattern is reflected in the existence side by side of two groups of intellectuals — the "traditional" intellectuals or the ulama organically bound to indigenous classes and "modern" intellectuals who owe their existence to the relations of domination on a world scale and who are instrumental in the reproduction of these relations.1 Perpetuation of this dichotomy, on the other hand, is premised on the requirement of peripheral ruling class for "traditional" intellectuals to legitimize its rule internally. Yet the "logic" of ruling class dependency on Europe (both economic and military) dictate that 'traditional' intellectuals should be abandoned and that "modern" intellectuals be created. One implication of this process is rigidification of class ideologies whereby the "traditional" culture of indigenous classes as well as "traditional" intellectuals assume a defensive character and increasingly lose their capacity to adopt to changes. "Modern" intellectuals as well as the new "trans-national" classes however, are reduced to the status of mere transmitters of Western ideas and technologies without organic ties in the local society. It is not uncommon for these "modernists" to resort to coercive means in imposing their ideas; state policies of secularization and Westernization in Turkey until 1950 and in Iran under the Shah could be cited in the context of this process of cultural/ ideological alienation that characterizes the Middle Eastern periphery. These are some of the thoughts inspired by Gran's book; I strongly believe it is a unique achievement not only in the study of cultural/ideological transformation in the Egyptian periphery but also in raising certain key problems relating to peripheral development in general.

David Seddon : Moroccan Peasants, 1870-1970 Moroccan Peasants is a detailed study of changing class structures underlying the political and ideological forms of tribe and kinship in the eastern Rif region of north-eastern Morocco first during the late nineteenth century of European commercial penetration, then under Spanish colonial rule from 1912 to 1956, and finally in the post-independence period of 1956-1970. More significantly, however, Seddon's study of rural transformation aims at understanding the dynamics of Moroccan state through its pre-capitalist phase into the colonial and post-colonial phases "for it is historically in the rural areas that the class struggle develops which explains the existence of the state

' For a brilliant discussion of this dualism within in the contemporary Arab intelligensia, see Laroui (1976: 153-77).

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itself" (p. 52). 1 At the same time, Seddon emphasizes the historically specific political-ideological structures of tribe and kinship that secured the conditions of existence of the class struggle and that served to legitimize state power at different periods of Moroccan history. Seddon shows the so-called "traditional" political-ideological forms are perpetuated not because of absence of change, but it is the very conditions of change that result in their continuation. This line of thinking, in turn, aims at undermining conceptions of linear determination between class-state and politics-ideology. In his respect Seddon's book offers important insights into the conceptualization of the peripheral state. On the other hand, Seddon's undertaking, presupposes a new conceptualization of Moroccan history, at least one that challenges the fundamental premises of the present literature on Morocco. As the critique of this literature is central to Seddon's theoretical stance, I shall briefly summarize its main arguments.

A Critique of Modernization

Perspective

True to the precepts of "modernization theory", this literature characterizes the pre-colonial society as "traditional" therefore "stationary" and conceives societal change as an abrupt transition from "traditional" to "modern" (dynamic or Western), coincident with the establishment of the colonial state. The "traditional" society is, in turn, viewed as divided into two zones: that of the makhzen or the realm of central government, constituting an inner circle of tribes, where taxes were collected from subdued tribes and law was respected; and that of the siba or the realm of unruly tribes who constantly threatened to destroy the makhzen and establish their own hegemony. The ethnic split between Arab and Berber is superimposed upon this division and the oscillation of political power between the Arab makhzen and dissident Berber tribes describe the history of pre-colonial Morocco. Islam, on the other hand, is introduced into the model as an "ahistorical" ideological category unifying and integrating the totality of discrete tribal units. That this model provided the colonial powers, both French and Spanish, with justification to intervene and exploit the conceived divisions within the society has been explored by recent work on Morocco. 2 In this context, one should note that on the level of political ideology the colonial state viewed itself as successor to the makhzen; it differed from the latter, however, in its ability to establish permanent control over dissident tribes and therefore to transform the pattern of perpetual oscillation of political power between a weak central government and unruly tribes. 1 Page numbers cited in the text refer to those in Moroccan Peasants. See, for instance, Burke (1973).

2

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Seddon, however, argues that this model of "traditional" society, confined to observations of tribal political forms is a more accurate description of the political ideology of the pre-colonial society than its actual dynamics revealed through an analysis of underlying social and economic structures. Thus, in the ideological conception of the makhzen, the sultan is represented as the chief of a powerful tribal complex whose authority depended upon his ability to forge alliances with and exploit the differences between other tribal leaders so as to extract tribute from them and recruit item into his army. The tribal communities based on patrilineal descent are viewed as essentially egalitarian in their internal structures, while relations between them are assumed to be those "between groups that are structurally equivalent in terms of geneological ideology that permeates the system and between men who are fundamentally equal. This egalitarianism, in turn, provided individuals with important political values and powerfull principles of alliance and opposition" (P- 52). Moreover, this conception of an essentially tribal society, crystallized in anthropological models of segmentary and factional systems, stress continuity rather than change from "traditional" to "modern" (colonial and post-independence) society and see the perpetuation of tribal political forms and kinship ideology in both the colonial and post-independence periods as part of a yet-to-be completed process of modernization. Thus, studies of the post-independence period see "the supposedly highly contingent nature of Moroccan politics as the result of the persistence of "traditional" structures and a reflection of the essentially "transitional" nature of Moroccan society" (p. 271). These approaches, taking "tribal politics" as their unit of analysis, emphasize "the crucial role of individual choice and strategy among actors (either as persons or groupings) in the formation of the inherently unstable political alliances that are said to characterize Moroccan political life and ... the function of such shifting alliances in the maintenance of the overall status of the Moroccan regime since independence" (p. 271). The king, in turn, as the supreme zaim or the tribal leader is assigned the role of perpetuator of the state of equilibrium in this maze of shifting alliances and conflicts between the members of the political elite, while politics per se is viewed as "essentially devoid of ideological content, being organized on a pragmatic and usually highly personal (clientelist) basis" (p. 273). Seddon counterposes a problematic of structures to the problematic of political actors that characterize the present studies of Moroccan society. His unit of analysis is the Moroccan social formation with its economic, political, ideological levels. Interaction between different levels, on the one hand, and social relations within the economic base, on the other, describe the internal

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dynamics of society. "Change" is a function of mobilization of contradictions inherent in this complex pattern of relationships. Thus, stressing structural change over continuity, Seddon identifies external trade, labour migration and state intervention as factors that helped mobilize these contradictions at different stages of Morocco's integration into the world capitalist system. In analyzing the pre-colonial dynamic, Seddon argues for a model of society structurally integrated through state's extraction of surplus in the form of taxes from rural producers. This argument, in turn, assumes the existence of a "peasantry" — as opposed to the tribal population of the conventional formulations — on grounds that rural producers, agriculturalist and pastoralist, were incorporated economically and politically into the Moroccan state as subjects with the obligation to pay taxes. This relationship between the state and subject peasantry is, in Seddon's view, distinct fom that between state and tribal leaders who acted in the capacity of local administrators responsible for tax-collection and who presided over the peasantry. Secondly, Moroccan totality was integrated through state control over internal and external trade. With regards to internal trade, Seddon stresses the significance for pre-colonial political economy of the commerce between rural and urban areas linked by trade routes and the presence of local and regional markets. More significantly, Seddon points to the centrality of long distance trade as a source of revenue for the state, enabling the state to form armies thereby establish its controls over the local tribal formations therefore over agrarian surpluses. Thus, the struggle between the state and local tribal formations for control over trans-Saharan trade until the seventeenth century and over European trade in the subsequent period was central to the dynamic of pre-colonial Morocco. In the case of European trade, inability of the state to establish its controls over it resulted in contraband activity particularly after the 1860s when Morocco was opened once and for all to European commercial penetration. Contraband trade was most significant in the Rif region along the Mediterranean coast where illegal exports of wheat, iron, and animal produce led to an accumulation of wealth in the hands of local tribal leaders and import of arms provided the means of resistance to the central government. From the 1860s, onwards developments in Morocco conform to the pattern of "peripheralization" observed for other areas of the Middle East. 1 This pattern can be summed up as follows: decline in state control over agricultural production and over trade resulting in contraband trade and in revenue crisis for the state, which, in turn, led to indebtedness and increased dependence on European powers. This was followed by attempts at reforms by ' For a model of "peripheralization" of the Ottoman empire, see Wallerstein et al. (1987) and Islamoglu and Keyder (1987).

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the state, on the one hand, the collapse of urban craft production with the influx of European manufactures, decline in internal trade and old urban centres as local and regional commerce became an adjunct to European trade centered around coastal towns, on the other hand. At the same time, "peripheralization" results in the aggravation of contradictions within the society; one, between the surplus-extracting state and surplus-producing rural producers that is reflected in the political struggle between the central government and the tribal formations; and two, between the trade-monopolizing state and merchant capital in the form of a comprador bourgeoisie in towns and of capitalist farmers, as agricultural production is commercialized and class differentiation occurs in the countryside. This, in turn, signals the dissolution of the state as it loses control over sources of revenue and consequently its political domination is undermined as power gravitates to those groups that increasingly lay their hands on trade and agricultural surpluses. This model of "peripheralization" enables Seddon, first, to show that the Moroccan economy was subordinated to European interests and transformed prior to the legal and political creation of the colonial state which, was indeed the "logical culmination" of the historical development over several centuries. Second, Seddon reacting to the "mosaic" model of "tribal society" — emphasizes the integrative role of the state in pre-colonial society and the undermining of this role through European commercial penetration. In doing this, however, he seems to overlook certain structural specificities of Moroccan state such as the rudimentary character of the central bureaucracy and the absence of a centralized army independent of tribal recruits. 1 These features, especially the weak bureaucracy, differentiate the Moroccan state from the Ottoman state and their consideration may help explain the specificity of Morocco's "peripheralization", for instance, the inability of the state to affect reforms in the late nineteenth century and its subsequent vulnerability to direct colonial domination. This fate the Ottoman state with its strong bureaucracy — reinforced through centralizing reforms — was able to avoid.

Peripheral Transformation of Rural Society Seddon studies the transformation of rural class structures in the context of "peripheralization" and the subsequent emergence of colonial and post-colonial society. In his detailed analysis of relations of production and forms of property in the predominantly pastoral economy of the eastern Rif in ' For a comparison of the Ottoman and pre-colonial Moroccan bureaucracies, see Burke (1976: 15 Iff).

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the pre-colonial period, he identifies the contradictions within the economic base of the rural society and specifies the tendencies for accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few "big men". At the same time, he points to the tension within rural society between the structural tendency towards class differentiation and unequal distribution of wealth and resources and the "egalitarian" political ideology of tribal formations based on kinship. In the period of colonial rule (1912-1956), conditions of economic development, already under way in the late nineteenth century, served to mobilize both sets of contradictions. On the economic level, increased commercialization in agricultural production and rise in grain prices in response to rapid urban growth (as coastal towns expanded with increased European trade), on the one hand, an inability of the local economy to provide subsistence resulting in labour migration into Algeria thereby diverting manpower from the pastoral economy, on the other hand, led to a shift from pastoralism to settled agriculture. The settlement of tribes, together with the influx of Spanish settlers, resulted during the 1920s and 1930s in an increased demand for land and its subsequent commodification. These developments were accompanied by the introduction of a new colonial law generalizing private property in land. This law was previously limited to the agriculturalists of the hill region, while in the plains inhibited by the pastoralists tribal customary law prevailed. The outcome of the struggle over land and its increased privatization was the gradual emergence of a division between landed and landless peasantry. Seddon argues emphatically that this division was premised on the tendencies inherent to the pre-colonial structure. That is, the "big men" of the pre-colonial period as well as the rich peasants producing for the market through their contacts with colonial administrations were able to acquire large tracts of lands and drove the lower stratum of the peasantry off the land. At the same time, administrative policies of the colonial state reinforced the tribal divisions through appointments of tribal chiefs as "native officials". Also administrative reorganization along the lines of patrilineal descent maintained the segmentary political ideology thereby served to rigidify the former divisions. In this context, Seddon draws attention to two points, first, the emergent dislocation between the economic dynamic characterized by accelerated class differentiation and political-ideological structures "frozen" by administrative fiat; second, the structural penetration of rural society by the state, on the one hand, and by the dynamics of capitalist development of the Moroccan economy as a whole, on the other. These aspects also provide the parameters of rural transformation in the post-independence period.

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In analyzing the rural dynamics in the eastern Rif during the postindependence period, Seddon shows how the unequal distribution of resources (together with poor soil and unfavorable climatic conditions) led to a severe crisis in the agrarian economy especially from 1959 onwards. This was indeed a general of crisis the Moroccan economy. It resulted in food imports as population growth outstripped the increases in agricultural output. In the eastern Rif, it signalled high levels of unemployment. The minority of rich peasants or landowners, in whose hands lands land and livestock were concentrated and who engaged in commercial production, employed wage labour but not on a regular basis. On the other hand, the limited resources of middle peasants placed constraints on their ability to produce for the market as this was possible only after subsistence needs were met. Moreover, the middle peasantry, employing mostly family labour, not only was not in a position to absorb the rural work force of landless and small peasants but also, in years of bad harvest, contributed to the ever-growing body of seasonal or temporary labourers. Consequently, the rural underemployed or unemployed sought of work outside of a agriculture, resulting in a rural exodus.

Labour Migration As an Aspect of Peripheral

Development

Seddon in analyzing the rural exodus and the consequent waves of migration into towns and abroad emphasizes the impact of these developments on local class structures, both urban and rural. At the same time, he identifies labour migration abroad as a specific mode of Morocco's integration into the world system. In relation to urban migration, Seddon traces the increased differentiation of "urban" and "rural" to the colonial period. In this period increased commercial activity between towns and the countryside was facilitated by improved transportation, the growth of existing towns and by the development of former rural markets into towns. The result was the rise of a class of urban petty bourgeoisie of small businessmen or traders. (The latter mostly engaged in smuggling activities between the French and Spanish zones.) This trend was already under way in the later nineteenth century when the tribes in the hill areas served as intermediaries in the growing commerce between the interior of Morocco and the coastal towns dominated by European trading communities. With the establishment of the colonial state, however, the ranks of the urban petty bourgeoisie further swelled by state employees in local administration. Seddon argues that persons constituting the petty bourgeoisie both state employees and small traders or businessmen — were belonged to the — rich or middle peasantry. The latter groups benefitted from

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the new job opportunities while maintaining their ties with the countryside. At the time, the landless or the small peasantry who migrated to towns was to form the beginnings of a lumpenproleteriat of peddlers or of domestic labour. This pattern of development was reinforced in the post-independence period. The less fortunate, however, migrated abroad. In the colonial period labour migration was to Algeria but most significantly to Spain where Moroccans were employed in Franco's nationalist army during the Spanish civil war. In the post-independence period (beginning in the early 1960s) Western Europe absorbed much of Morocco's unemployed. Seddon shows that labour migration abroad relieved the pressure of unemployment in the local economy. At the same time, workers' remittances had the effect of reinforcing the existing class structures. Reluctant to return to rural areas, returning workers set themselves up as small traders or shopkeepers in towns, thus joining the ranks of the urban petty bourgeoisie. Investing in land, they also became part of the rich peasantry. Seddon concludes that by the mid-1960s, migration to Europe became a privilege of a small minority of wealthier peasants and urban petty bourgeoisie, in most cases sons of former migrants. This, in turn, meant that the landless and poor peasants had no recourse but to move to towns where they joined the unemployed.

Peripheral State and Politics Seddon shows that state intervention in the agrarian economy in the form of irrigation projects, credit facilities and allotment of former collective lands, also served to reinforce the existing class divisions in the countryside. For the most part, irrigation projects benefitted the wealthier peasants who owned large tracts of land in the plains where cultivation involved high risks, and not the poor peasants who cultivated the hillsides. Similarly, the state sanctioned control of credit facilities by rich peasants. Moreover, in the distribution of land the state made sure that recipients were peasants who owned land (therefore with experience in cultivation) and, that they were loyal subjects. Hence, state intervention in the rural economy was premised on political considerations. In the period between 1956-1960, the Rif region was characterized by a series of rural rebellions primarily resulting from the neglect of this area in the development projects launched by the state. The rebellion found its political expression in the Mouvement Populaire, the party representing middle and rich peasants. After suppresing the rebellion, the state sought to appease these groups through its policies of intervention in the local

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economy. At the same time, the staate undertook to "depoliticize" the countryside. This took the form of "tribalization" as local government was organized around "rural communes" that coincided with the tribal-based units of the colonial period. Thus, while the existing class divisions were given legitimacy in the ideology of "tribal community," emphasis on kinship and on personal conflicts and alliances provided the state with the means of political intervention in the countryside in favour of ruling groups. This process, in turn, further reinforced the dislocation between the economic base subjected to the logic of capitalist development and the political-ideological structures that were reconstituted in their pre-capitalist forms though these very forms were being undermined by the capitalist context. In this relation, Seddon points to the weakening of kinship ties and of the older patterns of social and economic cooperation, as descent groups broke up under the impact of migrations and of the shift from pastoralism to settled agriculture. But what needs to be stressed here is that the contradiction between the economic and political-ideological structures emerges as a structural specificity of the postcolonial society. I believe Seddon's primary contribution lies in his attempt to delienate this specificity in the concrete analysis both of the local and national structures; and more importantly, in the analysis of the post-colonial state. Seddon's discussion of post-colonial state in Morocco centers around three fundamental aspects of such state structures observed for other societies with a colonial past. 1 These interrelated features are: (i) the absence of the hegemony of a single class and the consequent relative autonomy of the state whereby groups (e.g. bureacracy-military) that are fundamental in the actual workings of the state mechanism assume the role of mediators among different classes, (ii) prominence of the state in economic development, (iii) state's centrality in creating the hegemonic conditions of ideological unity and legitimacy for the "new nation" — a function implied in discussions of "nation-building" in development literature. Seddon's analysis shows that the state dominated by the monarchy plays a central role in Morocco's capitalist development since independence. In explaining this, he, first points to the weakness of the urban bourgeoisie — commercial and industrial— and its failure to establish hegemony. Independence resulted in the ousting of the European colonial bourgeoisie that blocked the development of the Moroccan bourgeoisie. This latter class that led the nationalist movement against colonial rule was, however, unable to establish its control over the state apparatus after independence.

tSee, for instance, Alavi (1972) and Saul (1974).

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This was primarily because the Moroccan bourgeoisie remained essentially commerce-oriented. Reluctant to invest its capital in productive enterprises —industrial and agicultural —, it operated in the areas of import trade, land speculation and construction where profits were high and degree of capital investment was low. This, coupled with the flight of European capital, resulted in state's undertaking of productive investments. At the same time, despite the ideology of private enterprise and laissez faire in commerce and industry, the bourgeoisie saw the furtherment of its interests in increased state interventions in the economy. The latter took took the form of controls over banking, currency, credit institutions, and import-export licensing. To make sure that its interests were served by the state, the bourgeoisie sought to integrate itself with the state apparatus by placing its members in high positions in the bureaucracy. The state, on the other hand, assumed a relatively autonomous role whereby economic development programs were increasingly directed toward the perpetuation of the monarchy's hold over the state apparatus. Thus, to quell the resistence to the king's authority in underprivileged rural areas and to counteract the severe crisis in food production, state economic policy (between 1965-1973) shifted from industry to agriculture. This had the effect of strenghtening the dominant classes in the countryside (also the urban petty bourgeoisie of small businessmen in towns with ties in the rural economy) at the expense of the urban bourgeoisie. At the same time, "development projects" primarily directed towards agriculture helped to generate multiple neo-colonial interests. These projects, funded by such international agencies as the World Bank and the United States government came to define a sphere of foreign public capital. Alliance between this foreign public capital and the monarch, a loyal ally of the U.S. in the Western Mediterranean, served to strengthen the economic base of the state vis-à-vis the different classes. Seddon shows that while the pattern of peripheral development signalled gross imbalances between different groups none was in a position to effectively challenge the domination of the state by the monarchy. The rural exodus and the consequent expansion of a labour reserve army in town with links in the countryside resulted in a rapid turnover in urban employement and was a factor in explaining the weakness of working class organizations. At the same time, shift in state economic policy from industry to agriculture hindered the further development of the working class. Seddon identifies the appearance of a new petty bourgeoisie of state employees that increased in numbers as a result of state intervention in the economy and society and of the concern to provide employment for the educated middle classes. This emergent bureaucracy (especially in the lower and middle levels) whose interests were by

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no means identical with those of the monarchy or the rural classes, represents a major potential threat to the political status quo. Yet its dependence on the state for employment, rendered this group vulnerable to pressures from the monarchy, thus insuring its subjugation. Seddon's detailed study of Moroccan politics in the post-independence period shows that the struggle of different classes for control over the state apparatus took place through the medium of political parties. (This is in contrast to the segmentary and factional models that assume a clientelist basis for Moroccan politics). More significantly, this analysis suggests a relationship between the impotence of party politics as manifested in the failure to develop a bourgeois democracy or a socialist alternative and the "retarded" development of capitalist relations or peripheral development. Pointing to an ambivalence in the relationship between the monarchy and political parties, Seddon stresses the manipulation of political parties and their leadership by the monarch and their supression in the event that they constitute a challenge to the monarchy's domination of the state (e.g. the state of emergency between 1960-1965). At the same time, while state power in the hands of the monarchy is ultimately based on coercion, it also requires consensus that both encompasses and conceals coercion. But this consensus depends on the effectiveness of ideological-political structures that legitimate state power. Seddon shows that in Morocco, the ideology of "nation" — classless and united — organized around the monarchy is central to this process of legitimation. The king, who in the struggle for independence allied himself with the nationalists against the colonial powers, emerged as the symbol of the independent Moroccan nation and unity. This provided the king with the ideological justification to stand above specific class interests or political parties. Declaring that "the people wanted administration without political interests", the king became the embodiment of the benevolent state, acknowledging the economic ills of his subjects but blaming social unrest on the squabbles of political parties. Hence, on the level of state ideology, political developments are dissociated from the economic dynamic; the latter becomes the domain of state intervention for the general interest of the "nation" and "depoliticization" is the true realization of the idea of "nation". At the same time, within the "nation" vertical cleavages, i.e. kinship and tribal divisions are stressed too the exclusion of the horizontal or class divisions resulting from economic development. This, in turn, imparts to the idea of "nation" a historicity; political "language" is realized in the traditional political ideological forms of the tribal community and kinship. Thus, "depoliticization" finds further legitimation in "tribalization. "Finally,

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economic domination and coercion by the state is mediated through Islamic ideology. The ideological role of Islam as a unifying and integrating factor in "tribal" society was recognized by the European colonial states that sought to replace the customary law of the rural tribal population with the Shari'a (the Islamic law). In the post-independence period, the traditional role of the king as the source of baraka (bliss) constitutes yet another ideological structure legitimating his power. The centrality of state in providing ideological unity in general, and the Moroccan state dominated by the monarchy that assumes the function of creating hegemonic position in particular, raises a number of questions crucial to the conditions of political struggle in peripheral societies. For one, "ideology generation" becomes central to the assumption of state power. By contrast, class struggle is not determinant, given the historical conditions of perripheral capitalism that inhibit the development of fundamental classes (e.g. industrial or agricultural capitalists, urban or rural proletariat). 1 This calls for an investigation into those groups that serve as generators of ideology. In his context, educated middle classes, which Seddon identifies with the petty bourgeoisie of state employees, play an important role. Seddon points to the significance of this group as a potential threat to the control of the state by the monarchy. A specification of the conditions under which this potential could be realized, however, remains beyond the scope of his work. On the other hand, it appears that the monarch, having coopted both the "traditional" (those who are educated in religious schools) and "modern" (educated abroad or in schools established by the French) intellectuals through offering of posts in the bureaucracy, mobilizes them in the direction of producing the state ideology, and manages an uneasy balance between the two groups. Yet, in the event of the collapse of the present regime and in the ensuing struggle for state power, the ideological struggle between the "modern" and "traditional" intellectuals, may serve to define the orientation of the future state — be it in the form of "Islamic internationalism" (as in Iran) or "Westernist nationalism" as in Turkey.

Conclusion Both Gran and Seddon raise important questions around the issue of state's role in the capitalist development of the periphery. Of course, state intervention in capitalist economy and society is not a unique feature of ' For a discussion of this specificity as observed in Arab societies as well for an excellent analysis of the Arab ideological discourse, see Laroui (1976: 33-4, 83-126, 153-77).

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peripheral development. State regulatory practice has been central to the establishment and reproduction of capitalist market relations as well as of capitalist industrialization in core countries. In Germany, Japan and in England, capitalist interests required the state for creation of the institutions (e.g. rules of private property, contract laws) that enabled market exchange and industrial production. State's ability to affect capitalist development, however, involves the hegemonic aspect of state power and is not simply a function of the state's regulatory (or coercive) capabilities. This hegemoic aspect refers to the state's legitimation function, to its ability to organise the unity of dominant classes and to mobilize the consent of large segments of society. More precisesly, it refers to the ability of state to build consensus over the viability of a sociatel order premised on market exchange relations and on the principle of private property. Legitimation, however, presupposes a cultural idiom that aims at 'normalizing' or rendering 'natural' in the eyes of all groups in the society the market-generated inequalities amongst individuals and the unequal distribution of property. Grand and Seddon study, respectively, the ways the Egyptian state under Muhammed Ali and Moroccan (colonial and post-colonial) states affected the organisation of peripheral capitalism. This process entailed an unequal distribution of resources between those who participated in the European trade and economy and those who were excluded from it. It also signalled a close association of state structures with the former groups. For instance, in Morocco the removal of the colonial commercial and industrial interests and the weakness of indigenous commercial and industrial groups, resulted in postcolonial state's assuming a more active role in the country's integration with the world economy. The Moroccan post-colonial state has been committed to the development of a capitalist agricultural sector that produced for European markets and where the inequitable distribution of resources (land and credits) was ensured through the channeling of aid funds to wealthier tribal groups and peasants. But based on these observations, could one conclude that peripheral restructuring of the economy and society that requires state regulation, on behalf of groups linked to the European markets at the expense of those who are not, precludes the possibility of the state's becoming hegemonic thereby condemning it to a structurally determined political weakness ? Both Gran's and Seddon's analyses suggest a negative response to this question. They emphasize the nature of power relations in the individual societies at different periods of their integration into the European economy and focus on different legitimating discourse that describe the specific peripheral development paths. In doing this, they point in the direction of the historically contingent nature of the peripheralization process and of the role

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of the state in that process. It it true that historically there has been certain constraints on the development of hegemonic states in the periphery with the ability to steer the economy towards goals that gave priority to increased productive capacities in the domestic economies and with the political ability to mobilize society in that direction. Yet the presence of objective constraints should not preclude possibilities of political action that aims for a domestic definition of economic and social priorities. This is not an argument for severing of ties with the world economic system but for the possibility of negotiating a given country's position in that system. Gran and Seddon each in his own way through their emphasis on historically contingent power relations and state power, largely contribute to the dispelling of the apparent inevitabilities that the logic of economic determinations imply.

REFERENCE Alawi, H. (1972), "The State in Post-Colonial Societies: Pakistan and Bangladesh", New Left Review, 74, 59-881. Amin, S. (1971), The Maghreb in the Arab World, Harmondsworth: Penguin Bookss. — (1976), Unequal Development: An Essay on the Social Formations of Peripheral Capitalism, New York: Monthly Review Press. — (1978), The Arab Nation, London: Zed Press. Anderson, P. (1974), Lineages of the Absolutist State, London: New Left Books. Avineri, S. (ed.) (1968), Karl Marx on Colonialism and Modernization, New York: Doubleday. — (1972), "Modernization and Arab Society" in I. Howe and C. Gershman (eds.), Israel, the Arabs and the Middle East, New York: Bentham Books. Burke, E. (1973), "The Image of the Moroccan State in French Ethnological Literature: A New Look at the Origins of Lyautey's Berber Policy", in A. Gellner and C. Micaud (eds.), Arabs and Berbers: From Tribe to Nation in North Africa, London: Duckworth. — (1976), Prelude to Protectorate in Morocco: Pre-Colonial Protest and Resistance, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Gramsci, A. (1980), Selections from the Prison Notebooks, Q. Hoare and G. N. Smith (eds. and translators), New York: International Publishers. Gran, P. (1979), "Medical Pluralism in Arab and Egyptian History: An Overview of Class Structures and Philosophies of the Main Phases", Social Science and Medicine, 13B, 339-48.

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— (1987), "Late 18th - Early 19th Century Egypt: Merchant Capitalism or Modern Capitalism?" in H. ìslamoglu-lnan (ed.), Ottoman Empire and the World Economy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hegel, G.W.F. (1956), The Philosophy of History, New York: Dover Publications. Hindess, B. and Hirst, P.Y. (1975), Pre-Capitalist Modes of Production, London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul. islamoglu, H. and Keyder, Q. (1987), "Agenda for Ottoman History" in H. Ìslamoglu-lnan (ed.), Ottoman Empire and The World Economy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Laroui, A. (1976), The Crisis of the Arab Intellectual: Traditionalism Historicisml, Berkeley: University of California Press.

or

Lerner, D. (1958), The Passing of Traditional Society: Modernizing the Middle East, New York: Free Press. Marx, K. and Engels, F. (1972), On Colonialism, New York: International Publishers. Mouffe, C. (1979), "Hegemony and Ideology in Gramsci" in C. Mouffe (ed.), Gramsci and Marxist Theory, London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Polk, W. and Chambers, R. L. (eds.) (1968), Beginnings of Modernization of the Middle East: The Nineteenth Century, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Said, E. (1978), Orientalism, New York: Random House. Saul, J. S. (1974), "The State in Post-Colonial Societies: Tanzania", The Socialist register 1974, 349-68. Turner, B. (1978), Marx and the End of Orientalism, London: George Allen and Unvvin. Wallerstein, I., Decdeli, H. and Kasaba, R. (1987), "The Incorporation of the Ottoman Empire into the World Economy", in H. Islamoglu-lnan (ed.), Ottoman Empire and the World Economy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

PEASANTS, COMMERCIALIZATION, AND LEGITIMATION OF STATE POWER IN SIXTEENTH-CENTURY ANATOLIA

Recent research on Ottoman agriculture suggests that commercial expansion in the peasant economy did not set into motion a trend towards concentration of land or towards the formation of large estates. 1 Nor was there a general tendency toward peasant dispossession and conversion of peasants into enserfed or wage labor on large holdings. Instead, production for the market, to a large degree, took place on small plots worked by free peasants. This pattern held true for periods of commercial growth both before and after Ottoman agriculture was exposed to increased European demand for its products. In this article I will primarily deal with the response of Ottoman peasant economy in north-central Anatolia to increased commercial demand in towns and to population growth in the sixteenth century. 2 First, however, I will discuss a number of conceptual problems relating to the dynamics of Ottoman peasant economy. A central issue confronting students of Ottoman agriculture is that of explaining the underlying mechanisms that were responsible for the persistence of independent peasantry. The explanations given derive from the high land/labor ratio and from the fiscal considerations of the state, which relied on the extraction of peasants' surpluses, in the form of taxes, for its primary source of revenue. 3 I will argue that these explanations are based on an essentially economic logic and resent a picture of the Ottoman state as a maximizer of revenues. The political dimension is thus reduced to a taxation function. 4 As such, the economistic view is inadequate in accounting for political mechanisms that subsumed such variables as land/labor relations, ^Halil Inalcik, "The Emergence of Big Farms, Ciftliks: State, Landlords and Tenants" in JeanLouis Bacqué-Grammont and Paul Dumont, eds., Contributions à l'histoire économique et sociale de l'Empire ottoman (Louvain: Editions Peeters, 1983), pp. 105-26; Bruce McGowan, Economic Life in Ottoman Europe: Taxation, Trade and the Struggle for Land , 1600-1800 (Cambridge: CUP, 1981). For a detailed empirical study of this region based on Ottoman fiscal surveys (tahrir) and court records (kadi sicilleri) see Huri Islamoglu-Inan, "State and Peasant in the Ottoman Empire : A Study of Peasant Economy in North-Central Anatolia during the Sixteenth Century" in Huri Islamoglu-Inan, ed„ Ottoman Empire and the World Economy (Cambridge: CUP, 1987). "'For a recent debate on the political economy of agrarian change in the Middle East and North Africa, closely related to the issues discussed here, see Kathy Glavanis and Pandelis Glavanis, "The Sociology of Agrarian Relations in the Middle East: The Persistence of Household Structure", Current Sociology, XXXI, 2, Summer 1983, 1-109. 4 For an example of such a view of the Ottoman state, Huri islamoglu and C. Keyder, "Agenda for Ottoman History", Review, I, 1, Summer 1977, 31-56.

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population growth, and commercial expansion, and influenced the way in which these factors affected changes in land distribution, organization of production, and labor control. Put differently, in order to understand why changes in economic factors did not lead to the dispossession of the peasantry and to the formation of large estates, we require a more adequate conception of the political logic of the Ottoman economy and society than the taxation function alone provides.

Political Authority and its Relation to the Agrarian

Economy

Important to the political logic of the Ottoman system was a legitimizing notion, 1 by which I mean that state actions were informed by the belief that such actions were enforcing traditional rights and norms. Furthermore, practices of the state carried out by its agents were to a large degree supported by the consensus of the society. Hence, it is possible to detect, in the intervention of timar-holders in the production and appropriation of peasant surpluses, as well as in the principles underlying the organization of markets, a concern for maintaining the subsistence economy of free peasants, a concern for preventing accumulation on land through limits imposed on commercial production, and finally, a concern for directing agricultural surpluses to specified markets so as to ensure the provisioning of non-agricultural populations. Implicit in these concerns was a paternalist world-view premised on the role of the state as dispenser of justice and perpetrator of eternal order. 2 A paternalist Weltanschauung was universalistic in that it presupposed the application of the principle of justice to all subjects regardless of their religion or creed, and it assumed an undivided centralized polity. This world-view was embodied in legal documents and in the principal institutions of the system of revenue grants (or the timar system), kadi courts, market regulations and organization, and in the principle of the state ownership of land. These institutions are all too familiar, and I will not discuss them here, 3 but I will point to those aspects that are immediately relevant to the legitimation process.

^For a treatment of this concept, see Edward P. Thompson, "The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century", Past and Present, 50 (1971), 76-136. 2 For a discussion of this world-view, see Halil Inalcik, "Suleiman the Law-Giver and Ottoman Law", Archivum Ottomanicum, I (1969), 105-38. ^For a general discussion of the Ottoman institutions, see Halil Inalcik, The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age,1300-1600 (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1973).

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First, it is important to note that the paternalist model in the context of the timar system describes a separation of juridical and administrative practices whereby the timar-hdiders as extractors of peasants' surpluses exercised no juridiction over the person or the land of peasants on their timars. Such jurisdiction lay with the central state, which exercised it through a hierarchy of judges or kadis, who were responsible for administering both the Islamic Law ( s h a r i ' a ) and the sultanic law or the drf. This meant that kadis oversaw the activities of the timar-holders and made sure that the latter did not step beyond their rights in their interaction with the peasants and performed their administrative dutis in accordance with the precepts of state legal codes. 1 The presence of kadis together with /iwar-holders in a given locality was, in turn, to provide the peasants with recourse to justice. As such, the paternalist model assumed a consensus by the ruled over the principles of justice and order. Rescripts of justice, or adalet-names, on the other hand, provided a means through which the central state could respond to the grievances of the ruled.2 The second feature of the paternalist model largely derives from the consensus aspect and defines the central state as the source of legitimation. All claimants to revenues, including those who were not state officials such as the recipients of revenues from waqfs, pre-Ottoman ruling groups, and later the local notables (ayan) and tax farmers, derived their rights over peasants' surpluses from the juridical and administrative practices of the central state. 3 Juridical-ideological institutions of the state served to legitimize revenue collection in the eyes of the peasantry. The central state, however, intervened to support the claims of revenue holders provided that surpluses were produced by independent peasants. As such, from the point of view of the central state the independent peasantry not only constituted its fiscal base but also the basis of its political legitimacy. The paternalist model I have just outlined pertains to an ideal image the political authority had of itself and of the society over which it ruled. As such, it parts company at many points with realities even in the sixteenth century when the state authority was at its zenith. Yet the model had a reality as the legitimating principle of political authority; it provided the idiom of domination and a vocabulary for political expression of different groups within 'For drf see Encyclopedia of Islam (2nd edition), s.v."t///' by Halil Inalcik. Halil tnalcik, "Adaletnameler", Belgeler, II, 3/4 (1967). 3 See, for instance, McGowan, Economic Life in Ottoman Europe-, §evket Pamuk, "Commodity Production for export and Changing Relations of Production in Ottoman Agriculture in the 19th Century" in Huri Islamoglu-Inan, ed., The Ottoman Empire and the World Economy, Regat Kasaba, "Migrant Labor in Western Anatolia, 1750-1850" in Q. Keyder and Faruk Tabak, eds., Landholding and Commercial Agriculture in the Middle East (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991), pp. 113-22. 2

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the society. In this capacity the paternalist precepts manifested a certain degree of resilience in the face of changes occasioned by the internal dynamic as well as by a new world-historical dynamic after the seventeenth century. This is not to say that the legitimating principle remained stationary; it, too, was transformed and was gradually undermined especially in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as the Ottoman Empire was integrated into the world market and the practices of the central state under external and internal pressures increasingly contradicted its own ideal. On the other hand, the resilience of the paternalist idiom, especially in relation to rural producers, may in part be accounted for by its adherence to the right of producers to subsistence and the obligation of the political authority to ensure the conditions of thet subsistence. For instance, when the central authority impinged on this right in Bulgaria during the nineteenth century, by recognizing the private property rights of Muslim aghas on peasant lands, the peasants rebelled and demanded return to state ownership of land. 1 In doing so the Bulgarian peasants were expressing their right to subsistenc in terms of the paternalist ideology. At the same time, especially in the nineteenth century, it appears that the central authority, in its struggle for survival under adverse internal and external conditions, clung to the precept of preserving the subsistence economy of the peasants. Legitimacy concerns as well as fiscal considerations, and the political conflict with the landed classes dependent on the world market, played a part in this struggle. Consequently the central bureaucracy took a contradictory stance in the application of the Land Code of 1858 that was passed under British pressure. 2 On the one hand, property rights of peasants on land were codified, and titles were granted to peasant families. On the other hand, introduction of private property made the land alienable, which, if the law were fully implemented, would result in peasant dispossessions in the event of indebtedness. The central state moved to impose such customary restrictions as prohibitions on confiscation of peasant plots in cases of indebtedness, or as the reassertion of peasants' rights to own farmsteads on private property. As such the state sought to protect the peasantry from the adverse effects of commercial development. The contradictory attitude of the central bureaucracy in relation to the land code may in part explain the absence of peasant rebellions in Anatolia during the period of commercial expansion. This pattern of development is in sharp contrast to that in Egypt where the state increasingly identified with the ' Halil Inalcik, Tanzimat ve Bulgar Meselesi (Ankara, 1943). Omer L. Barkan, "Turk Toprak Hukuku Tarihinde Tanzimat ve 1247 (1858) Arazi Kanunamesi", Tanzimat, I (1940), 321-421. 2

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interests of landed classes and applied the law of private property in land, and, in so doing, undermined its legitimacy in the eyes of the peasantry. 1 One consequence of the Egyptian pattern of development was the peasant uprisings in the 1870s which culminated in the British occupation. Viewed in this perspective, the ability of the Ottoman state to maintain its political independence may in part have been a result of its ability to maintain a semblance of its legitimacy vis-à-vis the rural population in the Ottoman heartlands. To account for this specificity requires a re-formulation of the nature of political authority in the Ottoman empire. This involves a conception of state power not merely as a site of coercion or surplus extraction but as a combination of coercion and hegemony or consent, that is, the legitimacy concern. 2 Central to this conception is the assumption that state power requires conensus that both encompases and conceals coercion. Consensus, in turn, depends on the effectivity of juridical-ideological practices that legitimate political authority. In the Ottoman context the dominant ruling coalition of central bureaucrats, janissaries, and members of the juridical-religious scholars (ilmiyye) sought to reconcile the interests of peasants, merchants, artisans, tribal groupings, and pre-Ottoman ruling groups around the paternalist world view. This world view, however, had a dual focus. First, was that of Islamic precepts embodied in the Islami Law (shari'a) which provided the organizing principles (or ideology) of social life. The second focus of the paternalist ideology was the Sultanic law (or orf)\ it is basic premise was that the ruler was responsible for the welfare of his subjects. 3 Ôrf provided the organizing principle for the relationship between the rulers and the other groups in the society. But the consent of the ruled to rulers was mediated through institutions (e.g. tarikats, guilds, medreses, or institutions of higher learning) organized around the Islamic ideology. (Enderun)

Central to this complex legitimation matrix were the religious scholars First, the ulama in their capacity as judicial functionaries were responsible for mediating the relationship between the ruling class and the other social groups through the application of the ôrf principles. Secondly, (ulama).

^Alan Richards, "Primitive accumulation in Egypt, 1798-1882", Review, I, 2 (Fall, 1977), 3-49. The understanding of state power presented here owes a great deal to the ideas of Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, translated and edited by Quentin Hoare and Geoffrey N.Smith (New York: International Publishers, 1980) pp. 206-69. For a recent formulation of Gramsci's ideas, see Chantal Mouffe,"Hegemony and Ideology in Gramsci," in Chantal Mouffe, ed., Gramsci and Marxist Theory (London: Routledge and Keean Paul, 1979) pp. 168-209. Halil Inalcik, "Suleiman the Law-Giver" and "Adaletnameler". Also Inalcik's "Urf" in EI ( 2 n d edition). 2

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they mediated the relationships within the society in their capacity as waqf administrators, as judges responsible for the application of family law. Finally, the ulama played a role in mediating the paternalist ideology through the educational system. Thus, the ulama can be characterized as "organic intellectuals" whose activities were directed towards the reproduction of dominant social relations. The ideological unity that made possible the reconciliation of the interests of the ruling coalition with those of other classes in the society was to a great extent the result of the ulama's intellectual activities.1 Peripheralization undermined this scheme of legitimation of state power. First, with the centralization measures and the reforms enacted to fulfill the requirements of economic integration into the world market, came the formation of a new ruling class of bureaucrats. This class was characterized by its inability to reconcile its interests with those of other classes in the society, primarily because its very existence came to depend increasingly on global linkages and interests often in contradiction with the interest of indigenous classes. The alliance of the central bureaucracy with "foreign" merchants or their minority agents is a case in point. Concomitant with this development was the undermining of the universalistic world view that forged the interests of different groups. The new role of the central bureaucracy as an agent in facilitating the operations of the world-economy meant the adaptation of Western principles in organizing the state and its relation to the society. 2 For instance, granting of special privileges to Christian subjects through the establishment of separate commercial and penal courts came into conflict with the old organizational principle that focused on the role of the Sultan as the protector of all his subjects. 3 At the same time, in order to meet the expenses incurred by the adoption of new reform measures, the central state resorted to more coercive means of surplus extraction (or taxation). 4 Put differently, the concern of the central bureaucracy to legitimate itself within the inter-state system often came into conflict with its concern to legitimate itself inside the

' f o r an excellent treatment of the role of the ulama in the production of 'culture' and changes in that role during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, see Peter Gran, Islamic Roots of Capitalism,1760-1840 (Austin: University of Texas Press,1979) especially pp. 178-88. Gran explores the relationship between the ulama and the mystical orders- the convergence and divergence of their interests. 2 For an adoption of new modes of administrative organization and new regulations during the Tanzimat era, see Roderic Davison, Reform in the Ottoman empire, 1856-1876 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963) and Bernard Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, 2nd. edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968). 3 Niyazi Berkes, The Development of Secularism in Turkey (Montreal: McGill University Press, 1964). 4 For changes in the modes of taxation and therefore the role of the state, see Roger Owen, The Middle East and the World Economy, 1800-1914 (London: Methuen, 1981), pp. 59, 292.

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empire. 1 In the event that the ruling class that held state power was unable to reconcile this conflict, it resorted to "coercion." 2 Hence, it is in this context that one could talk about rule without consent, or Ottoman "despotism" that the nineteenth-century writers were so keen in observing. Again, in this historical context, one could view the "weakening" of the Ottoman state structure incumbent on the "peripheralization" process in terms of the undermining of the legitimacy of the Ottoman ruling class and of its alienation from other classes. Consensus in this context describes the process whereby the paternalist world view spoke to the genuine aspirations and requirements of rural producers. One such aspiration was the right to subsistence. Consensus over that right largely took the form of a passive act in which the main features of the social order were accepted as givens. Yet this passive posture should not suggest that the peasantry was totally isolated from the dominant ideology and institutions and that whenever it expressed itself politically it did so in the idiom of its local cultures. 3 That is, just as the peasant economy that is centered around village communities can not be considered to be entirely autonomous of the institutions of the central state which affected patterns of production and distribution in that economy, the "local" culture of the peasantry can not be viewed as totally autonomous. The paternalist idiom and its symbols were to some degree internalized by the peasants, and as such these and not necessarily the folk forms, provided the vocabulary of resistance to the central state — as the Bulgarian case shows. This is not to suggest, however, that the perpetuation of the independent peasantry was a smooth, non-conflictual process, given the consensus matrix and the institutional framework of surplus extraction and distribution. It involved a continual struggle on the part of the central authority to impose its administrative-juridical institutions and precepts on local claimants to revenues, especially at times of commercial expansion. The central state sought to limit commercial production to reclaimed wastelands where large estates were indeed formed, 4 and to state farms as was the case

For this hybrid legal structure, see Donald Quartaert, "A Provisional Report Concerning the Impact of European Capital on Ottoman Port Workers, 1889-1909" in Jslamoglu-inan, ed., The Ottoman Empire and the World Economy, pp. 300-08. 2 This was the case for the appropriation of wag/elands and the establishment of a regular police force. See §erif Mardin, The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought (Princeton: Princeton University ftess, 1962). •'For a formulation of the approach that stresses the centrality of local cultures in political expressions of peasants, see James C. Scott, "Hegemony and the Peasantry", Politics and Society, VII, 3 (1977), 267-96. ^Halil Inalcik, "The Emergence of Big Farms, Ciftliks".

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with rice production. 1 This dynamic was further complicated by the existence of organic links between groups that formed the ruling coalition and the commercial and landed interests within the society. The central bureaucracy and the ulama controlled large stretches of land and both of these groups, and the janissaries (infantry corps) participated in trade. Hence, one can not view the state as a monolithic class of surplus extractors. Not all members of the ruling coalition were at all times interested in maintaining the integrity of peasant holdings. Here, for analytical purposes, a distinction needs to be made between the class content of the state and its institutional aspects. It was primarily through the intervention of administrative-juridical institutions in the class relations between the extractors and the producers of surplus that the independent peasantry was maintained. The effectiveness of this intervention varied of course, but it is in the context of these institutions that peasant production and limited commercial development in peasant economy took place. Viewed in this perspective, peasant economy can not be treated as an invariable or as being merely subject to cyclical variations deriving from economic variables internal to it. Here I refer to Malthusian 2 and C h a y a n o v i a n 3 formulations on the nature of peasant economies. The Malthusian view assumes that, given the absence of technological change, agricultural production in pre-industrial societies is essentially stagnant. As such, changes in the population factor explain the changes in the organization of production and rural class relations. The Chayanovian view, on the other hand, points to the size of the peasant household and its level of selfexploitation as determinants of the levels of production. While these approaches point to two dynamic elements in the peasant economy, namely, demographic factors and self-exploitation of peasant households, they fail to relate these elements to the political-social context in which peasant production takes place. 4 Put differently, these frameworks tend to explain the changes in the peasant economy in terms of factors internal to that economy. I will argue that both the perpetuation and changes in the peasant economy were largely a function of external structures, i.e., power relations and the political-

1 Halil Inalcik, "Rice Cultivation and Celtukci-Reaya System in the Ottoman empire", Turcica, XIV (1982), 69-131. 2 For a masterful application of the Malthusian view, see Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, The Peasants ofLanguedoc (Urbana: University of Illinois, 1977). 3 A .V. Chayanov, Theory of Peasant Economy (Illinois: Irwin Press, 1956). 4 For a dynamic treatment of the population factor, see Guy Bois, "Symposium: Agrarian Class Structures and Economic Development in Pre-industrial Europe-Against the Neo-Malthusian Orthodoxy", Past and Present, 79 (May 1978), 60-9.

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juridical institutions in which these relations were embodied. 1 In doing this I will stress the externality of the population factor 2 and point to the extra economic determinants of demographic growth such as conditions of political stability, migration, and forced sedentarization of nomadic tribes. At the same time, other external determinants of agricultural production such as state taxation demands, will be admitted into the analysis. Thus, once these external linkages of the peasant economy are established, it is no longer possible to threat the peasantry as either autonomous or invariant. Its perpetuation or disappearance becomes incumbent on the larger political-social context.

Agrarian relations and the State: Ottoman Anatolia In the light of these general observations I now turn to specific structures of the Ottoman agrarian society in north-central Anatolia. In doing this I will first focus on the relations between extractors and producers of the surplus and the relations of these groups to central authority, /^war-holders were not the only claimants to peasants' surpluses. In north-central Anatolia after the Ottoman conquest in the fifteenth-century, pre-Ottoman system of surplus extraction relations were largely left intact. This meant the recognition of the claim to peasants' surpluses of the former Turkish military rulers (umera) and the members of religious establishments including the ulama at mosque-medrese complexes, and shaykh families who were the custodians of dervish hospices (zaviyes). This religious elite controlled large stretches of lands as their waqfc. At the same time, the interests of the religious elite and the umera were intertwined, as it was not uncommon for the umera to convert their properties into waqf. Under the malikane-divani system which was the predominant form of surplus-extraction in this region, the preOttoman ruling groups retained the ownership rights to land, and revenues from land were divided between the legal owners (or the malikane-holders) and divani-holders who were entitled to revenues as part of the lunar? As such, ' For an application of a similar approach to pre-industrial European societies, see Robert Brenner, "Agrarian Class Structures and Economic Development in Pre-industrial Europe", Past and Present, 70 (February 1976), 30-75. 2 Such a view of the demographic factor largely borrows from Ester Boserup's work (The Conditions of Agricultural Growth: The Economics of Agrarian Change and Population Pressure (Chicago: Aldine Publications, 1965). For a detailed discussion of Boserup's views in relation to the Ottoman peasant economy, see Islamoglu-lnan, "State and Peasant in the Ottoman Empire". ^For the distribution of the divani and malikane shares in the 1520-30 and 1574-76 period, see tables 5.1 and 5.2 in Islamoglu-lnan, "State and Peasant in the Ottoman Empire", pp. 135-6. A detailed description of this system is in Omer L. Barkan, "Turk-Islam hukuku tatbikatinin Osmanh Imparatorlugunda aldigi §ekiller I: Malikane-Divani Sistemi", Turk Hukuk ve Iktisat Tarihi Mecmuasi, I ( 1939), 119-85. The system is also described in various kanuns or regulations, see O. L. Barkan , XV.ve XVI. Asirlarda Osmanh Imparatorlugunda Zirai Ekonominin Hukuki ve Mali Esaslari I: Kanunlar (Istanbul: Istanbul Universitesi Edebiyat Fakultesi Yaymlan, 1943), pp. 73-4,77, 115-16, 182, 299-300.

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state ownership of land as a central precept of the paternalistic idiom of rule was not enforced in this region. In the second half of the fifteenth century the Ottoman central administration was content to appoint the members of the pre-Ottoman ruling groups with claims to divani revenues as timar-holders.1 Throughout the sixteenth century the Ottoman central authority was engaged in a continuous struggle with the local elites to establish its politicaljuridical framework and to control a larger share of the surplus from this region. 2 Ottoman tax registers 3 suggest that in the sixteenth century the timera families were gradually replaced by direct state appointees as claimants to divani revenues and as timar-holders. In this period there was also a rise in the share of waqf in total revenues. Under the malikane-divani system freehold properties could be sold or divided among heirs resulting in discontinuities in ownership and in extreme fragmentation of holdings. In order to prevent fragmentation and to escape confiscation by the central state, the pre-Ottoman umera increasingly converted their properties into family waqfs. At the same time, the Ottoman central state in the sixteenth century allotted a significant part of the revenues that directly accrued to it, to mosque medrese complexes. 4 Thus, it appears that the central state was seeking an alliance with the local religious scholars (ulama) who as teachers, judges, and reciters of sermons at mosques controlled the ideological-juridical institutions. These institutions had formed the basis of legitimacy of the local Turkish dynasties. As such, alliance with the ulama was a means of coopting that legitimacy and therefore further undermining the domination of local dynasties. On the other hand, it is not unlikely that the central administration appointed the judges (or kadis) in this are from the ranks of the local ulama who then would be in position of implementing the juridical precepts that constituted the basis for the legitimacy of state power. This, in turn, could

' In the fifteenth century, malikane-owners who were assigned administrative duties ere required to deliver a specified number of eskincis or mounted soldiers to the imperial army. See nd Encyclopedia of Islam (2 edition) s.v. "Eshkindji" by Halil Inalcik. 2

For political and military histories of individual regions studied here, see Islam Ansiklopedisi, s.v. "Tokat" by Tayyib Gokbilgin; Encyclopedia of Islam, 2 nd edition, s.v. "Coram" by Franz Taeschner ; Islam Ansiklopedisi, s.v."Niksar" by Besim Darkot. For a description of general conditions in the province of Rum which included the districts in the sample studied, see Huseyin Husameddin, Amasya Tarihi (5 vols. Istanbul: Hikmet Matbaasi, 1927-35). 3 For a detailed description of how the figures in the tables are arrived at, see Islamoglu-Inan, "State and Peasant in the Ottoman Empire", p. 406, n. 14. 4 T h e category of "unspecified" shares that appears in tables 5.1 and 5.2 (Islamoglu-Inan, "State and Peasant in the Ottoman Empire", pp. 135-6) refer to those shares that directly accrued to the central treasury. Hence, it is assumed that revenues from these shares were collected by emins or state officials who were responsible for the sale of the product tax on markets and who sent the cash returns to the treasury. In the later sixteenth century, the proportion of 'unspecified' shares in the total number of shares declined significantly-in the case of divani shares this proportion dropped from 41.6 percent in 1520 to 27.9 percent in 1574. These revenues were assigned to waqfs of mosque-medrese complexes and to timars.

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explain the prominence of ulama as claimants to surpluses in the sixteenth century. But what were the implications fo the organization of agricultural production and for rural relations of the introduction of the timar system on the one hand, and of co-optation of local ideological-juridical structures, on the other? In general terms, increased application of the timar system and appropriation of the local ideological-juridical apparatuses allowed the central state to intervene in the class relation between the owners of land and the direct producers. Concrete manifestations of this intervention, in turn, defined the character of rural structures under the malikane-divani system. First, under this system, legal owners of land were entitled to a rent but neither the condition nor the amount of this rent was determined by them. The amount of rent was specified in state legal codes as a single tithe (one-tenth of peasants' total output) on grains and other produce and as one-half of the dues from beehives and mills. Legal owners were not free to cultivate their lands, nor could their intervene in the production process undertaken by "free" peasants with usufruct rights to small plots and whose rights and obligations were specified in state codes. All matters relating to the person and the land of the peasant were outside the purview of legal owners (or malikane-holder); these were the responsibility of rima/"-holders who formed the administrative cadres and whose powers could be revoked by the central state. Timar-holders received the divani share of revenues which consisted of another single tithe on grains and other produce and the other half of dues on beehives and mills. In addition, however, timar-holders were responsible for the collection of all resm-i gift1 or land cum personal taxes, sheep tax, and penal fines. Moreover, peasant holdings could not be sold or purchased without the permission of timar-holders who were responsible for the drawing of title deeds and who saw to the dispensation of holdings that fell vacant. Secondly, neither legal owners of land nor timar-holders exercised any jurisdiction over peasants; as was the case on state-owned lands, legall matters relating to peasants and their land were settled at the tribunal of the kadi appointed by the central state. Finally, there were legal sanctions against accumulation of land in the hands of legal owners; though malikane-holders could sell or purchase lands, such transactions were subject to validation by the central state. In brief, direct intervention of the administrative (political) and juridical practices of the central state in the "internal nexus" of surplus extraction or class relations between the legal owners and peasant producers, deprived the former of any local power base and reduced them to the status of a "rentier" ' For a discussion of resm-i cift taxes see Halil inalcik, "Osmanlilarda Raiyyet Rusumu", Belleten 23 (1959), 575-610.

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class. As such, the malikane-holders, though they held the ownership title to land, were dependent on the administrative-juridical apparatus of the state for appropriation of rural surpluses. This was tantamount to the establishment of the political domination of the central state and resulted in the gradual undermining of the claims of the pre-Ottoman ruling elite — both to revenues and to political domination. In the sixteenth century, those timarholders who did not belong to this group, and the local ulama, co-opted by the state, emerged as the two major claimants to revenues in north-central Anatolia. On the other hand, the state's intervention in surplus extraction relations aimed at preserving the integrity of peasant holdings and at preventing any control by surplus extractors over the peasant production process. In doing this, the central state was not merely seeking to secure its own fiscal base, but — perhaps more importantly — fulfilling its ideological role as the protector of the peasantry and the preserver of "eternal order." Embodied in juridical structures, this ideology served to legitimize state controls over the production and appropriation of surpluses, and constituted the basis of the state's political domination. In the next section I will discuss how this specific structure of surplus-extraction relations in north-central Anatolia affected changes in the organization of production and in rural class relations during a period characterized by population growth and commercial expansion.

Population Economy

and Production

Trends

in the Sixteenth-Century

Peasant

In the second half of the sixteenth century, north-central Anatolia witnessed phenomenal increases in population and commercial growth. 1 Yet population growth did not result in Malthausian scissors and in a subsistence crisis, nor did commercial demand in towns lead to peasant dispossessions. Can we explain the absence of these developments in north-central Anatolian agriculture simply by high land/labor ratios that the aggregate figures for Ottoman agriculture may suggest? First of all, population growth did lead to a deterioration of the land/labor ratio; there is evidence of extension of arable lands, of fragmentation of peasant holdings (gifts), and of conversion of mazra'a or uninhabited cultivated lands into full fledged villages. 2 But scarcity of land ' Islamoglu-lnan, "State and Peasant in the Ottoman Empire", pp. 137-38. ^Michael A. Cook, Population Pressure in Rural Anatolia, 1450-1600 (London: Oxford University Press, 1972), pp. 11-29. For conversion of mezraas into villages during the sixteenth century, see Islamoglu-lnan, "State and Peasant in the Ottoman Empire", Table 5.21.

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does not appear to be a main constraint on peasant production, and it does not appear justified to talk about a Malthusian type subsistence crisis arising from population pressure on land. Contrary to Malthusian expectations, peasants in north-central Anatolia responded to population growth by intensifying production. They did this by employing techniques of intensive land utilization which they mobilized in response to changes in demand patterns. This took the form of introducing new crops into the rotation — such as legumes with nitrogen-fixing properties1 and opening forest assarts 2 cleared by fire and axe which frequently provided fertilization so as not to require draught animals. Of course, peasants were always aware of such techniques, but because they were labor intensive and required the peasants to work harder, it appears that they were not employed before population growth and increasing demand for peasant's produce made their employment absolutely necessary. Population growth, which was largely a result of immigration into this area from the more turbulent regions of eastern Anatolia, was accompanied by a rise in the number of landless peasants (or the new migrants) listed as cabas in the late sixteenth-century registers. 3 The availability of labor made possible the use of intensive techniques in the production of the two major crops — wheat and barley. Yet the increases in the production of wheat and barley lagged behind population growth. 4 To close this gap it appears that peasants increased the production of other foodstuffs: fruits, vegetables, legumes, and dairy products, which as we will see later, were also marketed. 5 The cultivation of these goods required significant labor outlays made available by increased population. In brief, north-central Anatolian peasants escaped the Malthusian scissors not because of the fact that land was infinitely available, but because increased numbers in the later sixteenth century made possible the intensification of agricultural production. Secondly, since there is nothing to suggest that peasants of northcentral Anatolia were actually suffering from food shortages, urbanization in the sixteenth century can not simply be explained in terms of the subsistance crisis. 6 To the extent that urban population growth was an outcome of migrations from the agricultural hinter-land, it was probably more in response to increased employment opportunities in towns. One such opportunity was joining the entourage of provincial administrators.

' For changes in crop patterns and introduction of legumes in the sixteenth century, IslamogluInan, "State and Peasant in the Ottoman Empire", pp. 142-3. 2 For a description of these entries called balta yeri in the Ottoman registers, see Cook, pp. 7980. For a general discussion of forest assarts, see Boserup, Agricultural Growth, pp. 24-31. 3 For a discussion of the causes of population growth in this region, see Islamoglu-Inan, "State and Peasant in the Ottoman Empire", pp. 112-5; for figures on cabas , Ibid., pp. 137, 140, Tables 5.4 and 5.7. 4 For indices of population and production of wheat and barley, Ibid,., p. 141, Table 5.9. •'For increased production of non-grain crops, Ibid., pp. 154-8, Tables 5. 18, 5. 19, 5. 20. 6 For population in the three towns located in the region under study, Ibid., 139-40, Tables 5.6, 5.8.

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Finally, in the later sixteenth century distribution of land was somewhat more egalitarian than the pattern of fragmentation suggests. Thus, for instance, survey data show that in districts around Tokay many gifts entered in the name of a single person were in fact shared. More significantly, there is also evidence that tenures that came up for disposal tended to go to the landless as were forest assarts listed in the later surveys. 1 While the availability of assart lands and mazra'as that were converted into villages in the later sixteenth century suggest that land was not scarce, this could not have been an effective barrier against enserfment. Nor did the availability of land provide the peasantry with infinite options for setting up independent farms. It was of utmost importance to the Ottoman administration how land was utilized and who was utilizing it. The fact that available lands were cultivated by independent peasant farmers was not so much a function of the supply of land as the effective exercise of political authority. Thus, timarholders were assigning assarts and lands that came up for tenure when a peasant died without leaving an heir or when the lands were not cultivated for five years to landless peasants and not to, say, urban notables, nor did they establish estates on such lands. Lastly, timar-holders also controlled some lands that they rented out to peasants. 2 This practice afforded peasant production some flexibility whereby the producer could vary the size of his holding according to the size of the househould; more importantly, in the later sixteenth century these lands were leased to new immigrants. Although, timar-holders were leasing these lands under favorable conditions at a time when demand for land was high, they were still leasing them to peasants, and they did not convert their domains into large commercial estates to benefit from the commercial opportunities. Labor shortage was not a significant barrier to such a development. I have mentioned earlier that the presence of a significant number of cabas, the use of labor intensive techniques, and increased rice cultivation on state farms worked under sharecropping arrangements, all point to the availability of labor. Though peasants in sixteenth-century Anatolia were able to provide for their subsistance, not all peasant production was for subsistance. Surplus production in this period was largely in response to state demands for wheat and barley. These demands took the form of the grain tithe collected in kind and of extraordinary levies at times of emergency or war. The tithe represented as much as one-fifth of the peasant's total output in the areas under investigation where a double tithe was extracted. Extraordinary taxes were also 'Cook, Population Pressure, pp. 22-5,37-9. 2

Ibid.. 74-5.

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levied in kind (nttzul), requiring two-thirds or four-fifths to be paid in wheat and one-third or one-fifth in barley. Sometimes, though, they took the form of forced government purchases {stirsat)} However, it is not possible to determine the magnitude of these impositions for the period under study, since they were not recorded in the fiscal surveys, and separate records are not available prior to 1590.2 Yet, state demands for such tax deliveries from areas in noth-central Anatolia must have increased considerably in the later sixteenth century when the imperial army repeatedly traversed these areas en route to Iranian campaigns. Thus, it can be argued that taxation demands siphoned off a significant part of peasants' grain surpluses, and that the increases in total grain yields 3 were to a large extent stimulated by increased state demands to meet the requirements of an army on the march. 4 This may, in turn, explain the higher rates of increase in barley yields, a staple food for army horses. Peasants also produced a surplus for sale on local markets which in north-central Anatolia, a region including as many as twelve towns, meant urban markets. It is true that market involvement of peasants was limited by the state's appropriation of tithe and levies in kind. Yet increases in the later sixteenth century in the production of fruits, especially grapes used in winemaking, vegetables, and livestock suggest an increase in the commercial production of peasants for town markets. 5 Since this was not a closed rural economy, peasants required markets to obtain the cash necessary for the purchase of manufactured goods they themselves did not make and for the payment of money taxes. There is also evidence of increased production of cotton 6 — which was not a very significant crop in this region — possibly in response to the demands of rural weavers and spinners as well as urban craftsmen. The increased tax revenues from the rural dye house in Karahisar-i Demirli — a region that also witnessed a rise in the cotton production — suggests an increase in the activities of domestic cloth and yarnmakers in the later sixteenth century. 7 'For a detailed discussion of these levies, see Lutfi Gucer, XVI. ve XVII. Asirlarda Osmanli Imparatorlugunda Hububat Meselesi ve Hububattan ahnan Vergiler (Istanbul: Sermet Matbaasi 1964). o Exemptions from avariz-i divaniye and tekalif-i orfiye as these extraordinary levies were called, were granted to entire village populations in return for their work in maintaining roads, bridges, passes (derbents). See, for instances, Tapu Kadastro Genel MudUrlugu Ar^ivi (Ankara) Kuyudu Kadime, vol. 14 (1547), p. 183a; vol. 38 (1576), p. 233a; vol. 14 (1574), p. 222b. For similar exemptions granted to rice growers in Niksar, see Bagbakanlik Arsivi (Istanbul) Tapu Tahrir, vol. 54 (1528), p.103. 3 For changes in grain yields throughout the sixteenth century, see Islamoglu-lnan, "State and Peasant in the Ottoman Empire", pp.143-8, Tables 5.4,5.15. ^Halil Inalcik, "The Impact of Annates School on ottoman Studies and new Findings" Review I, 3/4 (Winter/Spring 1978), p. 89. 5 For increases in the production of these crops and sheep raising, see isiamoglu-Inan," State and Peasant in the Ottoman Empire", pp. 149-50, Table 5.15; pp. 157-9, Table 5.20. 6 ibi.d., pp. 157-8, Table 5.20. 1 lbid„ pp. 151-2, Table 5.16.

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A major commercial crop produced in north-central Anatolia was rice. The extent to which there was a shift to rice cultivation in response to increased market demand is not clear from the data included in the surveys. The Ottoman central government was well aware of such a tendency and tried to protect other peasant produce from the onslaught of rice. In doing this, it attempted not only to ensure the production of subsistence goods but also to preserve the integrity of small peasant producers. Judging from the extent of government regulations limiting rice cultivation and the measures against those who cultivated more than the specified amount of seed, it may be concluded that the state was engaged in a continual struggle with the local officials as well as other notables who wanted to extend lucrative rice cultivation on their holdings. To maximize their profits, these personages made illegal impositions of corvée labor. 1 Hence, given the considerable temptation to increase rice yields, the production of this corp may have also taken place on a "contraband" basis; therefore the actual yields may have been greater than those recorded in the surveys. By the same token, the tendency toward the "enserfment" of the peasants on rice fields may also have been more significant than in other spheres of cultivation. On the other hand, we know that rice was exported from north-central Anatolia to the Crimea and possibly to Istanbul, but this export production largey took place outside of the peasant economy. Rice, requiring considerable investment in irrigation, was produced on large state farms by sharecroppers, who were under a different legal status than ordinary peasants. A legal framework allowed large scale commercial production of rice to take place. 2 This legal framework also sought to contain the infringements on the free status of the peasantry and threats to the integrity of peasant holdings likely to arise in commercial rice cultivation. The extent to which sharecropping relations were generalized and peasant cultivators participated in such relations, largely depended on the state's ability to enforce its measures and on the willingness of local administrators and notables to abide by those measures. The surveys, unfortunately, are not very helpful in shedding light on this aspect of the rural dynamic. Lastly, there was a considerable increase during the later sixteenth century in the number of sheep raised by peasants in north-central Anatolia. 3 That such increases were especially pronounced in the hinterland of towns suggests that they took place in response to increased urban demand. In ' For such government regulations, see Barkan, Osmanli imparatorlugunda Zirai Ekonominin Hukuki ve Mali Esaslari, pp. 113, 200-5. 2 For rice cultivation and its organization in the Ottoman empire, see Inalcik,"Rice Cultivation". 3 For changes in sheep raising, see Islamoglu-Inan, "State and Peasant in the Ottoman Empire", pp. 149-50, Table 5.15.

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addition to supplying the urban upper classes with meat, sheep were also the source of wool. Part of the wool produced by peasants went to supply urban weavers, while at least some was used by rural craftsmen. 1 Despite increased urban demand for the products of sheep farming, there is little reason to suppose that a significant shift to pastoral activity occurred in the peasant economy resulting in conversion of fields to grazing lands. Grain cultivation, safeguarded through state measures, remained the dominant form of agricultural activity during the sixteenth century. But the importance of sheep husbandry as a supplementary activity seems to have increased. From the perspective of the peasant household economy, this meant that either certain lands were set aside for grazing or, if animals were grazed on fields, longer fallow periods were required. In the latter case, animal droppings on fields must have contributed to increased soil fertility. Grazing lands were not recorded in the surveys in any systematic manner, 2 therefore it is not possible to establish whether these lands were preserved or reclaimed in the later sixteenth century when peasants sought to increase grain yields. On the other hand, sheep farming was a much less laborintensive activity than crop cultivation; the prospect of more work if grazing lands were converted into fields — at a time when peasants were already working harder — might have stopped them from reclaiming these lands. This consideration, coupled with favorable market conditions, could in part explain the rise of sheep farming in this period. At the same time, the rise in sheep husbandry may also suggest that at least part of this activity was carried out by local ruling groups on their freehold properties or on reclaimed wastelands, or by timar-holders on mazra'as that were not assigned to 3 peasants. As sheep raising did not require large outlays of labor, such commercial activity could be carried out without uprooting the peasantry or impinging on their free status.

' On rural craft production, see the discussion in section 4. The number of cayir, otlak, kislak and yaylak entries recorded for each district under study in the later surveys are as follows: 8 in Yildiz (with a total tax of 255 akces ); none in Cincife: 3 in Venk (total tax of 120 akces); 1 in Kafirni(total tax of 72 akces) ; none in Corurnlu; 2 in Karahisar- i Demirli(total tax of 1280 akces). For a detailed and general description of these entries in surveys, see Kemal Abdulfattah and Wolf-Dieter Hutteroth, Historical Geography of Palestine, Transjordan and Southern Syria in the Late 16 th Century (Erlagen: Erlangen Geographische Arbeiten, 1977), p. 71. 2

^Inalcik, "The Emergence of Big Farms, Ciftliks".

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Conclusions The model of social-economic transformation revealed through the detailed study of single Ottoman region in the sixteenth century suggests the following conlusions. First, rural economic development — i.e., increases in productivity and changes in technology — was to a large extent stimulated by taxation demands and not, in any significant way, by market demand patterns. By leaving the organization and control of the actual production process in the hands of direct producers with hereditary cultivation rights over the land, the Ottoman system afforded the peasantry the minimal space in increase yields in response to changes in demand patterns. That is, the system offered possibilities of economic development, but this development was largely dictated by extra economic structures that described surplus extraction relations and legitimization concerns, and not by economic decisions of individual producers responding to favorable market demand patterns. Thus, this study rejects views of development that ascribe the stagnation of pre-industrial economies to the intervention of non-economic factors into the "economic" sphere. Instead, I have argued that Ottoman economy largely owed its dynamism to state intervention in the form of taxation demands. As such, this study stresses the political rationality of economic development in the Ottoman empire. Secondly, and as a result of the above pattern of economic development, commercial expansion in the form of increased demand for agricultural goods did not result in any significant commercialization of agricultural production. In the later sixteenth century market involvement of peasants was limited, though not totally absent. In contrast, increased commercial demand signaled an intensification in the market participation of revenue holders or groups with a claim over peasant surpluses; in the period under study, these groups were the timarholders and ulama. Given that the grain tithe collected in kind was calculated as a fixed proportion of total yields, increases in the aggregate supply of grains were translated into increased marketed surpluses by these groups. A rough estimate indicates that nearly two-thirds of the total grain tithe from areas under study — after allowances are made for consumption needs of individual groups — found its way to local town markets in the second half of the sixteenth century. This amounted to nearly 13 percent of total wheat and barley yields from these areas. It can thus be argued that food requirements of local towns were to a large degree met from the surpluses marketed by revenue holders who absorbed the price effects resulting from increased commercial demand for foodstuffs. On the other hand, more than half of the total income that accrued to revenue

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holders from sales of tithes and from money dues was, in all likelihood, spent locally.1 Both the ulama and the ttmar-holders were major consumers of urban finished goods; their increased incomes, coupled with the expansion in their entourages in the later sixteenth century, could be expected to provide the primary stimulus for the expansion of urban craft production. Hence, the regional urban development that characterized this period appears to have been largely an outcome of increased market involvement of revenue holders who were the principal bénéficiaires of increased commercial demand for agricultural goods. Thirdly, increased commercial demand, given the limited market involvement of the peasantry, did not lead to an increased specialization between urban and rural areas. One indicator of such an increase would be the changes in the extent of rural craft production, which in sixteenth-century north-central Anatolia largely consisted of weaving and spinning of wool and cotton produced by the peasants themselves. The only evidence that the fiscal surveys provide of these activities is taxes levied on dye-houses.2 Of the three dye houses recorded in the rural areas under study, only one — and that in the tribal district of Karahisar-i Demirli — shows a substantial increase in its revenues in the period between 1520 and 1575; the one in Kafirni near the city of Tokat shows a sharp decline in revenues, while income from the third dye house in Yildiz (again near Tokat) remained constant during the same period. These trends, in turn, suggest that at least in Kafirni and Yildiz, peasants might have diverted some of their time and labor away from craft production to intensive production of grains and of non-grain crops. 3 The latter activity, coupled with rising demand for cloths as population increased, ^For destination of revenues from waqf lands, see Islamoglu-inan, "State and Peasant in the Ottoman Empire", p. 134, Map 3. ^For commercial and manufacturing taxes in rural areas, Ibid., p. 151, Table 5. 16. These taxes represent amounts paid annually to the treasury by persons to whom revenues from commercial and manufacturing establishments were farmed out. As such, these figures are not always accurate indicators of the extent of business carried out, for instance, at individual dye houses, because those franchises were often granted for a fixed sum. Actual receipts accruing to tax farmers could be in excess or below the sum recorded in surveys. At the same time, while the presence of a dye house in a given region may point to textile production, the opposite may not always be true. Evidence for other parts of Anatolia suggests that villages often did their own dyeing in their homes or cattle sheds. There is, of course, no way of to assess the extent of such activities and to determine the extent of rural production of fibers and cloths in areas for which dye houses are not recorded. Nevertheless, for areas for which a dye house is recorded, it is not altogether inaccurate to suppose that tax farmers exerted considerable pressure on rural craftsmen to have their dyeing done at the dye house. Thus, for instance, one encounters complaints by villagers to the effect that dye house administrators sought to prevent them from doing their own dyeing. Ba§bakanlik Argivi, Muhimme Defterleri, volume 74, p. 38. 3 For the role of production of non-agricultural goods in the economic development of peasant household economy, see S. Hymer and S.Resnick,"Model of an Agrarian Economy with nonAgricultural Activities", American Economic Review, LIX, 4, Part I (September 1969), 493506. Jan Devries in his critique of Boserup, also emphasizes this aspect of the peasant economy. "Labor/Leisure Tradeoff', Peasant Studies Newsletter, I (1972).

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might have led to increased peasant purchases of cloths and yarns in towns. But this tendency toward increased market involvement of peasants was restricted by the "limited commercialization" of agricultural production and the absorption of peasants' surpluses through taxes. This, in turn, imposed limits on the amount of cash the peasant had at his disposal (especially after the payment of money taxes) and therefore on the peasant's ability to purchase urban manufactures. On the other hand, in Karahisar-i Demirli considerable increases in dye house revenues point to an intensification of weaving and spinning activities in this region, where both cotton and wool production, as evidenced in the rise of sheep farming, also rose during the sixteenth century. But it is not clear whether it was the peasants or nomads who increased their weaving and spinning activities; if it were the nomads, were they responding to increased peasant demand? At present, we know very little about the interaction between the peasants and the economy of pastoral nomads; but peasants of this region — as more of their labor and time was absorbed by intensive methods of agricultural production — might have increased their purchases of finished goods from nomads. Moreover, since they could enter into barter exchange relations with the nomads, peasants probably preferred nomad-produced goods to those of urban craftsmen, who demanded cash. In sum, "limited commercialization" of peasant production, largely dictated by the mode of surplus extraction that characterized the Ottoman society, meant that increased urban demand in the later sixteenth century did not lead to increased specialization of production between urban and rural areas. Though peasants might have purchased more finished goods both in urban markets and from nomads in the later sixteenth century than in earlier periods, rural craft production remained an important activity of the peasantry. Fourthly, commercial expansion did not have the effect of disrupting the organization of agricultural production based on small peasants holdings. As I have discussed earlier in relation to the impact of population growth on rural economic and social structures, there is no evidence that peasant dispossessions increased in the later sixteenth century, nor is there any indication of widespread formation of large commercial estates. Appropriation of peasants' surpluses in the form of taxes in kind on grains, coupled with legal sanctions against the sale and subdivision of peasant plots, ensured the cultivation of staple goods for peasant subsistence and for the provisioning of the army and the towns. Also, the political-legal structures of the state appear to have been effective in significantly limiting capital accumulation in the countryside and, therefore, differentiation among peasant households. More importantly, these structures also imposed constraints on the amount of

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surplus that was extracted by different groups of revenue holders and on their claim on the peasants' land and labor. The concern of the central state for maintaining the integrity of the peasant household economy is particularly pronounced in the restrictions on commercial production of rice. These restrictions were primarily aimed at preventing the expropriation of peasant lands and the recruitment of peasants as sharecroppers or corvée labor on rice fields by revenue holders who sought to expand the cultivation of this highly lucrative crop. Finally, in describing the structure of surplus extraction relations in north-central Anatolia I have tried to show how the incorporation of preOttoman ruling groups into the political-legal framework of the central state ensured their dependence on the state for extraction of surpluses and therefore, their subjection to the state's political authority. This structure of dependency of revenue holders on the administrative (coercive) and ideological (legitimating) apparatuses of the state, in turn, largely explains why population growth and urban commercial expansion in the sixteenth century did not result in the destruction of the peasant household economy, i.e., fragmentation of peasant holdings, peasant dispossessions, formation of large estates, and increased social coercion of labor. Consequently, the tonar-holders and the ulama at mosque-medrese complexes — who were the two major groups with a claim over peasants' surpluses — did not benefit from increased commercial demand for agricultural goods through forcefully converting peasant holdings into units of commercial production. Instead, revenue holders enriched themselves through marketing of the tax on the output at favorable market prices. The later sixteenth century also witnessed the decline of the timar system as changes in war technology shifted the balance from provincial cavalry to foot soldiers. From the point of view of provincial administrators or i7»M/--holders, this signalled the breakdown of the administrative framework that enforced their claim to surpluses. Thus, faced with the prospect of losing their privileged status, these soldiers took to plundering the countryside and resorted to illegal extortions of peasants' surpluses. This reaction, which broke out in local disturbances throughout Anatolia and came to be known as celali uprisings, represented not so much a resistance to the state's politicaljuridical structures that prevented commercialization of agriculture and therefore capital accumulation in the hands of provincial administrators, but a resistance by this group to the prospect of being excluded from the politicaljuridical framework of the state that enabled them to appropriate agricultural surpluses.

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Once the timar system was effectively replaced by tax farming as the dominant form of taxation in the seventeenth century, agricultural production undertaken by independent peasant producers on small plots appears to have been reconstituted. Tax-farmers then enforced their claims over specified shares in the context of the political-legal practices of the state. Tax-farmers belonged to the ranks of local notables — ulama and merchants — and the economic trends of the later sixteenth century no doubt contributed to their ascendancy in the subsequent period. These developments remain outside the scope of this study and information relating to seventeenth- and eighteenth-century developments in north-central Anatolia is scarce. Yet recent research on European territories and for Anatolia in the nineteenth century 1 strongly suggests that in response to increased European demand for agricultural goods, tax-farmers did not undertake to radically transform the rural social-economic structures and to bring about a commercialization of agricultural production. Instead they responded to increased commercial demand by claiming a larger share of the surplus either through squeezing the peasants for more taxes or by not delivering to the state what was its due. While this signalled increased economic power of tax-farmers — who sold these surpluses on lucrative markets — and a decline in the actual amounts received by the state, these developments do not appear to have eliminated the political-juridical dependence of tax-farmers on the state in most Ottoman territories. Thus, the pattern of social-economic development described here has certan generalizable features. Shaped by the evolving structures of the Ottoman society, it is a pattern premised on regional economic development encouraging the rise of local power nodules which remained dependent on the state for enforcing their claim over surpluses produced by "free" peasants. Such a model of rural development, of course, requires further elaboration in the light of micro-historical studies of different Ottoman regions at different time periods. But, I believe, it may provide a framework for research on patterns of rural development under conditions of commercial expansion, both prior to and after the period when the impact of European demand was felt.

' Kor instance, McGowan, "The Study of Land and Agriculture in the Ottoman Provinces within the Context of an Expanding World economy in the 17th and the 18th Centuries", International Journal of Turkish Studies, II, 1 (Spring/Summer 1981), 57-63; Pamuk, "Commodity Production"; Kasaba, "Migrant Labor".

AN AGENDA FOR COMPARATIVE HISTORY: LAW AND PROPERTY AS ASPECTS OF STATE POWER

Binary conceptualizations of the East versus the West plague historical analyses of those regions that remain outside the narrowly defined boundaries of Western Europe that describe France and England. Such analyses vacillate between visions of flawed, imperfect histories of the East set against an idealized, hypostatized image of Western Europe and idealized images of a glorified, unique Eastern past. Thus, for instance, conceptualizations of the Ottoman empire in terms of the Asiatic mode of production describe Ottoman empire in terms of the Asiatic mode of production describe Ottoman history as a series of absences of private property, of proto-industrial forms, of the third estate and of the 'rule of law ideal' that serve to explain the despotic nature of the Ottoman state and the stationariness of the Ottoman economy and society (Islamoglu and Keyder, 1987). Underlying these absences is the assumption of a domain of presences in an idealized European history against which Ottoman history is measured. By contrast, historical analyses that stress the peculiarities of Ottoman historical development describe a 'golden age' in the 16th century when the state was not despotic and when the society and the economy was possessed of an internal dynamic (Islamoglu-tnan, 1987a; 1987b; 1988). On the one hand, these 'golden age' constructs that emphasize 'what the Ottoman history had been prior to its 'decline' spell a search for a backward-looking utopia (Laroui, 1976). On the other hand, they involve a search of Ottoman precedents of European modes of organizing the state and society (Inalcik, 1973; Barkan, 1940). For the historian of the Ottoman empire, this binarity between the idealized images of European and Ottoman histories promises uncomplicated visions of the self and the 'other' that confronts it. As such, these visions describe ideological positionings in the face of European historical development that spelled the establishment of European domination over the Ottoman empire. These ideological practices involve, first, a rejection of Ottoman historical structures that are cast as impediments to a European type of development. Second, the spell exercises in restoring the self-respect of the dominated through attempts at rendering the non-European past legitimate visà-vis European history.

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Consciousness of the vacillation, however, between 'what they or the West is or was' and 'what we (in the East) had been', means a looking for ways of breaking that bind. Comparative focus offers the possibility of diffusing this binary grid by seeking to define problem zones in the histories of both the East and the West as each region responded to generalized market relations and to competitive military and economic pressures on a global scale at different time periods since the 18th century. Central to this conceptualization is the notion of an historical rapture experienced both by the Middle Eastern and European societies albeit in different periods in their historical developments. This rupture describes the transition from political to market societies. In the former where the organizational principle of society was political, state power expressed through state rules sought to order society according to revenue requirements of dominant groups that comprised the state and to subsistence requirements of all segments of society. In market society, however, state rules were instrumental in the ordering of society according to the requirements of market activity in the form of maximization of profits by private individuals, on the one hand, and of the fiscal and political requirements of the territorial state, on the other. The conflict between these two requirements of market society, in turn, describes the different domains of power struggles in individual market societies as each was re-structured in the context of global market exchange relations and in the competitive environment of the international state system. That is, the casting of this conflict in the context of power configurations in different regions describe the specific development paths in individual regions. The object of this paper is to propose an agenda for a comparative study of state-society relations that constitute a problem zone in the historical development of marked societies in the Middle East and in Europe. The conception of state-society as it is developed here is set against a background of a critique of liberal conceptions in social sciences. This perspective in relation to Middle Eastren posits an absence of separation between state and society and explains the so-called weakness of civil society by this absence. Such a conception presupposes an ideal site where state and society were separated, namely, in the European liberal market society. The latter, in turn, describes modernity. Central to liberal conception of state-society relations is the assumption that state intervention impedes the development of civil society or the sphere of market exchange of private individuals. This, in turn, presupposes a correlation between market activity and the liberal constitutional order that finds its expression in the precept of separation of powers. The latter embodied in the 'rule of law' ideal confines state power to

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the role of overseer of market activity and assigns the task of law-making to the legislature or to parliaments comprised of the representatives of civil society. At the same time, rule of law ideal describes the institutional autonomy of law (the juridical branch) from the administrative practices of the state and renders the state accountable before the law. Thus, the rule of law ideal confidied in liberal constitutions ensures the non-intervention of the state in civil society. Bourgeois revolutions that spell a triumph of commercial classes over feudal forces are the historical requirements of the correlation between market activity and liberal constitutional order. Those areas unblessed by this event due to the weakness or absence of commercial classes are, according to the liberal view, easy prey to authoritarianism and to flawed economic development. When applied to the Middel East, this view takes the modern Leviathan as historically given and traces it to the despotic character of the Ottoman state that held sway in the Middle East for four hundred years prior to the 20th century. As such, the Ottoman state tradition reincarnated in modern Middle Eastern states is held responsible for the absence of civil society, of bourgeois revolutions, of liberal politics. This agenda challenges this liberal conception of state-society relations and of state power that represents idealized, hypostatized images of both European and Middle Eastern societies. To do this, we propose a comparative analysis of the historical development of state-society relations, of state power and of law as an aspect of state power in Europe and in the Ottoman Middle East. By means of this historical analysis, this agenda seeks to problematize the seemingly immutable, ideal categories of the liberal perception. This attempt at historicizing involves a conceptualization of statesociety relations, of state power and law in terms of power relations that prevailed in each region, therefore focuses on their variability and on their conflictual character. The starting point for this conceptualization is a depiction of the liberal conception as the legitimating ideology of European market societies that did not correspond to the actual historical developments in these societies. 1 Thus, for instance, Habermas (1988: Part III) describes the legitimation crisis of European societies in terms of blatant departures of their historical reality from this ideal. Above all, critics of the liberal conception point to the determining role the state played in the formation and reproduction of societies

Polanyi (1963) and Habermas (1989). For a discussion of the state as a form of organization which the bourgeois are compelled to adopt both for internal and external purposes, see Corrigaan and Sayer (1981).

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premised on market exchange relations. Historically, this took the form of territorial states that were instrumental in creating the institutional framework of market activity. At the same time, territorial states existed in an international environment where individual sovereign states were engaged in competition with each other to expand their territories (Poggi, 1978). This meant that market activity to realize its generalization (globalization) tendencies required state power in the form of territorial conquests. Furthermore, exigencies of competition in the international state system required the ability of individual states to steer the economy and society within their territorial boundaires. This conception that links the fate of civil society with that of the territorial state, however, casts doubt on the requirement of bourgeois revolutions or strong commercial classes for the development of that society. Thus, recent critics of 'the bourgeois revolutions' thesis argue that the development well as the reproduction of civil society presupposed political transformations that made possible the formation of state structures with abilities to steer the economy and society in the context of generalised market exchange relations and of competitive international state system (Blackbourn and Eley, 1984; Mooers, 1991). The steering ability of the state was, in turn, determined by the nature of power struggles waged in the local and international arenas. The grounding of state power in local and global power relations introduces the element of historical contigency into the analysis and seeks to explain the different modalities of political forms, of market institutions in terms of power configurations that characterized individual regions. This implies a problematization of the universalistic assumptions of the liberal view. Thus, for instance, viewed in the context of power relations, liberal political forms ceases to be a requirement of market activity. In fact, historically, more often than not, market activity required non-liberal political forms and the 'rule of law' ideal as the legitimation principle of market society was subject to constant contestation. At the same time, the approach suggested here allows for a problematization of market categories such as private property and the freedom of movement of commodities. Thus, by contrast to the liberal view that takes these categories as given, therefore as historically inviolable, we will describe them as domains of power struggle, therefore subject to variations over time and in different regions. Central to the argument presented here is a definition of state power in terms of state's abilities to make rules, to create institutions and to render these rules or institutions generally acceptable. 1 These abilities describe the ' For rale-making and the state, see North (1989) and Mann (1986).

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legal practice of the state in its regulatory and legitimating aspects. 1 Put differently, this agenda focuses on thé state's political capabilities to affect the power constellations that would enable it to create the legal institutional underpinnings of a given societal order and to build a consensus over the violability of that order through organizing the unity of dominant groups as well as mobilizing the consent of large segments of society. This conception of state power implies a certain understanding of rules or law that needs to be made explicit. First, rules represent expressions of state power in affecting a given societal ordering. This refers to the enabling aspect of rules or imparts the rules their regulatory character. Yet the instrumentality of state's regulatory practices should not suggest that law is simply a tool in the hands of politically dominant groups, be it the state elites or commercial classes, to realize their particularistic ends. Nor should it suggest that law is a superstructure reflecting and/or sanctifying the economic interests of dominant groups (Thompson, 1990: 219-69) Rules describe the different fields of power struggle in the context of which they are subject to constant negotiation among different groups. That is, here law is viewed as a negoitable institution that is made and re-made with changes in power relations. Rules that are constitutive of power relations are, however, mediated by the state. Such mediation defines the boundaries of the negotiability of rules. More explicitly, state mediation implies the ability of the state to render rules generally acceptable or enforceable. This, in turn, describes the legitimation dimension that is embodied in general understandings that prevail in a given society as to what law represents. Here I refer to the moral framework of law that serves to conceal the naked relations that the regulatory rules decribe and render these rules enforceable. Put differently, embedded in moral frameworks, rules appear to be 'natural' or 'universal', therefore acceptable.2 The above represents a general conception applicable to law in both market and political societies. Yet, the form and substance of state's regulatory practices as well as the moral framework of rules differed in the two types of society.3 Such differences reflect the different requirements of these societies. With regards to state's regulatory practice, in the political society rules describe the institutional parameters of a hierarchial order premised on distribution of sources of revenue and subsistence among different groups of ' f o r the distinction between regulatory and legitimation aspects of law, see Unger (1976). For the concept of hegemony that corresponds to legitimation dimension, see Gramsci (1980: 20669). ^For a discussion of the moral framewoork of law as well as the issue of negotiability of law, see Corrigan and Sayers (1981: 21-53). 3 For this differentiation expressed in terms of bureaucratic versus liberal societies, see Unger (1976).

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claimants. In market society, however, rules define the parameters of market activity of private indivudals. Thus, for instance, the domain of market activity is expanded through removal of corporate restrictions and absolutist privileges and access to market is defined through rules of private property. Put differently, market rules cut across hierarchives, and regulate market exchange among competing individuals who are equal by virtue of being subject to the same general rules. Furthermore, in market society, state intervention in civil society ensured the reproduction of market society as state regulation served to mitigate the effects of market failures on different groups. Thus boundaries of the political have been expanding and contracting as the state responded to the pressures of different groups as these contended for power and resources and as the terms of market society were constantly renegotiated and reformulated. This is in contrast to the preservationist thrust of regulatory practice in non-market society that seeks to demarcate the lines between the rulers and the ruled. Finally, in the political society rules describe particularistic regulations that took into account individual conditions in defining the differentiated claims of subsistance and revenue, over resources. In market society, rules describe general claims. Moreover, in conformity with the dual determination of market society in the form of the requirements of market exchange activities of private individuals and of territorial state, these general claims are differentiated into the categories of private and public law. The former describes the rules of market activity whereas the latter refers to those rules that regulate the relationship between the state and society as well as describing state institutions. This bifurcation of law is absent in political society. Thus, transformation from the political to market society implies a redefinition of the objectives of state power as well as a recasting of the fields of power struggle embodied in individual rules. Here we should note that the conception of state regulation in market society we have just outlined conforms to the view of 'bourgeois revolution from above'. 1 According to this view, it is the state regulatory practice that defines that institutional parameters of capitalist market and not the automatic workings of the market or the triumph of a class subject (i.e., the commercial and industrial bourgeoisie). It implies a blurring of state-society separation ^This view is most recently formulated by Blackbourn (1984a; 1984b). See also Jones (1977). Of course, primary inspiration derives from Polanyi (1963). This approach significantly departs from Gerschenkron (1962)'s argument on late industrialization. Gerschenkron viewed state intervention in the industrial process as a special institutional response to economic backwardness. As such, he assumed (under conditions of economic backwardness) an absence or a weakness of commercial classes for state intervention to take place. The argument presented here that defines state regulatory practices as an integral aspect of capitalist market development as well as capitalist industrialization derives its theoretical insights from Habermas (1989) and Corrigan and Sayer (1981).

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rooted in conceptions of 'bourgeois revolution' that spells a political triumph of civil society and propertied classes to place institutional checks on state intervention in the economy. In the context of the argument presented here state-society separation is part of the self-image of market society and it defines the domain of legitimating legal practice of the state. This domain refers to universal and general principles of equality of all citizens before the law and of the sanctity of private property, embodied in the 'rule of law' ideal. This ideal also spells the separation of powers that envisions an autonomy of the juridical from the executive (or the state conceived as an agent of coercion) and the separation of the legislative (or the domain of the representatives of civil society or propertied classes). These general principles, aimed at rendering market society 'natural' in the eyes of all groups within the society and to generalize private property relations premised on the market, were embodied in liberal constitutions and civil codes. Through comparative historical analysis of different societies we need to show how state's regulatory practice came into conflict with its generalizing principles. Put differently, we are referring to a tendency towards legitimation crisis of market society as a consequence of its requirement for political structuring through state regulation. What needs to be delienated are the historical conditions in which the state was able to maintain or not maintain liberal constitutionalism as a legitimating principle. Private property relations is one domain where this crisis tendency is most explicitly revealed. Thus where access to market is defined by rules of private property, equality of all citizens before the law reads equality of property-owning citizens. This signals a contradiction between formal legal equality and substantive inequality premised on unequal distribution of power and resources in market society. Critical legal studies (e.g., Cotterrell, 1987) have shed light on how legal doctrine accommodates and guarantees these inequalities while a belief in equality is maintained. This is achieved through the separation of legal subjects (persons) and assets (things bey own), whereby legal subjects are equal but distribution of assets is not. Hence, however much more one owns than another, general freedom of transactions, the equal right of all to own property as well as the legal security of property that the law provides to all citizens makes it possible for the general principle of equality of legal subjects not be compromised by inequalities in the nature and the amount of assets owned. Put differently, rules relating to property in market society conceal the power relations that private property represents by taking as its object a 'regime of things' separated from persons.

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Here the category of private property in market society is to be differentiated from that under Roman law 1 and in the Shari'a. For instance, Shari'a rules in the Ottoman empire relating to private ownership referred to a strictly regulatory category that defined private ownership as a differentiated, particularistic claim over sources of revenue. 2 That is, private ownership described certain privileges or exemptions granted by the state. Legitimation of state authority and of the social order structured by state regulation was not dependent on the state's ability to generalize private property as it is the case in market society. Instead, legitimation was premised on the state's ability through its rules to distribute sources of revenue and subsistence among different groups of claimants. In affecting this distribution the state claimed a divine sanction for its rules. This meant that in non-market society of the Ottoman empire legitimation was removed from the sphere of political struggle and rested in universal principles embodied in a type of natural law premised on a belief in a divine order. Such legitimation had an external referent in a cosmic order created by God. This order assumed the equality of all men before God, and human law (or the state's regulatory practice) was to approximate to the cosmic ideal or to adopt dictates of higher law to particular situations.3 Once the belief in a cosmic order was discredited by the European enlightenment thought that coincided with the generalization of market relations, legitimation involved attempts at generalizing of particulars as was the case with private property relations. Hence, transformation to market society implied that private property was not simply a regulatory category, as it was in non-market society, but was coupled to legitimation of state power. ^For a discussion of the category of private property in Roman law and how it was transformed into an abstract category that describes the relationship between persona and res, in the deductive systematic discourse of the Continental jurists, see Kahn-Freund (1949). ^Here, Renner (1949: Ch. 2)'s differentiation between private property in the context of simple commodity production and of capitalist market relations is relevant. In the former, private property describes an 'order of goods' or the production and distribution of goods by the household. It does not describe an 'order of labour' or controls over the labour-power of produceurs who are separated from their means of production, by the owners of the means of production. Neither does private property, in the pre-capitalist context specify an 'order of power' premised on ownership. In the 19th century of Ottoman state, in an attempt to secure itsk revenue base and preserve the 'order' of the empire (which meant stemming the tide of market relations in the agricultural economy), sought to sanctify 'usufruct rights' of peasants in legal formulations of private property. This was paralleled by restrictions on sales of peasant holdings, on mortgage and lease practices. This could be seen as resistance on the part of the Ottoman state to power patterns implicit to capitalist private property which through auxiliary provisions of lease, sales and mortgage sought to transform the relations of domination in the society. Also, assigment of freehold properties by the Ottoman state to different groups within the ruling class (e.g. members of the religious establishment, pre-Ottoman ruling groups) was a measure to affect the integration of these groups into political order the parameters of which were defined by state's ower. Particularly relevant to this latter point is Salzman (1993). For discussion of legitimation and 'natural law' in non-market societies, see Unger (1976: 7682, 86-126).

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As such, in market society where sanctity of private property is a legitimating category, both the domains of legitimation and regulation constitute fields of power struggle among different groups in society. What should be explored is how states in different societies subject to generalized market exchange relations were able or not able to justify (or to induce a belief in the 'naturalness' of) a social order characterized by marketgenerated inequalities in the eyes of those who did not benefit from these inequalities. State regulatory practice served as a way of alleviating these inequalities. In this sense, historically, legitimation in market society can be said to depend on the nature of state regulatory action to mobilize consensus and effect alliances around liberal precepts. What needs to be identified, however, are the historical conditions under which state action fails to do so and recourse is taken to non-liberal principles of legitimation. Nationalism in the latter part of the 19th century can be viewed as a response to the crisis of legitimation premised on liberal principles. Membership in the nation could more effectively provide the universal equality that participation in the market based on private ownership could not. At the same time, late industrialization required the kind of state intervention that blatantly contradicted the liberal ideal of non-intervention in civil society. Thus, aggravation of the contradiction between the reality of market society and its ideal embodied in liberal precepts rendered nationalism (made possible by state action), a more viable legitimating principle. Gellner (1983)'s discussion on the indispensability, for the rise of nationalism, of the kind of state that developed in industrial society with a highly intricate division of labour and cooperation is extremely pertinent to this discussion. Gellner's specific focus is on the indispensability of state for industrial development, thus abstracting industrialism from the context of capitalist market relations premised on private property. He points to state's concerns for universal literacy in industrial society and for imposing certain shared cultural norms that nationalism describes. These concerns Gellner relates to the equality principle that underlines political legitimacy in industrial society and that is embodied in the promise of mobility inherent to the industrial division of labour making possible high rates of economic growth. Gellner's model of the interdependence between industrial society with its prerequisite for the state and nationalism raises the question of the role of the state in societies such as the Ottoman empire, where commercial capitalism had precedence over capitalist industrialization, and the issue of nationalism in that context. Thus, for instance, could one view adoption of Islam with its egalitarian precepts as the legitimating principle of the

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Ottoman state in the 19th century under conditions of generalized market exchange relations, as an attempt to cast Islam in the mold of nationalism in an ethnically diverse empire ? Put differently, could the Islamic ideology in the context of capitalist commercial expansion be treated as a kind of nationalism in the Ottoman empire and in its successor states in the 20th century Middle East? Finally, one could explore the role of the 'rule of law' ideal, formalized and hypostatized in liberal constitutions and civil codes, as a symbol of the legal unity of nation-states that developed in the competitive environment of the international state system. John (1985) has pointed to the role the German civil code of 1893 played as a instrument of legal unity that the nation state required. In the light of proliferation of liberal constitutions in different countries (including the 1876 Ottoman Constitution), this point suggests that liberal constitutions that came to symbolize modern development did not necessarily describe a liberal social order characterized by state's nonintervention in civil society but served to the requirements of the unity of the state which was central to capitalist market development.

REFERENCES Barkan, O. L. (1940), "Turk Toprak Hukuku Tarihinde Tanzimat ve 1274 (1858) Arazi Kanunnamesi", in Tanzimat /, Istanbul: Maarif Matbaasi. Blackbourn, D. (1984a), "Economy and Society: A Silent Bourgeois Revolution", in G. Eley and D. Blackbourn, The Peculiarities of German History, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Blackbourn, D. (1984b), "Economy and Society: The Shadow Side", in G. Eley and D. Blackbourn, The Pecularities

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Gellner, E. (1983), Nations and Nationalism, Ithaca: Cornell University Press. John, M.F. (1985), "The Politics of Legal Unity in Germany, 1870-1896", The Historical Journal, 28 (2), 341-55. Jones, G. S. (1977), "Society and Politics at the Beginning of the World Economy", Cambridge Journal of Economics, 1 (1), 77-92. Habermas, J. (1988), Legitimation Crisis, Cambridge Polity Press. —

(1989), The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, Cambridge: The MIT Press.

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(1987b), "State and Peasants in the Ottoman Empire", in Huri îslamogluInan (ed.), Ottoman Empire and the World Economy, Cabridge: University Press.

(1988), "Les Paysans, Le Marché et L'Etat en Anatolie au XVI e Siècle", Annales E.S.C. 43(5), 1025-43. Islamoglu, H. and Keyder, Ç. (1987), "Agenda For Ottoman History", in Huri islamoglu-inan (ed.), Ottoman Empire and the World Economy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. —

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in Historical

Perspective,

Kahn-Freund, O. (2949), "Introduction", in K. Renner, The Institutions of Private Law and Their Social Function, London: Routledge and Kegan and Kegan Paul Ltd. Laroui, A. (1976), Crisis of the Arab Intellectual: Traditionalism or Historicism, Berkeley: University of California Press. Mann, M. (1986), "The Autonomous Power of the State: Its Origins, Mechanisms and Results", in J. Hall (ed.), States in History, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Mooers, C. (1991), The Making of Bourgeois Europe: Absolutism, Revolution and the Rise of Capitalism in England, France and Germany, London: Verso. North, D. C. (1989), "Institutions and Economic Growth: An Historical Introduction", World Development, 17 (9), 1319-32. Poggi, G. (1978), The Development of Modern State: A Sociological Stanford, Ca.: Stanford University Press. Polanyi, K. (1963), The Great Transformation, Boston: Beacon Press. Renner, K. (1949), The Institutions of Private Law and Their Social London: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd.

Essay,

Function,

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Salzman, A. (1993), "Centripetal Centralization: Life-Term Tax-Farming in the 18th Century Ottoman Empire", in T. Ancanli, A. Gani and D. Ludden (eds.), Political Economies of the Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal

Empires,

Vol. 1 (forthcoming). Thompson, E.P. (1990), Whigs and Hunters: The Origin of the Black Act, London: Penguin Books. Unger, R. M. (1976), Law in Modern Society: Theory, New York: Free Press.

Toward A Criticism

of Social

WHY EUROPEAN HISTORY?

I would like to begin my opening remarks with the question: Why a workshop on European History? If we leave aside the easy answer that myself as an organiser happens to be interested in that history, we need to take this question seriously. This is especially so if we take into account the fact that the numerous history seminars organised in this country generally address themselves to problems of Ottoman and Turkish history. Nor is the interest in Ottoman history simply confined to academic circles. A cursory glance at popular magazines and newspapers is sufficient to reveal the remarkable frequency with which the members of the Turkish intelligentsia and politicians invoke Ottoman history in justification for present practices. This preoccupation with the Ottoman past is not, however, unique to the present day. Since the collapse of the Empire in the early twentieth century, social and political identities not only in Turkey but also in the Balkans and the Arab lands, are continuously constituted and reconstituted amidst debates over different interpretations of Ottoman history. A striking feature of these interpretations is that they all rest on implicit or explicit assumptions about what European history has been. An idealised image of European history against which Ottoman past is measured looms large over the writing of Ottoman history. After all, European history is the history of winners, of those who were able to establish their domination over the rest of the globe through technological prowess, political and military might. As such, the history of losers is written in terms of the categories of the winner and in relation to its history. This relational perception of Ottoman history, in fact, partakes in a grand narrative of world history which has provided the vocabulary for European hegemony over the rest of the world since the nineteenth century. Central to this grand narrative has been a casting of the histories of Europe and non-Europe, of the East and the West in terms of contrasting ideal images. Thus, European history as the privileged domain of dynamism (read capitalism), rationality (read secularism, absence of religious dogma), liberal constitutionalism, democracy is pitted against a non-European history characterised by stagnation (read lack of economic competition, capitalism), irrationality (read predominance of religious belief) and by despotic or authoritarian forms of government. On the one hand, this master text of

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absences and presences serves to justify Western domination over the East by pointing to European superiority. On the other, it represents a domain in which different actors reproduce their positions of the dominant and the dominated. Historicla writing on different areas is the site of such reproductions and through the practice of writing histories ideal images of Europe and non-Europe are constituted, reconstituted and politically mobilised. In the case of the Ottoman Empire, for instance, the Westernist liberal perspective which has acquired a new momentum in the context of the recent global upsurge of liberal ideology, constitutes Ottoman history as a domain of absences of all those properties that resulted in the triumph of liberal competitive capitalism in Western Europe. Its central theme is that of the absence of private property the development of which is presumed to have been impeded in the Ottoman context by a state preponderance in the economy and, more precisely, by state ownership in land. At the same time, the Ottoman Empire was not blessed by Roman law legacy which in Europe allowed for a definition of private property. Not only Islamic law is assumed to have been deficient in this regard, but also Islamic religious tradition is believed to have had a stifling effect on the development of individual initiative of civil liberties. The absences of private property, of individual initiative, in turn, explain other absences, namely, those of propertied classes or bourgeoisie, of bourgeois revolutions, of the 'rule of law', liberal constitutionalism, of parliamentary democracy, and therefore, of civil society. To this flawed and imperfect Ottoman historical heritage, the liberal paradigm ascribes the deficiencies of post-Ottoman societies, especially the presumed absence of civil society, and sees the modern salvation of these societies in a total rejection of the Ottoman legacy in favour of institutions which characterise the domain of perfect history, Western Europe. Also operating within the grid of absences and presences of the European grand narrative, the Islamic liberal perspective subscribes to the antistatist bias of the Westernist conception of Ottoman history. But in this view the Islamic community at the time of the Prophet Muhammad and his immediate successors replaces European history as the domain of liberal perfection. As such, Islamic liberalism is part of a culturalist reaction to demonisations of Islam which ascribe economic stagnation, absences of rational forms of thinking, of liberal constitutionalism and democracy in Islamic societies to a pervasive Islamic cultural essence. Thus, in a defensive manner, Islamic liberalism finds in the early Islamic community which it claims to have lived according to the precepts of the sharVa or God's law, an embodiment of all the institutions of civil society. For one thing, this Utopia where decisions related to community affairs were arrived through consensus,

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Ill

is believed to have been a repository of the much lauded institutions of participatory democracy and constitutionalism. Islamic liberalism also claims that the shari'a provided legal protection for private property and encouraged commercial transactions. The history of Muslim societies since the seventh century, on the other hand, is perceived to be one of retreat from this ideal state occasioned by the emergence of usurper despotic states among which was the Ottoman state. Moreover, the Ottoman state is often viewed as a predecessor of the Middle Eastern colonial and post-colonial states characterised by their repression of 'Islamic civil societies'. The way out of this historical predicament would take the form of a return to the Utopia of early Islam, and not through adoption of European modes. This defensive posture vis-à-vis the image of European society as the privileged domain of world history is also characteristic of the secular statist constitutions of Ottoman history. In this perspective the 'absences' of the European grand narrative are translated into 'presences' not in a remote Islamic Utopia but in an Ottoman golden age. Moreover, this secularist version of 'If they (the Europeans) had it, we had it too' position, in choosing the state as its object of adulation (instead of the civil society of the Islamists), partakes in a non-liberal reading of the European grand narrative, that of Enlightenment Jacobinism. In doing this, statist view points to the secular character of the early Ottoman state, to a separation of the domains of the religious and the secular, especially one which corresponded to a distinction between public law or the secular law of the ruler and private law or the family and inheritance law of the shari'a. Hence, driven by a concern to endogenise secularism and, in doing so, to legitimate the secularist orientation of the Turkish Republic, secularists recast the secular-religious dichotomy of the Enlightenment discourse, in a pre-Enlightenment Ottoman golden age in the sixteenth century. In fact, this Enlightenment inspired drama which pits a secular bureaucracy against the Islamic ulema, is pivotal to the secularist conception of Ottoman-Turkish history. Thus, in this perspective, beginning in the late sixteenth century, the secular elements witnessed a low point in their fortunes only to be followed by their triumph in the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. This triumph is, however, continually challenged and, in a Manichean fashion, forces of light have to be vigilant in defending it against the forces of darkness or of religion. The practice of reproducing the ideal images of the East and the West also characterise the writing of European histories. European historians ranging from MacNeill to E.L. Jones, M. Mann, P. Anderson, J. Hall describe the 'rise of the West', 'the European miracle' in terms of properties that were unique to European history. Such uniqueness is sought, depending

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on the specific emphasis of the individual historian, in private property, in Roman law, in competitive state systems, in patterns of economic productivity. These 'presences' provide internal explanations for the development of capitalism, of liberal constitutional states, of penetrative, strong states with abilities to steer the society. These explanations, however, assume a contrastive backdrop of non-European history lacking in all those properties which rendered European history unique or special. This exercise in juggling of absences and presences of ideal properties, in turn, brings into sharp focus Europe's superiority over non-Europe, and in doing so, becomes instrumental in explaining, if not justifying, Europe's ascendance over the rest of the world. At the same time, the discourse of European superiority also has a self-congratulatory dimension as is evidenced in the recent reformulations of the European grand narrative by Mann and Hall. These histories largely partake in the 1980s and 1990s atmosphere of a renewed European selfconfidence in the self-renewing potential of the European capitalist societies. To summarise my argument, conceptions of European history in terms of its uniqueness and of Ottoman histories in affirmation or contestation of that uniqueness, assume a comparative perspective. Yet the categories of comparison have been those of idealised images of European and Ottoman histories. These images uncluttered by ambiguities and complexities that characterise the actual historical processes, promise uncomplicated visions of the 'self' and the 'other' that confronts it. In the case of historians of the Ottoman Empire, such images represent different ideological positionings in the face of European domination. For European historians, they represent selfdefinitions of the dominant in terms of a presumed superiority, or a celebration of its achievements vis-à-vis the less fortunate. I feel we can do better than that. New kinds of histories, both European and non-European can be written. We know all to well that writing of history is context-bound. Histories partake in the features of the epochs in which they are written and they are constitutive of power relations that characterise a given era. As such historical writing does not simply represent ideological constructs but such constructs have concrete underpinning in relations of domination and of subjugation. We are living at a time when capitalist world economy is undergoing integration on a scale not witnessed before. One aspect of this integration has been the rise of successful models of capitalist development in areas outside of the boundaries of Western Europe. This point to an undermining of European domination over non-European areas premised on Europe's privileged position as the unique domain of capitalist development. Such challenging of Europe's uniqueness is not all that new; in the late nineteenth century the world had witnessed the development of

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capitalist industrialism in Japan. But Japan's defeat in the Second World War and ideological configurations of the post-war period which contrived to identify capitalism with democratic forms of government, with liberal constitutionalism resulted in obscuring the fact that Japan was a capitalist industrial country prior to the war. Since the 1970s and in the face of phenomenal successes of Japanese capitalism which at points tend to eclipse those of Europe and the U.S., it became rather apparent that the Japanese 'miracle' could not simply be explained in terms of post-war démocratisation measures. Instead such explanations are sought in the ways the Japanese economy, the society as well as the state were reconstituted in the context of power relations, power struggles that characterised Japan's participation in the global capitalist environment of the nineteenth century. Moreover, since the 1980s, other East Asian areas, which previously ranked among underdeveloped regions, have joined the leage of advanced capitalist countries. For the most part, they did so by following the Japanese path. This tendency towards a pattern of multi-centred capitalist development, it appears, will further be accelerated with the collapse of the bipolar configurations of the Cold War era. A case in point is the recent Chinese advances. What this points to is that in the post-Cold War era with one pole, that of the capitalist path to development, remaining and with its success or workability certified, the road appears to be open for different areas to transform themselves in such ways as to be included in the capitalist game. The attraction of this game lies largely in the fact that it works and it delivers results. This aspect is further underlined by examples of what did not work, namely the socialist experiments in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Development of capitalism in any one area has not, however, been a smooth process. It involves conflictual relations amongst different groups; it also involves a form of power which devolves on a certain type of state. For one thing, capitalism as a system of generalised commodity exchange by private individuals seeking to maximise profits, promises to deliver more to some than it does to others. This is because generalised market exchange relations presuppose the development of private property which renders goods and resources, including land and labour, freely disposable or exchangeable in the market. Private property, on the other hand, implies an establishment of absolute claims over goods or resources by some to the exclusion of the claims of others. For this reason, generalisation and universalisation of private property relations involve power struggles between those who gain from it and those who lose. Such struggles are waged in the context of the general rules or categories defined and enforced by the state. It is, in fact, not possible to think of private property relations independently of their definitions in state

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rules, and of their enforcement by the state. In the capitalist context these rules assume the character of general categories which seek to achieve a subsumption of multiple and diverse property claims to that of the singular claim of absolute private property. But such subsumption has always been problematic and state practices or rules relating to the organisation of property relations more often than not represent domains of continuous conflict amongst different claims or interests. At the same time, exigencies of competition in the international state system, as well as in the global economy, requires the ability of individual states or steer the society and the economy. The steering ability of the state above all entails a definition of a quality of 'stateness', in the sense P. Abrams meant it, independently of its multifarous practices that organise social and economic activity in general, and property relations in particular. It implies that the state acquires a definition that renders its various activities legitimate in the eyes of different groups in the society. This involves the justifying of the state's fiscal practices or its taxation claims which impinge on the definition of private property as exclusionary of all claims. It also involves those activities of the state that mediate the effects of capitalist development on those groups which do not benefit from it. These practices of the state, however, take place in the context of power struggles waged locally and internationally. None of the outcomes of these struggles waged on different levels of the capitalist society are predictable. That is, success or failure defined in terms of abilities to achieve capitalist development and thereby to survive in a competitive global environment can not in any way be predicted in relation to historical determinations that privilege one area against others. Moreover, property forms, political institutions, forms of market organisation which develop out of power relations, conflicts in different areas represent negotiated settlements between conflicting interests and therefore can not be expected to conform to idealised perceptions of these institutions with reference to specific conditions in Western Europe. Instead it is possible to speak of multiple development paths. From the point of view of historical writing, this context and the ways of perceiving the real world it engenders, offers new possibilities. It may provide a starting point for the writing of comparative histories that go beyond ideal images and totalising categories that gloss over or obscure the conflictual and problematic character of capitalist development and simplify complexities and diversities in the historical development of both the East and the West. First, it implies a conception of capitalism as a universal phenomenon, as a historical rupture experienced globally and a re-directing of

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the historian's gaze to the shared predicament of European and non-European regions alike in partaking in a drama in which each region participated, in the context of their own specific structures, from the eighteenth century onwards at different time periods. This, in turn, relegates to a secondary status the issue of origins in explanations of success or failure of different regions. That is, when the determination of capitalist institutions is sought in power conflicts, struggles waged both in individual regions and globally, these institutions can not be assumed to have existed in an historical continuum with origins in a remote idealised past. More precisely, the fact that capitalist organisation of production and the political configurations that made possible its generalisation first originated in Western Europe, more precisely in England, does not assure the continuity of this type of development in those areas. Nor does it privilege European history as the repository of ideal properties that made possible capitalist development by contrast to other areas where these properties are presumed to have been absent. In emphasising historical contingency over historical determinations, I am, in fact, suggesting a problematisation of European history whereby historical analysis is no longer one which seeks to make diverse phenomenon conform to an idealised image of Europe. Such problematisation seeks to point to discontinuities or to ambiguities in the definitions of different institutions which constitute domains of struggle among different groups. Similarly, I also propose a problematisation of non-European histories whereby they are no longer to be viewed in terms of presumed continuities with ideal categories or essential features. The latter categories have been instrumental in explaining the lack of success of the East vis-à-vis the West. From the point of view of writing of comparative histories, the problematising of the histories of the East and the West implies a focusing of the historian's attention to those domains of conflict, to problem zones common to both histories. For instance, viewed in this perspective, development of private property in different Western European areas need not be seen as being historically determined by certain features of the Roman law or by the medieval economic dynamic. The development of private property has been universally problematic and subject to continuous contestations and negotiations which resulted in the rise of qualified forms of property in most European regions in the nineteenth century. Once this is acknowledged, then the protracted development of private property in the nineteenth century Ottoman Empire, would not appear to be a symptom of an essential Ottoman imperfection. Instead it may be seen in relation to power struggles which characterised the definition of private property as a general category, on the

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one hand, and in relation to power relations in the context of the development of a modern Ottoman 'stateness', on the other. As such, while the Ottoman state in the nineteenth century sought to generalise private property in land and in doing so sought to create a peasant economy of small holders, the rules of private property constituted domains of conflict between groups or individuals with long-established collective rights over land and those who were granted absolute ownership rights. At the same time, the requirements of the state engaged in military and political competition with other European states, also had the effect of restricting absolute private property. They did so not only in the form of taxation claims but also in the form of restrictions on land transactions which aimed at preserving the integrity of peasant holdings. Thus, property forms in land that characterised the Ottoman regions in the nineteenth century were outcomes of concrete power struggles that accompanied the development of the modern state and the introduction of private property as a general category. They do not represent continuities from a remote past but describe the specifity of the Ottoman path to capitalist development. By pointing to the historically diverse and complex character of capitalist institutions viewed as contingent outcomes of power relations in different world regions, I challenge the ahistorical perceptions of these institutions in terms of ideal images representing unproblematic absences and presences in a grand narrative of world history. I have tried to show that this grand narrative which was (and still is) continually constituted, does not simply represent an imagined history of the world with little relation to a 'real' history. It is constitutive of the relations of domination of the West over the East and its various constitutions entail definitions of political and social identities in the face of that domination. The problematisation of the ideal images or categories of the European grand narrative also implies a challenging of Europe's essential superiority over non-European areas. This challenge, however, is not simply rooted in a Third Worldist reaction to European domination but is one that takes as its point of departure the contemporary power configurations and of the kinds of questions they raise in relation to the nature of the development of capitalism as a global phenomenon. This way of looking at the problem should not suggest that European domination has not been real or that the West has not been successful. I am simply pointing to the historically contingent character of that domination and success. In doing so I am questioning the validity of those modes of thinking or of perceiving world history which essentialise historically contingent outcomes and therefore absolutise success or failure.

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In short, what I am proposing is a new kind of historical writing which does not represent a comparing and contrasting of ideal categories or of ideologically distilled 'after the fact' representations of dominating and being dominated. Instead, the kind of comparative history proposed here takes as its starting point the task of problematising both European and non-European history by pointing to the contingent character of developments everywhere rooted in internal and global power relations. Once the problematic character of all history — something which the employment of ideal, totalising categories obscure — is admitted, the past appears to be less well-ordered and more laden with conflicting signals as to what emerged subsequently. On the one hand, admission of problematicity may make the historian more sensitive to what the possibilities were in given historical situation regardless of outcomes. That is, what was possible and did not happen, failed struggles as well as successful ones are all part of history. As such, neither success nor failure are seen as absolute and the lines between them become blurred. On the other, the consciousness of complexity and diversity may provide a more accurate description of capitalist modernity as a process in continual flux, ever-changing and transforming in the midst of multiple power relations with diverse and unpredictable outcomes. I am, however, far from claiming that the new comparative history proposed here is scientific by contrast to the ideological orientation of the existing histories. It is simply that the concern of this type of history writing may be one that is probably shared more generally than the ideological postures of dominating, or being dominated. It is a concern with uncertainty of facts, the contingent nature of life that we all experience and share in a world in flux. It is also a concern with perceived possibilities of joining the major league of the capitalist game with all the contradictions and conflicts that this game entails. I do hope this workshop by bringing together historians of Europe in what is conventially regarded as a non-European environment, will stimulate thinking on the writing of comparative histories in ways that more faithfully take into account the problematic nature of all history, past and future, regardless of geographical location.

OTTOMAN AND CHINESE MODERNITIES COMPARED: STATE TRANSFORMATIONS AND CONSTITUTIONS OF PROPERTY IN THE QING AND OTTOMAN EMPIRES

Modernity has long been the preserve of Europe. Social science perspectives on modernization that have shaped the categories of historical analysis since the nineteenth century have excluded the Ottoman and the Chinese Empires from mappings of modernity. 1 Instead, the two empires are designated as part of an undifferentiated and ahistorical domain of the East, characterized by what it lacks: individual ownership of property, rational organization of market activity, and rational bureaucratic forms of government. This construct of the East provides a contrast to an equally abstract domain of the West (including western Europe and its extensions in the United States) privileged with the presence of modern forms. This high drama of absences and presences of idealized properties has been instrumental in legitimating European domination of the East. The notion of oriental despotism has been a central feature of that legitimation. 2 In Asia it facilitated the setting up of colonial administrations that could be identified as rational and bureaucratic, as opposed to the arbitrary rule of the despot and the constraints that such rule imposed on social and economic progress. At the same time, once Asia was frozen in an imagined straitjacket of Oriental Despotism, any indigenous transformation of statecraft in modern times was dismissed, either as not conforming to the bureaucratic rational model (as was the case for China) or as a poor and ineffective aping of the European model (as was the case for the Ottoman Empire). On the whole, Oriental Despotism became a short-hand explanation for why Asia did not develop. This paper addresses the experiences of modernity of the Ottoman and Qing Empires in the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries. It will focus on statecraft, or practices of governing or ordering social reality. More specifically, it will focus on administrative rulings or law and procedures which ordered and defined property relations on land. The idea behind this undertaking is to formulate an understanding of modernity that is historical 'Brian Turner, Marx and the End of Orientalism (London, 1978). Huri Islamoglu-inan, "Introduction" in Ottoman Empire and the World Economy, ed. H. Islamoglu-inan (Cambridge, 1987); Peter Perdue, "Constructing Chinese Property" in Constituting Modernity, Private Property in the East end West, ed. H. islamoglu (London, I.B. Tavris 2001). 2

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and contingent, and that does not confine modern transformations in the governing of social reality to the European experience, or treat the experience of non-European regions as derivative. What is proposed instead is a shared experience of modernity, with multiple paths of modern transformations. The comparison of modern transformations in statecraft in two non-European regions provides an important starting point for bringing into focus the universality of the experience of modernity, beyond the narrow confines of western Europe. Methodologically, this venture calls for setting aside analysis that has its starting point in ideal types — a check-list of modern properties generally associated with the nineteenth-century European experience in state-building and its colonial extensions. These properties have been appropriated and mobilized to support diverse political and ideological positions. For example, the ideal type of the centralized bureaucratic government has not only been part of a vocabularly of European domination, it has also been assimilated in defensive renderings of non-European histories that seek to show that this form of government existed in Asia long before it did in Europe. Contemporary critics of modern statecraft, most recently James C. Scott, 1 also take the bureaucratic organization of society to be a defining feature of modernity. For Scott, it was the administrative and legal practices of modern statecraft which simplified, standardized, uniformized and therefore rationalized social relations, including property and taxation relations, and rendered them administratively legible and accessible to state control. Thus, standardization and uniformization differentiated modern administration from pre-modern statecraft. The latter was characterized by an inability to cut through the web of particularistic customary practices making up the myriad of property arrangements and to establish its claims of taxation and surveillance over society. In fact, in Scott's analysis, the binary contrast between modern and pre-modern statecraft parallels and East/West dichotomy of modernization theory. The only difference is that, while for proponents of the modernization perspective, the central state-building project and its practices of bureaucratization and rationalization represent the hallmarks of modern progress to be emulated and aspired to, for Scott, they spell the harsh reality of the modern state's administrative and scientific coercion. The modernization perspective and Scott's analysis thus converge in casting modern statecraft as an ideal type, abstracted from the historical contexts of power relations. Both analyses focus on the effects of this state form on society. For modernization theory, bureaucratic penetration accounts ' james C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven, 1998).

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for social integration. 1 For Scott, modern forms of statecraft, invasive and controlling, condemn society to eternal impotence; by contrast, pre-modern state forms, hitherto characterized as ineffective, allowed room for politics and negotiations among social groups. The descriptive mode hypostatizes and renders non-problematic what it identifies as the brave new world of the modern leviathan, as against the idyllic era of negotiations or politics that preceded it. Responding to accounts of idealized absence and presence rooted in binary perceptions of an hypostatized world history, this paper introduces an understanding of the history of modernity in which Europe and non-Europe shared. In a preliminary way, this history refers to different strategies of coping with the dual challenges of competition among political and military formations and commercial expansion, both of which were experienced in varying degrees throughout Eurasia from roughly the fifteenth century. One institutional response to this dual challenge was to centralize power in the hands of rulers and bureaucracies. In European and non-European areas, this response signaled a tendency towards concentration of coercive and moral authority so as to maintain social harmony while promoting social and economic welfare. Fulfillment of these goals depended on raising revenues, especially in the eighteenth and the nineteenth century when intensification of competition among states, as well as the exigency of resistance to European colonial expansion, resulted in increased military expenditures. Moreover, central government expenditures in this later period also had to be expanded to cover social welfare costs that had previously been the responsibility of different groups that were part of the ruling coalition. In turn, the taxation imperative compelled governments to become closely involved in promoting economic activity, so that state fiscality and economic growth were inseparable features of the nineteenth century historical environments. These developments always took place in the context of power relations, external as well as internal. The individual contexts of power relations where state objectives and legitimation idioms are formulated and negotiated, may appropriately be called a state environments. Statecraft or institutions that order social reality are part of these environments; the Philip Huang has pointed to an absence in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in China, of bureaucratization and rationalization, emphasizing the degree to which this absence affected the ability of the state to fom alliances with divergent groups (elites) to consolidate its powers. [See Huang, The Peasant Economy and Social Change in North China (Palo Alto, 1985).] In other words, if the Chinese imperial state had not failed to bureaucratize and affect an integration of society by means of a modern administrative apparatus, might it have escaped collapse at the hands of provincial assemblies and the new military troops? The posing of this counterfactual reveals an understanding of bureaucratization as an ideal formulation, abstracted from any given historical experience of state-making, whether European or nonEuropean.

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different institutions represent power fields where social relations are constituted. When viewed in this perspective, what Scott describes as customary or untouched by statecraft in pre-modern environments, can be seen as constituted through practices of statecraft, albeit of a different kind. In contrast to the nineteenth century, the constitutive practices of early modern statecraft were rooted in power contexts where central rulers competed and shared power with different groups. In this framework, statecraft was an art of accommodation, aimed at distributing taxable resources among members of the ruling blocs. By contrast, in the nineteenth century, when power was centered in state bureaucracies, statecraft no longer aimed at distributing resources. It focused instead on directing resources to the center, so as to enable the state to deliver the "greatest happiness of greatest numbers" in terms of security writ large, meaning military mobilization against internal and external enemies as well as economic growth. Both early modern and modern practices of statecraft were domains of negotiation or of politics. For Scott, only a pre-modern "local" society, blessed with a partially "blind" and incapacitated state, could have politics, that is, continual negotiations of customary practice that ordered property relations and other aspects of life. In a mood recalling the anti-statist civil society perspectives of the 1990s, Scott relishes the plurality and diversity of political life in his imagined pre-modern society. This paper, refusing to confine politics to reified domain of pre-modern society, will argue that in early modern state environments, the practice of statecraft represented the sum total of particularistic settlements negotiated among different groups, one of which was made up by the representatives of the central authority. For instance, in the Ottoman Empire during the sixteenth century, tax regulations for individual provinces were settlements negotiated between central officials, local officials, and local groups, including the cultivators. Thus, what was customary was constituted through negotiated settlements that were summed up in administrative regulations, as well as the rulings of provincial courts of law. Legitimation idiom which unified the diverse particularistic negotiative processes was an understanding of justice; it rested on the ability of the institutions of statecraft to accommodate the different interests. By contrast, in the nineteenth century, when power focused in the central government to the exclusion of other groups, the ability of the central government to mediate among different interests represented the legitimating idiom of the new state environment. Such mediation was to be effected through general laws, administrative rulings and procedures which stood in contrast to the particularity of rules and procedures of the early modern environments. The challenging of central government, in turn, took the form

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of challenging and negotiating the generality of institutions that ordered social relations. Because he identifies "politics" with society at a distance from the state, understood as a multitude of practices of control and surveillance, Scott is unable to recognize the distinctively modern politics of administration. Instead he draws attention to the politically emasculated character of the administratively constituted modern society. This paper does not view administrative practices as disembodied tools of control or subjugation. In the lived experience of modern statecraft, law and attempts at mapping and registering land and property were constantly challenged. Such resistance was far from being ineffectual. The fact that a comprehensive cadastral mapping of imperial territories could not be carried out in the nineteenth century Ottoman context suggests the success of this resistance. The Ottoman Land Code of 1858, which introduced individual ownership in land as well as procedures for compiling land and property registers, also points to the fact that administrative practice was a site of negotiations. Only slowly did modern administrative practice, objectified and de-personalized, emerge as the arbitrator among the different interests in land from which it distanced itself. 1 The ability of the central government to render its uniform and general rulings acceptable in the eyes of different social groupings — in other words, its legitimacy — rested on mediation and arbitration affected through its administrative practices. As such, the modern state did not have an existence separate from the society it sought to control and subject; it was continually formed and consolidated in the processes and procedures that were fashioning a rural society of free-holders. In that sense, the struggle of the central government to obtain legibility and simplicity in land tenure, as part of its imperatives of taxation and economic growth, was a prolonged one; the attainment of state objectives was ultimately contingent on the ability of its agencies to conciliate different interests and on the power relations between the different groups and these agencies. Lastly, local or customary practice did not altogether disappear. Lastly, local or customary practice did not altogether disappear. Rather, as in the case of regional codes issued in response to contestations of the Land Code, these practices were renegotiated and their particularity re-established — this time in relation to the general precepts of the Code, and not simply as recognitions of the local on its own terms. 2

' H. W. Arthur, Without the Law: Administrative Justice and Legal Pluralism in Nineteenth Century England (Toronto, 1985). For a discussion of particularization in relation to the generality of the Land Code of 1858 and the provincial regulations that were drafted at this time, see Huri Islamoglu, "Property as Contested Domain: A Re-evaluation of the Land Code of 1858," in New Perspectives on Property and Land in the Middle East, ed. Roger Owen (Cambridge, Mass., 2000). 2

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Modernity as conceived here is political, and therefore contingent on historical contexts of power relations, both among states and within individual state environments. Modernity in this sense cannot be confined to an idealized image of the nineteenth century European experience of central state building and the forms of statecraft associated with it. First, in the perspective of this paper, the history of modernity is not confined to the moment of the European domination in the nineteent century; rather it is extended back in time to include the experiences of early modernity in European and non-European regions. Nor were modern forms of statecraft confined to the kind of bureaucratic practices that sought uniformization and standardization of social relations. These practices are found at a specific moment in power configurations in certain regions, when the balance of power shifts to central bureaucracies. In areas where such a shift did not occur, other modern forms of governing continued to exist. The Chinese experience of state-building initiative at the local or regional level in the nineteenth and early twentieth century is a case in point. 1 This exercise in historical relativity lends itself to a problematization of bureaucratization or rational forms of government. It also points to future possibilities of governing modern society and economy other than those that focus on centralized state bureaucracies. This consideration has particular relevance at the opening of the twenty-first century, when the institutions for steering and regulating economic and social activity that have been identified with centralized administration seem increasingly inadequate for the task. In the present-day context of accelerated social and economic integration on a world-scale, regional forms of governance that transcend the limits of central state administration, seem to hold a promise for a more effective organization of societal life. Secondly, perception of modernity as historically and politically contingent underlines its conflicting and problematic character in Europe and non-Europe alike. It focuses attention on the processes of modern transformations and not on "idealized" outcomes abstracted from highly complex historical experiences. Not all of the different processes of modern transformation were able to meet the challenges of survival in interstate competition and capitalist transformation in the nineteenth century. Consider for a moment the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires. These multinational empires collapsed in the early twentieth century, mainly because of 1 Against the model of bureaucratization as state-building, Wong poses popular mobilization and social control as a model of Chinese state-building. What distinguishes this model is its accommodative, negotiated character as evidenced in consultative gentry assemblies in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Wong suggests that this fabric of social relations may have contributed to the preservation of the imperial unit even after the collapse of the empire, see Roy Bin Wong, China Transformed: Historical Change and Limits of European Experience (Ithaca, 1997), 157ff.

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strong nationalist m o v e m e n t s , despite having undergone modern transformations in terms of orderings of social relations, and as importantly in terms of idioms of rule. This essay will focus on the Ottoman case.

Contingencies of State

Centralism

Centralized political power is highly prized in the historiography of modernity. Responding to allegations by Eurocentric historiography that modern forms of government were not to be found in Asia, Ottoman and Chinese historians have stressed the existence of centralized states long before such a feat was achieved in Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth-centuries. 1 This perspective often focuses on central institutions such as armies and bureaucracies. In the case of China, the civil service bureaucracy and the system of elite education are identified as mechanisms for integrating local groups into imperial service. Similarly, the Ottoman devshirme system was a mode of imperial integration through recruitment of Christian youths from conquered territories, who were then trained as military and civilian elites to staff the infantry and the central as well as provincial administrations. During the sixteenth century, the Ottoman infantry or janissaries provided an edge to the Ottomans in the competition with the emerging European states, some of which still relied mainly on cavalry. The Chinese civil service bureaucracy, spanning the empire, was important in ensuring a domestic order that promoted China's early economic prosperity, including commercial expansion and the development of market networks. 2 The institutional perspective is problematic on a number of counts. Above all, it has a tendency to abtract institutions from the specific contexts of power obtaining when they were formed. Hence, institutions identified as representing the early modern Ottoman or Chinese central states are often backward projections of idealized institutional forms associated with the nineteenth century European administrative states. At the time, emphasis on centralization at on early date saddles the historian with the probem of having to explain why these empires could not maintain their lead over Europe in the race toward central institutions. More often than not, one is compelled to juggle various decline scenarios. For the Ottomans, the seventeenth century 1 H. Inalcik, The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age 1300-1600 (New York, 1973), and Wong, China Transformed. 2 The impressiveness of early economic expansion in China prompted historians to raise the question as to "why capitalism did not develop in China first." For a recent and impressive posing of this question, see Andre Gunder Frank, Re-Orient: Global Economy in the Asian Age (Berkeley, 1998).

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marks the beginning of such a downward slide, whereas for the Qing it is the nineteenth century. Hence, the task of the historian becomes one of explaining the decline of such institutions including the janissaries, the system of revenue grants, the devshirme, the imperial civil service, or the examination system, as if these were immutable features of a "golden age" that could no longer be sustained by the Ottomans and the Chinese of a later era. 1 Finally, insofar as the institutional focus claims a certain uniqueness for early modern Asian state formations in terms of their central institutions, it abstracts them from the larger context of modernity that they shared with European areas, albeit it forms determined by their specific historical circumstances. To counter the fetishization of imperial state centralization, this paper will focus not on institutions but on processes of ordering social reality in different historical contexts. Here, statecraft refers not simply to sets of central institutions but to the processes of ordering social relations among different groups or interests. This approach allows for differentiation between early modern and modern state environments, but it also seeks to guard against unilinear, progressivist conceptions of history. In effect, one finds an entanglement of the early modern with the modern, as the central rulers or administrations caught up in military and political competition (internal as well as external) sought to wrestle power from other actors and affect changes in modes of governing. In early modern state contexts, European and non-European, centralism involved a series of negotiated settlements shaped by a distributive ethos. Thus, the different institutions ordering social relations sought to accommodate the groups competing for control over resources (agriculture and trade) as well as the producers of agricultural surpluses through a series of particularistic negotiations. For the most part, these institutions represented the sum total of settlements negotiated between te ruler and the different groups. Such settlements involved relations of reciprocity. For instance, in return for tax exemptions, groups competing for revenues as well as agricultual producers performed certain tasks, such as provisioning provincial ' For decline scenarios, see Inalcik, The Ottoman Empire; for the seventeenth century accounts of ottoman decline which constitute the basis for the decline thesis later, see Ko?i Bey, Koci bey risalesi (editor Zuhuri Dam§man) (Istanbul, 1972). Rifat Abdulhaj, Formation of the Modern State: the Ottoman Empire, Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries (Albany, 1991), argued that the seventeenth-century accounts of decline were penned by the members of the central administration who were on the losing end as result of institutional changes effected by changes in power configurations both internally and externally, especially in relation to intensification of military and political competition and the increased cash requirements of the central government to finance armies. For recent critiques of the Ottoman decline thesis, see Linda T. Darling, Revenue-Raising and Legitimacy: Tax Collection and Finance Administration in the Ottoman Empire, 1560-1660 (Leiden, 1996); Ariel Salzman, "An Ancien Regime Revisited: 'Privatization' and Political Economy in the Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Empire," Politics and Society 21/4 (1993): 393-423.

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armies, or social services like the maintenance of infrastructure, or charitable work. 1 The position of the ruler and the individuals or groups in different contexts of negotiation varied with the balance of power between them. Despite claims on the part of rulers to divine sanction, the legitimacy of the center, or the authority of the ruler, rested with the ability to negotiate settlements. 2 In the Ottoman Empire, from its inception in the fourteenth century, the saga of state formation was one of continual attempts at centralizing of power in the hands of ruler and his court. In this respect, the Ottoman experience shows certain parallels to early modern European cases of statemaking characterized by the incessant struggles of monarchs against the established claims or rights of feudal bodies, clerics, and municipal governments. In the Ottoman case, however, the entitlements and obligations of military and provincial elites, and of a religious establishment that overlapped with provincial or feudal and urban elites, were not expressed in a language of pre-established legal rights. Until the ninteenth century, the various claims to sources of revenue (such as taxes on land and on trade) including the claims of the ruler and his court, were formalized in a set of rules that represented negotiated settlements between the ruler and the different groups that constituted the ruling bloc. What allowed the ruler the right to negotiate these settlements — and to differentiate himself from the elites with whom he competed for entitlements to tax revenues — was his role as dispenser of justice. An understanding of justice, cast in terms of ruler's ability to ensure order or freedom from social strife, provided the idiom of rule which imparted a coherence to diverse patterns of negotiation, and made it possible for the ruler to represent the state. In practice, the ruler's justice presupposed measures to accommodate the competing power claims within the ruling bloc. Thus, during the formative centuries of the empire, until the late sixteenth century, sources of revenue were distributed among different groups as their revenue grants. These groups included the military commanders who acted as provincial administrators, members of the religious establishment, and former rulers in conquered territories. While the ruler made grants of revenue in return for contributions of mounted soldiers for cavalry and/or performance of social services, the concern for enlisting the political allegiance of different groups was paramount in the distribution of revenue

On these relations of reciprocity in the context of the French state of the seventeenth century, see Alain Guéry, "Le roi dépensier, le don, le contrat et l'origine du système financier de la monarchie française de l'ancien regime," Annales 39/6 (1984): 1241-69. 2 For discussion of this point in relation to the activities of French kings in the seventeenth century, see David Parker, "Law, Society and the State in the Thought of Jean Bodin," History of Political Thought 2 (1981): 253-85.

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grants. This may explain the apparently arbitrary character of the exercise of ruler's justice vis-à-vis elite groups. Above all, justice involved making provision for individual circumstances in different areas, as well as for the different types of revenue grants. These provisions, included in state ordinances and provincial regulations, responded to individual circumstances and were negotiated with respect to the power commanded by the parties at different time periods in different areas. Because the central government needed more cash to build central armies to meet intensified inter-state competition on its European frontiers, and because of the commercial expansion that began in the sixteenth century and (with a brief pause in the seventeenth century) continued into the eighteenth century, tax-farming came to be widely adopted as the preferred mode of fiscal extraction. Tax-farming was another moment in the distributionist mode of imperial integration, at a time when the composition of the ruling bloc underwent change. As such, despite its departure from the earlier system of revenue grants, associated with the zenith of Ottoman centralism in its golden age, tax-farming did not represent a rupture with previous forms of governance. It belonged to the context of power relations imbued with the ethos of distributive-accommodationism. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and until midnineteenth century, the Ottoman central government was engaged in incessant struggles with tax farmers over control of tax revenues. These struggles were worked out in tax-farming contracts that represented negotiated settlements between the central government and the different groups of tax-farmers. In these settlements, the central government sought the allegiance of these groups, as well as securing for itself a share in revenues. On the other hand, in order to discipline the more powerful groups, including the members of the religious establishments (Christian and Muslim), military commanders and officials, and the provincial elites, the central government in the late seventeenth century attempted to re-direct the assignment of tax farms away from old elites towards new elites in the process of formation, especially in the provinces. 1 In Qing China, imperial centralism was not mediated by a system of revenue grants nor by tax farming. Instead, Qing officials were engaged in continual negotiations wih different groups of landholders in the different provinces over the amount of tax that was to be paid to the state. The taxation claim of the imperial government, as well as multiple claims over land use, were negotiated in multiple and particularistic settlements embodied in contracts, in the provisions of customary law, and the statutory law of ' Salzman, "An Ancien Regime Revisited."

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individual provinces. As was the case in the Ottoman Empire, the different rulings, representing multiple negotiated settlements, responded to individual circumstances; they varied over time and from one locality to another with conditions of production nd with political and social leverage enjoyed by different parties to negotiations. 1 The reference point for multiple settlements and particularistic rulings was the Confucian understanding of domestic order that formed the legitimating idiom of imperial government. It was rooted in the shared context of pre-industrial society where food shortages were a main cause of social unrest, while the maintenance of social harmony presupposed the continuity of agricultural production. Perdue refers to the ideal of Qing administration as being one of independent peasants, each self-sufficient in his plot and able to pay taxes in cash to the state. 2 The social reality of the countryside was, however, much more complicated. Multiple layers of use claims prevailed over a single plot, including those of "owners" or holders of sub-soil rights who paid taxes to the imperial government and tenants or holders of top-soil rights who paid rent to "owners." Nevertheless, state policy remained committed to the continuity of agricultural production by peasant cultivators either as tenants or "owners," and to the maintenance of social harmony. To this end, the central government instituted in the eighteenth century, a statewide civilian provisioning network that included an highly developed granary system; 3 government measures promoted security of tenure, sought to regulate land markets and return refugees to their lands. 4 Similarly, in the early Ottoman Empire, ruler's justice presupposed the perpetuation of the subsistence production of peasant households which provided the rural as well as the urban populations with foodstuffs. 5 While state-wide famine relief was practiced, Ottoman subsistence management emphasized regulations that controlled the movement of foodstuffs, as well as raw materials; the aim was to ensure local provisioning through the formation of regional economies. Moreover, to ensure the continuity of food production, regulations restricted the alienability or divisibility of the subsistence 1

Peter Perdue, "Constructing Property." Peter Perdue, "Constructing Property." ^Pierre-Etienne Will, R. Bin Wong, James Z. Lee, Nourish the People: Civilian Granaries and Food Redistribution in Qing China, 1650-1850 (Ann Arbor, 1991). 4 State policy was also instrumental in empowering, alternatively, the different groups with claims over rents and land use in their struggles against one another and, at times, against the central government when the latter sought, in the eighteenth cenutry, to simplify the multiple claims to use or permanent tenancy and to rationalize its taxation claims. See Melissa Macauley, "A World Made Simple: Law and Property in the Ottoman and Qing Empires," in this volume. "'For a lengthy discussion of the moral economy of the Ottoman state, see Huri islamoglu-Inan, State and Peasant in the Ottoman Empire (Leiden, 1994). 2

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holdings, limited the freedom of movement of cultivators and regulated fallow practices. State rulings included in provincial regulations, as well as in edicts by the ruler responding to individual complaints, sought to protect subsistence producers from extortion by holders of revenue grants. To this end, these rulings delineated the use rights of producers, as well as their obligations to different groups of revenue claimants. These obligations included specifications of the form in which dues were paid (in kind, in labor, or in money), the rates at which they were paid, and exemptions from payments in return for services rendered. Regulations varied from one locality to another, depending on the conditions of production and on the political or military status of cultivators; they represented a series of settlements negotiated between the cultivators and the extractors of their surpluses over long periods of time. Finally, the different rulings and contracts that regulated actual land use represented multi-layered, shared claims that were negotiated over land use, including webs of grazing and planting rights on common lands, as well as on individual plots. In brief, the pattern of negotiated settlements that characterized the orderings of social relations in the early modern state environments of the Ottoman and Qing Empires, suggests an understanding of statecraft premised on a reconciliation of particularisms, of localisms. This understanding departs from Scott's view, which situates negotiative activity, politics, in the society and out of the reach of the pre-modern state. On this basis, Scott makes the pre-modern state absolutely ineffectual in terms of its ability to subjugate society to its control. But if one asks what the state was able to do in a given context of power relations, and what kinds of orderings of property relations were possible, one sees that the boundaries of politics are those of the terrain of power relations, within which the central authority sought order through a multitude of particularistic negotiations, so as to achieve a measure of social harmony. In the nineteenth century, both the Ottoman and the Qing imperial governments were confronted with challenges of domestic rebellion and of European imperialistic penetration. The Qing government proved to be more successful in meeting these challenges and was able to maintain its territorial integrity, while the Ottoman government lost significant territories both to rebellion and in foreign wars. Wong argues that unlike the developments in Western Europe and, we would add, in the Ottoman Empire, the concerns for mobilizing resources and men to meet military and political challenges did not lead to a centralization of power in a modern bureaucracy. Instead, for Wong, modern state formation in Qing China was characterized by an expansion of local government capacities, by a more formal involvement of local elites in

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local affairs, and by a blurring of the distinction between officials and elites, so that elites were employed in the staffing of government bureaus. Modern state formation in this sense emphasized popular mobilization and social control, and was part of an attempt to implement a Confucian agenda for domestic order. 1 In this connection, Wong points to imperial government's enlisting of the cooperation of local elites, especially for addressing social welfare concerns and most centrally that of famine relief. He argues that in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century, the Qing did not formulate a new agenda of rule and remained committed to the Confucian agenda. This should not, however, suggest a continuity in terms of societal dynamics. One could perhaps talk about an attempt to recast the Confucian agenda in a new context of power relations in which localities dominated. Wong points to the diminished capacities of the central government in addressing social welfare concerns in the nineteenth century when compared to eighteenth century. He also mentions the resistance of local gentries to the strong official control directed towards extracting revenue and men. The outcome appears to have been a shift in the balance of power and a re-location of the state-building initiative in the localities with the development of provincial military units and consultative gentry assemblies. The latter, in the late nineteenth century, became sites for politics where the claims of the central government on the provincial gentries, in the form of revenues, and of cooperation in the management of subsistance (which involved provisioning grains during times of famine) were variously met, resisted, evaded, or negotiated. This localization of politics as well as the military led to an undermining of the capacity of the central state to rule and to the declaration of independence by provincial governments in 1911. By contrast, in the Ottoman Empire the shift to modern state formation meant a radical shift in the balance of power to the central government, consisting of the central army and the bureaucracy. This new arrangement undermined the distributionist-accommodative mode of imperial integration premised on the negotiation of diverse claims over resources. In the nineteenth century, confronted by domestic rebellion in Egypt and the Balkans and by wars with Russia, the Ottoman central government sought to appropriate the tax revenues that had formerly accrued to military commanders, members of the religious establishments, and tax-farmers. This involved a dissociation of state power from the networks of negotiated settlements with divergent interests and focusing it instead on the central bureaucracy and the army. Statecraft no longer sought to accommodate but to subjugate through coercive means which included the use of the central armies, as is evidenced in the case ' Wong, China Transformed.

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of the abolition of the janissary corps. 1 Statecraft also sought to subjugate through an ordering of social relations by means of administrative rules and procedures that cast these relations in general and universal terms. This meant that rules that were no longer summations of negotiations between the ruler and the different groups or individuals; they did not impart privilege and impose obligations on particular individuals or groups. One such privilege had been exemption from state taxes; removal of that privilege meant the subjection of the different tax-farmers and of religious institutions to the general rule that required the payment of state taxes by all subjects. This implied a much more radical constitution of social reality through administrative practice than was implied in the earlier state environment with its legitimation of concerns focusing on distribution and maintenance of social harmony. Conquest had previously been the primary means of expanding revenue, but the limits of Ottoman territorial expansion were reached in the second half of the eighteenth century. If many European states faced a similar limitation (e.g. after the treaty of Westphalia in 1648), they compensated for it by colonial ventures and the building of merchant empires. At the same time, both the Ottoman and European states resorted to intensive modes of revenue-raising. This implied a coupling of the revenue concern with that of increasing the productive capacity of the population, of land, of industry. 2 That is, the central authority would not simply content itself by appropriating what was previously distributed, it also sought to create further wealth to be taxed. In the nineteenth century, this consciousness of the 'economy' on the part of the Ottoman government is revealed in the kinds of precise information about productivity levels and supply and demand for different products that the central government demanded from the officals who were charged with preparing surveys of landed property. 3 In Qing China, territorial conquests in central Asia during the eighteenth century demonstrate a similar concern to increase the revenues of the imperial government, as do the attempts during this period to reduce the number of claimants to agrarian surpluses. Moreover, in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Qing China attempted to improve its productive capacity, even though existing power configurations did not allow for the 1 Janissaries, who were the former infantry corps, were subsequently closely affiliated with urban craft guilds and constituted an important force in urban society. On measures in the nineteenth century, by the Ottoman government, to protect and to render the population more productive, see Sel§uk Dursun, Population Policies of the Ottoman State in the Tanzimat Era: 1840-1870 (M.A. thesis, Sabanci University, March 2001). On the population politics of the modern, see Michel Foucault, "On Governmentality" in The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, ed. Gordon Burchell, et al. (Hemel Hamstead, 1991). 3 See below the next section. The Ottoman interest in political economy is demonstrated by the translation in 1852 of Jean Baptiste Say's Economie politique, one of the most popular political economy texts of the nineteenth century. 2

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crystallization of the central bureaucracy or for general and universal practices of ordering social reality to promote economic growth. Instead, the imperial state sought to achieve this objective through the negotiative environment of consultative provincial assemblies. 1 The imperative for a radically new constitution of reality resulted in a shift in the self-definition or legitimation of central authority. It was no longer a question of the ruler's ability to maintain social peace through distributive measures but rather of the efficacy of its administration and its ability to deliver in material terms to its subjects, that is, to ensure the "greatest happiness of greatest number." Efficacy in this sense was gauged by the government's ability to provide for social welfare (which included maintaining an acceptable level of subsistence) as well as measures to improve productive capacity. In the earlier period, the local groups accommodated in particularistic settlements were expected to monitor rulings designed to maintain the level of subsistence, including those relating to the security of land tenure. With the focusing of power at the center, famine relief became the responsibility of the central government. The Qing attempt in the eighteenth century to concentrate power and revenues at the center through the introduction of individual ownership coincided with the introduction of the granary system. When such centralization failed, the central government enlisted the assistance of local gentries in famine relief. In the Ottoman Empire a granary system was introduced in the late eighteenth century. It also coincided with the moment when the central government was seeking to reduce the power of tax-farmers who previously ran the granaries. 2 Similarly, in the early period, other social welfare provisions such as health, education, and municipal services in cities, were the responsibility of religious f o u n d a t i o n s . 3 When the central bureaucracy sought to eliminate the foundations and lay claim over the resources they controlled, the provisioning of the welfare services too develved on the central bureaucracy. In the nineteenth century Ottoman Empire, did this reconstitution of social reality through administrative practices of the central government, with the shift from a distributive ethos to one of state welfarism and productionism, spell erasure of the local? No, it signaled rather its reconstitution and insertion into the new state environment. This is demonstrated in the next section in relation to compiling cadastral surveys of the land and formation of local commissions to undertake this task. ' Wong. China Transformed. ^Tevfifc Guran, 19. ytizyil Osmanli Tarimi (Ottoman Agriculture in the Nineteenth Century) (Istanbul, 1998). 3 Nadir Ôzbek, "Osmanli Imparatorlugunda 'Sosyal' Yardim Uygulamalari, 1839-1918," Toplum ve Bilim, Ki§ (1999/2000).

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For the modern Ottoman state, the administering of property entalied constitution of individual freeholds. This meant the elimination of the multiple claims over use and tax revenues from land and established the owner as the sole claimant to title and use. It also established the central state as the sole claimant to tax revenues. In fact, constitution of individual freeholds was closely related to the interrelated freatures of modernity in the nineteenth ccnutry, namely those of state fiscality and economic growth. In the productivist perspective of the nineteenth century, as Bentham succinctly put it, property was entirely the work of law (by which he meant administration), it was nothing but a guarantee, provided by the law, for individual expectations to derive certain advantages from a thing which a person was said to possess. In this sense, individual property created in law provided the individual with a security and freedom that facilitated his decisions regarding production. It was instrumental in fulfilling an individual's expectations in realizing his or her welfare. To the utilitarian mind, the objective of government in legislative activity ought to be the "greatest possible happiness of the community." 1 In the nineteenth century environment, where concerns for market expansion (arguably conceived in terms of maximization of an individual's expectations) overlapped with concerns for increasing state revenues, it was evident to political economists and statesmen alike that the burden for creating the new economic order fell upon central administrations. 2 The story of how central administration constituted individual ownership is thus the story of the constitution of the Modern Ottoman state.

Administering

Property

Individual ownership or private property is a fetishized institution. Institutional historians, most notably Douglas C. North 3 and Eric L. J o n e s , 4 attribute the development of private property in western Europe to attempts on the part of commercial groups to reduce transaction costs incumbent on multiple and overlapping claims that characterized property rights in pre1 Jeremy Bentham: The Theory of Legislation, ed. C.K. Ogden (London, 1931), 111-113. Here Bentham presented am impassioned critique of the eighteenth-century formulations of Natural Law theory, which posed property as natural (see Blackstone). According to Bentham, "property and law are born together, and die together. Before laws were made, the was no property; take away laws and property ceases" (113). Then Bentham proceeds to link property to security: "law creates whatever is to be secured." In this sense, Bentham established a direct link between property and law as governance. 2 R.K. Kanth, Political Economy of Laissez-Faire. Economics and Ideology in the Ricardian Era (Totowa, 1986), 132-39; Ottoman translations on the science of administration. ^Douglas, C. North, Structure and Change in Economic History (New York, 1981). 4 Eric L. Jones, Growth Recurring: Economic Change in World History (Oxford, 1988).

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industrial society. The result was expansion of commercial activity and economic growth associated with capitalistic economic development. Conversely, these authors attribute what they perceived to be the "economic stagnation" or absence of capitalism in China and the Ottoman empire to state ownership of land in these societies, which they believe to have prevented the development of private ownership and stifled individual intiative in economic activity. Without going into how this formulation is entangled with the notion of Oriental Despotism, and leaving aside also the debatable nature of the assumed correlation between economic growth and private ownership, 1 1 would simply like to point to the fact that this economistic perspective fails to reveal the power relations that underlay the development of individual ownership in both European and non-European areas. Central to these power relations was the development of centralized states which sought to lay exclusive claims to tax revenues from land. 2

A. Law and the Administration of Property In early modern European and non-European contexts, in keeping with the distributionist-accommodations objectives of government, property rights on land were understood as a bundle of claims that largely corresponded to the multiple settlements negotiated among different groups. 3 These setlements were cast in terms of rules that were variously formulated by the state or the ruler, formulated in customary practice that was given the seal of approval or incorporated by the ruler, by court rulings. One common feature of these formulations was that they sought to accommodate the existing multiple interests and were not exclusive. In the Ottoman Empire, definitions of property rights on land consisted of a bundle of rights representing claims to land use, revenues and title. The title to land (rakaba) generally lay with the ruler (or the treasury). This did not represent a title of ownership in the modern sense but ability on the part of ruler, or the central government, to distribute rights to revenues from land and in so doing, to negotiate with different groups or individuals the conditions of their allegiance. State "ownership" also served to define the Research undertaken in the 1980s amidst the Thatcherite hysteria for privatization has shown that it was the existence of a competitive environment and not private ownership that was determinant of economic efficiency or growth. Graham Thompson, Economy and Society; on this issue in relation to patent law, see Peter Perdue, "Constructing Property." 2 For a deelopment of this idea at length, see Huri islamoglu, "Property as Contested Domain: A Re-Evaluation of the Land Code of 1858" in New Perspectives on Property and Land in the Middle East. o Henry J.S. Maine, Ancient Law (London, 1920).

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boundaries of the heritable use rights that cultivators had over their plots; by protecting the rights of cultivators, the state sought to ensure continuity of agricultural production and, therefore, production for subsistence and for tax payment. State rulings introduced in provincial regulations and reiterated in numerous edicts also imposed limits on the divisibility and alienability of use right. They also restricted the cultivation of non-grain crops, and the timeperiods for which lands could be left uncultivated or left fallow. Given that most taxes were paid in kind, rulings emphasized the primacy of grain production on state lands. 1 These claims were continously negotiated and redefined. For instance, depending on the nature of the settlement negotiated among the parties, the rights to revenues could rest with a freeholder (miilk), a pious endowment, or with the treasury, while the title rested with the state or the treasury. This should not suggest that the claim of the state to title was an absolute one: especially in areas where there was strong resistance to the Ottoman conquest, the Ottoman ruler conceded the right to title to former ruling groups. These groups included members of the religious establishment in the Muslim region o Anatolia. The rights to revenues from such lands could be assigned to state officials, and state regulations relating to subsistence production applied also to these lands. Similarly, the different categories, which defined entitlements to revenues and to land use, did not correspond to an understanding of ownership in the modern sense. I have already discussed what state "ownership" stood for within the confines of the pre-nineteenth century Ottoman administrative universe. Nor did miilk (freehold) signify private ownership; instead it was a category of entitlement to tax revenues which the grantee held by virtue of an official document of entitlement from the ruler, as was the case with other types of revenue grants. The holder of the mtilk grant could alienate his rights to revenues, transfer it to his heirs, or convert it into mortmain property or vakif. Trees or buildings on agricultural holdings, as well as other produce, were also classified as freehold which, in this case, referred to entitlement to the fruits of land. These claims were differentiated from rniri claims, or the "ownership" claims of the central treasury, over the soil where the trees and buildings stood and on grain fields. The cultivators of miri lands had inheritable usufruct rights which they held by a deed issued for a fee by the local administrator cum revenue holder. ' An important point of difference between the Ottoman and Qing imperial contexts would be that in Qing China taxes were paid in cash, while in the Ottoman Empire they were mostly paid in kind. This factor may explain the more intimate involvement of cultivators with the market in the Qing context, while in the Ottoman case it was the tax collectors and the holders of revenue grants who were involved in market transactions. For the latter argument, see Huri IslamogluInan, State and Peasant in the Ottoman Empire.

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What differentiated the bundle of claims that constituted property rights on land in Qing China from that in the Ottoman Empire was that in the Qing case the bundle did not include multiple claims over tax revenues. Instead it consisted of the singular taxation claim of the imperial government from the gentry or holders of sub-soil rights, the rent claims of the gentry, the usufruct claims of the holders of top-soil rights or tenants, and the use claims of subcontractors from holders of topsoil rights. The first of these claims would be interpreted as a grand rent paid to the imperial government in view of the loosely defined ownership of all lands by the emperor. These multiple claims were continually renegotiated and were formulated in a plethora of contractual settlements issued by the courts, carrying the official stamp of approval of the imperial government. 1 At the same time, these claims were formulated in official rulings of the emperor which, as was the case in the Ottoman Empire, represented an appropriation or accommodation of the exising local understandings of property rights to the vocabulary of official rule. On the other hand, what imparted a unity to the maze of negotiated settlements was the sense of Confucian domestic order and its central premise, the concern for maintaining the security of tenure of peasant cultivators. It was the idiom of rule that defined the limits of what was possible and what was not in terms of property settlements on land. To it the imperial state owed its ability to rule and the gentry its ability to extract rent. Melissa Macauley has shown that in the eighteenth century the attempt of the Qing imperial government to re-define the top-soil rights of the gentry as individual ownership rights, to the exclusion of the multiple claims of permanent tenancies, failed 2 . The proposed change would also have eliminated the conditional sales that resulted in confusion about who at a given point was the "owner" and thus responsible for tax payment. Through this measure of simplification, the central state had sought to increase its revenues, or realize its administrative ideal of creating the individual holders paying taxes in cash to the state. In met resistance from holders of top-soil rights, as well as the gentry, for whom conditional sales provided escape-valves from tax responsibilities. On the other hand, the inability of the imperial government to institute individual ownership pointed to the limits of its action in a given context of power relations with given vocabularies of legitimation. The Ottoman central government did succeed in introducing individual ownership, but it did so following bitter struggles waged especially against the different groups with claims over tax revenues from land; at the same time it sought to mediate, through particularistic concessions, the claims of ' M. Macauley, "A World Made Simple; "Perdue, "Constructing Property." ^M. Macauley, "A World Made Simple".

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subsistance producers who were threatened by the loss of their heritable usufruct rights. This meant a recasting of power mappings that constituted the state context and an idiom of rule that increasingly departed from the understanding of the distributive justice of the ruler and focused on the ability of administrative procedure to mediate the different property claims. Though the nineteenth century is aptly described, here too, as the "age of property,"1 the Ottoman environment did not fall prey to the religion of property that raged especially in post-revolutionary France, a region Ottoman administrators watched closely. This was not due to any innate predisposition against private property stemming from state ownership in land or the lethal effects of state intervention in economic activity. Quite simply, the Ottoman administrators, in line with the conservative governments in Europe and central Europe, watched with a great deal of apprehension the disputes over the introduction of individual/absolute ownership that raged in the French countryside. Ottoman territories themselves were not entirely free of such disturbances. The liberal guarantees included in the reform edict of 1839 had encouraged the provincial tax-farmers and notables to register their tax-farms (or revenue grants) as their private property. The decisions of provincial assemblies, which the reforms introduced, as well as those by judges in provincial courts of law 2 served to buttress this new form of property. For instance, a decision of the Vidin Council taken soon after the issuing of the 1839 edict and referring to the abolition of corvee impositions, stated that "no person could cultivate or take over another's land without payment; he will have to pay by some other means [than corvée]." In the course of deliberations of the council, a single rent was established by which the council acknowledged the abolition of corvee, while at the same time it sought to establish the tenancy status of cultivators on lands owned by tax-farmers.3 In 1851 when the cultivators ("tenants, " share-croppers) in Vidin broke into open rebellion, they were voicing their claims vis-à-vis the tax farmers by demanding title deeds on land; in other words, the cultivators had learned to employ the vocabularly of private ownership. The rupture in the old order of property resulted in widespread rebellions throughout the Balkans, in Bulgaria, Bosnia, and Albania. In each case, the rebels were cultivators who also staked their claims in terms of 'fc. M. Forster, Howard's End (New York, reprint 1997). T h e practice of issuing certificates (hüccets) by judges in establishing property rights was a common one. In the earlier period this practice was used to established the "freehold" (mülk) claims over revenue. Such freehold claims included the ability to exchange freely and to bequeath to heirs rights to revenues from land and other taxable resources. In the nineteenth century, it appears that the practice of establishing property rights through issuing court certificates was a means of establishing "absolute" ownership claims. Inalcik, Tanzimat ve Bulgar Meselesi (Ankara, 1943), 95. 2

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individual ownership rights. The central government, attempting to contain rebellion, found itself in the position of mediating the claims of different groups f o r absolute ownership. The capacity to do so increasingly differentiated the central state from other actors in the process of negotiating property claims. This was in effect the historical "moment" when the state took over the constituting of individual ownership through its administrative practices, as none of the traditional propertied interests could claim to do. 1 This "moment" of property was inseparable from attempts on the part of the central bureaucracy to entrench itself at the expense of other groups within the society. One important way of accomplishing this was to limit revenue claims to those of the central state, while imposing the obligation to pay taxes on all, including members of the ruling bloc. Other claims to revenue were thus eliminated, along with privileges in the form of tax exemptions. The drafting of the Land Code of 1858 was a major political success. It attested to the Ottoman central government's ability to establish its claim to mediate among different interests, so as to set forth a general code that henceforth provided the reference point in all property matters. By contrast, the French state, throughout the nineteenth century, failed to pass a rural code in the face of intransigence on the part of propertied classes who saw in such a code an instrument to strengthen their own hand. 2 On the other hand, the text of the Ottoman Land Code was highly negotiated, testifying to the problems encountered in codifying property relations. Yet the Code did include a definition of individual ownership that supplanted earlier definitions of multiple claims to revenues and to land use. It has been argued that the Code sought to establish the ownership rights of cultivators at the expense of the tax farmers who came to control large tracts of land, thus allowing the central state to maintain its justice-dispensing f u n c t i o n s . 3 But the code did not explicitly favor any one group; while it included some measures to restrict alienation of land, it included others that facilitated exchange. In the Balkans where land was controlled by local notables who were also tax-farmers, and land was worked under sharecropping ' I have already referred to the role of the decisions of provincial councils in the Balkans in the formulation of individual ownership rights. Ottoman historians know very little about the decisions of kadi courts on property matters in the nineteenth century; after all there is no reason why the kadis in the provinces would not support the property claims of tax farmers and other Ottoman officials, as did the English magistrates and the French jurists with their close affiliations to local propertied groups. For the English case, see Arthur, Without the Law, for the French, Donal R. Kelley and Bonnie G. Smith, "What was Property? Legal Dimensions of the Social Question in France (1789-1848)," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 128/3 (1984). 2

Serge Aberdam, Aux Origines du Code Rural, 1879-1900: Un Siècle de Débat (Paris, 1982). Ô . L. Barkan, "Turk Toprak Hukuku Tarihinde Tanzimat ve 1274 (1858) Tarihli Arazi Kanunnamesi" in Tanzimat I (Istanbul, 1940). 3

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arrangements, the Code became an instrument by which the notables established absolute ownership rights to the detriment of the use-rights of the cultivator-sharecroppers. In this case, the central government, needing the political and military support in the face of local resistance and nationalist aspirations, backed the ownership claims of the notables. The important point is that the Land Code established the central state as the agency for the constitution of individual ownership rights. It was on state lands that the state's unique claim to tax revenue was established; it was also on state lands that individual ownership rights were instituted. This implied a change in the meaning of miri or state lands. Prior to the Code, state ownership enabled the ruler to exercise his distributionist justice by assigning revenues to different groups to obtain their political allegiance and to ensure subsistance production. Under the Code, state ownership took on a character close to absolute ownership, which could be transferred to individuals by means of sales contracts and land registration. But when the central government attempted to extend these practices as well as the practice of lease contracts to non-state lands, it encountered resistence from the former ruling groups.

B. Land Surveys and the Administration of Property Law was constitutive of individual ownership in the sense of providing an overall legal framework for social relations. But the actual constitution of individual ownership took place through registration and through surveys. The latter represented the compilation of statistical information on land, ownership, and production. From the perspective of the fiscal or administrative goals of the central government, the most desirable situation was to attach every parcel of taxable property to an individual responsible for paying tax on it. To this end, the Ottoman government encouraged registration of property in the name of individuals, who were designated as individual heads of households. This practive began as early as 1847. The surveys, which were undertaken in 1859/60, aimed at ensuring the registration of all lands and properties. In this sense, these surveys approximated to the character of the modern cadastral survey. Most significantly, the constitution of individual ownership meant a change in the categories in terms of which land and resources were recorded. Land surveys had been a central practice of Ottoman state-craft from the early days of the empire. In keeping with the distributive logic of state power in the earlier period, the early tax surveys represented an administrative universe

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divided between the military class, or the recipients of revenue grants and taxpayers. The military class appeared in the registers as holders of power positions; they were not persons but recipients of taxes. Since they were exempt from taxes, neither their names or their numbers were recorded. Taxpayers, on the other hand, were recorded by their names; the amount of produce collected as taxes was also entered into the registers. Land was recorded as a category of taxation, in relation to a tax that fell on the person as well as the land (resm-i gift). The unit of measurement was the gift or the area ploughed by a pair of oxen. Qift, however, varied with climatic and ecological conditions. Its plasticity, in turn, made it amenable in an environment in which payment of taxes was subject to negotiative process. Earlier survey were blind to those aspect of social reality that did not fall within the purview of taxation. They were signifiers of shifting power positions, transcribed in the continual distribution and redistribution of resources among different groups in a given locality. Though the surveys did give information about population, production, and land, their main purpose was the mapping of power relations in a given region. At the same time, they bore witness to the recognition of the authority of the ruler, since revenue entitlements were described in the given format of the register and carried out by means of procedures determined by the center. The much-acclaimed tax registers (tahrirs) constituted an important vocabulary through which the Ottoman understanding of distributive justice was articulated. The nineteenth-century surveys represented a radically different state environment. There was no question in the minds of the nineteenth-century Ottoman bureaucracts that access to information on population, income, wealth and property was a pre-requisite for realizing the modern aspiration of state taxation and economic growth. To this end, beginning in the 1830s, the central government undertook the preparation of statistics including population censuses, income registers and cadastral surveys. Clearly, the central government put a great deal of effort into the preparation of these surveys. These preparations included pilot projects in selected districts and the work of constituting local commissions to carry out the collecting and recording of information. That this was an urgent matter for the central government it attested by the fact that the preparation of eighteen thousand income registers (temettuat defterleri) compiled between 1840-1845, 1

At present researchers have full access only to these registers. Two other surveys are dated 1859/60 and 1881-94. Scholars have no access to these. The extremely detailed instructions regarding the preparation of the the 1859/60 surveys suggest that this was the most comprehensive of the nineteenth century land and property surveys. For a discussion of nineteenth century Ottoman surveys see Safa Saraçoglu, "A Snapshot of the County of Kafirni through the Surveys of 1845 (MA Thesis, Middle East Technical University, 1998), and comparisons to French surveys of the same period, see Alp Yiieel Kaya, Les enquêtes agricoles de la France et de l'Empire Ottoman au milieu du XIXe Siècle (Unpublished Mémoire du DEA, Paris: EHESS, 1999). Pioneering work on temettuat or income surveys has been done by Tevfik Giiran, 19. YUzyilda Osmanli Tarim Ekonomisi.

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covering all imperial territories outside of Arab lands, was completed within the surprisingly short time. There also appears to have been a continuous effort on the part of the central government to explain and to justify why new assessments of wealth and income were necessary. To this end, statements by government officials stressed the need for assessments on the grounds of complaints about heavy tax burdens and of inequitable distribution of taxes among different regions and individuals. Tax evasions on the part of members of former ruling groups were considered a primary cause of inequity in the distribution of tax. 1 All such efforts notwithstanding, information recorded in income registers was not used in the assessment of taxes. That this information was at times glaringly defective was probably not lost on central government officials. 2 The problem was that individual heads of households had been less than candid in declarations of their wealth. The central government was well aware that muhtars (village headmen) and imams (prayer leaders), who received and recorded the declarations of wealth from these individuals, tended to overlook the inaccurate statements. These deficiencies were also revealing of power configurations on the level of the village, a situation the central government set out to remedy in the preparation of the subsequent surveys. Surveys were not simply repositories of information. Systems of classification and the categories included in the income register surveys, compiled fourteen years before the Land Code of 1858, were pivotal to the constitution of individual ownership. First, the income registers did not classify information on different regions on the basis of holders of revenue grants, as was the case with the earlier registers. Rather, these registers rested on the assumption that the central state was the primary recipient of taxes and the members of the former military class were themselves subject to state taxes, together with ordinary households. Instead of separate surveys devoted to proceeds from different types of revenue grants (timar defterleri, mukataa defterleri, vakif defterleri), income registers classified information on the basis of listings of households. In the old surveys, the unit of recording had been the village whose revenues were apportioned amongst different revenue

' "Ta^ra Miilkiyc ve Mai Memurlarina verilen Talimatdir," 15 Cumade'l-ula 1273/11 January 1857, Dustur, I. Tertib, vol. 1, 2nd ed„ (Istanbul, c. 1863), 555-58, Article 2 on the failure of notables to register their sons in order to exempt them from military service and to pay less tax. A number of decrees issued by the central state prior to or at the time of the compilation of the 1844 survey, as well as accounts referring to a failed attempt at compiling a survey in 1838, point to complaints about the heavy tax burdens on ordinary people and to situations where notables did not pay taxes. 2 In a number of cases, the tithe payments were recorded as nearly 45% of the total income from a cultivated area.

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grant-holders; payment of taxes was the collective liability of the village and taxes (other than the tithe) were equally distributed amongst households on the basis of negotiated arrangements within the village. In the 1840-1845 income registers and the subsequent property and income surveys of the nineteenth century, the unit of recording was the individual household, which was taxed on the basis of its income. The household was the site of individual ownership and in the process it was redefined as an "atomized" unit with responsibilities for payment of taxes and for economic activity. The household became the pivotal point around which administration could operate. The income registers included detailed inventories of lands and animals in the possession of the household, and at the end of each entry there was an estimate of household income. It must be emphasized that not all of what was recorded was taxed. Entries in income registers also listed items that were not taxed. In this sense, these registers were not simply tax books, they were constitutive of the household as an economic unit. For one thing, the registers record all land in the possession of the household, not just those lands that were cultivated and taxed. This suggests that land was no longer being treated simply as a tax category. It was also an asset that yielded income to its possessor. Income registers recorded lands that were cultivated, left fallow, or leased out. They also recorded income from land leases and the cash income accruing from the land for the year before registration as well as the year of registration. The abstraction of land from the context of a negotiative-accommodative system of taxation becomes manifest in the adoption in the income registers of the doniim, an aerial unit of measurement, instead of the gift, a unit of measurement characterized by its plasticity and therefore by its negotiability. This was, no doubt, a step in the direction of standardization and uniformization of the measurement unit, which was integral to the central government's effort to simplify property relations on land. The introduction of the aerial unit of measurement was important from the point of objectification of land as a "thing, " as the object of ownership and the object of exchange in the market. The dual objectives of modern administration, economic growth and state fiscality, coincided in administrative practices directed towards augmenting the productive capacity of land and other resources that were expected to result in increased state revenues. The Instructions to Property Officials in the Provinces issued in January 1857, 1 are indicative of the interest the central government had in detailed information on land and other productive resources. These instructions include lists of questions the property 1 "Ta§ra Miilkiye ve Mai Memurlarina verilen Talimatdir," 15 Cumade'l-ula 1273/11 January 1857, Düstur, I. Tertib, vol. 1, 2nd ed. (Istanbul, c. 1863), 555-58.

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officials in the provinces were expected to seek answers for and report on to district officials and governors. Property officials were also expected to enter these results in registers and send them to Istanbul each year in February or at the latest in early March. 1 At the outset o the instructions it is stated that, "the generosity of the ruler dictated that he rendered services for the progress of agriculture which would benefit the country and his subjects." To this end, exact information was to be obtained for all villages in all districts and subdistricts. These included measurements of areas of cultivated fields and figures on seed/yield ratios at a given harvest time. 2 For indvidual farms, it meant informaton on the area of each farm in aerial units of measurement, the area sown and the amount of seed cultivated, and the are of land left fallow; the the yields from vineyards and grape presses, as well as the amount of grape produce consumed in the locality of the farm, and the amount exported. Assessment of the income from land and its resources, inseparable from an interest in the productive capacity of land, was a primary objective of these statistics. The Instructions to Property Officials, in the spirit of market management that was characteristic of the nineteenth-century political economy, asked for comparative figures. Thus, the property officials were to note the yearly variations in production or yields and in prices. The central government wanted to know how the changes in the supply of a given good were reflected in its price, and what factors affected its supply, or production. Any factor that caused a fall in production was to be counteracted by administrative intervention. To this end, property officials were instructed to enlist the assistance of agricultural officials to combat diseases that affected the vineyards causing a fall in state revenues and harming the owners of vineyard. The latter referred to a domain outside of taxation, to that of economic activity of the individual household.

1 "Tagra Miilkiye ve Mai Memurlanna verilen Talimatdir," 15 Cumade'l-ula 1273/11 January 1857, Diistur, I. Tertib, vol. 1, 2nd ed., (Istanbul, c. 1863), 555-58, Article 5 on corrupt practices in the process of registration. Changes in production were to be reported every month to the new Treasury by property officials or miilkiye memurlan. 2 The catalogues of the Finance Ministry (Maliye Nezareti Defteri no. 797, 1272/1856) include a register of cultivated lands for villages in the kaza of f a n , located in the province (sancak) of Biga. This register, in contrast to those of earlier years, contains information on the area of cultivated lands, the geographic location of fields, quantities of seed planted and yields for individual crops for the years 1856 and 1857. The figures given are those of quantities measured in kiles and they are not monetary values. The format of individual entries in the register is as follows: the name of the head of the household is followed by the numbers of animals he owns, the lands he cultivates (which are represented in the measurement units of kita and doniim), the quantity of seeed clutivated, and yields in kite for individual crops. At the end of the records for each village, the quantities of seed and yield for individual crops are totaled. I am grateful to my doctoral student Alp Yucel Kaya for providing me with this information.

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Lastly, the practices of numbering and of classification in numbers registers were very important to the process of individuation of ownership as well as to the exercise of central government controls. The practice of numbering was initiated in the income registers of 1840-1845 by the affixing of numbers to individual households. The Regulation for the Surveying of Property and Population issued in 1866, 1 states that fields, orchards, pasturelands and vinayerds should be recorded in property listings in terms of general and particular numbers. 2 The 1866 register for which the above instructions were issued are not available to researchers. Thus, it is not clear what was meant by general and particular numbers assigned to land or property. But the procedure of numbering properties and individual households made possible an administrative crystallization of the individual householder as holder of property, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, of land or property as a "thing" to be owned or exchanged and to be taxed on its income. Moreover, the recording of land in registers presupposed that document of ownership, title deeds (tapu), were shown to the scribes in charge of recording; in the event that these were not available, they were to be renewed in the courts. These documents were to include the general number of property or land as it was recorded in the property register, together with descriptions of its orders and of its shape. 3 These descriptions of the registration practices with multiple registers correlated with each other through systems of numbering and of tables, represent an ordering of landed property laid before the eyes of the central administrators and made accessible for their intervention. As such, they represent a snapshot of the Ottoman administrative universe of the nineteenth century. The saga of preparing surveys in the nineteenth century was one of a continual struggle between the central government and the local notables. Hoping to evade state taxes and conscription, the notables, who more often than not acted in collaboration with local populations, resisted the demands of the central state to provide information about the wealth and population of their households. State measures in the face of such resistance took the form of sanctions and severe punishment, including three years of prison in irons; 4 ' "Tahrir-i Niifus ve Emlaka Dair Nizamnamedir," 14 Cumade'l-ula 1277/28 November 1860 Dttstur, I. Tertib, vol. 1, 2nd ed„ (Istanbul, c. 1863), 889-902. ^Changes in the status of property due to sales and leases as well as births and deaths were entered in daily registers (yevmiye defterleri) and were subsequently recorded in the main registers where each household was assigned a number. This may suggest a preliminary step in the direction of proper cadastral surveys. 3 Tahrir-i Emlak ve Niifus Nizamnamesi, Fasl-i Evvel, Article 12: "defter-i emlakde muharrer umumi rakamlar ve e§kal ve akyise ve hudud tarifve tahrir olunacak." 4 Tahrir-i Emlak ve Niifus Nizamnamesi, Fasl-i sani; in the process of recording the population, persons failing to present birth certificates were not to be allowed access to courts and their travel certificates were to be revoked.

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there were also exhortations to officials to persuade the population to give honest disclosures of their wealth and property. 1 The central government still sought to mediate the interests of different groups, but now by integrating local elites into the new administrative framework for the collection and recording of land and population statistics. The Regulation for the Survey of Property and Population of 1866 stipulated the appointment of commissions at the different levels of provincial administration, ranging from the eyalet (district) to the village. These commissions included assessors who were to be chosen from among the respected persons in individual localities. At the village level, a commission of six members was to be appointed for a group of six villages, with each village providing one member. Commissions were expected to meet weekly in the summer and biweekly in the winter on a given day of the week. The decided on the distribution of taxes among the households according to their ability to pay, and were also responsible for reporting to the District Council births and deaths, persons who moved, and buildings constructed without permission. It appears that these commissions (which in all likelihood were to be chosen from among respectable persons in the region) stood above the village administration represented by the muhtar (headman). In the compiling of income registers, the village headmen had played a very important role and had shown poor performance from the point of view of the central government. The Regulation of 1866 stated that village headmen came from lower classes and people from respectable backgrounds deemed it below their dignity to hold this position. For reform and restitution to be executed properly, the Regulation continued, village headmen had to be appointed from among persons who were considered trustworthy, both by the central government and the local population. To this end, the Regulation stipulated that scribes 2 appointed by the central government should dismiss the existing village headmen and appoint new ones from among the trustworthy and respected persons in the village. Whether or not the appointment of new village headmen by the government, or the inclusion of locally respected persons in the Commissions were effective devices in making possible the collection of more accurate information, it is not possible to tell. 3 We do know that despite the flurry of administrative activity in relation to the compilation of property and land registers, the Ottoman state did not '¡Vlesail-i Miihimme, 58/15. T h e grand commission at the provincial centers included 22 scribes who were members of the ilmiye, or scholarly class, four estimate-makers, and one chairperson (reis). (Tahrir-i Emlak ve

2

Niijiis Nizamnamesi, Fasl-i Evvel.) 3

I t is important to note that in the compiling of income surveys, survey officials were initially appointed from the center. In the face of local opposition, this practice was discontinued after 1844.1 am thankful to Professor Tevfik Giiran for this information.

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succeed in executing cadastral maps, which were central to the process of cadastral surveying. Cadastral maps remain the final achievement of the modern state in constituting individual ownership on land. They enabled cutting across the maze of property relations and established administrative controls over the lands, its resources and population. Above all, cadastral maps draw boundaries and leave no ambiguity as to who owns what. James Scott states that cadastral maps "... are designed to make a local situation legible to an outsider." 1 This may explain the remarkable success of cadastral mapping in the colonial contexts of the nineteenth century where the map provided an outsider-state with a "bird's eye view." In the case of the noncolonial Ottoman state, its ability to be an outsider, that is, to abstract itself from the context of power relations within the empire, was far more limited. As a result, the central government conceded to local demand in curbing its practices of registering of wealth and land. It did so because in areas such as the Balkans, the central government heavily relied on the collaboration of the notables to contain social unrest, which in the nineteenth century was increasingly expressed in terms of nationalist aspirations. In the absence of a reserve army of administrators that could be brought in from a colonial homeland, the Ottoman state depended on local notables for instituting the new administrative order, as was seen in the case of forming of commissions for the preparation of surveys. No longer operating in an administrative universe of distributiveaccommodative practices, and lacking the home-country reference point for its actions that colonal states had, the Ottoman state sought justification for its practices in political maneuverings. The outcome was a spate of compromises, and grand undertakings that could not be put into practice, as was the case with the income registers, as well as the numerous amendments to the Land Code in the form of regional regulations. All of these point to resistance to administrative practices that sought to simplify, to clarify, and ultimately to define a new ordering of social relations. Politics triumphed after all without the legitimating vocabulary of distributive justice. Yet, by recording land as individual property, and by registering and numbering land and properties in the names of individual households, the new regime left its imprint on social relations in general and property relations in particular. In the end perhaps, the legitimacy of this regime came to rest on the execution of these bureaucratic practices, on the incessant upward and downward flow of documents. ^Scoti, Seeing Like a State, 45.

9

For successful cadastral mapping in British India in the mid-nineteenth century, see Richard S. Saumarez, "Mapping Landed Property: A Necessary Technology of Imperial Rule?" in Constitution of Property in Comparative Perspective, ed. Islamoglu.

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Conclusion This essay has tried to cut the Gordian knot of questions surrounding modern transformation in two regions that are often characterized as failures or, at best, as outsiders with ambiguous standings in the enchanted realm of modernity. The Ottomans did succeed in introducing individual ownership because they were able to institute the practices of modern statecraft. The Qing were not able to do so, largely because they were unable to create a central bureaucratic state. On the one hand, the creation of a bureaucratic state was not a guarantee for the survival of the Ottoman imperial entity in interestate competition which, in the nineteenth century, included economic development. By contrast, the Qing Empire maintained its integrity without bureaucratic forms of statecraft, and despite the fact that the central government collapsed in the early twientieth century. In this case, non-central forms of modern statecraft, including local consultative agencies, were able to mobilize the military power and perhaps the developmental energy needed for survival in the military and political arena. These contrasts between central state-building and state-building initiative at the regional level notwithstanding, both the Ottoman and Qing contexts witnessed modern transformations. This paper has illustrated modern transformation in the Ottoman environment through the ordering of property relations on land. It has shown that the transformation that occurred was problematic and contingent. Individual ownership was established by law, but was contested vehemently by the former claimants to revenues and by holders of diverse use claims; the institutionalization of the concept of individual property through the drawing of cadastral maps was also resisted. Yet, the legal recognition of individual ownership and the new categories for cadastral surveying radically altered the very terms in which property relations on land were negotiated and perceived. That is, while various land-holding groups seemed to enjoy a continuity of the benefits they derived from land and, in all likelihood, evaded taxation, they did so in the capacity of landowners or tenants. As such, they submitted to the categories of individual ownership and to domination by the central bureaucracy in the form of being subjected to its procedures regarding lease contracts and registration of property. Moreover, while the central bureaucracy might have not been successful in the end of maximizing revenues — a failure that may have contributed to its coming to the brink of financial collapse at the end of the nineteenth century — the processes of modern transformation resulted in dramatic changes in property relations and in the nature of state power, the impact of which was visible both in the organization of the Ottoman agricultural economy and in the nature of

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successor states, especially in the Balkans and in Anatolia. 1 As significantly, modern transformation implied that the very self definition of the state, its idiom of rule, was no longer that of justice premised on the distribution of claims to revenue and land use in order to accommodate different interests with the objective of maintaining social harmony. Instead, the legitimating principle of the Ottoman state in the nineteenth century was its abilitiy to administer effectively and equitable; it dispensed justice not through distribution but through equitable administration of its demands from (most notably taxation demands) and its services to its subjects. It was represented no longer by the just ruler by the generality and uniformity of administrative practice that imparted to the bureaucract the role of mediator. The figure of the bureaucrat came to represent the state, embodied its identity. This was an identity in keeping with the multi-national character of the empire. It aspired to affect an erasure of all national identities. As importantly, not beclouded by the romanticism of nationalism, it was a thoroughly modern (in the Weberian sense) identity. It was perhaps this identity that survived until the 1980s, but has since been undermined by radical changes in the context of power relations rooted in the expansion of market exchange activity, both international and domestic, so that a search in now underway for new self-definition of state environments. This is not very different from the situation in other world regions that, within their own trajectories of modern transformation, seem to be engaged in similar searches.

For a discussion of agricultural economy in the Balkans both prior to and following the Ottoman administration, see Michael Pallarait, The Balkan Economies c. 1800-1914: Evolution Without Development (Cambridge, 1997); for implications of Ottoman ordering of property relations in the Balkan states in the 1940s, see Ômer Liitfi Barkan, "Osmanh Imparatorlugu'nda Çiftçi Simflarin Hukuku Statiisii I" Ùlkii Dergisi, IX 49 (1937): 33-48; "Osmanh Imparatorlugu'nda Çiftçi Simflarin Hukuki Statiisii I" Ulkii Dergisi, IX, 50 (1937): 101-116; "Osmanh Imparatorlugu'nda Çiftçi Simflarin Hukuki Statiisii I" Ulkii Dergisi, IX, 53 (1937): 329-341; "Osmanh imparatorlugu'nda Çiftçi Simflarm Hukuki Statiisii V Ulkii Dergisi, X , 56 (1937): 147-159; "Osmanh Imparatorlugu'nda Çiftçi Simflarm Hukuki Statiisii I" Ulkii Dergisi, X, 58 (1937): 298-302; "Osmanh imparatorlugu'nda Çiftçi Simflarin Hukuki Statiisii I" Ulkii Dergisi, X, 59 (1938): 414-422.

A HISTORY OF THE IDEA OF CIVIL SOCIETY1

Two definitions dominate the history of the idea of civil society. First is a description of civil society as political community (societas civilis) encompassing the entirety of the governed people, ruled and ruler alike (Ellis, 2000). Civil society is coterminous with the state, or the context of power relations ordered through law and institutions, with the objective of ensuring social harmony. Second definition describes civil society as organized society outside of and often in opposition to the state. In this conception civil society is represented in two ways which are interdependent. It is represented as the independent network of relations rooted in interests and holding between individuals. It is also represented as the sphere of societal organizations that are freed from corporate bodies and are based on self-government, equality among members and on the principle of tolerance. The two definitions do not exist in a relationship of progression to each other; the notion of civil society as a domain separate from the state does not represent a more advanced stage in the history of human societies. State viewed as a context of power relations, organized through law and institutions, and embodying an organizational principle, that articulates the shared concerns, has been in the foreground of conceptions, that pose civil society as distinct from the state. These conceptions, historically, correspond to moments of 'break-down' or 'crisis' in the political orderings which characterize a given state environment. They represent the voices of groups or positions, which are excluded from a given context of power relations and its institutional embodiments. They also point to the limits of an institutional environment to politically mediate new interests. With reconstitutions of new state environments, conceptions of civil society as a separate domain give way to definitions of differentiated power positions within political society. The dialectical interplay between conceptions of separations and differentiated community belongs to historical contexts which shaped these conceptions, but which were also bounded by vocabularies provided by them.

An abridged version of this article was published as 'Civil society, history of the idea of' in International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by N. J. Smelser and Paul B. Baltes. Oxford: Pergamon, 2001.

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The notion of civil society as political community in Greek and Roman political thought was not limited by the legal category of citizenship. Political community was more than the sum total of 'citizens', or 'male heads of households' equal in standing facing non-citizens or producers, agricultural and artisanal, who were part of their households but not their equals. Aristotle's koinonia politike was a politically constituted community that organized separate spheres of life in the state. The recognition that people lived in different spheres and that their standings varied in terms of the property they held, of their skills and abilities, was central to Aristotle's conception of political community. That community was a domain of politics and the art of politics, of ruling lay in the ability to organize by means of laws and institutions, the different spheres and to ensure that persons lived in the sphere they belonged to. The end of laws and institutions was the attainment of a social environment without strife, which, for Aristotle, was synonymous with justice. Aristotle viewed the citizen as a person who shared in the administration of justice and who held office to this end (Aristotle, 1965). In this sense, citizenship in the Athenian city-state was as much a moral category as it was a legal one (Ehrenberg, 1999). The moral dimension extended to the organization of the sphere of the household, or production for use by producers and by rulers, including soldiers who were responsible for the defense of the commonwealth. Aristotle viewed the production for use or subsistence as being 'natural' by contrast to production for exchange and for profits or commerce, which was 'unnatural' and subversive of the moral order of civil society. Restraints imposed on commercial activity were an essential component of exercise of justice. For Cicero and the Roman lawyers, societas civilis, or civil society was the equivalent of res publica (commonwealth), or "an assemblage of people in large numbers associated in an agreement with respect to justice and a partnership for the common good" (Cicero, 1988). Cicero viewed justice as being rooted in nature, in the 'social spirit' which nature implanted in man and which was informed by reason; it is the force that induced individuals to forego a measure of self -interest in the name of common good (Ehrenberg, 1999). Cicero wrote amidst the collapse of the Roman Republic and at a time when the harmonious life of the 'commonwealth' was disrupted. Rome was no longer a city-state dominated by citizens and their subsistence producing households, but an imperial city where landed magnates, financiers, and merchants uneasily co-existed with a vast and hungry population of proletariat and slaves. Harking back to Aristotle's koinonia politike, Cicero saw the

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realization of justice in the 'even balancing of rights, duties and functions' (Cicero, 1988) in the state. Societas civilis in this context represented a union or association of groups and individuals by means of laws and institutions, which organized their activities and sought to achieve a flexible equilibrium among them. The Aristotelian idea of politically constituted community provided the organizational principle in the different agrarian formations of western Eurasia until the end of the 18 th century. Following the collapse of Roman empire, hoinoia politike was negotiated in two contexts, western Europe and the lands of Eastern Roman and Ottoman empires, which the later European political theory tradition, formulated in the 18 th and the 19 th centuries, viewed as being entirely disjointed from each other. In western Europe it experienced a near total submergence during the Middle Ages when extreme political fragmentation of political communities led the Church to assume a central role in the achievement of societal integration. Henceforth until the 18 t h century, the Church became the rival of temporal rulers in political authority and in notions of rule. Idea of politically constituted community gradually reemerged in western Europe after the 14 th century with the rise of monarchies albeit with Christian notions of rule which, by attributing a divine origin to kingly authority, served to strengthen the position of the king vis-à-vis the other power holders in the political community. In the lands of Eastern Roman Empire, the idea of politically constituted community had a relatively uninterrupted history and the Church was subordinated to the political and moral authority of the emperor. The Ottoman Empire was successor to Eastern Roman discourse of political organization. In the Ottoman setting the Aristotelian and eastern Roman notions of differentiated political community, existed in synthesis with ideas of bureaucratic and hierarchical organization, which derived from the political traditions of agrarian empires in the Iranian lands. This synthesis which predated the Ottomans in Islamic areas, emerged from an encounter in the 9 t h and 10 th centuries, between Islamic philosophers who were well-versed in the works of Plato and Aristotle, and bureaucratic elites of the Islamic states who were educated in the Persian literature of 'Mirrors for Kings' (Hodgson, 1974). It met with the resistance of the pious Islamic establishment and their notions of the community of believer's equal in their submission to God. Struggles among the different contenders for political power in this early period, did not result in the crystallization of an Islamic Church and the Islamic establishment came to represent a power position to be accommodated into the hierarchical political community.

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In the Ottoman Empire, koinoia politike was represented by the figure of the just ruler. The political power of the ruler rested with the abilities to sustain the conditions for the subsistence production of peasant and artisanal households and to achieve a fair distribution of surpluses among different groups of power holders constituting the hierarchical levels of the political community which included the members of the Islamic establishment. These abilities were articulated through an understanding of justice, imbued with an Islamic sense of 'good order', or shariat and which purported an absence of social strife either in the form of food riots or scramble for revenues among power holders. Practice of justicc involved a series of negotiations between the ruler and groups or individuals within the political community whereby obedience to rule was exchanged with entitlements to revenue grants and to titles to land use. In Christian western Europe, the idea of community instituted by God and which comprised all mankind (identical with Christianity), was a challenge to the notion of differentiated community constituted through politics directed towards the objective of achieving social harmony or justice. St Augustine's City of God where men were equal before God and united in the universal church, stood in contrast to the Greek and Roman polis of multiple and differentiated spheres of life. As importantly, the Christian understanding of community, embracing all of mankind was not a politically constituted community. The Church and the temporal rulers who were responsible for its government derived their right to rule from God and stood outside of the community. God was the source of justice and human law was bounded and spiritual law established its spheres of competences. Thus, governing and law as its primary instrument were stripped of their political character, they were seen as enactments of God's will on earth. The realities of political power relations in the Middle Ages resulted in various permutations of the Christian ideal of universal community. They created spaces, which made possible the introduction of politics and human agency in the constitutions of social life albeit in forms significantly altered through their exposure to Christian understandings. The struggles between the Church and emperors or monarchs over the right to rule which derived from God, were central to the shaping of notions of societal ordering in the medieval period. Out of these struggles crystallized the principle of organization of life into spiritual and temporal sphere, to be governed, respectively, by the Church and temporal rulers. This principle which admitted to differentiation within the Christian community, also pointed to a recognition of further differentiation within the unity represented by the person of monarch.

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The concept of koinonia politike was to find a new foothold in the space provided by the institution of monarchy, hitherto its history was to link with the doctrine of sovereignty. The latter was the site of contradictory impulses: it invested the ruler with absolute power the substance of which was inalienable, impartible and willed by God. Yet in the middle ages the idea of monarchial sovereignty remained bound to public office. It was divine but at the same time, a service rendered to the community (Gierke, 1960). The relation between the monarch and the community involved reciprocal rights and duties; all individuals in the community stood in a legal relationship to the monarch. In this conception, monarchy was not a right but a duty; power of the ruler was not absolute but limited by his ability to further peace, justice, and utmost freedom of all. Absolute obedience was to God; obedience to the monarch was conditioned by rightfulness of his rule. The underside of the notion of monarchial sovereignty as public office was the concept of political society. The latter concept experienced a renaissance in the context of European monarchies between 16th and 18 th centuries. In this period, kings, endowed with divine rights and with absolute powers to make laws to which they were not subject, were engaged in endless negotiations in the making and implementing of laws. These negotiative processes sought to balance the interests of different group's. In doing so, the kings sought to ensure that these laws were just, or contributed to social harmony (Parker, 1989). The political society rested on reciprocal relations of exchange of entittlements to different groups and individuals in return for their obedience and/or for services they rendered (Guery, 1984).

Koinonia Politike Transformed Political society as it was shaped in the context of the European monarchies, was transformed in the 17th and the 18 th centuries and a new context of power relations and its institutional representations prevailed over patterns of societal orderings representing negotiations of political power on different levels. Competition among European monarchies over territories, contributed to centralization of political power in the ruler's court. By the end of the 17 th century, individual monarchies had reached the limits of their territorial expansion, which severely restricted the ability of the monarchs to raise revenues. The limits to territorial expansion, by undermining the practice of distributing sources of revenue among the individuals and groups, also deprived the rulers of an important means of mediating different interests and therefore preventing social strife and maintaining order in the political society.

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Confronted with intensified struggle over sources of revenue within the political society, hard-pressed to build central armies and central bureaucracies to collect taxes, efficacy of centralization was the only prospect the rulers could offer as proof of their ability to ensure security and prosperity of the commonwealth. It signaled a crystallization of the institution of the sovereign monarch into a site of administration and regulation increasingly differentiable as the 'state'. Centralization of political power was paralleled by an expansion of economic activity. The centralizing monarchies facilitated economic expansion through colonial conquests abroad as well as by creating the institutional and regulatory frameworks, which were constitutive of economic practices. For the rulers, management of economic activity within the boundaries of their existing territories, became a primary means of optimizing revenue and wealth. But management of economic activity was part of a new context of power relations. It brought together the propertied landed interests and the moneyed classes including merchants and financiers, in a symbiotic relationship (through practices of venality of office, tax-farming, bureaucratic service) around the administrative apparatus of the monarchy. This power bloc faced subject populations, which increasingly ceased to belong to corporate orders. Different interests were integrated in the political community through multitudes of ordinances, and political society was represented through a network of ordinances and in terms of ascertainable statistical data (Tribe, 1988). In the 18 th century, achievement of internal order, which remained the primary objective of rule, was seen as the product of constant regulation and no longer as an outcome of negotiated settlements. The concern for regulation of economic activity combined cameralism, mercantilism, political arithmetic, and bullionism, into a new perception of government that is based on the idea of householding (Tribe, 1988; Firth, 1988). Political society was no longer viewed as a context that organized different spheres of life (estates, orders, and corporations), but as the domain of household, in the sense of Aristotle's oikos, of the ruler who as the patriarch was responsible for the welfare of his subject-children. Such welfare, however, was conceived in economic terms. The task of the ruler was viewed as one of ensuring that his subjects increased in numbers, that they were provided with subsistence and productive employment. Regulation was the means for fulfilling this task. The perception of political community as the regulated domain of the 'household' did not include a definition of the 'economy' as a separate sphere from the political domain of the state. But it, like the conceptions of political philosophers of the 17th century, placed economic activity at center-stage of

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discussion of political or civil society albeit as a domain to be kept within bounds, to be bridled. Subscribing to the distinction in Natural Law theory between status civilis and status naturalis (Tribe, 1988; Neumann, 1957), 18 th century discourses on economic management viewed economic activity as part of the natural state. It was part of the sphere of discord which Hobbes described as bellum omnium contra omnes, or the barter society in which individuals contract with and against one another (Hobbes, 1949); to which Locke assigned the contentious process of the formation of private property (Locke, 1960). Discourses on economic management and political philosophers concurred on the necessity to submit economic activity to 'public good'. If for Hobbes the state of nature ended when it submitted to the 'civil union' 'called state or civil society' (Hobbes, 1949), for Prussian Cameralists economic activity was to be constituted or organized in political society if security and wealth of the commonwealth were to be optimized. For the English mercantilist, James Steuart self-interest had to be restrained and directed by the 'reason of state' if it were not to damage public good, which Steuart defined in terms of England's success in achieving greater exports and capturing increased shares of trade. Concentration of political power in administrative monarchies had resulted in a decline in importance of old corporate bodies and of deliberative institutions that served to mediate power in the old political society. Groups that were excluded from the political arena, as well as new groups including bureaucratic elites and commercial classes, sought inclusion through societal associations and political institutions that could provide them with a voice against absolutism and/ or with a societal milieu. Conceptions of civil society by Montesqieu, Ferguson, and Kant responding to conditions of absolutism and depolitization in the different European regions, focused on delineation of associational spaces, of environments for societal negotiations (Jacob, 1991), of civicness, and publicity. For Montesqieu, responding to despotization of political power under the French ancien regime, civil society (l'état civil) was a context for the societal negotiation of the absolute power of the monarch. It was not a domain separate from the monarchy. His conception of division of powers addressed a situation in which the monarchy had severed itself from the network of power relations within the political society of estates and corporations and had appropriated for itself a separate sphere of power (l'état politique). It sought to reintroduce the monarch into Vétat civil or political society, by means of a set of institutions that would check absolute authority of the ruler and balance it with the authority of other groups (Richter, 1998).

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The latter in late 18th century France predominantly consisted of the landed aristocracy, their advocates in the judiciary, and the commercial interests. Kant employed the notion of civil society or bürgerliche Gesellschaft, first, in the sense of the old political society, inseparable from the Prussian absolutism of Frederich the Great that was indispensable for social stability. Second, for Kant, Bürgerliche Gesellschaft referred to the public sphere or to a domain of a reading and debating public that was separate from the arena of political power and action (Reiss, 1991). The latter, Kant regarded as the reserve of the state, or the ruler. Bürgerliche Gesellschaft was a sphere "beyond the political order", 'beyond the particularistic concerns of political action" where practical issues of governance could be debated on the basis of universal principles of reason. In this critical practice of holding the actual policies in the political society to the light of universal reason, Kant saw a restraint to the absolute power of the ruler, as well as the basis for legitimation of his power. (Ellis, 2000) Its practitioners were to be drawn from the ranks of Prussian elites, bureaucratic and bourgeois, educated and trained in state schools and administrative offices, as well as in social clubs and associations. They were to make use of their reason in public whereupon they shed the trappings of their class or official status. The authors of the Scottish Enlightenment, most notably Adam Ferguson, addressed the issue of civil society not simply from the perspective of restraints or resistances to the authority of the centralized state. Ferguson pointed to the corrosion of civic spirit in the political society, where commercial classes, successful and mercenary, became servile to the administrative state which provided them with a 'rule of law ' but deprived them of their traditional rights (Keane, 1988 ; Ferguson, 1995). His notion of civil society referred to a network of institutions, organizations engendering a sense of universal civic concern beyond the particularity of interests of state administration and of commercial classes. Ferguson proposed the idea of civil society of voluntary associations as a context for societal negotiation within the bounds of the existing political society, albeit a short terms one in the environment of late 18th century.

Civil Society as a Separate Domain The 18 th century witnessed the intensification of commercial production of foodstuffs and crafts goods in the countryside and, in the latter part of the century, large-scale, factory-based production of manufactured goods, or the industrial revolution. These trends of commercialization and

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industrialization challenged understandings of economic activity that prevailed in the political society and that subjected both production and labor to the moral and political concerns of subsistence provisioning and order maintenance. The doctrine of laissez-faire, laissez passer, first introduced by the French Physiocrats then taken up by Adam Smith, was a plea for the removal of regulations that privileged the landed classes through restrictions on grain trade, overseas merchants through grants of monopolies, and the 'poor' through subsidies provided by Poor Laws. Smith was an advocate for the new industrial order. Regulations that represented interventions by the state in the economic process impeded the free exchange of labor, capital (including land), of goods. In doing so, they resulted in unfavorable conditions for industrial production, most notably, in high wage levels in industry. Smith proposed a separation of the economic domain and the liberation of the economic factors of labor, capital (including land) and goods from the network of social and political relations of the political society and their subjection to a network of exchange relations among individuals transacting in the different factor markets. His civilized society was an interdependent network of economic relations between individuals and sectors. It originated in the decisions of calculating individuals. These decisions were responsible for setting into motion self-regulating markets, operating according to the universal laws of supply and demand. If individuals, unimpeded by privilege and state intervention in the form of regulations, were at liberty to decide in accordance with their self-interest, markets could be trusted to allocate equitably the resources in the form of wages, rents, and profits. This, for Smith, was the key to progress, economic growth and national prosperity, as opposed to the prosperity of particularistic interests (Smith, 1974). Smith, as did the Physiocrats, emphasized the naturalness of market activity. As against the artificial, invented reason of the Leviathan, they argued that economy was governed by laws of nature and pointed to the autonomous capability of civil society to generate its own order and prosperity (Gordon, 1991). The state's role was to ensure the security of natural phenomenon and the workings of the 'invisible hand'.

uomain oi ine civinzeu , W H I C H uevciupcu uuinig uic I / — aiiu i o ccniuncs in the course of European encounters with non-European regions in the Asia and the Americas. The discourse of civilized Europe created its opposite in the images of an uncivilized non-Europe, most prominently, the East. Thus, the East was constituted as the domain of despotism pace Montesqieu, of chaffing

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regulations over economic activity pace Smith, of absence of private property pace Harrington. When after 1800, the term civil society acquired the negative connotation as 'the reign of dissoluteness, misery and physical and ethical corruption'(Hegel, 1965; Kocka, 2000), the content of the term 'civilized' as it applied to a European self-definition came to have an independent existence of the notion of civil society. No matter how 'barbaric' Europe became, it was to remain 'civilized' vis-à-vis non-Europe, its optimistic image of itself having been transfixed in a vocabulary of domination. Hegel's solution to the European dilemma was a re-formulation of political society that would put an end to the dissonances unleashed by the revolutions of the 19 th century. In that he differed from the political economists with their aspirations for economic society and its nightwatchman state. Hegel subscribed to the political economists' notion of civil society, as nexus of economic interests, as network of relations that continuously reproduced themselves, distinct from the state. Yet, Hegel did not share Smith's utopianism that saw promise of prosperity and progress for all minkind in the natural and clockwork-like operations of the market set into motion by the calculated decisions of individuals, freed of 'unnatural' state regulations that disrupted its natural rhythms. The first half of the 19 th century in Europe was a time of revolutions set into motion by the struggles between the propertied and non-propertied classes in agriculture and industry, as well as those against the autocratic practices of centralized states. The revolutionary upheveals revealed a discrepancy between understandings of the orderly workings of the economy subject to universal laws of nature and the ensuing chaos in social relations. They called into question conceptualizations of civil society as an autonomous domain capable of generating order and progress through its own dynamics. Hegel's concept of civil society or bürgerliche Gesellschaft as the domain of need and labour, of particularistic interests, of conflict, was a representation of this questioning of the assumptions of the 18 th century political economy. For Hegel, civil society produced a series of antagonisms in the form of extremes of wealth and poverty that threatened to destroy the productivity gains from the activity of individuals in pursuit of self-interest. It represented the difference between society and state, between society and its orderings (Reidel, 1984). Marx, subscribing to Hegel's critique of political economy and his conception of civil society as a domain of conflict, saw in it a potential for a revolutionary transformation of production relations that characterized market society. He emphasized the opposionality between state (political order/ politischer Staat) and society as the realm of all economic relations (bürgerlicher Gesellschaft), between superstructure and base (Marx,

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1975). For him, civil society both preceeded and determined the state, it had no need for regulation but was ruled by the contingencies of class struggle. For Hegel, however, the central problem was one of achieving an organization of interests which would inhibit the destructive potential of civil society. Smith was not unaware of the conflictual potential of a society where self-interested individuals were pitted against each other. He had looked for the means of harmonizing individual interests or regulating economic activity of private individuals, in human behaviour or in a mode of sociability in which each individual is judged by others and judges other, creating a system of reciprocities each individual judged his own actions in terms imputed by others. At the same time, Smith assigned the civil state with the duties of administering justice and providing for security which included the protection of private property and corrections of inequalities (albeit in the short-term) created by the market allocation of resources. But these were not burning issues for the political economists in the mid-18 th century for whom industrial society and the productive capacity it was expected to unleash, was a Utopia to be achieved, and the adverse effects of industrialization were not yet felt. For Hegel, the havoc created by the 'order of property', rendered the issue of ordering of economic activity of private individuals inseparable from the issue of constituting a new political society or state. Hegel's starting point was the utility principle of political economists and political theorists of the 19 t h century and the understanding that the ends pursued by all particularistic interests were interconnected and could be attained "when people define their willing and doing in universal terms" (Reidel, 1984). In this sense, society is civil because it is ordered legally through administration of justice, morally and politically through police (or administration) and corporation (or class). It is civil because the individual is a bourgeois and a citizen, the particularistic interest is at the same time universal, civil society becomes one with its orderings, or the state.

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Formulations of civil society as separate from the state, viewed as the domain of particularistic interests, bespoke of a revolutionary era when the political society that focused on administrative monarchies, unraveled amidst challenges of political opposition, of property uprisings, and of new manufacturing interests. These challenges expressed in idioms of natural and universal rights of property, of equality brought European societies to the brink of total revolution and war. With the establishment of a semblance of

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order in mid-19 th century, all energies- political, social and intellectual- were channelled toward the formation of a new political society, or a new state context. The issue facing politicians, statesmen, political economists and political theorists, of the 19 th century and 20 th century was that of achieving political stability in an environment of market economy that resisted subjection of economic relations to moral and political ends of subsistence provisioning and order maintenance. The concern for the creation of a new state context signaled a move away from the notion of civil society as the autonomous domain of market activity subject to natural and universal laws, to its perception as a domain shaped and reformed through the practices of a state representing the universal or the public interest. While not positing an identity between state and society as was the case with the old koinonia politike, an understanding of society (that subsequently in the environment of welfare states became its self-perception) developed in terms of the practices of government. In the perpectives of the English, utilitarians, most notably Jeremy Bentham, and of the social economy of Lorenz von Stein, removal of the obstacles of obsolete privilege and restrictive policies of mercantilism on the part of the 'ancien' state, did not ensure the workings of the market economy. For Bentham, the new economic order required positive state action and political economy was inseperable from an art of government, or an "art of directing the national industry to purposes to which it may be directed with greatest advantage" (Kanth, 1986). Stein (in agreement with Hegel) viewed society as a site of conflict, oppression, and revolt, and identified the 'social problem' as the main obstacle to economic progress. To ensure progress, market economy, or civil society needed to be instituted and injustices and inequalities it generated, were to be ameliorated through state's administrative activity. For Stein, central to this process was the creation of social citizenship and the active participation of the citizen in the state's decision making (Kastner, 1981; Pasquino, 1981; Mengelberg, 1964). In this context, civil society was represented, to use Foucault's expression, as a "realité de transaction", an outcome of collective struggles and of clashes between divergent interests (Jhering, 1867) that were mediated through state's administrative practices. For Stein, as it was for Bentham, the state was not the Rechtstaat which stood outside of civil society, but the sozialstaat representing a process, continiously interacting with society, whereby the society was formed and reformed. Stein, like Bentham, viewed the state in terms of positive realization of order and liberty and not in the negative terms of maintenance of order and defense of liberty. The state represented a special

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institution which acted for the general interest and in accordance with the principles of public service. Its legitimacy rested with its ability to deliver (in administrative terms) to the different sectors within the society and in Bentham's terminology ensure the 'greatest happiness of the greatest numbers' (Kanth, 1986). It implied the direct participation of the state in the economic process and its assuming for the productive capacity of the economy. On the one hand, the state was to become a major player in the market economy. On the other hand, administrative practices of the state were to provide the social spaces where different interests could participate to negotiate their claims (Donzelot, 1984). Not all observors of the mid-19 th century European societies saw a promise of liberty, in the practices of centralized, administrative states that sought to govern civil society in the name of universal interest. For Alexis de Tocqueville in De la démocratie en Amérique (1835-40) the real danger to modern society did not lie in class conflicts, in the struggles between the propertied and non-propertied, but in the new despotism of the all-pervasive state administration. Anticipating Foucault, Tocqueville pointed to the administrative suffocation of civil society as evidenced in the state's monopoly of public education, health care, social services to the poor and the unemployed (Keane, 1988) that subjected all aspects of citizens' existence to state scrutiny. Eschewing public spaces as arenas for the struggle for social rights, Tocqueville stressed the importance of the development of civil associations that lay beyond the control of the state, in placing political checks on administrative despotism. In the late 19th century the European welfare states, most notably the Bismarckian state in Germany, the French Third Republic, and the Gladstonian British state, sought to ensure political stability through extension of public services and of protective rights for workers and unions. The policies of welfare states involved more than an extension of rights, or entitlements but a legal and administrative constitution of social citizenry, or civil society in the form of the legal subjectivities of trade unions, corporations, of the family, of voluntary and charitable associations (Neocleous, 1996). The administrative constitutions of market economy did not simply subject the population to the controls of the modern leviathan; they were outcomes of struggles of workers, manufacturers, and other interests in society. Administrative practice became power fields where different interests were mediated. It germinated into an understanding of civil society on the part of its members in terms of government practices. Following the First World War, societies torn by war and working class activism, turned to institutional arrangements in the governing of market

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society, that represented a displacement of power from state administrations to major organized forces (legal and administrative constructs of the earlier century) of labour, corporations, state agencies, agricultural corperatives. This context signaled a second phase in the consolidation of modern state context. Its institutional representations, its forms of government with reference to organized interests varied from those of the first phase in the second half of the 19 th century when government had as its object the welfare of the public. Foreshadowed by developments under the European welfare states and in the United States, the new forms of governance referred to a "growth of private power and the twilight of sovereignty" (Maier, 1988). They represented centralized and bureaucratic systems of bargaining whereby organized interests groups, or political parties, labour unions, and cartels vied for economic and political power. The new institutional context was characterized by a blurring of the distinction between state and civil society, public and private. But this blurring did not so much point to an understanding of civil society in terms of practices of the government, but was suggestive of its conceptualization of in terms of power positionings of organized interests. The state controlled prices, movement of labour, allocation of resources. These state incursions into the market economy, however, did not result in an extension of the public domain. Instead the state turned over the new regulatory authority to delegates of business, labour, agriculture through informal party or coalition caucuses and also through official supervisory boards and committees (Weber, 1958). The Zeitgeist of corporatist organization also pervaded Antonio Gramsci's understanding of civil society formulated amidst working class upheveals of the 1920s in Italy. For Gramsci, the leader of the Italian Communist Party, civil society was the domain of hegemony which the dominant group exercised throughout society; it comprised not only all the material relations, but all the political and cultural relations which made it possible for the class subject to transform reality or the objective economic conditions, into conditions of its freedom (or domination). For Gramsci, unlike for Marx, the central problem was not that of assuring the autonomy of civil society, or the domain of economic relations of industrial society, from an archaic state so as to conditions of the class struggle between labour and capital. Gramsci's concern was with politically positioning the working class as the dominant group in a historical context of organized interest groups including the Church. Hegemony of the working class presupposed the political, legal, cultural constitutions, or in Gramsci's terms, "interpretations" of the economic structure (Bobbio, 1988); it involved the political and cultural mediations of the different interests. In that sense, Gramsci, the leader of the Italian Communist party, had found a kindred spirit in Hegel and not in Marx.

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Late 20t,r Century understandings of Civil Society The post- World War II political and economic order developed in line with European trends of focusing politics in the state and in the context of welfare states subsuming civil society to state regulation. Not dissimilar to the situation in the late 19th century and the post-WWI era, economic growth, distribution, security represented the core themes of politics. The post-war II context differed from the earlier one, in that in this period these themes were generalized to regions outside of Europe, including the socialist areas of Eastern Europe, and to post-colonial societies, or the Third World. The different regions varied in terms of the nature of the political actors, or class content that determined how growth was attained and sustained, of the efficiency of realizing economic and social goals. They also varied in terms of their political institutions and modes of resolution of social and political conflict. From the late 1940s into mid-1970s sustained economic growth in the capitalist economies of western Europe and the USA made challenges to economic distribution less urgent and the internationalization of the security problem, e.g. NATO, led to a consensus over distribution and security. Capital transfers from a booming US economy in the form of military and economic aid, helped to sustain the developmental states in the Third World. The statist socialist regimes relied on ideological and political disciplining of populations to generate surpluses that were distributable by the centralized state mechanism. In the 1950s and 1960s social scientists in western Europe and the US predicted that under conditions of long term growth, political problems could be transformed into administrative and non-controversial routines and resolved by experts. This functionalist perception of politics was perfected under the socialist regimes where technicist-scientistic understandings of government excluded all forms of political organization, including political parties, trade unions, collective bargaining that prevailed in the advanced capitalist societies. The functionalist perpective, socialist and capitalist alike, however, precluded any discussion of civil society. From the point of American and European social sciences, groups and individuals did not have a societal existence independently of their participation in institutions of the welfare state environment. The socialist ideologues identified civil society with bourgeois society and decreeed that it was superceeded by the advent of socialism. In the mid-1970s slowing down in economic growth in the advanced capitalist societies resulted in constraints on the ability of the state to tax business and affect distribution of income to the working class in the form of social welfare benefits. The fiscal crisis of welfare states was further

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agggrevated by the rising costs of welfare and the customized nature of welfare needs. The crisis called into question the technicist understandings of society which subsumed society to state regulation. Social science and political debates since the 1970s have focused on a critique of social statism and sought to differentiate the civil society from the state. From the perspective of the neoconservative program over-politization of the state in advanced capitalist societies and the fusion of the political and non-political spheres of social life, resulted in erosion of political authority and a crisis of governability. At the same time, this fusion resulted in a total break-down of the autonomy and authority of non-political spheres, including the family, religion, market. They proposed that the boundaries between state and civil society be redrawn and civil society has to be restored as a defense against the state and against politics. In this context, civil society represented the depoliticized sphere of the market and what remained outside of the market activity, including religion and family, must be re-integrated through a cultural model that will integrate the market acivity of self-interested individuals. Thus, the 1970s and 1980s witnessed the revival of late 18 th century Scottish -English understandings of civil society as non-profit voluntary associations of public assistance, of self-help groups. The state of neoconservative imagination, approximated by Thatcherite interpretation in the 1980s, is a lean structure characterized by effective authoritaritarian forms of action. From the perspective of social movements paradigm, social statism had disastrous consequences for natural life, for political participation and solidarity. It proposed an understanding of civil society as an autonomous and politized sphere no longer dependent on regulation and constraint by bureaucratic- representative political institutions. The politics of social movements of environmentalists, antinuclear activists, women's and gay movements of the 1970s, was motivated by concerns of guaranteeing the qualiy of life, to protect the environment and to create authenticity and participation. This agenda required sponteneous organization and much less rooted in preexisting interests, could not be advanced by the 'officially' sanctioned institutions of political parties and trade unions. Civil society referred to an intermediary institutional space between private (domain of the personal) and the public (or the domain recognized as the object of official political institutions and actors). Habermas' notion of public sphere is a parallel concept to civil society in the realm of ideas and communications; it includes the organization of civic or bourgeois opinion as represented by associations and media. Public sphere is a space where communication about collective

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values take place. In the advanced capitalist societies because of the interpénétration between the political and economic domains, the state became a major actor in the market economy and is no longer able to advance the common good. This, for Habermas, signals the legitimation crisis of advanced capitalist societies and raises the questioning of the need to formulate a public discourse outside of the the domains of the market economy and the welfare state and doin so, (in the spirit of Kant) subject both to the critical scrutinity of communicative rationality. In the mid-1970s the crisis of the socialist state, initiality in Poland, provided an opportunity for discussion about politization of civil society. The perspective of new evolutionism of Adam Michnik and Jacek Kuron, referring to the experiences of failed revolutions in Hungary (1956) and Czechoslovakia (1968), stressed the need to protect social life from the totalitarian state. They proposed the construction from below of a civil society, self- organizing, independent, mobilizable. This civil society was assigned the task of pushing back the state administrative forms of penetration in social life. For other dissidents in socialist eastern and central Europe, most notably Vaclav Havel, civil society was the domain of anti-politics; it was a vision of society that was not simply independent from the state but opposed to it. In the 1980s and 1990s in Central and South America, in Africa and Asia, as well in the former socialist areas of Central and Eastern Europe, the expansion of the domain of the market relations that included introduction of market reform programs initiated two diverging perceptions of civil society. The first perception represented civil society as the sphere of opposition to the market or global capitalism and to the state as the conveyor of market reforms. Islamic movements in North Africa and Indonesia, and the Chiappas movement in Mexico, were motivated by this understanding of civil society. The second perception of civil society focused on the cultural model, or the life-world that was needed to integrate market activity. It emphasized the centrality in civil society of religion, family, voluntary associations in generating moral economic, cognitive norms. Civil society is viewed not as a domain of political action, or resistance, but of cybernetic or self-regulating institutions or systems.

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Bibliography Aristotle. 1965. ed. E. Barker. The Politics. New York: Oxford university Press Bobio, Norberto. 1988. Gramsci and the Concept of Civil Society. In: Keane, J. (ed). Civil Society and the State: New European Perspectives. London: Verso Bottomore, Tom. (ed.). 1983. Civil Society. A Dictionary of Marxist Thought. Oxford: Blackwell Calhoun, Craig (ed.) 1992. Habermas and the Public Sphere. Cambridge: MIT Press Cicero. 1988. The Republic. Cambridge: CUP Press Cohen, Jean L. and Arato, Andrew. 1992. Civil Society and Political Theory. Cambridge, MIT Press Donzelot, Jacques. 1984. /'Invention Sociale. Paris: Ehrenberg, John. 1999. Civil Society: The Critical History of an Idea. New York: New York University Press Ellis, Elisabeth. 2000. Immanuel Kant's Two Theories of Civil Society. In: Trentmann, F. (ed.), Paradoxes of Civil Society: New Perspectives on Modern German and British History. New York: Bergham Books Gordon. Colin. 1991. Govermental Rationality: An Introduction. In The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality. Edited by Graham Burchell, Coiln Gordon, Peter Miller. Chicago. University of Chicago Press. Gierke, Otto. 1960. Political Theories of the Middle Age. Boston: Beacon Press. Guéry, Alain. 1986. Etat, classification sociale et compris sous Louis XIV: La capitation de 1695. Annales ESC, vol. 41, no. 5. Ferguson, Adam. 1995. An Essay on the History of Civil Society. New Brunswick: transaction publishers. Firth, Ann. 1988. From Oeconomy to the 'Economy': Population and Self-interest in Discourses of Government. History of the Human Sciences. Vol. 11, No. 3. Havel, Vaclav. 1988. Anti-Political Politics. In: Keane, J. (ed). Civil Society and the State: New European Perspectives. London: Verso Hegel, G. W. 1952. (English trans. T. M. Knox) The Philosophy of Right. London: Oxford University Press. Hobbes, Thomas. (English trans S. P. Lamprecht) 1949. De Cive or The Citizen. New York. Hodgson, Marshal, 1974. Venture of Islam, 3 vol., Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Jhering. Rudolph. 1915. The Struggle for Law. Chicago. Callaghan and Company. Jacob C. Margaret. 1991. The Enlightenment Redefined: The Formation of Modern Civil Society, Telos, vol. 58, No. 2.

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Kant, Immanuel. 1963. What is Enlightenment? In: Beck, 1. W. (ed.). On History. Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc. Kanth. Rajani K. 1986. Political Economy and Laissez Faire: Economics and Ideaology in the Ricardian Era. Totowa, New Jersey. Rowman & Littlefield. Keane, John (ed). 1988 Civil Society and the State:New European Perspectives. London:Verso. Kocka, Juergen. 2000. Zivilgesellschaft Versprechen. Berlin.

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Kocka, Juergen. 1997. The difficult rise of a civil society: societal history of modern Germany. In: Fullbrook, Mary. German History since 1800. London: Arnold. Locke. John. 1960. Two Treaties of Government. Edited by Peter Laslett. Maier, Charles (ed.). 1987. Changing Boundaries of the Political: Essays on the evolving balance between state and society, public and private in Europe. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press. Neocleous, Mark. 1996. Administering Civil Society: Towards a Theory of State Power. London: MacMillan Press. Neumann. Franz. 1957. Types of Natural Law. In The Democratic and Authoritarian State. New York: Free Press. Offe, Claus. 1987. Challenging the boundaries of institutional politics: social movements since the 1960s. In Maier, C. (ed.). Changing Boundaries of the Political: Essays on the evolving balance between state and society, public and private in Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Parker, David. 1989. Sovereignty, Absolutism and the Function of the Law in the Seventh-Century France. Past and Present, No. 122. Pasquino, Pasquale. 1981. Introduction to Lorenz von Stein. Economy and Society, vol 10, no. 1. Reidel, Manfred. 1984. Between Tradition and Evolution: The Hegelian Transformation of Political philosophy. Cambridge: CUP Press. Richter, Melvin. 1998. Montesquieu and the Concept of Civil Society. The European Legacy. Vol. 3. No. 66. Rosanvallon, Pierre. 1988. The Decline of Social Visibility. In: Keane, J. (ed.). Civil Society and the State: New European Perspectives. London: Verso. Smith, Adam. 1974. The Wealth of Nations. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Trentmann, Frank (ed). 2000. Paradoxes of Civil Society: New Perspectives on Modern German and British History New York: Bergham Books. Tribe, Keith. 1988. Governing Economy: The Reformation of German Economic Discourse, 1750-1840. Cambridge: CUP Press.

PROPERTY AS A CONTESTED DOMAIN: A RE-EVALUATION OF THE OTTOMAN LAND CODE OF 1858

This article will study the transformation of property rights on land in the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century. My argument is that this transformation, which signalled the rise of private property rights, took place in relation to changes in the nature of state power. Put simply, I argue first that the practices of a certain type of state which developed in the nineteenth century were largely responsible for the constitution of individual ownership rights. Of these practices, I will concentrate on law, more specifically on the Land Code of 1858. The larger project of which this article is a part also focuses on the administrative practices of registration and of surveying property. Second, I argue that property laws, as well as the state practices of registration and recording, represented spaces in which social actors confronted each other in negotiating the definitions and orderings which these practices made possible. That is, definitions of property rights represented domains of resistance and contestation imparting to these rights their highly contingent political and historical character.

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Implicit in the study of transformation of property rights in the Ottoman Empire undertaken here is a critique which extends in significance beyond the Ottoman example. This critique addresses a set of arguments regarding the development of private property and relations between state and society, as well as the relation of law to state and to society. These arguments, embodied in a discourse of liberalism, traceable to the work of the political economists and jurists of the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries, formed part of the world-view of the European middle classes in the era of liberal capitalism. 1 They have enjoyed a renaissance since the 1980s and are recast in debates on 'growth through trade', 'state and market', 'globalization', 'jurgen Habermas, Legitimation Crisis (Boston: Beacon Press, 1975); for formulations of this understanding in court decisions on property matters, most interestingly, in British India, see Nicholas Dirks, "From Little King to Landlord: Property, Law and the Gift under the Madras Permanent Settlement", Comparative Studies in Society and History 28 (1986), 307-33.

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'privatization', and the 'rule of law', in relation to developments in the different world regions, most provocatively in the former socialist areas. Central to the liberal perspective is the assumption that state and society, or the sphere of market exchange activity of private individuals, politics and markets, constitute separate domains. This separation is understood to be a pre-condition for economic growth and for commercial expansion. Private property belongs to the societal domain; it is deemed to be the central institution of the market economy, which makes possible the exchangeability of resources including land, labor, and goods in markets. There is, however, little agreement as to the origins of private property and a tension between the historicist and the naturalist explanations has characterized debates around property since the seventeenth century.1 The critique undertaken here primarily addresses the historicist orientation which posits a causality between commercial expansion and the development of private property. 2 Confronted with increased opportunities for economic gain or changes in relative prices, maximizing individuals are expected to free what constitutes ' T h e naturalist argument was most forcefully stated by John Locke who situated private property in the natural state of men. John Locke, Two Treaties of Government, ed. Peter Laslett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960). Premised on natural law formulations, the naturalist argument was also espoused by French jurists who were responsible for the drafting of the Civil Code. Donald R. Kelley and Bonnie G. Smith, "What was Property? Legal Dimensions of the Social Question in France (1789-1848)", Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 128: 3 (1984), 200-30. In the nineteenth century liberal jurists, including Sir Henry James Sumner Maine and Jeremy Bentham were highly critical of the natural law formulations regarding private property. They saw the development of private in the historical context of commercial expansion. For them private law represented a formalization of that development. Henry. J. S. Maine, Ancient Law (London: John Murrray, 1920), and Jeremy Bentham, The Theory of Legislation, ed. C. K. Ogden (Ijjndon: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1931). Bentham referred to property as an 'expectation' on the part of the individual which developed in an environment of exchange; an expectation to be realized in law. 2'i'hc historicist perspective has recently been taken up by the new institutional economists, most notably, Douglass C. North, Structure and Change in Economic History (New York: Norton, 1981) and Eric L. Jones, The European Miracle: Environments, Economics and Geopolitics in the History of Europe and Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981). North and Jones point to the determination of private property in terms of decisions or choices made by individuals seeking to maximize their economic gains in an environment of commercial expansion. They argue that environments of commercial activity are characterized by 'market failures' or impediments (e. g. communal property rights) to the exchange activity of individuals. Market failure implies transaction costs. Private ownership, in this context, is an institution which achieves a reduction of transaction costs, and in doing so generates efficiency. It is an outcome of cost-benefit analysis undertaken by maximizing individuals to reduce transaction costs. The New Institutional Economics presents a challenge to the notion of the 'market' as representing an abstract realm of economic exchange of homogeneous goods through voluntary transactions by large numbers of autonomous, fully-informed individuals with motives of profitmaximization. This abstraction characterizes the formulations of neo-classical economics, as well as the Smithian liberal formulations of the post-1980s liberal renaissance. It does not allow for either 'market failures' or institutions. From the orthodox 'market' perspective, private ownership is part of the process of allocation of resources through the workings of supply and demand forces in the market. The institutionalist would not object to this characterization in principle, except for the fact that they do not take for granted the self-regulating properties of the market. Put differently, they feel that the market will not automatically achieve its ends and point to the fact that it may require a little help from institutions, including private property.

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the object of property from juridical and administrative obstacles that restrict its free circulation and its unfettered enjoyment. Property relation in this context is perceived to be one between a person and a thing, or the object of property. In the nineteenth century land as the primary source of wealth was cast as such a 'thing' and the establishment of absolute, private ownership rights over land came to be viewed as inseparable from the generalization of a commodity regime in which land, as everything else, was to be rendered freely exchangeable. Both commercial expansion and the rise of private property presuppose the absence of state intervention. 1 State refers, in the liberal conception, to the realm of politics, of particularistic, subjective interests; it stands in opposition to what are deemed to be universal and objective relations in the sphere of exchange. The characterization of 'economic' relations as universal and objective derives from an understanding that individuals possess a natural propensity to maximize their gains and that their individual preferences constitute the patterns of supply and demand which achieve the most efficient allocation of resources. The state, on the other hand, is assigned the task of policing the market transactions of the profit-maximizing individuals. Finally, the bifurcation of law into private and public consecrates the oppositional relation between state and society. Private law, referring to the law of contracts (with definitions of legal subjects and objects) and formulations of private property in civil codes, is perceived as a formalization of what takes place in society, or the sphere of exchange, thus making possible certainty and predictability in market transactions. 2 Public law defines the administrative rules and procedures; most important, from a liberal perspective, it defines the rules of conduct of the state and, in doing so, subjects the state to the rule of law. The latter imbued with an objectivity and institutional insularity and sanctity, stands apart from both the domains of policing and of exchange. 3 Formalization of the property relation in private law involved its definition as one between a person (the legal owner or possessor of the right *For an institutional!st argument on state intervention as impeding economic growth, see Eric L. Jones, Growth Recurring: Economic Change in world History (Oxford, 1988). 2 F o r this liberal perception of law as one responding to and expediting commercial expansion, see Maine, Ancient Law. The present-day institutionalists prefer not to get involved in private law debates. To the extent that they are at all concerned with law they refer to the administrative rulings by the state which formalize the decisions of maximizing individuals participating in the different markets. See North, Structure and Change, as well as his more recent work which focuses on the state. ^

For a critical discussion of separation of powers and the rule of law, see Habermas, Legitimation Crisis; for critical view of private law, see Karl Renner, The Institutions of Private Law and Their Social Function (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1949), especially Article 2; and for a critique f r o m the perspective of administrative law, see Mark Neocleous, Administering Civil Society: Towards a Theory of State Power (London: MacMillan, 1996).

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of ownership) and an asset or a 'thing'. 1 In relation to landed property, this suggested a juridical disentanglement of the individual right from the bundle of rights which previously constituted property. At the same time, it entailed the legal constitution of land as a thing, alienable, disposable. A m o n g other things, the latter presupposed the obliteration of the distinction between movable (goods) or immovable (land) property whereby land was rendered as transactable as any other commodity. 2 Casting of the property relation in terms of a person and an asset, represents an objectification of that relation; its abstraction from the web of power relations which are constitutive of it. It signaled a rupture with previous representations of property relations in terms of entitlements and obligations of persons or groups which were inseparable from their status or their relations to each others in a hierarchically ordered society. The liberal world-view has been inseparable from a vocabulary of European domination over non-European areas in the latter part of the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. This vocabulary represents a collusion of the oppositional, dichotomous perception of social reality, which characterizes the liberal perspective, with a spatial bifurcation between Europe or the West and non-Europe or the East. Thus, European history is cast as the privileged realm of exchange, or the market, of private property, of circumscribed state presence, and of the rule of law. 3 Non-European history, Roger Cotterell, "Power, Property and the Law of Trusts: A Partial Agenda for Critical Legal Scholarship" in, Critical Legal Studies, ed. Peter Fitzpatrick and Alan Hunt (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987). Cotterell focuses on the ways legal formulations accomodated and guaranteed the inequalities implied by private ownership which excluded all claims to property but those of the individual owner. Cotterell argues that, through the separation of legal subjects and the assets they own, the law could allow for an equality of the legal subjects, while inequality becomes an attribute of the distribution of assets. This was important in view of the fact that the equality of all persons before the law was a central precept of the rule of law formulations in the nineteenth century. 2 F o r a discussion of these categories and systems of classifications, see Maine, Ancient Law, lOOff., 295. Maine also pointed to an obliteration of the distinction between inheritance and acquisition in establishing the alienability of land given that alienation of inherited property of the father was subject to the consent of male children, while that of his acquired property was not. Maine wrote: "The history of property on the European continent is the history of the subversion of the feudalized law of land by the Romanized law of movables ". Ibid., 283. This notion of law as generative of categories and classifications leads to endless discussion of which law has the categories and which law does not. As the law self-consciously employed by nineteenth century jurists, including English ones, in the nineteenth century, Roman law is generally assigned the privileged position of possessing them. By contrast, and typically, Islamic law does not. Leaving aside the little studied area of the overlaps between the precepts of the shariah relating to land and Roman law (it could not be otherwise as Islamic societies developed in former Roman lands), this view misses the particularity of debates which take in the context of different vocabularies in relation to categories and classifications which constituted individual ownership. For some of these debates, see Ebulula Mardin, Medeni Hukuk Cephesinden Ahmet Cevdet l'a,sa (Istanbul, 1946). ^Habermas demonstrates that the 'rule of law' embodying the principles of separation of powers (state, society, law), of sanctity of private property, and of the equality before the law, refers to a self-definition (ideology) of Western liberal societies, and as such represents an aspiration rather the actual conditions in these societies (Legitimation Crisis', also Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy (Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, 1996).

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by contrast, describes a sphere of stunted commercial development, or economic stagnation, of despotic states, and of the absence of the rule of law. The history of the Ottoman Empire has long been fashioned in the image of the East. In this fashioning, state intervention in society or economy, most dramatically manifested in form of state 'ownership' of land, was understood to be a feature of Ottoman despotism and has been held responsible for stunted market activity, for the inability of private property to develop, and the consequent absences of commercial classes, a bourgeois revolution, of a liberal constitutional state and of the rule of law. 1 My intention here is not to indulge in the ifs and buts of this high drama of absences and presences, and produce yet another revisionist history of the Ottoman Empire. Instead I propose to go beyond the binary perception of the eastern and western histories by problematizing the arguments upon which this bifurcation rests. Most importantly, I will challenge the separations/autonomies of the liberal discourse in relation to the development of private ownership. By confining this development to the 'rational' responses of maximizing individuals engaged in exchange activity, and to objectifications of those responses in law, liberal perspective abstracts private property from the power relations which were(and continue to be) constitutive of it. Power relations, however, do not exist in isolation, but are part of historical contexts. The centralized states which developed in Western Eurasia during the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries, have been such a context. Military and political competition among states had been largely responsible for the development of these states. This paper will argue that private ownership was an ordering of property relations on land by the centralized states; it was part of their attempts to establish absolute control over revenues from land in order to meet the exigencies of interstate competition. As such, private ownership belonged to the sphere of power relations which characterized the domination of centralized states. For a discussion of East/ West problematic in relation to the Middle East, see Talal Asad ed., Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter (London: Ithaca Press, 1973); for an evaluation of the liberal as well as Marxist (Asiatic Mode of Production) treatments of Ottoman history, see Huri islamoglu-lnan, "Introduction: Oriental Despotism in World System Perspective", in The Ottoman Empire and the World Economy, ed. Huri Islamoglu-lnan (Cambridge: CUP, 1987). In the case of the Ottoman Empire, liberal historians argued that state ownership of land was the primary obstacle on the way to the development of individual ownership rights in the Ottoman context, see Gabriel Baer, Studies in the Social History of Modern Egypt (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969), 62-78. In relation to Egypt, Kenneth M. Cuno, subscribing to a similar liberal reasoning, points to the development of private property in land in the late eighteenth century in the context of commercial expansion and the weakening of controls by the Ottoman state over the economy. According to Cuno, this process was interrupted by ti» rise of a strong state under Mehmet Ali and intensified state intervention in agriculture. "The Origins of Private Ownership of Land in Egypt: A Reappraisal", International Journal of Middle East Studies 12 (1980), 245-75.

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Individual ownership represented an abstraction of the property claim of the individual from the web of multiple, particularistic entitlements to revenues from land and from the diverse, shared claims over land use and over its income which formerly accrued to different revenue claimants. In concrete terms, it meant, first, the establishment of the singular and general taxation claim, to the exclusion of the multiple revenue entitlements of different groups: second, it meant the definition of absolute ownership claim of the title-holder to the exclusion of the former claims to land use. As will be discussed in relation to the Ottoman example, resistance on the part of groups excluded by claims of private ownership accounted for the highly fluid and contingent character of property relations in the 'age of property' as the nineteenth century was succinctly described. 1 The perception of the property relation as one embedded in confrontations among groups or individuals, stands in contrast to the liberal perception of it as an outcome of cost-benefit calculations on the part of maximizing individuals, objectified in law. It points to the character of the property relation as a power relation. In this respect, this paper concurs with the Marxist critiques of the liberal understanding of the property relation as one between a person and a thing. 2 But it departs from those critiques which subscribe to the precept of the separation of state and society and view the development of private property as an outcome of the struggles of commercial classes waged in society. From the Marxist perspective, though with notable exceptions, both the state and law represent superstuctures which rubber-stamp, or sanctify the outcomes of class struggles. By contrast, this paper argues that private property was an ordering of centralized states and it was created through the practices of the state, including administrative rulings or law, as well as the techniques of registration, cadastral surveying and mapping. It seeks to establish these practices as sites of power relations and power struggles. Such, state practices which ordered, or defined property relations are contexts in which confrontations among groups or individuals over property rights take place. They represent power fields. Thus, this paper does not only emphasize the power relations

' e . M. Forster, Howards End (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997). For a discussion of property relation as a power relation, see C. B. Macpherson, "The Meaning of Property", in Property: Mainstream and Critical Positions, ed. C. B. Macpherson (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1978); also F. Benda-Beckman, Property in Social Continuity (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1979), especially article 1. 2

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which constituted private ownership, but also the historical contexts 1 , or the sites in which these power relations were engaged. It will argue that these contexts impart the individual confrontations and struggles their particular terminologies and vocabularies, and in so doing, they, to a large degree, shape the actions as well as the discourses of both the propertied and the dispossessed. They constitute the political arena in which different actors have the possibility of participation. This paper will focus on administrative law 2 , law as a form of governance and will point to the constitution of private ownership rights through the categories and systems of classifications of the centralized state. In doing so, it will challenge the liberal understanding that state practices hinder the development of individual ownership and that autonomy of law is a precondition for that development. First, contrary to the liberal understanding, law here is not viewed as simply formalizing what has already taken place in the sphere of exchange. It is argued that law is constitutive of the relations it defines; that is, by defining the actual property claims or rights of persons or groups, law enables these rights. In this respect, this paper subscribes to E. P. Thompson's view of law as being "deeply imbricated within the very basis of productive relations which would have been inoperable without this law". 3 Second, the analysis of this paper takes issue with the liberal view of law's autonomy which confines the definition of individual ownership right to the sphere of private law. In this relation, the historically problematic character of law's autonomy and of the separation between public and private law, needs to be stressed. Neither could be assumed to have had their origins in Roman law which was re-introduced in western Europe in the seventeenth century. 4 Both law's autonomy and the institutional differentiation between public and private law were part of power configurations which varied from ' In emphasizing the contexts of struggles this paper departs from the 'moral economy' arguments which tend to assume a universal vocabulary of 'justice' against the inherent 'injustice' of private ownership. These arguments tend to hypostatize in moral terms the resistance to private ownership. In so doing, they abstract the different struggles from their historical contexts, from the contexts in which the dispossessed have a chance of political participation and do not simply suffice with having the moral high grounds. Edward P. Thompson's work, especially "The Moral Economy of English Crowd in the 18th Century", Past and Present 50 (1971), 76-109, has been the inspiration for such arguments. They are further elaborated in the work of authors whose work come under the rubric of subaltern studies, especially in relation to India. 2

F o r a discussion of administrative law, in addition to Neocleous, Administering Civil Society also see, H. W. Arthurs, Without the Law: Administrative Justice and Legal Pluralism in Nineteenth Century England (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985). ^Edward P. Thompson, Whigs and Hunters: The Origin of the Black Act (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1990), 261. Also for the constitution of private property through Enclosure Acts in England, see Philip Corrigan and Derek Sayer, "How the Law Rules", in Law, State and Society, ed. Bob Fryer et al (London: Croom Helm, 1981), 23. 4 Perry Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State (London: NLR, 1976).

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one region to the other. They represented contested domains everywhere, including western Europe. 1 That this was so was most dramatically demonstrated in post-revolutionary France. In that instance, the demarcation of the domain of private law as comprising property law and the law of contracts, was effected through the formulations of jurists with close affinities to propertied classes. 2 These formulations, as well as the decisions of the courts regarding private property in land were vehemently contested and the legal constitution of private property primarily took place through administrative rulings or law, and through decisions of the administrative tribunals.3 In the nineteenth century Ottoman Empire, a differentiation between private and public law and a drafting of a civil code were attempted. This was largely in response to pressures on the Ottoman government to emulate European legal systems in order to facilitate European trading within the empire. Initially, the Ottoman government was pressured by the French to adopt the French civil code; Ottoman jurists, most of whom were also highranking state bureaucrats, resisting that proposal, compromised by undertaking to draft a civil code premised on the precepts of Islamic jurisprudence.4

' i n the case of Germany during the nineteenth century, Michael John argues that the formulations of the Civil Code were relativized in special provisions well before the Code was issued in 1892. These special provisions which embodied the demands of the different social groups, were administrative rulings which significantly modified the precepts of the Code regarding private property. In fact, it was these practices which defined property relations in the nineteenth century. Thus, Michael John suggests that the German Civil Code was more important as a represention of legal unity as crafted through the professional commitment and the legal skills of the German jurists than it was a representation of property relations as they existed. "The Politics of Legal Unity in Germany, 1870-1896", Historical Journal 28: 2 (1985). 2 Kelley and Smith, "What was Property?" 3For the centrality of administrative law in the constitution of the English working class, see, Neoclaus, Administering Civil Society, for an argument about how the 'law' of the jurists was circumvented by administrative practice in France following the 1848 revolution and widespread resistance to the understanding of absolute private ownership embodied in the Civil Code (1804) as well as in post-revolutionary Constitutions, see Jacques Donzelot, L'invention du Social (Paris, 1984). In this relation, Donzelot pointed to a new mode of state intervention which developed in the mid-nineteenth century and which, he argued, entailed a constitution of the 'social' (civil society) through administrative practice, including administrative law and statistics. He explained the development of this mode of intervention in terms of the need to contain civil resistance which found its expression in the political language of natural rights which the Revolution helped to generalize. The vocabularies of administrative law and statistics were important in diffusing civil resistance while allowing for the right of social struggle within the spaces provided by these practices. At the same time, the language of statistics was instrumental in the objectification (naturalization?) of social reality and therefore rendering it no longer a target of resistance. ''The French government initially proposed the adoption of the French Civil Code; the Ottoman jurists, mostly notably Cevdet Pasha also a one time grand vizier and a high-ranking bureaucrat, objected strongly on grounds that a civil code had to do with the identity or self-definition of a society and therefore the adoption of a foreign code would be undermining that identity. He proposed the drafting of an Ottoman civil code based on the precepts of Islamic jurisprudence orftqh. Ebulula Mardin, Medeni Hukuk Cephesinden Ahmet Cevdet Pasha (Ankara: Tiirkiye Diyanet Vakfi, 1996).

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Known as the Mecelle (collection) 1 , the Ottoman civil code also belonged to the terrain of a nineteenth century European understanding that the shariah, or Islamic law referred to a body of private law which, under Ottoman despotic rule, was superseded by the ruler's law (kanun), or administrative law. 2 This understanding assumed a binarity, an oppositionality between the precepts of Islamic law and the kanun. This binarity was most vividly demonstrated in what the Europeans perceived to have been a perennial tension between the categories of miilk (freehold) and miri (state ownership in land). This paper will show that the designation of the category of miilk, as a formulation of private ownership which already existed in the shariah, has been misleading and that in the nineteenth century the categories of both miilk and miri had to be reconstituted for a formulation of the general category of individual ownership. What needs to be pointed out here is that a dichotomous perception of law which was an outcome of historically specific power configurations, most significantly in post-revolutionary France, has been projected backward in time on Ottoman history as part of the process of the rewriting of that history in the nineteenth century. Such rewriting was inseparable from the establishment of European domination over the Ottoman Empire and it is a tribute to the effectiveness of that domination that the assumptions upon which the new history rested were internalized (or least acknowledged) by Ottoman elites and subsequently by the intelligentsias of the successor states in the former Ottoman lands.3 In the mental climate of European domination which emphasized a dichotomous perception of law, the Mecelle was expected to introduce a general formulation of private property and rules of transactions for private property, or rules of contracts. In practice, however, the Mecelle remained an uncompleted venture and property law and law of contracts, in the nineteenth century Ottoman setting, were part of the terrain of administrative law and to the extent injunctions of an Islamic 'private law' crystallized, they were complementary to the rulings of administrative law. This, in turn, points to

For discussion of the Mecelle, see Robert H. Eisenman, Islamic Law in Palestine and Israel: A History of the Survival of Tanzimat and Sharia in the British Mandate and the Jewish State (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1978), 19-26. For the text of the Mecelle, see Hilmi Ergüney, Mecelle Külli Kaideleri (Istanbul: Yenilik Basimevi, 1965). 9 For a discussion of a nineteenth century European understanding of the shariah especially in relation to French North Africa, see Alan Christelow, Muslim Law Courts and the French Colonial State in Algeria (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985). 3 Huri islamoglu-inan, "Law, Property and State Power in the State Power in the Ottoman Empire", unpublished manuscript. For instance, the Turkish historian, Omer L. Barkan subscribed to this dichotomous perception of law and assumed that in the Ottoman Empire kanun and shariah belonged to separate domains. Writing in the 'statist', Keynesian mental climate of the 1930s and 1940s, he argued that in the nineteenth century, the separation of kanun and shariah was obliterated in the Land Code. The latter, according to Barkan, represented a reassertion of the kanun precept of the state ownership of land, but was also infiltrated by the precepts of Islamic jurisprudence, especially in relation to the increase in the number of heirs. "Türk Toprak Hukuku Tarihinde Tanzimat ve 1274 Arazi Kanunnamesi" in Tanzimat I (Istanbul: Maarif Matbaasi, 1940), 21-421.

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the specific character of the Ottoman legal discourse and the power fields which this discourse embodied. Most significantly, in the nineteenth century and since the inception of the empire, the jurists who were engaged in the interpretation and the formulation of the precepts of Islamic law, were also responsible for the formulation of kanun, or administrative law.1 As such, kanun, contrary to the popular misconceptions of it, was not really the unequivocal word of the ruler. In the nineteenth century, the figure of Ahmet Cevdet Pasha, renowned jurist and statesmen, who was responsible for the drafting of both the Land Code and the Mecelle, was a rather dramatic representation of the intertwined character of the discourses of administrative law and the injunctions of Islamic jurisprudence. Thus, both laws were arenas where the legal constitution of individual ownership took place and that there was a dialogue between what are purported to be the unbridgeable worlds of Islamic or private law and administrative law, is shown not only in the overlapping of provisions, but also by the fact that Ottoman jurists in deliberating on land issues drew freely from both bodies of law. 2 However, the understanding of law as governance and as administrative practice departs from perceptions, evoked by Michel Foucault's work, of social reality constituted through the practices of the centralized leviathan and subjected to its all-embracing gaze. 3 This paper seeks to introduce a sense of law, or governance, as power fields in which multiple actors, including the different state agencies, confronted each other, to negotiate, to contest, and in so doing, to cast and re-cast the very terms of domination and subjugation.4 In

' HilliI Inalcik, "lslamization of Ottoman Laws on Land and Land Tax", in OsmanistikTurkologie-Diplomatik, ed. Christa Fragner und Klaus Schwarz (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 1992). 2 Viewed from this perspective, it is not surprising that the drafters of the Code which chronologically preceded the Mecelle, drew from the precepts of Islamic jurisprudence. Among the examples of this practice were the provisions of the Code extending the numbers of heirs from three to nine, as well as those introducing partibility and separability of multiple, overlapping claims to land use. Ahmet Cevdet Pa§a, Tezakir, vol. 4, ed. Cavit Baysun (Ankara: Turk Tarih Kurumu Basimevi, 1986). % o r a discussion of Foucault's work in this context, see Colin Gordon, "Governmental Rationality: An introduction" in The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, ed. Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon and Peter Miller (Hemel Hamstead: Harvester, 1991). Foucault himself was well aware of the problem of political closures implied in his conception of governmentality, see Michel Foucault, "The Subject and Power", in Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, ed. Herbert L. Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow (Brighton: Harvester, 1982). 4-fhis should not imply, however, that law represents a negotiated settlement (at least in the context of the modern state) in the sense that once a settlement is reached among parties, the individual parties lose their distinctnesss and dissolve into each other. Instead law represents multiple power fields embodying different sets of actors who retain their distinctness. As such, law is a continuous process of contestation or deliberation. In this sense, one could speak of law as politics and of its contextuality, its embeddedness in any given historical context. For the argument about law representing a continious process of contestation, of deliberation in which the individual actors do not lose distinctiveness, 1 am grateful to Peter Fitzpatrick, "Consolations of the Law: Community and Deliberative Politics", paper delivered at the Workshop on "Law and Deliberative Politics", Bielefeld-February 26-27, 1999. Fitzpatrick, however, does not specify the power contexts in which deliberations take place.

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the ease of property relations, it is possible to speak of resistance, or contestation as being part of the constitutive fabric of the very rulings which defined these relations: the struggles of different groups left their imprint on law and administrative practice. Thus, the analysis attempted here points to a fluidity in property relations which are power relations among persons or groups existing in a historically specific context. 1 What is suggested here is a politics of property, and of the market, with openings and possibilities for action and initiative on the part of individuals and groups. At the same time, domination is about the 'framing' of the different power fields, about defining the terms of contestation and of resistance. It represents a context, one that shapes the different power fields while at the same time being shaped by them. The institutional environment of centralized slates has been such a context. The perception, which links the development of private property to the practices of the state, assumes an understanding of state power which radically departs from the liberal understanding, which reduces that power to its policing function and views its interventions as being detrimental to the development of private ownership and of market activity. State power 2 here refers to the capability to order, regulate, and classify social reality. The exercise of those capabilities by the groups who hold state power implies that they are able to effect the power constellations that make possible orderings or regulations of social relations, and of economic activity towards defined objectives. Individual orderings are effected through administrative practices, which represent multiple power fields in which both social and legal actors (or state actors including central agencies, tax-collectors, and judges) confront, cajole, and dominate or are dominated. What imparts a unity to the context of multiple power fields (which comprise the state), and a pattern to different relationships of subjugation and domination, are idioms of rule; they form the representations of individual states. The figure of the just ruler in the Ottoman case was such a representation. 3 The idioms of rule pose the objectives of state power and For a discussion of the highly qualified nature of property relations in England, see David Sugarman, "Law, Economy and the State in England, 1750-1914: Some Major Issues" in Legality, Ideology and the State, ed. David Sugarman (London: Academic Press, 1983); for the contested character of private property, see Edward P. Thompson, "The Moral Economy of English Crowd in the 18th Century", Past and Present 50 (1971), 76-109; Whigs and Hunters. 2 T h e conception of the state presented here draws on the work of Philip Abrams, "Notes on the difficulty of studying the State", Journal of Historical Sociology 1:1 (March 1988); also see, Philip Corrigan and Derek Sayer, The Great Arch: English State Formation as Cultural Revolution (Oxford: Blackwell, 1985); Timothy Mitchell, "Society, Economy and the State Effect", in State/Culture: New approaches to the State in the Social Sciences, ed. G. Steinmetz (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, forthcoming). •'Historically, idioms of rule have derived from vocabularies of statecraft which get imprinted in collective memories. One could mention the legacies of Roman and Sasanid statecraft among these vocabularies. For a discussion of Sasanian vocabularies, see Halil inalcik, "State and Ideology", in The Middle East and the Balkans under the Ottoman Empire (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993); the Siyasetname (Book of Government) by Nizamulmtilk, the Persian minister to Abbasid rulers of the tenth century, is representative of understandings of Sasanid statecraft.

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provide the categories in relation to which individual orderings are established. They refer to a discourse which naturalizes and renders normal the multiple orderings of social reality, a given pattern of domination. It is important to note that this discourse is not in any way essential; it is continually produced through rituals and routines which become part of the daily experience of persons. In the case of centralized states of the late eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries centuries, in which the efficacy of bureaucratic practices became the self-definition of states, public registrations of life events including births and deaths, as well as of property, were rituals of this nature. Finally, the notion of state as a context for power relations in which multiple actors operate within the parameters of historically-formed vocabularies, breaks with the dichotomous view of social reality which casts state and society as inhabiting separate domains. With respect to relations of private ownership, state practices were constitutive of these relations which they ordered, classified, and defined. As such, these relations did not have an autonomous existence in a mystified sphere of the market, or society, outside of the orderings of the state. On the other hand, state practices are power fields in which both state and social actors confront each other, and negotiate the terms of domination and subjugation which this kind of property implied. Thus, state and society interpenetrated in ways which make it impossible to think of them as separate and opposing domains. The casting of lines of demarcation between them is to suggest the existence of historically-specific power configurations which led to constitutions of this demarcation. 1 In effect, this paper argues that the 'order of the market' and ' the order of property' it pre-supposed were outcomes of the governance practices of the centralized states and of the power fields, which characterized the practices of these states. Historically commercial environments (in agrarian contexts) had demonstrated tendencies towards a transformation of land, and labor, as well as goods, into commodities freely disposable or exchangeable in markets. Such tendencies towards commodification have been associated with the development of the private ownership right. In relation to early Islamic societies, Baber Johanssen's work pointed to a proliferation of rulings regarding private ownership of land by Islamic jurists during periods of

^For an excellent discussion of the historical development of the separation of state and society, in the context of the emergence of civil society in eighteenth century Europe, see Jürgen Habermas, Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1989)

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commercial expansion. 1 But these developments were confined to historical moments which were not sustained; for the most part they represented discrete pockets of commercial production for domestic or external markets. That is, prior to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in the context of the power relations which prevailed both globally and within different regions, exchange activity was largely that of goods, while commodification with respect to factors of production, including land and labor, was limited and production was, to a large degree, for subsistence and for the payment of taxes. This paper argues that 'the order of the market' or capitalism as a generalized system of commodity production and exchange belonged to a historically specific moment, to a terrain of specific power configurations. Its development has been inseparable from the orderings of social relations by centralized states which represented such a terrain. However, this should not suggest that the argument presented here assigns agency to the state, or its practices in the determination of property rights, to the exclusion of social groupings representing different interests, including the commercial one. It simply seeks to re-situate these interests in power fields which were constitutive of property rights, of commercialized classses themselves. What does the above conceptualization suggest from the point of view of writing of comparative history? First, it suggests a distancing from the understanding of the 'great transformation' as the moment of the market, its liberation from the shackles of feudal politics or states, a moment which belonged to Europe. Instead one could talk about the 'great transformation' as one of multiple state transformations which signaled re-orderings of social realities and which represented radical ruptures with what had been. These transformations and the formation of the centralized leviathans which originated in the context of interstate competition in Western Eurasia and subsequently generalized to other world areas, through exigencies of European colonial rule, as well as resistance to that rule, remain the single most ^The Islamic Law on Land Tax and Rent (London: Croom Helm, 1988); for a recent passionate discussion of a global order of exchange in the pre-eighteenth century period, dominated by China and other Asian regions including India, Persia and the Ottoman Empire, see Andre Gunder Frank, Re-Orient: Global Economy in the Asian Age (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998). Frank undertook an effective critique of the 'stagnationist' arguments which dominate the Euro-centric accounts of Asian economies by focusing on the commercial dynamics of these societies prior to the eighteenth century. Yet by extending the notion of the 'market' backwards in time and attempting an equivalence between the commercial economies prior to the eighteenth century and the ' order of the market' in the post-eighteenth century, Frank's analysis tends to overlook the power relations, including the development of centralized states which were pivotal to the development of the 'order of the market'. As a result, Frank can not explain the development of capitalism as an arena of power relations and his analysis is bogged down in an unfruitful discussion about the origins of the industrial revolution in Europe. Frank argues that the industrial revolution was responsible for the establishment of European hegemony in the post- eighteenth century and, writing before the recent crisis of the Asian economies, he suggests that with industrialization underway in Asia, these areas are once again vying for hegemony in the global economy.

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important agency in the constitution of the 'order of the market'. On the one hand, examination of the orderings of social reality by centralized states, and of the categories in which these orderings were cast, may point to a history widely shared by different world regions, cutting across the East/ West divide. On the other hand, the notion that constitutions of private ownership, of market exchange activity, as well as of law as autonomous and differentiated into private and public, all took place in power fields in which these were negotiated, resisted, and contested, points in the direction of the problematizing of the histories of both European and non-European areas, in that it calls into question the casting of world history as one of contrasting ideal images.

2. Transformation of the State In the Ottoman Empire, the transformation of the territorial state meant the dissolution of the distributive-accommodative mode of state power. The Ottoman territorial state developed during the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries in competitive struggle with other states and political entities in the Balkans and in central Europe, and to the east in Persia and Anatolia. The might and the survival of the state greatly depended on its ability to have access to the ever-increasing sources of revenue most urgently required to build and maintain armies. This, in the sixteenth century environment, meant territorial expansion. In keeping with military and political imperatives, the state practices which ordered social relations partook of a distributive-accommodative logic. The technology of warfare prior to the introduction of firearms had led to reliance on cavalry armies. This was true regardless of the fact that since its inception the Ottoman state had had a highly disciplined infantry corps, the Janissaries, which won the envy of raison d'état states elsewhere in Europe. To raise cavalry armies, the state distributed the rights over revenues from agricultural lands to veteran soldiers, to army commanders, and to local rulers in conquered territories, in return for the delivery of mounted soldiers. These groups were also entrusted with the administration of the different regions and were exempt from state taxes. The distributive nature of state power, however, extended beyond the concern for raising armies. The members of the religious establishment, who were not necessarily expected to deliver soldiers, were also recipients of revenue grants and of the privilege of exemption from state taxes. As such, the distribution of revenue grants was as much directed towards enlisting the political allegiance to the ruler of the different groups as it was

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towards securing a cavalry army. It was aimed at accommodating different groups in the ruling bloc and, in doing so, sought to preempt their potential resistance to the ruler's authority. It was also a means of incorporating the different regions into the imperial system. The pattern of exchange of revenue entitlements for political allegiance 1 reflected an understanding of state power which prevailed prior to the nineteenth century. In this context, the state was represented by the figure of the just ruler. 2 An understanding of justice, cast in terms of the ruler's ability to ensure order or freedom from social strife, provided the idiom of rule which imparted a coherence to diverse practices and, in fact, made it possible for the ruler to represent the state and, in doing so, differentiate himself from the members of the ruling bloc with whom the ruler competed for entitlements to tax revenues. 3 At the same time, the exercise of ruler's justice vis-à-vis the groups which were part of the ruling bloc, involved the making of provisions for individual circumstances in different areas, as well as for different types of revenue holdings e. g. vakif (pious endowment),mtilk (freehold), and timar (military revenue grants). These provisions, embodied in provincial regulations and state ordinances issued in response to immediate problems, represented settlements negotiated between the ruler and the members of different groups and were subject to variations over time with changes in the power positioning of the respective parties. 4

Alain Query described this exchange in terms of the notion of 'gift', see "Le roi dépensier: le don, le contraint et l'origine du système financier de la monarchie française de l'Ancien Regime", Annales, E. S. C. 39:6 (Novembre-Decembre 1984); "Etat, classification sociale et compromis sous Louis XIV: la capitation de 1695", Annales, E. S. C. 41:5 (Septembre-Octobre 1996). 2 F o r Ottoman state traditions, see Halil Inalcik, "Turkish and Iranian Political Theories and Traditions in Kutadgu Bilig", and "State and Ideology under Sultan Suleyman I", in The Middle East and the Balkans under the Ottoman Empire: Essays on Economy and Society. For European raison d'état states, see Gerhard Oestreich, Neostoicism and the Early Modern State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982). Also for a discussion of the Ottoman state in relation to the idea of raison d'état state, Frederich Meinecke, Machiavellism: The Doctrine of Raison d'Etat and its Place in Modern History (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1957), 85-9. 3 I n the early period the destination of revenues that accrued to the central state was specified e. g. Treasury (bayt-ul mal), the estates of the sultan and of the members of the Palace (has). For a discussion of these classifications, see Islamoglu-inan, State and Peasant in the Ottoman Empire: Agrarian Power Relations and Regional Economic Development in Ottoman Anatolia during the Sixteenth Century (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994), articles 1 and 3. 4 T h i s particularity is manifested in the issuing of special sets of regulations for different regions, for different groups e. g. nomads (yôriiks), rice cultivators (çeltikçi), or different categories of revenue-grant holders e. g. vakif, miilk. These regulations were often attached to the tax surveys prepared for different regions, as well as for different groupings and for types of revenue entitlements. For a detailed discussion, see, Islamoglu-lnan, State arid Peasants, Article 1; for texts and discussions of these regulations, Omer L. Barkan, XV. ve XVI. Asirlarda Osmanli Imparatorlugunda Zirai Ekonominin Hukuki ve Mali Esaslari, in Kanunlar, vol. I, (Istanbul, 1943).

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Ruler's justice also presupposed the perpetuation of the subsistence production of peasant households which provided the rural as well as urban households with foodstuffs. In fact, the ordering of property relations on land were premised on an understanding of a 'moral economy' of subsistence and of provisioning, propelled by a concern on the part of the central government to prevent social unrest resulting from food shortages. To ensure the continuity of food production, rules restricted the alienability or divisibility of the subsistence holdings, limited the freedom of movement of cultivators and regulated fallow practices. Rules also sought to protect the subsistence producers from extortion by revenue holders; to this end they delineated the use rights of producers, as well as their obligations to different groups of revenue claimants including the ruler or the central treasury, in terms of the form in which dues were paid (in kind, in labor, or in money), the rates at which they were paid, and exemptions from payments in return for services rendered. These regulations directed towards the preservation of subsistence production were characterized by a responsiveness to individual circumstances. As such they varied from one locality to the other with conditions of production and of political or military status of groups or individuals; they represented a series of settlements negotiated between the cultivators and the extractors of their surpluses over long periods of time. Similarly, rules which regulated actual land use represented multi-layered, shared claims that were negotiated over land use, including webs of grazing and planting rights on common lands, as well as on individual plots. At the same time, these rules sought to protect food production from the onslaught of pastoralism, and from being taken over by commercial crops. Orderings of property relations were, in fact, inseparable from the differentiated and particularistic claims over revenues of the different groups, on the one hand, and from the use claims of subsistence producers to land use, on the other. The title to land (rakaba) generally lay with the ruler (or the treasury). This did not represent a title of ownership in the modern sense but an ability on the part of the ruler, or the central government, to distribute rights to revenues from land and in so doing, to negotiate with different groups or individuals the conditions of their allegiance. State 'ownership' also served to define the boundaries of the use rights of cultivators who had heritable use rights over their plots. Not only were there limits on the divisibility and alienability of use rights, but they were also restricted in terms of the time-periods for which lands could be left uncultivated or left fallow, and in terms of the cultivation of non-grain crops.

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This, in turn, points to an understanding of property rights on land as consisting of a bundle of rights representing claims to land use, revenues and title.1 These claims were continuously negotiated and redefined. For instance, given the differentiation of rights to revenues and title on a plot of land, depending on the nature of the settlement negotiated among the parties, the rights to revenues could rest with a freeholder (miilk), a pious endowment, or with the treasury, while the title rested with the state or the treasury. This should not suggest that the claim of the state to title was an absolute one: especially in areas where there was strong resistance to the Ottoman conquest, the Ottoman ruler conceded the right to title to former ruling groups. These groups included members of the religious establishment in the Muslim region of Anatolia. The rights to revenues from such lands could be assigned to state officials and state regulations relating to subsistence production applied to these lands. On the other hand, representations of property rights on land as 'bundles of rights or claims', points to an understanding of property relation (in this case of relations of distribution and extraction of tax revenues and of access to land use) as power relations among groups or individuals. It refers to competing claims or entitlements, which were continually negotiated among groups and individuals. The negotiated settlements were, in turn, summed in different rulings, be it in the form of government regulations, ordinance of the ruler, or court decisions. What needs to be underlined is that the different categories which defined entitlements to revenues and to land use did not correspond to an understanding of ownership. I have already discussed what state 'ownership' stood for within the confines of this administrative universe. Similarly, miilk (freehold) did not signify private ownership; instead miilk was a category of entitlement to tax revenues which the grantee held, as was the case with revenue grants, by a berat or an official document of entitlement from the ruler. The holder of the miilk grant could alienate his right to revenues, transfer it to his heirs, or convert it into mortmain property or vakif. Trees or buildings on agricultural holdings, as well as other produce were also classified as miilk which, in this case, referred to an entitlement to the fruits of land. These claims were differentiated from miri claims on fields the 'ownership' or rakaba of which generally rested with the central treasury. The cultivators of agricultural lands had inheritable usufruct right (tasarruj) on these lands, which they held by a deed issued for a fee by the local administrator cum revenue holder.

The idea of property as a bundle of rights derives from Maine, Ancient Law. Maine employs the metaphor of the bundle in describing the pre-modern property systems. Also see discussion in Section 1.

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Here, it is important to elaborate on the differentiation between mtilk and miri which corresponded to the categories of movables and immmovables. In the early Ottoman context, mulk referred to ownership of 'movables', or fruits of land whereas miri which focused on land or fields was 'immovable'. Thus, mulk properties were alienable and exchangable, while miri or fields which constituted the sources for revenue and subsistence was inalienable and therefore were prevented from being concentrated in few hands. As mentioned above, the mtilk grants to different groups represented grants of the revenues from fields and the alienability of such holdings referred to the transferrability of rights over revenues. Similarly in the case of transfers of usufruct rights, what was actually alienated was not land but the right to land use or to its fruits. Thus, the differentiation betweeen the categories of mulk (movables) and miri (immovables) signified spaces where different claims could be formulated. As will be discussed later in this paper, the formulation of individual ownership rights which was inseparable from the constitution of a single category of ownership, was no less than an eradication of multiple claims on land and the establishment of the singular claim of the legal owner. It was a process ridden with conflict; it presupposed an undermining of the Ottoman (also pre-modern) perception of land as a source of revenue and subsistence which coincided with the concerns of provisioning of rural and urban populations and the distribution of revenues among the members of the ruling bloc. These concerns described a political culture which rested on the idea of distributive justice and which was premised on the ability of a 'ruler' or a state to maintain order. Both this political culture and the understanding of state power it represented, was to be radically transformed in the century. The transformation of the accommodative-distributive state took place in the environment of intensified military and political competition among European states beginning in the seventeenth century. Interstate competition and the requirement to maintain standing armies, which in this period came to prevail over cavalry armies, were factors in empowering the central government at the expense of the provincial power nodules. Confronted with high costs of warfare, as well as the financial burdens of an expanding bureaucracy, the centralizing state sought to increase its revenues. Earlier territorial conquests had been a primary means of augmenting the revenues which accrued to the ruler. Conquests also enabled the ruler to accommodate rival political claims through the system of revenue grants. By the eighteenth century, the Ottoman state had reached the limits of its territorial expansion both in Europe and in the East; moreover, in the nineteenth century it began losing territory in the Balkans and in Egypt.

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Unable to expand outwards, the central government turned inwards to establish control over the revenues which had formerly accrued to the members of the ruling bloc. This was a long-drawn-out process of incessant struggles between the central government and the members of the religious establishment, provincial notables, and the old guard military establishment. One phase in this conflict had been a re-casting of the system of revenue grants on the part of the central government, in terms of life-term assignments of tax farms in the eighteenth century. The practice of tax farming involved large cash advances made to the central government by the tax farmers, in return for the right to collect taxes from a given region, and its preponderance coincided with commercial expansion in agriculture. From the point of view of the central government, it also represented an attempt to accommodate as tax farmers those provincial elites which were not part of old distributive networks. In so doing, the central government sought to weaken the hold of old elites over land while, at the same time, increasing its share of agrarian revenues. 1 In the nineteenth century, with the crystallization of a central army and a central bureaucracy, the government undertook new orderings of property relations on land. These orderings aimed at establishing the general claim of the central government over revenues to the exclusion of the entitlements of the different groups (including the ruler and his entourage) which formerly constituted the ruling bloc (including the tax farmers). At the same time, the central government sought to subject these groups to taxation, thus abolishing their privileges in the form of tax exemptions. All this, however, entailed a change in the nature of state power which was no longer represented by the ruler and distributive practices, accommodative of the different interests and groupings. State power was no longer associated with the person of the just ruler, but it became 'the state' writ large, represented through the efficacy and the generality of its bureaucratic practices. The latter, including legal codes and land cadastres, no longer referred to negotiated settlements which were responsive to individual circumstances and which sought to accommodate the multiple claims in prescriptive, prohibitive regulations. Instead state practices represented a pattern of domination which obliterated the particularistic claims through subjecting them to the universal, general claims of the state and of its bureaucratic efficacy. As such, these practices came to constitute domains of contestation in ways in which the particularistic injunctions, which represented the orderings of social relations in the pre-nineteenth century

For a discussion of Ottoman state power and changes in the nature of ruling elites, see Ariel Salzman, "An Ancien Regime Revisited: 'Privatization' and Political Economy in the Eighteenth Century Ottoman Empire", Politics and Society 21:4 (Dec. 1993), 393-423.

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context, were not. As mentioned earlier, the particularistic injunctions were summations of negotiations which had already taken place among different parties; they represented settlements negotiated so that social order could prevail. By contrast, modern administrative rulings or codes (as well as the modern cadastre) were continually negotiated texts; they represented sites of contestation and resistance by groups whose interests were no longer accommodated by the general formulations of the law. What, in fact, happened was a radical departure from the former administrative universe where the particular or its articulation in regulations, defined the very end of state power in terms of justice dispensation. We will discuss this change in the nature of state power and of its regulations in relation to the Land Code of 1858. The pattern of state formation in the environment of interstate competition described for the Ottoman state has close parallels with states in Europe, especially in those areas where land and the agricultural economy was the primary source of surpluses coveted by centralizing states and their internal political rivals. In the European context, unlike the Ottoman one, centralizing states, confronted with limits to territorial expansion on the continent increasingly engaged in colonial conquests. Despite this, throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the different European states were locked in struggles with local power groups over control of land revenues. 1 At the same time, state centralization was taking place in an environment of commercial expansion to which colonial conquests contributed significantly. In this commercial setting, individual states increasingly no longer saw generation of wealth simply in terms of extensive measures, that is, territorial conquests which enabled access to new sources of revenue, or appropriation of resources which were controlled by rival political groups within individual territories. 2 Taxation came to be perceived in more intensive terms, those of the state's regulation of economic activity to increase productive capacity which would result in an expansion of taxable incomes. French physiocratic convictions appear to have been an inspiration for this perception. The belief that land was the chief source of value, that it was an economic asset or a factor of production, seems, in a number of European regions, to have stimulated attempts at cadastral mapping as the scientific basis for the improvement of the most important asset. 3 Similarly, the Ipor the seventeenth century origins of the tension between central government and provincial power nodules in France, see William Beik, Absolutism and Society in Seventeenth Century France: State Power and Provincial Aristocracy in Languedoc (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). 2 The notion of the state's generation of wealth in terms of extensive measures would also apply to mercantilistic policies. 3 Roger J. P. Kain and Elizabeth Baiggent, The Cadastral Map in the Service of the State (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1996), 343-4.

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ordering of property relations in terms of individual rights was, more and more, grounded in the conviction that private ownership of land was essential for economic growth, in that only those who controlled the surplus production could be expected to invest in capital improvements. 1 Michel Foucault pointed out that exigencies of interstate competition made it imperative for the individual states to develop capabilities for steering economic activity that would both enhance productive capacity and subject expanding economic activity to state controls. 2 These capabilities, which Foucault referred to as techniques of government, already existed under the raison d'état states of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and came under the rubric of Polizeiwissenchaft? They included practices of inspection and regulation of economic and social life, especially in urban areas which witnessed population explosions during this period. But the regulatory practices of states that evolved after the eighteenth century did not simply represent an intensification or generalization of earlier governmental techniques. They represented new ways of ordering and regulating social reality (and therefore controlling it), in terms of categories which differed radically from those orderings and regulations under earlier states. As an aspect of this rupture and the establishment of control over economic activity, Foucault pointed to an institution of the economy, through state practices, as a separate domain. In this regard, he stressed the inclusion in the 'economy' of production which hitherto had belonged to the domain of the household. Expanding on Foucault's perception, it may be argued that in the nineteenth century the 'economy' referred to the sphere of commodity exchange of private individuals. Formerly, market exchange was primarily confined to the exchange of goods; the inclusion of production in the sphere of market exchange, implied that the primary resources of land and labor be constituted as economic assets, as factors of production, exchangeable and controllable. It implied the constitution of land and labor markets. In relation to land: previously, under territorial states, it was perceived as territory; it was primarily a resource for the production of subsistence goods and of tax revenues. To these ends, its alienability was restricted; its use was delimited. At the same time, represented in terms of the categories of revenue grants or

1 Elizabeth Genovese-Fox, The Origins of Physiocracy: Economic Revolution and Social Order in Eighteenth Century France (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1976), 113ff; for a description of property as an expectation; see Bentham, Theory of Legislation, (ed. C. K. Ogden: London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1931). ^Michel Foucault, "On Governmentality", in The Foucault Effect, ed. Burchell et al. •'Michel Foucault, "Omnes et Singulatim: Towards a Criticism, of 'Political Reason'", in The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, I, ed. Sterling McMurrin (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1981), 225-254; also Keith Tribe, Governing Economy: The Reformation of German Economic Discourse 1750-1840 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).

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tax farms of the different social and political groups, or of subsistence and surplus producing household units, land as a resource eluded control by any one group or interest. Similarly, people or inhabitants of territories were defined in particularistic terms and with reference to family, village, town quarter, or tribe. Representations in law and in other state practices, of land as an economic asset or as a 'thing' or as 'property', and of inhabitants in specific locales as population, or as laborers, were abstractions from particular contexts and pre-supposed the existence of the context of the modern state, of its disciplining, controlling practices, and of its ordering of social relations. Foucault focused on the ways in which the compilation of statistics and registration with the police made possible the constitution of the category of population measurable, identifiable, or tractable; that is, it became an object of taxation, or conscription, and an economic resource. For Foucault, the institution of the 'economy' as a separate domain in terms of the 'objectification' of persons as population, was inseparable from the establishment of state control over economic activity, or from the exercise of governmental power. From the perspective of this paper, Foucault's analysis, by pointing to the character of governmental practices as being constitutive of social reality, suggests a blurring of the demarcation between state and society. In doing this, it dispenses with endless quibblings about incompatibilities/ contradictions between the practices that originate in the spheres of state and society and about the nature of the state's role in the economy. Yet, this analysis tends to absolutize the processes of the 'constitution' of social reality through state practices. Thus, with relations of domination internalized or subsumed in the 'objects' of domination (e.g. land, labor, population), there appears to be no way of escaping or contesting governmental power. Put differently, Foucault does not problematize the processes of 'constitution'; statistical practice which was responsible for constituting objects of control and exchange, is viewed in relation to a capacity of exercising governmental power and not as a power field where resistance to it may be located. In the nineteenth century Ottoman context, as was the case in most European regions, subjecting agricultural wealth, particularly land, to state regulation was central to the project of the modern state. The ordering of property relations in terms of individual ownership was central to such regulation. Individual ownership right represented a dual abstraction of the property claim of the individual, from the web of multiple, particularistic entitlements to land revenues and from the diverse, shared claims over land use. The dual abstraction sought to establish total control by the central state over revenues which no longer referred to the multiple entitlements of different

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groups but to the singular, general taxation claim of the state. Secondly, it sought to achieve the absolute control by the individual owner over the income from and use of the land. From the point of view of an administrative ordering of social reality, individual ownership signaled a differentiation between the categories of income and of taxation, of property and of taxation. The Land Code of 1858 was a representation of this differentiation in that it addressed the issues related to landed property, while taxation was regulated through a separate set of regulations. What the separation of property and taxation reveals, however, is a change in the conception of economic activity from one primarily directed towards subsistence production and to the production of surpluses in the form of tax revenues, to one which emphasized its productive character. It points to a recognition that agrarian surpluses were no longer expected to be exhausted by revenue claims but were expected to deliver an income to the owner. In fact, taxes were to be calculated as a proportion of income. Thus, Ottoman land surveys of the nineteenth century were called surveys of income (or temettuat defterleri),' and no longer tahrir defterleri which were the tax surveys of the earlier period. Given the understanding of economic activity as a productive, income generating venture, the central state sought not only to establish its claims to total revenue, but also to establish its control over the totality of the wealth produced by individual owners in the countryside. The latter concern manifests itself in the coverage of the income surveys which sought to take stock of all forms of wealth, not simply listing the taxable resources as was the case with the earlier tax surveys. The administrative constitution of the individual ownership right was central to the process of establishing control. It took the form of creating the legal owner, of the right of property, of the object of property or the land as a thing, measurable, controllable and alienable 2 ; it also entailed the separating of the object of property from its subject, or the legal owner, his right of ownership. 3 The

For a detailed discussion of temettuat registers, see Huri islamoglu, "Politics of Administering Property: Law and Statistics in the Nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire", in Constituting Modernity, Private Property in the East and West ed. Huri Islamoglu, (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2004. Temettuat registers introduced the dönüm as the unit for measuring land. This was an aerial unit and was deemed more accurate than the gift, the area ploughable by a pair of oxen, which had served as the unit of measurement prior to the nineteenth century, Ibid. 3 This separation, indeed, represented a rupture with earlier definitions of rights to revenues and to use which did not presuppose an object separate from themselves. In these definitions, land classified as immovable was not, in its juridical perception, a thing with an existence of its own, exchangeable, or alienable. For instance, in the case of freehold property or transfers of usufruct titles to individual plots, what was alienated was not land, but the rights to its revenues and to use. Land was inalienable and restrictions on alienability were restrictions on alienability of rights and therefore their accumulation in a few hands. See Islamoglu-lnan, State and Peasant, also the discussion above in Section 2.

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registration of title to individual holdings 1 and the recording in income surveys of these holdings, as well the administrative rulings, enabled these definitions and separations. They also represented the sites for resistance to the formulation of individual ownership. In his study of property rights in Egypt during the nineteenth century, Tim Mitchell describes the separation of the right of ownership from its object, or land and refers to this process as one of effecting of a difference between the abstract, or the code of law which defined the right of ownership, and the concrete, or land, which was constituted through regulatory practices including registration and cadastral surveys. 2 Mitchell argues that effecting a difference between the right and its object represents a way of producing, through state practices, manageable spaces; individual ownership was one such space. Mitchell, however, does not simply emphasize the extension of governmental power which the creation of individual ownership implied. He points to the resistance to the generalization of private ownership rights and the formation of a new class of landowners, which were inseparable from the processes of the creation and the disciplining of a labor force. Cultivators who had lost their use rights over land to the new landowners and were forced to work as laborers on the land vehemently opposed the ordering of private ownership. Yet Mitchell's analysis falls short of problematizing the sites in law and administrative procedures where resistance and contestation took place and left their imprint on the very practices which subjugated the resistors. It simply points to the struggles against the domination patterns on land, almost as if these struggles were doomed to impotence before the all-embracing ordering of property relations on the part of the state, and before an exercise of unequivocal governmental power; it does not venture into the domain of politics of property.

For an excellent discussion of the technique of registration in the constitution of individual ownership in nineteenth century England, see Alain Pottage, "The Originality of Registration", Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 15 (1995). 2 Tim Mitchell, "Making Space for the Nation State", in Colonialism, Post-Colonialism and the Production of Space, ed. D. Clayton and D. Gregory (Oxford: Blackwell, forthcoming). Mitchell's analysis, however, is too categorical in assigning the creation of the right of ownership (which he designates as abstract) to the legal sphere and of the constitition of land as a 'thing' (which he designates as concrete) to the sphere of administrative practices of cadastration. The constitutions of the right and its object could be part of one and the same process. The Land Code of 1858 which represented administrative law was one such instance. At the same time, individual ownership right was also constituted through the concrete technique of registration of title (Pottage, "The Originality of Registration"). Second, Mitchell in emphasizing the rupture which private ownership represented in terms of the separation of the right from its object, overlooks the ambiguity in law regarding the 'thingness' of land and the argument that in the case of private ownership what is actually exchanged is the right and not the 'thing' (Alain Pottage, "The Cadastral Metaphor: Intersections of Property and Topography", in Constituting Modernity, Private Property in the East and West ed. Huri Islamoglu.

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This paper argues that law and administrative procedures were the power fields in which individual ownership was created. The Land Code of 1858, which was the central piece of legislation on landed property in the nineteenth century, represented one such power field. In this field, different stakes on the part of former claimants to revenues, groups with claims to ownership, or those with use claims over the land, as well as the different governmental agencies, clashed or were poised in uneasy compromise. As such, the text of the code was highly revealing of the politics of property in the mid-nineteenth century Ottoman Empire; it carried the stamp of the struggles carried out by different groups. These were by no means mute tussles lurking beneath the thick fog of the government's implacable gaze. They rendered the ordering of individual ownership rights highly fluid, continually contested and subject to qualifications, as is witnessed by the issuing of special regulations which represented modifications or specification of the general precepts of the code in the context of regional expectations. At the same time, those moments in which the general law was particularized were also the moments when the particular defined itself in terms of the vocabularies and categories of that law.

3. Land Code of1858 as a Power Field The Land Code of 1858 instituted, to use Ranjit Guha's phrase, a 'rule of property' or the singular claim of ownership of the title holder. 1 However, the Code applied only on state lands over which the central government in the nineteenth century had consolidated its control and established its taxation claims to the exclusion of the revenue claims of the former ruling groups. This has led both the liberal, as well as the Marxist, observers of the nineteenth century Ottoman Empire to argue that the Code represented a reassertion of state ownership on land. The latter is assumed to have impeded the development of individual ownership rights on land. 2 From a legal liberal perspective, the history of land ownership in the Ottoman empire has been one of the gradual transformation of miri status (state ownership) into miilk

' Ranajit Guha, A Rule of Property for Bengal: An Essay on the Idea of the Permanent Settlement (Paris: Mouton, 1963). 2 For Marxist Asiatic Mode of Production arguments of oppositionality between state ownership and the devefopment of private property, see Sholom Avineri, "Modernization and iVsab Society", in Israel, The Arabs and the Middle East, ed. Irving Howe and Carl Gershman (New York: Bentham Books, 1972); Karl Wittfogel, Oriental Despotism (New York: Vintage Books, 1981).

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(freehold). 1 This view assumes that the miilk category as it existed in the Ottoman context corresponded to individual ownership right; representing, as it were, a nodule of resistance and alternative to state ownership. 2 The argument presented here challenges these understandings. First, it seeks to show that the category of miilk as it was recast in the Ottoman context did not so much refer to absolute ownership as to a certain kind of a claim over land revenues and a claim over its fruits (Section 2). Second, this paper shows that procedures of registration and issuing of the title of ownership, as well as of drafting of lease contracts which enabled transactions in land, were initially applicable to state lands alone. 3 Individual ownership rights were constituted primarily through these practices. 4 The title of ownership replaced the former titles to land revenues and to its use (tasarruf)5: it signified the separation of the ownership claim from the former revenue and use claims, establishing it as the singular, and absolute claim over land only to be limited by the taxation claim of the state. As will be shown, the extension of these practices to miilk or vakif lands not only signaled the institution of individual ownership rights on these lands, but also For instance, see Robert H. Eisenraan, Islamic Law in Palestine and Israel. This perception that the administrative constitution of individual ownership took place on miri lands poses a challenge to the view that the Code represented a reassertion of the miri status (state ownership) over which the central government exercised control and subsequent legislation represented a gradual transformation of miri status into miilk (freehold) status. 2 F o r a discussion of the miilk category in the context of the bifurcation of Ottoman law into Islamic private and sultanic (administrative) public law, see Section 1 of this paper. Mecelle premised on the precepts of Islamic fiqh was to form the domain of private law. Mecelle did not introduce a general formulation either of private property or of contracts. Its provisions, however, suggest an obliteration of the distinction between movables (referring to all exchangeable goods including the fruits of the land) and immovables (representing land), which would indicate subjecting of goods and land to the same rules of transactions. (Eisenman, Islamic Law in Palestine and Israel). 3 I t has been argued that the notion of absolute property which the Code embodied was built on a relation between the state and individual cultivators and that it increasingly assumed the character of a contractual relation between the two. The idea of contractual relations also characterized the rent or lease arrangement as well as the transfers of tapu (state lands). Halil Cin, Osmanli Toprak Dtizeni ve Bu Diizenin Bozulmasi (Istanbul: Boga/.ici Yaymlari, 1985). For the text of the Land Code used in this study, see Ahmet Akgiindtiz, Mukayeseli Islam ve Osmanli Hukuku Kiilliyati (Diyarbakir, 1986), 683 ff. Hereafter I will refer to different articles by number. For a description of ferag (transfer) as a contractual arrangement in which both sides had to give their consent, and for the specification of conditions under which a party could be coerced or persuaded to transfer his land, see Articles 113-114, and 119 of the Code. The idea of contractuality, which is central to the development of absolute ownership, was further advanced with the issuing of Konturato Nizamnamesi in 1868. In fact, it was in the context of the extension of rent contracts to miilk lands that the assimilation of miilk lands to the status of tapu lands was debated. See Cevdet Pasha, Tezakir, IV, 141-2 for the suggestion that icare-i zemin provision of the Code should be extended to emlak-i sirfa and the miilk holders should be entitled to rents from those who planted trees on their lands. ^Marion Farouk-Sluglett and Peter Sluglett emphasized this aspect of the Code in their study of land tenure in Iraq. "The Transformation of Land Tenure and Rural Social Structure in Central and Southern Iraq, c. 1870-1958", International Journal of Middle East Studies 15 (1983): 491505; also on registration, see note 42. ^On multiple titles submitted by estate holders and cultivators to prove their ownership rights, see irade-i Defter-i Hakani-2 (MV 24225), dated 26 cemaziyyul-ahir, 1281.

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their subjection to the control of the central government. Viewed from this perspective, the status of miri (state land) can be said to have been inseparable from a legal-administrative formation of private or individual ownership rights. At the same time, in the nineteenth century the very meaning of miri seems to have undergone a change. It was no longer associated with the distributionist logic of state power whereby miri status enabled the ruler as the custodian of the treasury to assign revenues from state lands to different groups in order to obtain their political allegiance and to ensure subsistence production, in so doing preventing social strife. I have mentioned earlier this concern for order conjoined with an understanding of distributive justice. In the nineteenth century, the miri status signified the control of the central government over land revenues to the exclusion of all other groups. It also enabled the constitution of individual ownership through state practices, including transfers of state lands by means of a sales contract. Sale of lands in return for issuance of title deeds provided the central state with an important source of income. Most significantly, the new understanding of miri closely linked the development of individual ownership rights to the practices of the modern state. A central theme of this paper is that the constitution of individual ownership rights signaled the total control of the central government over land, which was the primary economic resource. Such control was made possible by the fact that individual ownership represented a separation of the revenue claim from the property claim, and in so doing created the space for the establishment of the singular taxation of the central government, to the exclusion of the revenue claims of groups which formerly formed the ruling bloc. Central government controls were also exercised through the application of the procedures defining individual ownership rights by state agencies. The text of the Code is replete with references to the competences of state agents (memuru marifetiyle) who were responsible for the registration of lands; they were also empowered to deny access by the title-holder in the event, for instance, that he or she discontinued cultivation for three years. 1 Moreover, the public character of registration of landed property in the presence of an official commission may have further underlined the presence of the central government in the countryside, thus establishing this process as a central ritual of the modern state. 2

1

Akgundiiz, Hukuk Kulliyati, Article 68. C i n , Osmanli Toprak Dtizeni, 126-9. The public character of all land transactions, including transfers, has also been viewed as a measure to ensure that the title holders were not coerced or persuaded into selling their property. On public registration, see Maine, Ancient Law, 354ff. 2

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However, the extension of state control was strongly resisted by those groups whose revenue claims were obliterated by the new property regime. This resistance and the power struggles between the central government and the former revenue claimants, are revealed in the system of classifying landed property introduced by the Code. First, the Code departed from previous classifications of land on the basis of recipients of revenue grants, for example, the pious endowment lands (vakif), lands held as freehold (temlik), the lands the revenues of which were alotted to military commanders (timar), to bureaucrats (zeamet), and palace members (has), or to tax farmers (,mukataa). Lands were now to be classified on the basis of conditions of access or use as, for example, common lands (metruke) or uncultivated land (;mevat). Lands were also classified as state lands (miri) and as freehold (miilk). Vakif lands generally belonged to the miilk category. Those lands from which vakifs drew an income but which were not freehold were considered miri and were called mevkufe. This separation of state, freehold and vakif lands no longer signified assignments of revenues of these lands to different groups of revenue claimants. It represented a delineation of those lands which were at the disposal of the state to transfer to individual owners from those which were not. Thus, the central government, through this separation, was conceding to the resistance of the holders of miilk and vakif to its taxation policies and to its procedures of registration; it was also revealing of the change in the nature of the understanding of miri and of the change in the nature of state power. Throughout the nineteenth century, the central government had attempted to confiscate vakif and miilk properties and to abolish tax farming. These attempts failed and tax farming remained the prevailing mode of tax collection while vakif and miilk holders continued their control over the land. These groups resisted the state taxes which were imposed on them when the system of revenue grants was revoked. Yet confrontations between the central government and the former ruling groups took place within the categories and/or classifications of the Land Code. The fact that the precepts of the Land Code applied to state lands alone left non-state lands in an administrative limbo. That is, non-state lands were not subject to the administrative practices of registration and issuance of title deeds, or to the precepts of the law of contracts, especially in relation to leases. This meant that they escaped state scrutiny and taxation. At the same time, given that previous regulations which made possible transactions in land were annulled, miilk and vakif holders, as well as former tax farmers, increasingly had problems in exercising their control over land. Added to this were pressures from the representatives of the central government and gradually the practices of registration of title, issuing title deeds and of drawing up lease contracts, were extended to miilk

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and 1 vakif lands. In certain instances, this enabled the former revenue holders to establish their ownership claims over lands which had been their revenue grants. The discussion in Section 4 suggests that the central government was not necessarily adverse to this development. The extension of state procedures also signaled the subjection of these groups to state taxes, which in many instances they continued to resist. But the terms of resistance were established through the categories of the Code. As such, the former ruling groups could resist taxation as landowners with titles to the land ownership but not as legitimate claimants to the revenues of the land. 2 The institution of individual ownership rights also represented a separation of the property claim from the subsistence claim of those with rights of access to land. It involved the establishment of the ownership claim to the exclusion of the use of and income from land whereby the title of ownership overrode the titles to land use (tasarruj) and the customary rights over land, including the collective grazing rights of the villagers. This was, however, a highly contentious process and the ambiguities built into the Code's precepts, as well as its contradictory formulations, bear testimony to the resistance to the institution of exclusive ownership rights over land. For one thing, the Code extended protection to title holders against trespassers with the aim of preventing the claims of third parties to access to land. Such claims included those of the planting of trees and construction of buildings. 3 Under the old regulations, the grain fields were generally classified as /win, while products of land such as trees, fruits, as well as buildings were classified as mtilk (freehold). The Code recognized the singular claim of the holder of ownership title over trees and forbade the planting of trees by outsiders on land held with title. This suggests a change in the classification of trees to miri. In another article, however, trees were designated as mtilk, For subjection of miilk lands to the tithe whereby rights on these lands were separated from the privilege of tax-exemption, see Omer L. Barkan, Turkiye'de Toprak Meselesi (Istanbul: Gozlem Yayinlari, 1980). This implied an approximation of the mttlk category to the category of individual ownership on state lands and a standardization of legal practice regarding different categories of land. In 1874 the practices of registration and issuance of title deeds were extended to miilk lands. For emlak-i sirfa or miilk nizamnamesi, see Cin, Osmanli Toprak Duzeni, 130. Also see above note 49 for Cevdet Pasha on the generalization of lease contracts and registration practices to vakif and miilk lands. 2

This may partly explain the difficulties encountered, since the inception of the Turkish Republic, in the taxing of the agricultural sector. Though these difficulties are often cast in terms of reluctance of governments to alienate small to medium sized peasant producers, the resistance to taxes on the part of large landowners, especially in western Anatolia no doubt contributed to the government's inability to tax. ^Akgiindiiz, Hukuk Kulliyatt, Article 25 of the Land Code. This was especially important in the case of ownership of trees which, as discussed in Section 4, was a highly contentious issue. The Code stipulated that in the event of transfer the trees could not be treated separately from the land and had to be transferred with it (Articles 44, 28, 25). This latter, in fact, implied a standardization of law relating to tapu (that is, titled lands or miri) and miilk lands (Articles 25,

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while being subjected to the ownership of the title holder. 1 This concession to previous practice may point to the opposition to the establishment of a single category of land which did away with spaces (possibilities) in the form of multiple categories through which multiple claims could be formulated. The concession took the form of a differentiation between rights of constructing buildings and planting trees and of ownership of the soil. But in the new legal context which the precepts of the Code represented, the mtilk category was no longer that of 'movables' vis-à-vis 'immovables' but represented a differentiation within more general category of ownership which Maine described in terms of a subversion of feudalized law of land by the Romanized law of immovables. The provisions on alienability and disposibility of land constituted another domain of contestation. The Code made provisions for the irrevocable transfer (ferag) of land either in return for payment or without expectation of payment. 2 This, however, held the threat of dispossession for cultivators who formerly had use rights over their plots and who managed to register these plots as their private property. This group was particularly vulnerable to the vicissitudes of the commercial environment in the nineteenth century. By way of protecting the property rights of cultivators, the Code restricted alienability through prohibitions on transfers in the event of indebtedness. 3 The provision was further negotiated through an acceptance of conditional transfers, which allowed for transfers of land with the condition that it would be returned upon payment of debt. 4 The incorporation of such practices by the Code, in fact, represented a recognition of the credit requirements of a commercialized agrarian economy and were directed towards the protection of the lender. 5 The Code included provisions for renting and leasing of state lands. 6 In some areas, especially the Balkans these provisions proved to be the subject of

Article 28 recognized the ownership rights of title holders on trees which they planted on tapu lands. But such rights were defined as mtilk (conceding to a continuity with previous practice) while, at the same time, premised on the principle that trees were subject to the status of the land. 2 Article 36 stipulated that transfer could not take place without the permission of the land official (arazi memuru). It stipulated that while the person who transferred property could not go to court to demand payment he could seize the property. This stipulation was revised in 1879 by an irade-i seniyye which recognized the right of the person who made the transfer to go to court. For a discussion of ferag in relation to the 1858 Code, see Cin, Osmanh Toprak Dtizeni, 120-8. For a general discussion of ferag in light of Ebu Suud's opinions, see Halil tnalcik, "Islamization of Ottoman Laws on Land and Land Tax", 108-9. 3 Akgiinduz, Hukuk Ktilliyati, Article 115. 4 Ibid., Articles 116, 117. Thus, vefaen ferag allowed for land transfers with the condition that they were returned after the payment of debt. On the other hand, ferag bil istiglal allowed for transfer of lands to the lender with the condition that he lease to the debtor in order to enable the latter to pay his debt and get back his land. 5 Cin, Osmanh Toprak Dtizeni, 146-56. ^Akgiindiiz, Hukuk Ktilliyati, Article 23.

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serious clashes between former tax farmers or notables who established their ownership rights and the cultivators who no longer enjoyed inheritable usufruct rights and were reduced to the status of tenants on their subsistence plots. Deliberations on the terms of tenancy, especially on its duration, frequently resulted in the issuing of special regulations which addressed the specific power configurations between owners and tenants in different regions. Section 4 is devoted to a discussion of a long-lasting conflict of this nature in Greece in the 1870s. Lastly, the central government and its taxation claims represented a power position from which definitions of individual ownership rights were negotiated. Above all, the central government was concerned with maintaining continuity in cultivation and therefore a continuous flow of taxes. To this end, the Code restricted the absolute rights of owners through the provision that the land reverted to the state in the event of the owner's failure to cultivate it for three years. 1 Moreover, the Code did not discourage confiscation, through the stipulation that the appropriator pay the tapu ('title) fees and cultivate the land. 2 This has been interpreted as a measure to tie the title holder to the land, to motivate him to retain possession of it. 3 It is also suggestive of the way in which the central government perceived individual ownership as closely related to the creation of wealth and therefore of taxable income. The highly qualified character of the text of the Code, as well as the classification schemes it embodied, testify to the problematic task of codifying property rights in the nineteenth century. Despite resistance, the Code established the definition of individual ownership rights as the vocabulary through which struggles over access to land were articulated. That is, a vocabulary of ownership replaced that of competing claims to use and revenues, and overtook that of competing claims to tax revenues and to land use. In France the intensity of the struggle in the countryside and the intransigence of the propertied classes, especially in relation to orderings of tenancy arrangements, did not allow for the issuing of a rural code until well into the 1880s. 4 By contrast, the Ottoman government did, in fact, issue a such a code, but it did so with great deal of trepidation. For one thing, the Code was a cross between a civil code and a rural code. In step with the civil

' Akgunduz, Hukuk Kiilliyati, Article 68. Akgiinduz, Hukuk Kulliyatt, Article 21. 3 Cin, Osmanli Toprak Dtizeni, 110. 4 Serge Aberdam, Aux Origines du Code Rural, 1789-1900: National de la Recherche Agronomique, 1982). 2

Un Siècle de Débat (Paris: Institut

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codes of the nineteenth century, it included a definition of individual ownership rights.1 This should not suggest that in the Ottoman Empire a notion of property, as it was formulated in the context of the natural law debates of the European enlightenment, was perceived as being the lynchpin of social and political order as was the case in post-revolutionary France. 2 Disputes over property, 'alienable and sacred' in the words of the 1791 Constitution, dominated the French countryside until the mid-nineteenth century. 3 In the Ottoman Empire, the overriding concern for order on the part of the central state during the first half of the ninetenth century 4 resulted in a more dispassionate view of individual ownership rights as Ottoman statesmen showed extreme sensitivity in respect of preventing disputes over property from being translated into political conflicts and for the most part saw to it that such disputes were relegated to the administrative domain thus becoming the subject matter of endless bureaucratic deliberations.5 In fact, the Ottoman view of property in the nineteenth century partook in the utilitarian consensus which linked the security of tenure, to be ensured by absolute ownership, with expectations of increased productivity. 6 The latter, from the point of view of the central state ever hankering for revenues, signaled increases in taxable wealth. 7 In this respect, the definition of

For an excellent anaysis of the French Civil Code, see Andre-Jean Arnaud, Essai d'analyse structure du Code Civil français: la règle du jeu dans la paix bourgeoise (Paris, 1973). The French Civil Code which stated in Article 544 that "property is the right to enjoy and dispose of things in the most absolute ways", had met with strong resistance in the countryside. Disputations in tribunals and in the legislature had resulted in the issuing of rulings which qualified and transmuted the definition of Article 544 and throughout the nineteenth century the French government came to rely on local usage for orderings of property relations on land. The contentious nature of property relations may explain the preponderance of policing measures in the French countryside. For a discussion of Article 544, see Kelley and Smith, "What was Property?". Kelley and Smith point to the condition of 'public interest' introduced in Article 545 which was, in fact, a restriction on the absolute right of property. ^William Sewell, "Property, Labor and the Emergence of Socialism in France, 1789-1848", in Consciousness and Class Experience in 19th Century Europe, ed. John M. Merriman (New York: Holmes and Meier Publishers, 1979). 3 For a discussion of these disputes during the Revolutionary period in the 1790s from the point of view of 'moral economy perspective', see Edward. P. Thompson et al., La guerrre du blé au XVIlf siècle (Paris: l.es éditions de la Passion, 1988). 4 T h e instance of Bulgarian revolts in the 1840s prior to the issuance of the Code, alerted the central state to the danger of social unrest if absolute ownership rights were to be generalized. Halil inalcik, Tanzimat ve Bulgar Meselesi (Ankara: Tiirk Tarih Kurumu Basimevi, 1943). The Greek Revolution in the 1820s, which adopted the ideals of the French Revolution, also made the Ottoman statesmen acutely aware of the threat of rebellion in the Balkans. 5 Cevdet Pasha, Tezakir, IV, 140-7. 6 An utilitarian flavor is clearly discernible in the text of the 1839 reform edict, see Section 4 below. 7 F o r a physiocratic (Quesnay) version of the line of reasoning which linked private property to increased productivity, increased production of wealth and to the interests of state in terms of increases in taxable wealth, see Genovese-Fox, The Origins of Physiocracy, 110-133, especially 112-4; also for a discussion of 'productive principle' in relation to the definition of private property right in British India, see Dirks, "From Little King to Landlord: Property, Law and the Gift under the Madras Permanent Settlement", 316.

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individual ownership rights by the Code was part of the process whereby the Ottoman modern state sought to regulate the agricultural economy through the introduction of measures directed towards increasing productivity.1 In line with the reticent posture in relation to private ownership, Ottoman statesmen painstakingly endeavored to emphasize the fact that the Code represented continuity rather than a rupture with past practices. Drafters of the Code shunned all talk of a revolutionary change in property rights but were adamant in pointing to the fact that their task had been simply one of compiling and codifying old regulations and not introducing any new ones. 2 Despite statements by representatives of the central government, the Code represented an ordering of property relations which radically altered the allocation of land as a resource. In doing so, it became a terrain in which the winners and losers confronted each other and the representatives of the central state negotiated their own claims with the contenders. The exclusionary nature of absolute, individual ownership, introduced by the Code, threatened to undermine the subsistence claims of cultivators in the form of hereditary usufruct rights, and collective grazing rights. Given that it was inseparable from the establishment of the singular taxation claim of the state, it also threatened to undermine the control of the former ruling classes in the countryside. The Ottoman nineteenth century was rife with struggles against the new regime of property. In some areas, these struggles pre-dated the Land Code. In the Balkans when the tax farmers interpreted the text of the reform edict of 1839, in which the ruler promised security of tenure, as confirming their ownership rights on land, the cultivators broke into open revolt. 3 It is interesting to note that these cultivators demanded a return to state ownership, indicating the ways in which state ownership colluded with an understanding of moral economy in the old order of property. Throughout the nineteenth century, the Ottoman central government was engaged in a continuous balancing act between the exigencies of a rule of justice (read absence of social strife) and a rule of property.

For a discussion of Ottoman state dirigism in the nineteenth century, see Donald Quataert, "Main Problems of the Economy during the Tanzimat period", in 150. Yilinda Tanzimat, cd' Hakki Dursun Yildiz (Ankara: Turk Tarih Kurumu, 1992), 212-13; also in the same volume, Tevfik Giiran, 'Zirai Politika ve Ziraatte Geli§meler, 1839-1876". Central to the constitution of the agrarian economy was the collection of large masses of data on agricultural production, which ultimately in the mid 1840s were compiled in the form of temettuat defterleri. Islamoglu^ "Politics of Administrating Property: Law and Statistics in the Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Empire". 2

"Cevdet Pa§a", islam Ansiklopedisi; also see the introduction to the text of the Code penned by its drafters Akgundiiz, Hukuk Kiilliyati. ^Inalcik, Tanzimat ve Bulgar Meselesi.

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4. Contestations of the Code and the Special Provisions Despite the fact that the Code included provisions limiting alienability, peasant dispossession on state lands was a common occurrence during the nineteenth century. 1 This was partly an outcome of two kinds of pressure on the peasant economy. In the first, cash requirements of peasant cultivators operating in an increasingly commercialized environment forced them to borrow money and in the event of default in debt payment they were forced to sell their holdings for which they held a title deed, or tapu. In the second, the increased taxation demands of the central state also resulted in peasant indebtedness and the consequent alienation of their holdings. In fact, the relaxation of restrictions on the transfer of tapu lands for payment of state taxes in 1861 and later in 1869 for payment of debts to individuals, suggests a recognition by the central state of the cash requirement of the peasantry. By meeting these needs in the nineteenth century environment of private property, the state allowed the alienability of landed property and thus removed qualifications on absolute ownership. Yet in Anatolia, at least, peasant dispossessions did not result in an unequivocal development of the rise of a class of large landowners. 2 Even in the Balkans and parts of western Anatolia, where peasant dispossessions did take place, the individual ownership rights of the dispossessor were significantly limited or qualified. To understand why, we need to explore the ways the Code was continuously contested, resisted, negotiated, and renegotiated in different contexts. These contexts included the courts of law, the various departments of the central government which were involved in the formulation of responses to individual petitions in the form of decrees 3 , and local commissions consisting of representatives of contesting parties. In these domains, individual precepts of the Land Code were contested and resisted by different groups in the countryside; they were recast in deliberations between these groups and the representatives of the central government. Thus, decisions of courts or other deliberating bodies, or decisions by central government ' l evfik Guran, "Osmanh Imparatorlugunda Zirai Kredi Politikasinin Gelijmesi, 1840-1910", in Uluslararasi MithatPa$a Semineri: Bildiriler ve Tarti§malar (Istanbul, 1984). 2 §evket Pamuk, "Commodity Production for World-Markets and Relations of Production in Ottoman Agriculture, 1840-1913", in The Ottoman Empire and the World Economy, ed. Huri Islamoglu-Inan. ^irades (or decrees, ordinances) are among the most important documents for the history of the nineteenth- century Ottoman empire. Beginning in 1832, the Ottoman rulers issued their orders and decisions in the form of irades which had the authority of law. The trades generally represented imperial decisions on specific matters and disputes and included a detailed description of the issue at hand and the imperial decision regarding it. For an excellent study of classifications of trades, see Mehmet Seyitdanlioglu, Tanzimat Devrinde Meclis-i Vala, 18381868 (Ankara: Turk Tarih Kurumu Basimevi, 1994).

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agencies certified by the sultan (irades) are extremely revealing of the actual nature of property relations on land in the nineteenth century Ottoman Empire. They describe the processes whereby multiple claims were accommodated and property rights on land were reconstituted oncc again as a bundle. What differentiated this bundle from that which represented the earlier bundle of revenue, use, and title claims, was that the new bundle was negotiated in the terminology of the Land Code, of its definitions, and its classification of landed property. I have discussed earlier the ways these definitions and classification, were contested, or qualified in the text of the Code. Yet the Code embodied a new understanding of property which represented a delinking of property rights from the multiple revenue claims, and erasures of multiple use claims (inheritable use rights including sharecropping and collective grazing rights) in favor of the singular ownership right of the title holder. The new bundle of claims, which were primarily those to access to land, had as their reference point the singular right of ownership, even when multiple claims significantly curtailed that right. This was the case in the 'translations' of the former inheritable use rights into lifeterm tenancies, discussed below. The bundle also included the singular revenue claim of the state writ large. The latter claim, unlike the revenue claims of the ruler or the treasury in the earlier period, was no longer the subject matter of land regulations; it was dealt with in regulations for taxation. The pervasiveness of the new understanding of property, in terms of providing the categories in relation to which landed property was defined, however, was revealing of a pattern of domination which focused on the central government and its agencies. The account by Cevdet Pasha, the renowned nineteenth century Ottoman jurist, of a land dispute in Yanya, a district in present-day Greece, provides a vivid description of the constitution of the bundle which made up property rights in the course of the struggles of cultivators against the former tax farmers or local notables who had acquired ownership titles. 1 This account is also revealing of the continuous negotiation and renegotiation of the term of domination by the central state represented in the categories of the Code. In 1875, Cevdet Pa§a, who was one of the principal drafters of the Code, wrote that if the general precepts of the Code and the Law of Contract 2 were to be implemented to the letter in the Balkan provinces, the population in these areas would rise up in arms. This comment was occasioned by a bitter dispute over property rights between estate holders ( a s h a b - i alaka) and 1 9 Cevdet Pa§a, Tezakir, IV, 140-52.

Konturato Nizamnamesi (Law of Contracts) appears to have been issued about the same time as the Code. The special regulations for Bosnia dated 1859 include a reference to Konturato Nizamnamesi, see "Bosna Nizamnamesi", Diistur, 3rd ed., vol. 1 (Istanbul, 1282), 78-84.

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cultivators of the soil in the estate of Parga in Yanya. 1 The estate holders, who had long-standing claims over revenues from the land (as tax farmers), had sought to acquire title deeds beginning in the mid-1840s. 2 The cultivators resisted what amounted to the establishment of singular and absolute ownership rights by the estate holders and the redefinition of their own use rights in terms of restricted tenancy rights.3 In an attempt to resolve the dispute between the ashab and the cultivators, Cevdet Pa§a, who had served briefly in 1874-75 as governor of Yanya, 4 formed a commission consisting of representatives of the contending parties. 5 Following lengthy deliberations, the commission negotiated a settlement and submitted its recommendations for a solution to the dispute to the Office of the Imperial Registry and the Council of State. 6 Independently of the report of the commission, Cevdet Pa§a also submitted an evaluation of the situation to the Council of State. As this evaluation provides certain insights into the deliberation process I will briefly summarize its contents. First, Cevdet Pasha described, in some detail, the power positions of the different actors in the dispute. The ashab were represented by a venerable Rauf Beyefendi, the son of a deceased high-ranking Tanzimat official, whose presence appears to have inspired awe even in the eyes of Cevdet Pasha, who himself was no stranger to power circles in Istanbul. Rauf Beyefendi succeeded in getting the cultivators to recognize the ownership rights of the ashab to the land. This meant an acceptance on the part of the cultivators of their status as tenants. It also meant that the cultivators gave up their hereditary use rights to the land. ' For description of these estates or bastinah giftliks where share-cropping arrangements prevailed, see Ahmet Cevdet Pa§a, Maruzat, ed., Yusuf Halagoglu (Istanbul: f a g r i Yaymlari, 1980), 65-77. ^For previous attempts to settle the conflict in Parga, see Cevdet Pa§a, Tezakir, IV, 140. One solution proposed was to give miri lands to the ashab; another was to parcel and sell the land of the estate (which was miri or state land). Neither was acceptable. 3 Also for a discussion by Cevdet Pasha of similar land disputes in Bosnia-Herzegovinia, see Maruzat, 65-7. In a dispute at the estate of Birgursi, in Yanya, the tenants complained of mistreatment by estate holders, (including charges that the ashab unlawfully imprisoned them). They challenged the rights of the ashab to the land and submitted tapu documents which represented their usufruct rights in support of their claims to land. The ashab, in turn, charged the cultivators with not paying the shares that were due to them. In support of their claims to these shares, which were equivalent to a rent, the ashab sought to prove that they had the ownership rights to the land. To this end, they submitted senedat-i resmiyye (official documents) allegedly dating back 150 to 200 years and sought to register the land in their names. (Irade-i Defter-i Hakani 2 (MV 24225), dated Cemaziyyulahir, 1281). It is important to note the practice of registering lands and issuing of title deeds pre-dated the Land Code of 1858. T w o nizamnames (regulations) relating to issuance of title deeds appeared on 17 May, 1845 and 21 May, 1847. Ilber Ortayh, Imparatorlugun En Uzun Yiizyih (Istanbul: Hil Yaymlari, 1983), 159. ^"Cevdet Paja", Islam Ansiklopedisi. 5

T h e commission was composed of one representative from each of the five quarters of the town of Parga, the nazir and the mudir of the giftlik (estate) and the two members f r o m provincial council, one from the council of the province (vilayet meclisi) and the other from the sub-province council (kaza meclisi). Cevdet Pa§a, Tezakir, IV, 141. 6 F o r the correspondence between these offices and Cevdet Pa§a, see Tezakir, IV, 131-9.

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Cevdet Pasha noted that the commission proposed that these conditions should not be limited to cultivated fields on state lands, to which the provisions of the Code applied, but should also be extended to mttlk lands on which houses were built in the town of Parga, which was part of the estate. On the grounds of those provisions of the Code which specified that the ownership of buildings followed the ownership of land, the estate holders laid claim to the ownership of what were described as the Venetian houses on the estate. While conceding the possession of the houses in both the town and the countryside to those who built or occupied them, the owners claimed they were entitled to a rent from the land on which the buildings stood. 1 On the other hand, ownership rights of the ashab or title-holders were significantly restricted by the fact that the cultivators resisted the specification of a time duration in lease contracts. Similarly, they resisted any change in the amount of rent due. Such resistances were couched in terms of a call for adherence to local customary practices. The latter, in most cases, referred to regulations which were embodied in earlier provincial codes, or in the edicts of the sultan. Under these practices leases on state lands ( m i r i ) which corresponded to usufruct rights generally lasted for very long periods, often spanning the lifetimes of individual tenants and their descendants. 2 When the ashab laid claim to the title of the land, the cultivators expected them to abide by the regulations which prevailed earlier. This meant that holders of title to the land could not revoke a tenancy, evict a tenant, or raise the amount of rent. Nor could they, upon the death of one tenant, lease the land to another. The family of the deceased tenant was expected to continue to cultivate the land as before and pay the rent (imro). The only condition under which a lease contract could be revoked and the tenant be evicted was when the tenant ceased cultivation and stopped paying rent. Only in such cases, and on the grounds that the present tenant was disrupting public order, could land be leased to a new tenant.

This represented a recasting of the provision in the Code that buildings and trees were subject to ownership of land (Articles 35, 28; Cin, Osmanli Toprak Duzeni, 111). This was a dispute over ownership of houses and of planted trees which the tenant-cultivators had built or planted on the land of ashab. The dispute also extended to the issue of the ownership of houses in the town of Parga. Using the precept of the Code that buildings were subject to ownership of land, ashab-i alaka claimed ownership of the Venetian houses in the town of Parga (Tezakir, IV, 144) In relation to houses built by tenant-cultivators, the Land Code prescribed that in the event that the tenant moved away from the land, such buildings were either to be destroyed and the building materials were carried away by the tenant or the ashab were to pay the tenant an amount which was the equivalent of the value of the house. In Parga, such houses were wellbuilt wooden constructs and it appears that their builders were not only reluctant to destroy them but they also laid claim to land on which the houses stood. Cevdet Pasha posed the problem rather elegantly: "it is not within the bounds of justice and fair play to tell the tenant to remove the building and leave the land to the ashab-i alaka (Tezakir, IV, 147). 2 Sec Article 23 of the Land Code, concerning the translation into proprietory rights of very long term leases (muddet-i medide) on miri lands, which states that the title holder has the right to take over his land (ahz ve zabt) at all times (cemi-i zamamnda); on icare-i faside or very long term leases, see Cin, Osmanli Toprak Duzeni, 83.

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On the basis of the settlement reached by the Commission, Cevdet Pasha recommended to the Council of State that a special regulation be formulated for Yanya. This amounted to compromising the generality of the formulations of the Code before the particularity of local demands. In fact, Cevdet Pasha, the pragmatist, was pointing to a need to concede to local public opinion, to 'customary' practice, if social peace were to be restored in this area. He spoke, of course, from the experience of his previous involvement as a high-ranking administrator elsewhere in the Balkans, where resistance by cultivators on the estates to the extension of the proprietary rights of the ashab was rampant throughout the nineteenth century.1 Frequent European interventions on behalf of Christian cultivators and against the estate holders, who were predominantly Muslim, had further aggravated the situation. On the other hand, Cevdet Pasha also knew that the central government could not establish order in the Balkans simply by giving in to the demands of the cultivators. The collaboration of the ashab with the central government was indispensable for effective Ottoman administration of the region. Hence, the central government had sought previously to enlist the allegiance of the ashab in areas such as Bosnia and Ni§ by issuing a special regulation which could ensure the ownership rights of the ashab while at the same time limiting them in such a way as to satisfy the demands of tenants.2

5. Concluding Remarks The central theme of this paper has been that the resistances and struggles against individual ownership were inseparable from the process of the formation of this right. The governmental practices, including law and cadastral surveying, which constituted individual ownership, were the power fields in which these struggles took place. At the same time, I have tried to show that these power fields belonged to historically specific contexts. These contexts established the goals of government; inseparable from these goals were understandings of government, and of power. This paper was focused on the modern state as such a context, which provided the vocabularies, the idioms, and the conceptual wherewithal for communication and deliberation. It represented an idiom of rule, a hegemonic language in which individuals or groups negotiated power positions. In that sense one could speak of a boundedness of the power fields and of the limits of resistance and struggle. ' Cevdet Pasha was dispatched by the central government to settle land disputes in Bosnia with the title of Minister of Anatolia (Anadolu sadareti payesi) in 1280 (Maruzat, 61, 66-67). 2 For similar settlements in Ni§, see Tezakir, IV, 142; for Bosnia, see Cevdet Pa§a, Maruzat, 659; "Bosna Nizamnamesi", Diistur, 3rd ed., vol. 1 (Istanbul, 1282), 78-84.

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These limits, which were defined by the hegemonic language, were by no means absolute; they were fluid and were discursively produced through the practices of the different agencies of the central state. This production involved silences on, as well as articulations of the central themes of power; individual ownership was one such theme. Throughout the nineteenth century, the Ottoman government vacillated in assimilating a 'rule of property' to its idiom of rule. The reform edict of 1839 was, indeed, a document steeped in liberal and utilitarian ideas of the 'age of property'. 1 It posed the precept of security of property (mal), life and honor from the vantage point of the state's interest in the prosperity of its subjects, who were the primary source of taxes. The edict explicitly stated that unless security and freedom of ownership (malik) and possession (tasarruf) of both movable (emval) and immovable (ernlak) property were ensured, people would not honor their state or country, and driven by anxiety would not use their property productively. The constitution of 1876, a liberal document by all accounts, however, did not share the enthusiasm of the edict for property. It assured the security of possessors ( m u t a s a m j ) and not of owners (malik) as did the edict; it stated that neither movable nor immovable property that was possessed (tasarruf) could be taken away from its possessors except in return for payment or in the event of its being required for the public interest. 2 Despite the reticence of the 1876 Constitution, private ownership was discursively constituted through the documents of the central government. The Land Code was one such document. The official correspondence between Cevdet Pasha and the various departments of the central government provided another example of the discursive constitution of private ownership. Thus, Cevdet Pasha, in his report to the Council of State regarding the Parga affair, emphasized and thereby re-established, the definition in the Code of an absolute right of ownership whereby the title holder had the right to do as he pleased with his property, including the right to evict tenants, and to lease the land to whomever he wished. In this, however, he was not motivated by an ideological commitment to a religion of private property as constituted by French jurists of the post-revolutionary period. His motivation appears to have lain in an understanding of state power in terms of an ability to achieve a generality and uniformity of bureaucratic practices. This understanding of state power stood in contrast to that of the old territorial state with its particularistic practices of regulation, responsive to individual circumstances. For the original text of the edict see, Suna Kili and §eref Göziibüyiik, Türk Anayasa Metinleri (Ankara, 1957), 11-3. For a discussion of the text, see Halil Inalcik, "Sened-i Ittifak ve Gülhane Hatt-i Hümayunu", Belleten 28, 616-18. 2 For the text of the 1876 Constitution, see Kili and Gözübüyuk, Türk Anayasa Metinleri, Article

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In that world which was lost to the nineteenth century, rules had as their point of reference an idiom of distributive justice. This should not suggest that Cevdet Pasha was insensitive to the politics of property, or to the competing claims or grievances of the different groups; that he was not so is revealed by his astute analyses of land disputes. Yet while admitting to the necessity of making concessions to the demands of cultivators and making recommendations for the introduction of special regulations for different regions to prevent open revolt, Cevdet Pasha insisted on the generality of regulations relating to the definition of ownership rights. Special regulations represented a mere exigency, an urgent, political response; they did not pertain to the vocabulary of the domination of the nineteenth-century state. Cevdet Pasha took care to incorporate this vocabulary in his legal opinions. He advised the Office of Imperial Registry on the necessity for extending the practices of registration of titles and drawing up lease contracts which were effective on state lands to vakif and mtilk lands. This was an argument for the consistency and generality of bureaucratic practices. In that, Cevdet Pasha was not far from an adherence to the Weberian ideal of the modern state with a concern for bureaucratic efficacy, for ensuring certainty in land transactions. 1 The vocabulary of bureaucratic efficacy was also that of domination by the central government. Thus, the extension of practices applicable on state lands to other categories of land was tantamount to erasures of the identities of groups whose interests were represented by these categories and therefore their subjugation to the imperatives of the central government, including taxation. General and uniform categories and procedures that were the substance of state power, and which represented erasures of particularistic interests, were challenged and resisted. The Parga affair testified to such a challenge. The tension between the tendency to make practices universal and uniform on the one hand, and particular on the other, lay at the heart of the drama of state formation in the nineteenth century. It inhabited the different practices; the legal definitions of property formed one such domain.

1 Cevdet Pa§a talked about the need for certainty as the an underlying concern in putting agreements into contract form (maksad-i asli muamalat-i nasi taht-i emniyette cereyan ettirmek) (Tezakir, IV, 145).

POLITICS OF ADMINISTERING PROPERTY: LAW AND STATISTICS IN THE 19th CENTURY OTTOMAN EMPIRE

Introduction James C. Scott, in Seeing like a State, poses legibility as a central feature of modern statecraft. In his perspective "the pre-modcrn state was... partially blind; it knew precious little about its subjects, their wealth, their landholdings and yields, their location, their very identity. It lacked anything like detailed 'map' of its terrain and its people...". 1 Scott contrasts the opaque practices of the pre-modern state to those of the modern statecraft that aimed at subjecting land and population to state taxation, conscription, and, most significantly, to state scrutiny. These practices, which were attempts at legibility and simplification, included the introduction of freehold tenure, establishment of cadastral surveys and standardization of legal discourse. At the same time, for Scott, making society legible and simplifying the state functions of taxation, conscription and control is also the refashioning of modern social reality. As such, simplifications were transformative and involved reordering of social reality through categories which were generalized and given the force of law. Scott points to the character of modern society thus transformed as one robbed off of its plurality and diversity, of the malleability of the local or the customary, and condemned to a life of ineffective resistance to modern statecraft, to political emasculation. By contrast, pre-modern states inefficient in carrying out their functions, allow for the 'local' and the customary to flourish. The local or society represents the domain of politics whereby plethora of local regulations relating to land and property vie with the ineffective attempts of central administrations to extend their control. This article subscribes to the understanding that social reality is administratively and legally 2 constituted which Scott's notion of 'transformative simplification' suggests. Yet, it is critical of Scott's analysis which posits statecraft or administration too readily against the society or the 'local'; with society representing a domain of politics, negotiations among 1

2

Scott, p. 2.

For an eloquent description of the legally constituted character of social reality à property on land Thompson, 1990, p. 26Iff.

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multiple and diverse actors and administration referring to a reservoir of techniques which seek to subjugate politics, social diversity to the singularity of its taxation, conscription, surveillance. Simply, this article argues that the separation of administration from the local or the political detracts from the political processes which characterise the legal and administrative constitutions of social reality; viewed in this perspective, individual practices including law, registration, cadastral mapping, represent power fields 1 where multiple actors, including administrative actors, confront each other to negotiate the terms of their existence. Thus, understanding of administrative rules, regulations, procedures, of law 2 as political power fields enables their perception in terms of concrete strategies and concerns of actors (individual or social) and no longer as reified, disembodied tools of modern domination, but they represent embodiments of 'society', of politics. Put differently, the functionalist perception of administration as a bundle of techniques geared towards subjugation and control of society gives way to a perception of politics of administration in which administrative technique is enmeshed in the societal relations which it orders. Above all, this article seeks to introduce an understanding of administration which stresses the political possibilities of administrative action, its historically contingent character and does not simply condemn such action to a political closure implied by its isolation from society. Thus, the critique of Scott's analysis attempted here suggests a blurring of the distinction between state and society; in doing so, it challenges the technicist conceptions of modern state domination, on the one hand, and the impotence attributed to pre-modern states on the basis of the latter's technical ineffectuality, on the other hand. The emphasis on the political character of administration points to an understanding of state domination in terms of a context of power relations. That is, the state represents a hegemonic environment where a dominant group or groups seek to reconcile and mediate multiple interests in the process eliminating some and including others. On the other hand, hegemony or state power refers to those abilities of the dominant group or groups to affect the power configurations that would enable orderings of social reality (including property relations which are responsible for allocation of resources) to achieve defined objectives. From the perspective of modern state domination, this understanding relativises that domination (by 1 For the notion of power fields, see P. Bourdieu, 1987. As different from Bourdieu, here the understanding of the power field is closely associated with the notion of state context of power relations or hegemonic environment. A context which shapes the power fields while at the same time is shaped by them. Hegemonic environment is about 'framing' of providing or defining the terms of contestation, mediation, negotiation. Islamoglu, 2000, pp. 11-12. 2 Law here refers to governance. Cf. islamoglu, 2003.

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contrast to its technicist view which absolutises it) and renders it contingent on the ability of central administrative actors to negotiate and to mediate in the multiple power fields which represent administrative practices. In this sense, the legal and administrative processes which are constitutive of social and property relations, are also those through which the domination of the modern leviathan is politically realized or fails to be realized. As such, which actors are included and which are excluded, whose interests are mediated and whose are not, are telling of the character of a given hegemony, and are part of the struggle for domination. Finally, hegemony is about 'framing' or defining the terms of negotiation, of contestation. Hegemonic vocabularies or idioms of rule which articulate the objectives of domination (be it in terms of prevention of social strife as was the case with pre-modern states, or of providing for general prosperity understood in terms of the interrelated goals of economic development and protection from external aggression as has been case with modern states), shape the character of the different orderings. Legitimating idioms also impart a unity to the multiple orderings which make up the different hegemonic environments as to warrant their description as if they were singular, undifferentiated entities, that is, states. 1 Viewed as contexts of power relations, pre-modern states can not be characterised in terms of the inadequacy of their administrative techniques which did not allow the center or the ruler to exercise effective control over resources. They represented hegemonic environments in which central rulers sought to accommodate the interests of different groups by means of distributing access to resources. Administrative practices or rules and regulations represented negotiated settlements between the ruler and different groups, regarding claims over access to resources, to their revenues or their use. These practices were constitutive of the local or the customary as modern statecraft was constitutive of modern society. This article will show how in the pre-19 t h century Ottoman empire, administrative rules, regulations constituted the local in relation to the power configurations which characterised the pre-modern state environment. On the other hand, modernity represented a struggle to establish one kind of hegemony over another. Practices of modern states, including cadastral surveying, general laws or procedures, which ordered social reality represented political processes in which the pre-modern and modern concerns and interests were entangled and continuously negotiated. The outcome was a modernity the defining feature of which was, more often than not, its ambivalence.

Ubrams, 1988, pp. 58-89.

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This article will primarily focus on the administrative constitutions of individual property on land in the 19 th century Ottoman empire through the practices of surveying land and property and through law. The establishment of individual property on land was inseparable from the formation of the Ottoman modern state in the environment of military and political competition in western Eurasia intensified since the 18th century. Individual ownership developed as part of the process whereby the central administration emerged as the singular claimant to taxes to the exclusion of the members of the former ruling bloc with claims over tax revenues. At the same time, individual ownership excluded the multiple claims to land use in favour of use claims of the titleholder, thus making it possible for administrators to identify the person liable for payment of taxes on land. The establishment of individual property was strongly resisted; regulations, procedures for compiling surveys which were constitutive of this form of property represented political power fields where negotiations and struggles of different groups left their imprint on the nature of property relations on land. A primary target of resistance and contestation was the generality of rules and categories that were constitutive of individual ownership. For instance, the Land Code of 1858 included a general definition of individual property but the text of the Code is replete with provisions which restricted individual property by allowing access to third parties and by imposing limits on disposibility or alienability of land. The latter provisions do not only reveal the highly contested character of the Code, but also point to attempts on the part of its drafters to mediate and reconcile the interests of groups which were affected by the introduction of individual ownership. These included the interests of holders of third party claims, for instance, those over buildings and trees on lands over which individual and absolute property rights were established, as well as interests of groups which were vulnerable to the vagaries of the land market if lands were to be transferred unconditionally in the event of indebtedness. 1 This article will study the formation of individual property on land through the contested categories of land and property surveys and the procedures for their compilation. These categories and procedures, which were subject to continuous negotiations and re-formulation, are telling of attempts to mediate, reconcile different interests, including those of different state agencies, as well as to eliminate others. What needs to be stressed here is that modern Ottoman state administration in constituting individual ownership on land through legal practice or surveying, did not confront a society from which it was isolated and over which it sought to establish its unequivocal control. The resistance Mslamoglu, 2000, pp. 3-61.

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of different groups and the mediation as well as elimination of the different interests in response to such resistance, represented political processes which were constitutive of individual ownership. As such, resistance to administrative action was far from being ineffectual; nor can it be described simply in terms of an attempt to subvert an administrative domain which had an existence outside of society, outside of the control of social actors. These struggles where internalised to the administrative practices and they were part of the 'making' of individual property. Such internalisation involved incorporation of local knowledge as is witnessed in the recasting of procedures for surveying as to emphasize the role of commissions consisting of local village representatives in the gathering of information for tax assessment. From the point of view of the relation of modern administration to society, this meant two things. First, the central administration, its procedures and regulations, were continuously formed and re-formed as it responded to the demands and the resistance of the different groups, in the process of fashioning a rural society of free-holders. In that sense, the ability of the central administration to achieve its objectives of taxation and control, was largely contingent on its abilities to mediate and reconcile different interests including those of the different agencies of administration, that is, on its ability to consolidate its hegemony. Second, the local or customary practice did not disappear. Instead it was reconstituted in the terms of the hegemony of the modern administrative state. For instance, resistance to the general formulation of individual ownership in the Land Code of 1858 occasioned the issuing of special provisions especially in the Balkan provinces where the revolts of cultivators showed a potential of developing into separatist nationalist movements. Special provisions represented negotiations of the category of individual ownership in response to local demand; it involved a recasting of the general precepts of the law in terms of local particularities, with infusion of local information. This did not, however, represent a subversion of the Land Code. The negotiations had as their reference point the general precepts of the Code; they were arguments which took place within categories set forth by the Code. In that sense, special provisions were part of the process of constituting of 'the local' in terms of the categories of modern hegemony. The bittersweet triumph of the Ottoman modern statecraft perhaps lay in the fact that from mid-19 t h century onwards, contestations and challenges of its practices were taking place in terms of the categories, vocabularies which these practices introduced.

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Historical Constitutions of Social Reality Starting from the premise that both early modern and modern social realities were administratively constituted and administrative practices were fields of negotiation and deliberation of multiple interests, this article emphasizes the political character of administration in both modern and premodern contexts. Pre-modern and modern state contexts, however, represented distinct configurations of power, or hegemonies. The 'makings' of modern social reality, including individual property involving re-allocation of resources, was also the 'making' of a new hegemony and the undermining of the old. In the process the old and the new were entangled and administrative practices which were constitutive of modern social reality were power fields in which the old was cast in the terms of the new, and the new was continuously formulated to accommodate the old in doing so transforming it. As such, politics of modern administration merged with while at the same time differentiating itself from the politics of the pre-modern administration. An understanding of this process, presupposes an understanding of the politics of the pre-modern Ottoman administration. The defining feature of administration in early modern Ottoman state context was that rules, regulations ordering social reality represented settlements negotiated between the ruler and the different groups, both within the ruling bloc and outside of it. These settlements were particularistic in that they addressed individual circumstances in a given locality, or in relation to the status of given person or group. In that sense, rules and regulations did not have the character of general rules or regulations of the modern state context. The particularity of administrative practices, however, referred to the distributive-accommodative concern of state power. This concern was articulated in the legitimating idiom of the state (represented by the ruler) which cast the ruler in the role of the dispenser of justice. The ruler's ability to dispense justice was, in turn, equated with his ability to prevent social strife and to ensure social order. On the one hand, rules and regulations were accommodative of the claims of groups competing for control over sources of revenues (land, market dues, customs duties, mines, industrial installments) and the claims of producers over access to the use of resources, in particular, to land. In relation to the former, the ruler undertook to distribute the sources of revenue in the form of revenue grants to members of groups which formed the ruling bloc. Initially the ruling bloc included military commanders who acted as provincial administrators, members of the religious establishment, as well as the former rulers in conquered territories. Underlining the reciprocal character of the relationship between the ruler and the holders of revenue

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grants, the latter were expected to provide mounted soldiers to provincial armies, social services among which were maintenance of infra-structural facilities and charity work. 1 From the point of view of the ruler, reciprocity also implied the enlisting of the political allegiance of these groups in return for distribution of revenue grants. In the 17 t h and 18 t h centuries under conditions of intensified interstate competition, increased importance of infantry armies and increased cash requirements, the rulers turned to tax farming as the preferred form of fiscal extraction. Yet, tax farming was another moment in the distributionist mode of societal ordering at a time when the composition of the ruling bloc was undergoing change. From the start, the Ottoman central government was engaged in incessant struggles with tax farmers over control of tax revenues. These struggles were worked out in taxfarming contracts that represented negotiated settlements between the central government and the different groups of tax-farmers which included the members of the religious establishments (Christian and Muslim), military commanders in the provinces, and the provincial elites. In these settlements, the central government sought the allegiance of these groups, as well as securing for itself a share in revenues. On the other hand, in the late 17 t h century possibly with the intention of disciplining groups who had become very powerful due tax farming arrangements, the central government sought to accommodate the claims of less powerful local actors and perhaps to eliminate some of the old guard.2 In doing so, it was attempting a reconstitution of the 'local'. Rules and regulations which were accommodative of the interests of rural cultivators and urban populations, also subscribed to the distributive ethos of the early Ottoman state environment and were constitutive of a moral economy of subsistence and provisioning. 3 While state-wide famine relief was practiced, Ottoman subsistence management emphasized regulations that controlled the movement of foodstuffs, as well as raw materials and in doing so, sought to ensure local provisioning through the formation of regional economies. Moreover, to ensure the continuity of food production, regulations restricted the alienability or divisibility of the subsistence holdings, limited the freedom of movement of cultivators and regulated fallow practices. State rulings included in provincial regulations, in the ruler's edicts responding to individual complaints, sought to protect the subsistence producers from extortion by holders of revenue grants. To this end, these rulings delineated

'On these relations of reciprocity in the context of the French state of the 17"' century, see Guery, 1984, pp. 1241-69. 2 Salzman, 1993, pp. 393-423. 'I For a discussion of a moral economy of the Ottoman state, see Islamoglu-Inan, 1994.

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the use rights of producers, as well as their obligations to different groups of revenue claimants. These obligations included specifications of the form in which dues were paid (in kind, in labor, or in money), the rates at which they were paid, and exemptions from payments in return for services rendered. Finally, the different rulings and contracts which regulated actual land use represented multi-layered, shared claims that were negotiated over land use, including webs of grazing and planting rights on common lands, as well as on individual plots. On the other hand, the fact that administrative practices were accommodative and distributive inscribed in an understanding of administrative justice, should not distract from the character of regulations or institutions, which ordered social relations, as settlements negotiated among different interests. Such settlements were subject to change over time as the relative power positions of the ruler and different actors varied with changes in the balance of power among them. For one thing, despite claims on the part of the ruler to divine powers, the legitimacy of the center, rested with the ability to negotiate settlements. 1 At the same time, what was 'customary' or the 'local' indeed referred to settlements which were negotiated among different groups, including the revenue grant holders, agents of the ruler and cultivators, summarized in texts of regulations. For instance, the provincial regulations which were appended to tax surveys and which described the existing practices in a given region as dating from ancient times were, in fact, referring to settlements negotiated only recently. Moreover, these settlements were subject to continuous negotiations and reformulation through rulings of the provincial courts of law, as well as through the texts of the responses of the central government to petitions submitted by individuals. In the 16 th century summations of new settlements reached among parties, were entered in the margins of tax surveys as amendments to earlier settlements. Similarly, regulations directed towards the preservation of subsistence production, were characterized by an administrative responsiveness to individual circumstances. They varied from one locality to the other with conditions of production and with political or military status of cultivators; they represented a series of settlements negotiated between the cultivators and the extractors of their surpluses over long periods of time. Finally, the courts of law provided the administrative spaces where these particularistic settlements were transacted. Until the 19 th century, judges seem to have acted as power-brokers between the local forces and the central government, and did not exactly conform to

^For discussion of this point in relation to the activities of French kings in the 17th century see, Parker, 1981, pp. 253-85.

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their image as devout state servants. 1 In the 19 th century, as part of its struggle for hegemony, the central government sought to replace local judges, who belonged to former power networks, with commissions or councils which were expected to take over the tasks of negotiating settlements as well as implementing procedures and rules. In brief, the early modern Ottoman administrative practices were constitutive of a social reality of particularities, of localisms in a hegemonic environment where the ruler, representing the central government, could reproduce his dominance through accommodating multiple interests. This was achieved through negotiations of multiple settlements over shares of tax revenues and over access to land use. These settlements formed the substance of rules and regulations. They did not, however, form discrete local practices with an existence outside of the state, its administration. Instead, the 'local' and rules and regulations which were constitutive of it, partook in a state environment imbued with a certain understanding of social harmony which pre-supposed the ruler's role as upholder of social order or dispenser of justice. Reference to this role was the recurrent refrain in all regulations, all documents issued by the ccntral government as well as those addressed to the ruler and his government. It was this belief that rules and regulations contributed to social peace, which was perhaps the substance of Ottoman stateness and it imparted a unity to multiple orderings of social reality in terms of localities. In the 19 th century, the understanding of state domination which rested on negotiations of particularistic settlements to accommodate the multiple claims to tax revenues and to subsistence, was radically transformed. The new state was represented through the efficacy and generality of its practices. The latter, including legal codes and cadastres, instead of constituting particularistic claims (localism or particularisms) through individually negotiated settlements, sought to obliterate those claims by subjecting them to the general claims of the central government over tax revenues. It involved constitutions of social reality in terms of general categories, of general procedures. This did not mean an erasure of the local or society; nor did it mean that constitutions of social reality were no longer negotiated or contested. Simply, the administrative practices of the new state constituting social reality did so in relation to the generality and singularity of the interests of the state writ large which was understood to encompass all groups or individuals that came under the jurisdiction of any one government. It meant 1 Such characterization of judges or kadis prevail in mainstream Ottoman historiography, see, for instance, inalcik, 1973. From the perspective of this article, it may be important to re-situate the kadi courts in the environment of power plays which characterised the Ottoman state context and not simply treat them as arms of an imaginary omnipresent state.

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that negotiations among different groups, including the agencies of the center, were not summed in particularistic rules and regulations. Instead general categories and procedures, regulations were continuously negotiated, reformulated while the central government sought to ensure its hegemony through its efforts of maintaining the generality and uniformity, seeking to subject all groups and regions to the generality of its claims. Thus, if ruler's justice, underpinning the hegemony of the early Ottoman state, was realized through addressing individual circumstances, the hegemony of the new state rested on its ability to address the general interest of society. Just as the early state practices were constitutive of particularisms, localisms, the practices of the modern state were constitutive of generalities, be it in the form of taxpaying citizens, individual property, even the society. The general interest of society was, in turn, secured by protecting it from external aggression and by enabling economic development. Historically, the transformation of the Ottoman state took place in the environment of intensified military and political competition among European states beginning in the seventeenth century. Interstate competition and the requirement to maintain standing armies, which in this period came to prevail over cavalry armies, were factors in empowering the central government at the expense of the provincial power nodules. Confronted with high costs of warfare, as well as the financial burdens of an expanding bureaucracy, the centralizing government sought to increase its revenues. Earlier territorial conquests had been a primary means of augmenting the revenues which accrued to the ruler. Conquests also enabled the ruler to accommodate rival political claims through the system of revenue grants. By the eighteenth century, the Ottoman state had reached the limits of its territorial expansion both in Europe and in the East; moreover, in the nineteenth century it began losing territory in the Balkans and in Egypt. Unable to expand outwards, the central government turned inwards to establish control over the revenues which had formerly accrued to the members of the ruling bloc. This was a long-drawn-out process of incessant struggles between the central government and the members of the religious establishment, provincial notables, and the old guard military establishment. In the nineteenth century, with the crystallization of a central army and a central bureaucracy, the government undertook new orderings of taxation and property relations on land. These orderings aimed at establishing the general claim of the central government over revenues to the exclusion of the entitlements of the different groups which formerly constituted the ruling bloc (including the ruler and his entourage as well as different groups of tax farmers). It meant the subjecting of these groups together with other social

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groups or individuals who were not holders of revenue grants or tax farms but, like them, were recipients of the particularistic privilege of tax-exemption to state taxes. 1 At the same time, state centralization took place in an environment of commercial expansion. The latter prompted the individual states not to see generation of wealth simply in terms of extensive measures, that is, territorial conquests which enabled access to new sources of revenue, or appropriation of resources which were controlled by rival political groups within individual territories. Taxation came to be perceived in more intensive terms, those of the state's regulation of economic activity to increase productive capacity which would result in an expansion of taxable incomes. 2 This implied a coupling of the revenue concern with that of increasing the productive capacity of the population, of land, of industry. 3 That is, the central authority did not simply content itself by appropriating what was previously distributed, but it also sought to create further wealth to be taxed. In the 19 th century, this consciousness of the 'economy' on the part of the Ottoman government is revealed in the kinds of precise information about productivity levels and supply and demand for different products that the central government demanded from its officials who were charged with preparing surveys of landed property. 4 In the 19 th century intellectual and political climate two imperatives of the modern state domination, taxation and economic growth, were expected to be realized through individual ownership in land. 5 In the utilitarian perception which permeated the makings of modern administrations and most eloquently articulated by Jeremy Bentham, property was entirely the work of law (by which Bentham meant administration); it was a guarantee provided by the law, for individual expectations to derive certain advantages from a thing which they were said to possess. In this sense, individual property created in law provided the individual with a security and freedom, which facilitated his decisions regarding production. It was instrumental in fulfilling individual's ' o f these privileges were the exemptions granted to the poor. The generalisation of state taxes to the poor was a contested issue in the 19 lh century, f a k i r , 2001, p. 123. 2

F o r a physiocratic (Quesnay) version of the line of reasoning which linked private property to increased productivity, increased production of wealth and to the interests of state in terms of increases in taxable wealth, see Genovese-Fox, 1976, pp. 110-133, especially 112-4; also for a discussion of 'productive principle' in relation to the definition of private property right in British India, see Dirks, 1986, p. 316. \ ) n measures in the 19 th century, by the Ottoman government to protect and render population more productive, see Dursun, 2001. On population politics of the modern state, see Foucault, 1991. 4

An indication of the Ottoman interest in political economy is the translation in 1852 of Jean Baptiste Say's Economie politique, one of the most popular political economy texts of the 19ih century. -'Also, see Islamoglu, 2003.

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expectations in realizing his or her welfare. As such, by administratively constituting property, the government was realizing the utilitarian ideal of achieving 'greatest possible happiness of the community'. 1 It was also ensuring the production of surpluses to be appropriated as taxes. For the utilitarians, the legitimacy of modern administration was understood to rest on its ability to deliver in material terms; it was summed up in the notion of security which referred to the government's ability to provide protection from external aggression (through building of armies which presupposed taxation) and to protect individual property. Thus, in the 19th century when concerns for market expansion (arguably conceived in terms of maximization of individual's expectations) overlapped with concerns for increasing state revenues, it was evident to jurists and statesmen alike that the burden of the creation of the new economic order fell upon central administrations. 2 The story of how central administration constituted individual ownership is also the story of the constitution of the modern state. The struggle to generalise it and the resistances to it, represented the processes through which modern social reality was refashioned.

How Law Constituted

Property?

In the Ottoman empire prior to issuing of the Land Code in 1858, definitions of property rights on land consisted of a bundle of rights representing claims to land use, revenues and title. 3 The title to land (rakaba) generally lay with the ruler (or the treasury). This did not represent a title of ownership in the modern sense but an ability on the part of the ruler, or the central government, to distribute rights to revenues from land and in so doing, to negotiate with different groups or individuals the conditions of their allegiance. State 'ownership' also served to define the boundaries of the use rights of cultivators who had heritable use rights over their plots; by protecting the rights of cultivators, the state sought to ensure continuity of agricultural production and, therefore, production for subsistence and for tax payment. State rulings introduced in provincial regulations and reiterated in

^Bentham, 1931, pp. 111-113, Bentham presented an impassioned critique of the 18th century Natural Law formulations of property. According to Bentham, 'property and law are born together, and die together. Before laws were made, there was no property: take away laws and property' (Bentham, 1931, p. 113). Then Bentham proceeds to link property to security: 'law creates whatever is to be secured'. In this sense, Bentham established a direct link between property and law as governance. Kanth, 1986, pp. 132-39. 3 For the understanding of property as a bundle of claims in pre-modern settings, see Maine, 1920.

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numerous edicts, imposed limits on the divisibility and alienability of use rights. They also restricted the time-periods for which lands could be left uncultivated or left fallow. Given that most taxes were paid in kind, rulings emphasized the primacy of grain production on state lands. 1 These claims were continuously negotiated and redefined. For instance, depending on the nature of the settlement negotiated among the parties, the rights to revenues could rest with a freeholder (miilk), a pious endowment, or with the treasury, while the title rested with the state or the treasury. This should not suggest that the claim of the state to title was an absolute one: especially in areas where there was strong resistance to the Ottoman conquest, the Ottoman ruler conceded the right to title to former ruling groups. These groups included members of the religious establishment in the Muslim region of Anatolia. The rights to revenues from such lands could be assigned to state officials and state regulations relating to subsistence production applied to these lands. Similarly, the different categories, which defined entitlements to revenues and to land use, did not correspond to an understanding of ownership in the modern sense. I have already discussed what state ownership stood for within the confines of the pre-19 th century Ottoman administrative universe. Nor did freehold (miilk) signify private ownership; instead it was a category of entitlement to tax revenues which the grantee held by virtue of an official document of entitlement from the ruler, as was the case with other types of revenue grants. The holder of the freehold grant could alienate his right to revenues, transfer it to his heirs, or convert it into mortmain property or vakif. Trees or buildings on agricultural holdings, as well as other produce were also classified as freehold which, in this case, referred to entitlement to the fruits of land. These claims were differentiated from miri claims on fields, the ownership of which generally rested with the central treasury. On these fields also the trees and buildings could have freehold status. The cultivators of agricultural lands (on which the treasury had 'ownership' rights) had inheritable usufruct right which they held by a deed issued for a fee by the local administrator cum revenue holder. The bundle of claims which characterized property relations on land represented multiple settlements negotiated among different parties. These settlements took the form of court rulings or summaries of results of negotiations which the judges mediated. They were also cast as ruler's law (kanun) which included appropriations of local customary practice. One common feature of these formulations was that they sought to accommodate the existing multiple interests and were not exclusive of them. 1

islamoglu-lnan, 1994.

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In the 19 th century the Ottoman central government did succeed in introducing individual ownership into the maze of multiple claims but it did so following bitter struggles waged especially against those groups with claims over tax revenues from land. It also sought to mediate the claims of subsistence producers who were threatened by the loss of their heritable usufruct rights through particularistic concessions. This meant a recasting of power mappings that constituted the state environment and an idiom of rule that increasingly departed from the understanding of the distributive justice of the ruler and focused on the ability of administrative procedure to mediate the different property claims with a promise to deliver to all or uphold the general interest. On the other hand, in the 'age of property' a phrase which aptly describes the 19 th century 1 , the Ottoman environment had not fallen prey to the religion of property which raged, especially in post-revolutionary France, a region which Ottoman administrators watched closely. This was not due to any innate predisposition against private property stemming from state ownership in land or to the lethal effects of state intervention in economic activity. Quite simply, the Ottoman administrators in line with the conservative governments in Europe, were watching with great deal of apprehension, disputes over the introduction of individual, absolute ownership, that raged in the French countryside. Ottoman territories themselves were not in any way of such disturbances. The liberal guarantees included in the reform edict of 1839 had encouraged the provincial tax-farmers and notables to register their tax-farms (or revenue grants) as their private property. The decisions of provincial assemblies and of judges at provincial courts of law 2 , served to buttress this new form of property. For instance, a decision of the Vidin Council taken soon after the issuing of the 1839 edict and referring to the abolition of corvée impositions, stated that 'no person could cultivate or take over another's land without payment; he will have to pay by some other means [than corvée]'. In the course of deliberations of the council, a single rent was established by which the council acknowledged the abolition of corvée while at the same time sought to establish the tenancy status of cultivators on lands owned by tax-farmers. 3 In 1851 when cultivators ('tenants', share-croppers) in Vidin broke into open rebellion, they were 1

Forster, 1997. The practice of issuing of certificates (hiiccets) by judges in establishing property rights was a common one. In the earlier period this practice was used to establish the free-hold (miilk) claims over revenues. Such freehold claims included the ability to exchange freely and to bequeath to heirs, rights to revenues from land and other taxable resources. In the 19th century, it appears that the practice of establishing property rights through issuing of court certificates was a means of establishing absolute ownership claims. 3 lnalcik, 1943, p. 95

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voicing their claims vis-à-vis the tax farmers in terms of demands for the issuing of title deeds on land suggesting that those cultivators had learned to employ the vocabulary of private ownership. The rupture in the old order of property affected by actions of provincial groups resulted in widespread rebellions, throughout the Balkan in Bulgaria, Bosnia, Albania, by cultivators who also staked their claims in terms of individual ownership rights. The central government, in the mid-19 t h century, attempting to contain rebellion, found itself in a position of mediating the claims of different groups for absolute ownership. The capacity to do so increasingly differentiated the central government from other actors in the process of negotiating property claims; it imparted to the central administration a degree of autonomy. This was in effect the historical 'moment' when the central government took over the constituting of individual ownership through its administrative practices as none of the traditional propertied interests could claim to do. 1 The 'moment' of property was inseparable from attempts on the part a central bureaucracy to entrench itself at the expense of other groups within the society. One important way of accomplishing this was to limit revenue claims to those of the central state, while imposing the obligation to pay taxes on all, including the members of the ruling bloc. Other claims to revenue were thus eliminated, along with privileges in the form of tax exemptions. This also meant a de-linking of the property claim in the form of ownership claim from revenue and use claims on land. The drafting of the Land Code of 1858 was a major political achievement. It attested to the Ottoman government's ability to establish its claim to mediate among different interests, so as to set forth a general code that henceforth provided the reference point in all property matters. By contrast, the French state throughout the 19 th century, failed to pass a rural code in the face of intransigence on the part of propertied classes who viewed such a code as an instrument to strengthen their own hands. 2 On the other hand, the text of the Land Code has an intensely negotiated character, testifying to the diverse interests the drafting the Commission was compelled to mediate. 3 The Code introduced a definition of

1 Decisions of provincial councils in the Balkans played an important role in the formulation of individual ownership rights. Ottoman historians know very little about the decisions of kadi courts on property matters in the 19 th century; after all there is no reason why the kadis in the provinces would not support the property claims of tax farmers and other Ottoman officials, as did the English magistrates and the French jurists with their close affiliations to local propertied groups. For the English case, see Arthurs, 1985; for the French case, Kelley and Smith, 1984. Aberdam, 1982. The Commission of drafters consisted of jurists headed by Ahmet Cevdet Paga. For the text of the report of the commission presenting the Code, see Akgunduz, 1986, pp. 683ff.

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individual property on state lands alone. In doing so, it sought to establish the revenue claims of the central government to the exclusion of the claims of other groups. On the other hand, by introducing a classification of lands including the lands of religious endowments (vakif), of free-holders (miilk)1 alongside miri or state lands, the Code conceded to the revenue claims of these groups outside of state lands. This also implied a change in the meaning of miri. Prior to the Code, state 'ownership' enabled the ruler to exercise his distributionist justice by allowing him to assign revenues to different groups in order to obtain their political allegiance and to ensure subsistence production. Under the Code, state 'ownership' assumed a character, approximating to a modern understanding of ownership in its emphasis on transferability by means of a sales contract and land registration. But when the central government attempted to extend the practices of registration and lease contracts which were applicable on state lands to non-state lands, it encountered strong resistance from the former ruling groups. At the same time, state ownership was undergoing further metamorphosis as public property whereby the central government sought justification for its control over property in its claim of upholding public or general interest. An important form public property had taken towards the end of the 19 th century was the setting aside of part of state lands as forest lands. This meant the introduction of a new domain of contestation over land whereby the boundaries of the public and private were continuously negotiated as state actors confronted private ones. 2 I have shown elsewhere 3 the way property relations in different localities were re-constituted in the 19 th century in the context of struggles waged over the general precepts of the Code. Here, I turn to the practice of compiling surveys, registration of lands and property for tax assessment as the fields of political power which were constitutive of individual ownership in the 19 th century.

Constitutions of Individual Property and Land / Property Registers The administrative constitution of individual property was underway prior to the issuing of the Land Code and following the declaration of the reform edict in 1839 which represented an internationally sanctioned statement ' For a discussion of miilk or freehold as a claim over revenues in the Ottoman context, see above and islamoglu, 2000. 2 For a treatment shifting boundaries of the public and private on land in relation to the institution of forest lands, see the article by Elvan Guloksiiz, 2003. 3 For a detailed discussion of the Code in this perspective, see islamoglu, 2000.

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about the new order of the state. 1 Steeped in the liberal ethos of the time, the edict assigned the central government the task of providing security of property and of life to its subjects. In practice, it entailed elimination of those who were perceived by the central government to be impeding that security through their onerous practices of taxing the population. The latter primarily referred to tax farmers consisting of the former ruling groups including religious foundations and holders of various revenue-grants. From the perspective of the central government, security of property of its subjects was inseparable from the fact of the establishment of its singular claim to taxation to the exclusion of all other claims. Hence, the most desirable situation was to attach every parcel of taxable land to an individual for paying the tax on it. Towards this end, the central government sought to administratively institute individual property throughout the 1840s. The most significant of these attempts was the surveying of lands and property for the assessment of individual incomes; it was followed by registration of individual title deeds. 2 For one thing, the new order of the state and/or of property was premised on an understanding that both land and other agricultural resources were productive assets, exchangeable in the market. In order to capture the changes in productivity and in their market value, the central government sought to tax the income from land and other resources. This was a departure from the earlier understanding premised on taxing pre-determined proportions of existing wealth in a given collectivity, most commonly, the village; absolute changes over time in this wealth were captured in taxes by means of periodic assessments, in the Ottoman case, every forty years. In practical terms, assessment of taxes on individual incomes meant that the central government required the kinds of information about land and other individual belongings which did not previously come to its purview. In this sense, the 19 th century surveys, unlike the earlier tax books which simply recorded the estimates of the taxes (both in kind and in cash) which a region was expected to deliver, sought to provide as accurate depiction of the assets of the individual as possible, to enable an assessment of his/her income. In relation to land, it meant descriptions, for instance, of the geographic location of fields, of the area under cultivation measured standards units of measurement, as well as the quantity of seed cultivated and the yields for individual crops. It also meant a systematic and on-going recordings of changes in the extent and value of landed property, of its yield, its productivity. ' T he debate around Ottoman reform often points to its being forced upon the Ottoman government especially by the British. This paper disagrees with this position. Reform edicts of the 19lh century, though embodied elements of the prevailing liberal discourse as this came out of Great Britain, they were cast in the context of the struggles among the groups which made of the Ottoman ruling class and attempts of the central bureaucracy and the army to establish its hegemony. This struggle for the making of the Ottoman modern state had begun in the latter part of the 18lh century and was rooted in the competition among the European states. Registration of property in the name of individuals began in 1847. Ortayli, 1983, pp. 159.

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Assessment of taxes on individual incomes, however, presupposed individual property and surveying practices in the 19 th century were instrumental in the constitution of this form of property. To begin with, assessment of individual incomes proved to be particularly difficult on lands where individual property was not established. The earlier system of taxation had defined the tax liability in terms of the tithe or a proportion of the produce which varied with the locality and of a land tax from the use of state lands, assessed on the basis of the extent of land ploughed by a pair of oxen. These taxes represented a tax/rent which accrued to the ruler and to the recipients of revenue grants from the ruler. This system, however, presupposed multiple claims on the use and revenues of land. Surveying officials in the 19 th century were especially hard-put in registering and assessing incomes from lands which were not the individual property of those who cultivated them but were part of the holdings of religious foundations and/or other types of revenue holdings. 1 The latter lands were not part of state lands on which the precepts of the Code applied and groups who had claim over revenues from these lands resisted the extension of the Code's jurisdiction and, in doing so, evaded state taxation. 2 As such, the practice of surveying became yet another scene where the former claimants to revenues fought against the new order of the central administration and of individual property. It also became an arena in which individual property was constituted. It is possible to trace the process of constituting individual property in the changes in the categories in terms of which land and resources were recorded in the surveys. Surveying of land and other agricultural resources for assessment of taxes, was practiced since the inception of the Ottoman empire and was an important aspect of Ottoman statecraft. In keeping with the distributive logic of Ottoman state power in the earlier period, the early tax surveys represented an administrative universe divided into the ruling bloc of claimants to taxes who were exempt from taxes and the taxpayers. The members of the ruling bloc were present in the registers as recipients of the different types of revenue-grants. The surveys did not record them by their names nor did they specify their population. Taxpayers, on the other hand, were recorded by their names; the amount of produce which was collected as taxes was also entered into the registers. Land was recorded as a category of ' These included the has or the domains of the ruler and his family and timar. It is interesting to note that timar holdings and sipahis are mentioned among the former revenue holders which resisted the central government as late as the second half of the 19th century. For instance, f a k i r , 2001, p. 125. Given the fact that historians have written them of as extinct since the 'decline' of the Ottoman classical system, their frequent recurrence in the documents of the later period may indicate that these groups while acting as tax-farmers may have maintained a distinct identity which differentiated them from other tax farmers. What exactly that identity was, may be a subject of future research. 2

gatar, p. 121.

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taxation, in relation to a tax that fell on the person as well as the land (resm- i gift). The unit of measurement was the gift or the area ploughed by a pair of oxen. Çift, however, varied with climatic and ecological conditions. Its plasticity, in turn, made it amenable in an environment in which payment of taxes was subject to a negotiative process. Earlier surveys were signifiers of shifting power positions as these positions were transcribed in the continual distribution and redistribution of resources among different groups within the hierarchical ordering of a distributive state environment. The information they provided about population, production and land, in fact, represented a mapping of power relations in a given locality and of the positioning of the different actors vis-àvis the ruler. As such, the early Ottoman tax surveys (tahrirs) represented the bundle of claims on land to its use, title and revenues and the ways these claims were negotiated in different localities. At the same time, these surveys bore witness to a recognition of the authority of the ruler in that the power relations they signified were described in the given format of the register and carried out by means of procedures determined by the center. In that sense, the old surveys provided an important vocabulary through which the Ottoman understanding of distributive justice was articulated. The 19 t h century surveys represented a radically different state environment and Ottoman bureaucrats increasingly saw having access to information on population, income, land and property, as an intrinsic part of realizing the dual modern aspiration of state taxation and increased production cum economic growth. To this end, beginning in the 1830s the central government undertook the preparation of statistics including population censuses, income registers and cadastral surveys. This article will study the temettuat registers or registers of income yielding assets compiled between 1840 and 1845 1 which are first in the line of a long series of land and property registers. Though temettuat surveys are possibly the least developed in terms of the categories they embody and perhaps the least successful in that the tax assessments they included were not used in actual taxation, they are at the moment the only surveys from the 19 th century to which the researchers can have full access to. At present researchers have full access to these registers which represent sets compiled in 1840 (1256 A.H.) and in 1845 (1260-61 A.H.). Our access to the surveys compiled in 1859/60 and in 1881-94 is at best patchy. Of these surveys, the 1859/60 appear to be the most comprehensive. The instructions issued by the central government regarding their preparation suggest that these surveys sought to approximate to the character of modern cadastre. For further information on these surveys prepared under the auspices of Tahrir-i Emlak Nezareti (Ministry of Property Surveys), see §ener, 1990, pp. 105-6 and (Jakir, p. 50. For a discussion of temettuat surveys, see Saracoglu, 1998 and for a comparison of the data of these surveys with French surveys of the same period, see Kaya, 1999. Pioneering work on temettuat surveys has been done by Giiran, 1998, Kutukoglu, 1995.

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On the other hand, the central government put a great deal of effort into preparation of the temettuat surveys. These preparations included executing of pilot projects in selected districts and the work of constituting multitudes of local commissions to carry out the collecting and recording of information. These efforts involved the mobilization of the society from the bottom up. That this was an urgent matter for the central government is attested by the fact eighteenth thousand income registers were completed within a span of two years, covering all imperial territories outside of Arab lands. Temettuat registers included a system of classification and categories which situated the different actors on land in relation to the singular claim of taxation of the central government over the annual income of the individual property holder. To this end, income registers did not classify information for the different regions on the basis of holders of revenue grants, as did the earlier registers. The temettuat registers rested on the assumption that the central state was the primary recipient of taxes and the members of the former military class together with ordinary households were subject to state taxes. A such, instead of devoting separate surveys for the assessment of revenue proceeds for the different types of revenue grants (timar defterleri, mukataa defterleri, vakif defterleri), the income registers represented a single survey with the household as the basis for classifying information on production and land holding. In the old surveys the unit of recording had been the village; they recorded the different shares of tax revenues apportioned to different revenue grant-holders from a given village. Payment of taxes (in cash and in kind) was the collective liability of the village and product taxes were divided amongst households on the basis of negotiated arrangements within the village. In the temettuat registers of the 1840s and the subsequent property and land surveys of the 19 th century, the individual household, as the unit of recording, was to be taxed on the basis of its annual income. The temettuat registers included inventories of lands, animals, other resources in the possession of the head of the household. The central government regulations emphasized that taxes were an obligation of the individual and not a collective liability of the village. This emphasis on individual obligation manifests itself in the registration of more than one tax-payers in a single household in the 1845 registers whereas this was not the practice in the registers of 1840.1

^A regulation issued in 1845 and addressed to local high officials and finance officers (idefterdaran) emphasized that taxes were an obligation of individuals and not a collective liability of the village and that they should be assessed on the basis of the income of the individual. This emphasis on individual obligation manifests itself in the registration of more than one tax-payers in a single household in the 1845 registers. BOA, Iradeler, Mesail-i Miihimme, 58/15 (1845).

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The practice of numbering and of classification by numbers in what was called numbers registers Were important to the process of individuation of ownership, as well as for facilitating access of the central government to information compiled in the surveys. The practice of numbering was initiated in the temettuat of 1840-45 through the affixing of numbers to individual households. On the other hand, Regulation for the Surveying of Property and Population issued in I860, 1 stated that fields, orchards, pasturelands and vineyards were to be recorded in property listings in terms of general and particular numbers. 2 The registers for which the above instructions were issued are not available to researchers and it is not clear what these general and particular numbers assigned to land or property referred to. But there is little doubt that the procedure of numbering properties and individual households sought to facilitate an administrative crystallization of the individual householders as holders of property, on the one hand, and of land or property as 'things' to be owned or exchanged and to be taxed on its income, on the other hand. Moreover, the recording of land in registers presupposed that documents of ownership, title deeds (tapu), were shown to the scribes in charge of recording; in the event that these were not available they were to be renewed in the courts of law. These documents were to include the general number of property or land as it was recorded in the property register, together with descriptions of its borders and of its shape. 3 These descriptions of registration practices correlating the information included in multiple registers by means of a system of numbering and of tables, represent an attempt to lay before the central administration official an order of landed property which these practices constituted and in doing so rendered accessible for the realization of its goals of taxation and economic development. As such, they represent a snapshot of the Ottoman administrative universe of the 19 t h century. This was, however, a contested universe where the achievement of both goals were seriously frustrated. The new order of property and of the state were 'made' in the context of incessant struggles among different groups representing multiple interests on land. The new order carried the imprints of these struggles which imparted its specificity to it. The categories of the surveys and practices of surveying were sites for these confrontations. The remaining part of this article is devoted to the 'makings' of individual property in relation to these confrontation. Before that, however, it is important to note 1 "Tahrir-i Emlak ve Niifus Nizamnamesi", circa 1866, pp. 889-902. ^Changes in the status of property due to sales and leases as well as births and deaths were entered in daily registers (yevmiye defterleri) and were subsequently recorded in the main registers where each household was assigned a number. This may suggest a preliminary step in the direction of proper cadastral surveys. 3 "Tahrir- i Emlak ve Niifus Nizamnamesi". circa 1866, Fasl-i Evvel, Article 12: "defter- i emlakde muharrer umumi rakamlar ve epical ve akyise ve hudud tarifve tahrir olunacak."

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that the categories introduced in the temettuat surveys were not simply constitutive of the taxation imperative; they were also constitutive of an 'economic' imperative which was inseparable from the taxation imperative. Temettuat registers suggest a thinking about land as an 'economic' category, that is, an income yielding asset and not simply as a categories of taxation cum use, that is, as territory to be taxed and/or leased for its use. As such, the temettuat registers recorded the different phases of productive activity, that is, the extent of lands under cultivation, left fallow, leased out together with the income from land leases and the cash income that accrued from the land for the year before registration as well as during the year of registration. Moreover, the conceptual disentangling of land from the tangle of taxation/property relations which characterized the earlier distributiveaccommodative environment, becomes manifest in the adoption in the registers of doniim, an aerial unit of measurement, instead of the gift, a unit of measurement characterized by its plasticity and therefore variability in different localities. This was, no doubt, a step in the direction of standardization and uniformization of the measurement unit, which was integral to the central government's effort to simplify property relations on land. The introduction of the aerial unit of measurement was important from the point of objectification of land as a 'thing', as the object of ownership and as an asset exchangeable in the market. As significantly, taking incomes of individuals as the basis for taxation occasioned the central government's interest in evaluating the productive capacity of land and its resources, in the variations in that capacity, as well as in market conditions which were to determine the value of assets. Beginning in the 1840s the augmenting of the productive capacity of land and resources became a central preoccupation of the Ottoman government. This was expected to result in increased tax revenues and, perhaps as significantly, in an improvement in the ability of the central administration to deliver to the population in terms of services. In January 1857, the Ottoman government issued Instructions to Property Officials in the Provinces1, asking the property officials in the different provinces to seek answers, on a yearly basis, to a list of questions relating to agricultural production. Property officials were also expected to enter the results of their queries in registers and send them to Istanbul every year in February or at the latest in early March. 2 The Instructions opened with the statement that "the generosity of the ruler dictated that he rendered services for the progress of agriculture which would

Taçra Mulkiye ve Mai Memurlarina Talimatdir", circa 1866, pp. 555-58. ^Ibid., article 5 on corrupt practices in the process of registration, changes in production were to be reported every month to the new Treasury by property officials or mulkiye memurlari.

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benefit the country and his subjects". To this end, exact information was to be had for all villages in all districts and sub-districts on measurements of areas of cultivated fields, figures on seed/yield ratios during harvest time. 1 For individual farms, information was requested on the area of each farm in aerial units of measurement, the area sown and the amount of seed cultivated, the area of land left fallow; the yields from vineyards and grape presses, as well as the amount of grape produce consumed in the locality of the farm, the amount exported. Finally, Instructions to Property Officials, in the spirit of market management which was characteristic of 19th century political economy, asked for comparative figures. Thus, the property officials were to note the yearly variations in production or yields and in prices. The central government wanted to know how the changes in the supply of a given good were reflected in its price, and what factors affected its supply, or production. Any factor that caused a fall in production was to be counteracted by administrative intervention. To this end, property officials were instructed to enlist the assistance of agricultural officials to combat diseases which affected the vines, causing a fall in state revenues and harming the owners of vineyards. From the above discussion, it is clear that compilation of statistics on the full extent and productive capacities of agricultural land for assessment of individual incomes, was an exercise in the extension of governmental scrutiny into domains in which governmental recording had not penetrated previously. On the one hand, this involved a penetration into individual lives as is evidenced by detailed descriptions of the physical properties of heads of households including whether they had a beard or were afflicted by a limp. On the other hand, it meant accounting for all the assets of the individual household, sometimes personal belongings. In brief, it foreboded a rigor in tax assessment and met with strong resistance. Recent work by Ottoman economic historians show that the period beginning in 1840s was one of incessant tax revolts and resistance to the process of information gathering directed towards assessment of taxes on the basis of individual incomes. 2 One most dramatic reminder of such resistance was that notwithstanding the effort The catalogues of Finance Ministry (Maliye Nezareti Defterleri no.797, 1272/1856) includes a register of cultivated lands for villages in the kaza of f a n , located in the province (sancak) of Biga. This register, as different from those of earlier years, contains information on the area of cultivated lands, the geographic location of fields, quantities of seed planted and yields for individual crops for the years 1856 and 1857. The figures given are those of quantities measured in kiles and they are not monetary values. The format of individual entries in the register is as follows: the name of the head of the household is followed by the numbers of animals he owns, the lands he cultivates which are represented in the measurement units of lata and doniim, the quantity of seed cultivated and yields in kile for individual crops for 1856 and 1857. At the end of the recordings for each village, the quantities of seed and yields for individual crops are totaled. I am grateful to my doctoral student Alp Yiicel Kaya for providing me with this information. 2 For instance, fakir, 2001 and Uzun, 2002.

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that went into their preparation, the central government was unable to use the information recorded in the temettuat registers in the collection of taxes. For one thing, this information was often glaringly defective and showed serious discrepancies in the distribution of taxes among regions and individuals. 1 Above all, individual heads of household had been less than candid in declaring their assets. The central government was well aware that village headmen (muhtars) and prayer leaders (imams) who received and recorded the declarations of assets from these individuals, tended to overlook the inaccurate statements. Another problem related to faulty assessment was the behavior of muhassih or public servants appointed by the central government and were responsible for the preparation of the income surveys, as well as for tax collection. These officials were found guilty of either overassessing individual incomes to endear themselves to Istanbul and underassessing them to endear themselves to certain local groups. Misdemeanours on the part of individual officials, however, are revealing of the nature of surveying (including gathering information and tax assessment) as an arena in which numerous battles were waged for the establishment of the domination of the Ottoman central bureaucracy over the members of the former ruling groups with entrenched interests on land. The establishment of the hegemony of the central government implied the recasting of the property and taxation relations, amounting to a radical revision in the allocation of resources on land. From the point of view of the central government, gathering of information with the objective of assessing of taxes on the basis of individual incomes would make possible a more equitable distribution of taxes among regions and individuals. Central government officials blamed the heavy tax burdens felt by ordinary people on tax evasions on the part of members of former ruling groups rooted in their resistance to recording of their assets. 2 As such, from the perspective of the central government, equity in taxation, or relief from the excessive tax burden, rested on the generality of the assessment and collection of taxes. This position notwithstanding taxes in the Ottoman empire rose in absolute terms and per capita throughout the 19 th century Ottoman empire, increasing nearly five-fold. 3 On the other hand, powerful groups in the countryside including ' In a number of cases, the tithe payments were recorded as nearly 45% of total income from cultivated area. 2 "Ta§ra Mulkiye", circa 1866, pp. 555-58, Article 2 on the failure of notables to register their sons in order to exempt them from military service and to pay less tax. A number of decrees issued by the central state prior or at the time of compilation of the 1844 survey as well as accounts referring to a failed attempt at compiling a survey in 1838, point to complaints about the heavy tax burdens on ordinary people and to situations where notables did not pay taxes. 3 According to §evket Pamuk, between 1750 and 1914 the taxes that accrued to the Ottoman Treasury increased five-fold and by the end of this period taxes amounted to 12 percent of gross national product. I am grateful to Professor Pamuk for this information.

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former tax farmers and/or members of religious foundations and former holders of revenue grants, did in fact resist the surveying process in the form of withholding information about their assets. In many cases these groups constituted the force behind the local rebels, if they did not actually incite rebellion themselves. 1 Traces of these struggles are to be found in the continuous reformulation of the categories used in surveying as well as in changes in the surveying methods and in the personnel who undertook this task. The strongest resistance was to individuation of taxation. A government regulation issued in 1845 and addressed to local administrative and financial officers emphasized that taxes were the obligation of the individual to be paid on his/her income and not the collective liability of the village. 2 Yet, 1845 surveys, as did the 1840 surveys before them, recorded totals of the incomes of households and individuals for each village, suggesting that taxes were assessed on the basis of the income from the entire village. This slip into assessment on the basis of collective income was a way of allowing individuals to escape the full burden of taxation. It also allowed for distribution of tax burden among individual households on the basis of distributive processes characteristic of the earlier era and that pitted the strong against the weak in the village community. Similarly, the continued recording in the surveys of both 1840 and 1845, of the tithe on grains as tax assessed on the total produce of grains in the village, attest to the strength of resistance to individuation of taxation. Furthermore, the resetting of the tithe at the general standard rate of one tenth in all regions, instead of the former rates which varied with the region, may be seen as an acknowledgement on the part of the central government that tithe was there to stay and the only alternative to abolishing it was 'modernizing' it. Of course, collection of the grain tithe which continued to be collected in kind, proved to be a highly lucrative business for officials who were responsible for its collection. In fact, many complaints about muhassih or the government officials who were responsible for surveying as well as for tax collection for two years between 1840 and 1842, relate to their abuses regarding tithe collection. 3 These grievances were further fueled by their rivals in the business of tithe collection, the former tax farmers, who after 1842 resumed the task of collecting of the tithe, while the collection of other taxes were entrusted to provincial governors and their financial officers, both appointed by the central government.

'See ÇaJar, pp. 130-140 and Uzun. BOA, irade, Mesail-i Mtthimme, 58/15, 1845. 3 For a detailed description of the procedures of tithe collection in the 19th century Ottoman empire and abuses involving muhassih, see Çakir, pp. 124-6. 2

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In fact, temettuat surveys represented an arena in which the old and the new clashed whereby the old categories insinuated their way alongside the new. This was true for the category of tithe which is often entered in the surveys sideways almost to the margin above the entry of the name and the description of the head of the household; the assets of the household were listed, in even lines, under the name and the description of the head of the household. Similarly, the sheep tax which was levied in kind and which was the collective liability of the village, continued to be recorded in a similarly awkward fashion as was the grain tithe. On the other hand, survey entries included detailed inventories of sheep, describing individual sheep in their various stages of their growth including pregnancy, nursing, possible directed towards assessment of their value, of their income yielding capacity. Collection of the sheep tithe was also a very profitable business; it was continued to the farmed until 1859-60 when the surveys began to include assessments of the sheep tax on the basis of the value and/or the income yielded of individual sheep. 1 Finally, the transitional character of the temettuat registers are revealed in debates and discussions over what was to be considered income, or what items yielded income which was liable to taxation and which were not. Central government officials often pointed out that the notion of temettuat or what constituted taxable income was misunderstood, resulting in abuses and/or frictions in the recording and assessment processes. 2 Methods of surveying as well as who were to be involved in the surveying of property, land, and population, in tax assessment and the collection of taxes, were all matters subject to contestation. Responding to such contestation, surveying of property and land came to be carried out by a curious mix of local groups or individuals and state officials. The content of that mix, however, was suggestive of the ways the local or society was being formed in relation to the practices of surveying. Initially, in 1840 the central government directly appointed muhassih who were responsible for the surveying of income yielding resources, for tax assessment on income as well as for tax collection. The central government also imparted these officials with the mission of propagating its reforms throughout the empire. Muhassih

I would like to thank Dr. Ahmet Uzun for very informative discussions of the sheep tax. When the central government couldn't do away with tax farmers, it sought to assign tax farming to groups outside the former taxfarmers. This was the case of assigning the farming of the grain tithe to the muhassih. In the 1840s the farming of the sheep tax was assigned to state officials or miiba§ir. 2 fakir, pp. 118-20. fakir refers to reports by the inspection commissions of the central government which state that the concept of temettuat was poorly understood by muhassils or state appointed officials. It would be interesting to look that the cognitive changes the introduction of the notion of income forced on the Ottoman agricultural society. Some of the problems referred to such the recording of all items, may a result of simply not understanding by what the central government meant by income yielding assets or temettuat.

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were not accountable to other high ranking government officials in the provinces but reported directly to central government bureaux in Istanbul; they had considerable autonomy in carrying out their activities with the assistance of councils the members of which the muhassils appointed from among local personages. Salaries of muhassils were paid by the central government but the level of these salaries were determined by the councils. This measure was no doubt intended to give these bodies some control over the activities of muhassils. The latter in carrying out the registration of property and population, were to be assisted by two scribes, one responsible for recording of population and the other for recording property. Both scribes came from the districts where muhassils served; they were appointed and paid by the muhassils. The actual process of registration as it was described by the central government instructions issued on January 1840, was one in which the muhassil accompanied by his scribes, visited the different localities (towns, villages) in the region over which he had jurisdiction and established councils in these localities. The procedures to be followed in the registration of property and population were to be established by individual councils in collaboration with the muhassil and his scribes. 1 The abuses of muhassils and their entanglements with local groups through the system of councils which appears to have resulted in serious misrepresentations of taxable incomes -ranging from frauds in measurements of grain tithe to measurements of area of land 2 , appears to have been a factor in provoking the revolts in Anatolia and the Balkans. The central government might have considered employing the muhassils and the new local councils they appointed to counterbalance the power of former revenue holders in the provinces. This objective was frustrated by the fact that the former power groups either managed to attract the muhassil to their ranks or resisted his activities to the degree of rendering them ineffectual. As a result, central government was compelled to abolish the office of the muhassil in 1842. This marked the end of grand posturing on the part of the central government in its attempt to affect the balances of power in the provinces, by setting the different groups against each other. It also marked the beginnings of a process of bureaucratization of registration of property, land, and population. Above all, bureaucratization presupposed mobilization of diverse local groups through a system of commissions formed at all levels of ' For the instructions (Muhassilan Yedlerine i'ta olunan Talimat-i Seniyye) issued by the central government on January 1840 and sent to muhassils, see BOA, irade, Dahiliye, 260, 20 Z'il-kade 1255/25 Ocak 1840 and BOA, Maliyeden Mttdewer Defterleri, No. 9016, pp. 2-4. For lengthy discussion and transcription of areas under the jurisdiction of muhassils, see Cakir p. 42-7 and 239-48. 1 am grateful to Dr. Ahmet Uzun for the information that one of main abuses of muhassils related to the tempering with strings used to measure land area.

was

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provincial administration down to villages. The commissions or councils were channels through local knowledge came to bear on the bureaucratic processes of registrations carried out government appointed officials; commissions were also the arenas in which the different interests were negotiated and the central government, its representatives mediated among different groups. Thus, in 1845 a regulation addressed to the important administrative and the financial officers of the central government assigned the responsibility for compiling of registers and gathering information to administrators (kaymakam) and financial officers (defterdar) of the central government in the provinces. These officials were to act under the auspices of the ten councils of reconstruction which included local personages as well as central government officials, established throughout the empire. The actual task of information gathering, however, was assigned to village headmen and village notables.1 While we have little information regarding procedures of surveying, personnel in charge of registration in the case of surveys compiled in the late 1850s, Regulation for the Survey of Property and Population issued in 1860 suggests that the performance in terms of effective taxation was not entirely to the satisfaction of the central government. 2 The Regulation told the administrators of the central government in the provinces to persuade the population to provide information on their property and their family members; it declared that the failure to provide such information which resulted in evasion of taxes, merited severe punishment including three years of chained imprisonment. 3 On the other hand, from the perspective of the central government, the most effective way of doing away with the information deficit was to elicit the cooperation of local populations in the process of gathering of information and registration of property and population. To this end, the Regulation stipulated the appointment of commissions at different levels of provincial administration. At the level of the province (eyalet), grand commissions included twenty-two scribes (muharrir) who were members of the ilmiye or scholarly class and who were appointed by the central government4, four

1

irade, Mesail-i Miihimme, 58/15 (1845). ^Remnants of a survey dating from 1856, includes categories of information which did not exist in the 1840-1845 temettuat surveys. The kind of information included in this survey closely approximates to that in 1859/60 surveys. While at present researchers have only patchy access to the latter surveys, from the few samples which are available, it appears that these registers of all those compiled until this date most closely approximated to a description of a cadastral registers. Tahrir-i Emlak ve NUfus Nizamnamesi", circa 1866, Fasl-i sani; in the process of the recording of population, persons failing to present birth certificate were not to be allowed access to courts and their travel certificates were to be revoked. 4

Ibid.

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estimate-makers (muhammen) 1 , who were chosen from among the respected persons in individual localities, and one chairperson. The scribes were responsible for the administration of certificates, that is of issuing certificates of property, for taxes as well as birth certificates. Commissions, on the other hand, were expected to provide the information to keep these certificates up to date, keeping track of births, deaths, of sales and acquisitions of property, of taxes paid. At the village level, a commission of six members was to be appointed for a group of six villages, with each village providing one member. The village commissions were expected to meet weekly in the summer and biweekly in the winter on a given day of the week. They decided on the distribution of taxes among the households according to their abilities to pay and were responsible for the reporting on births and deaths, on persons who moved in and out of the area the six villages as well as on buildings that were constructed without obtaining permission from the Provincial Council. It appears that village commissions stood above the administrations of individual villages, represented by the headmen. In the compiling of 1840-45 income registers, the village headmen had played a very important role with poor results from the point of view of the government. The regulation of 1860 stated that the village headmen came from lower classes and people from respectable backgrounds deemed it below their dignity to hold this position. For reform and restitution to be executed properly, the Regulation continued, headmen had to be appointed from among persons who were considered to be trustworthy both by the central government and the local population. To this end, the Regulation stipulated that scribes appointed by the central government should dismiss the existing headmen and appoint new ones from among trustworthy and respected persons in the village. Finally, in 1866 an addendum to the Regulation of 1860 introduced the property commissions established on the district (sancak) and sub-districts (kaza ) which came under them under jurisdiction of the highest level of provincial administration, that of the liva.2 The property commissions took over the task of issuing certificates from the scribes, who were appointed by the central government and were members of the district (eyalet)-level commissions. This ' Ibid. Tahrir Nizamnamesine zeyl olunmak iizere Fikra-1 Nizamiyyedir", circa 1866, p. 904 Eyalet merkezleri komisyonlarimn ruznamgecilik ve tatbik katibligi hidmetleri lagv olub, gerek anlarin veza'ifine ve gerek idarenin veza'if-i umumiyye-i kalemiyyesine dogridan dogriya komisyonlarm birinci katibleri merci'-i mes'uliyyet olacaklan misillu mtilhakat komisyonlarimn mu'amelat ve tedkikat kalemiyyesinin mes'uliyyet-i umummiyyesine dahi idare-i dahiliyyeleri haricinde yani kaymakamhkla idare olunan kazalar komisyonlari mu'amelatinda res-i liva komisyon katibinin mes'uliyyet-i hususiyyesinden sonra olmak ttzre yine anlarin sifat-i me'muriyyetleri merci' bulunacak ve fakat kazalarda emlak vuku'atimn mu'amelat-i yevmiyesi arazi katiblerine ve niifus vuku'atimn mu'amelat-i yevmiyesi niifiis mukayyidlerine muhavvel olub, anlarin idarelerinin hukuk-i teftijiyyesinden olan kazalarda res-i liva komisyon katibi mes 'ul bulunacakdir.

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development suggests a further nuancing of the process of registration on the part of the central government, by placing it in the hands of property commission which included local personages, on the one hand, and focusing the actual process of registration on smaller units of administration subject to systematic inspection by a scribes of the liva and away from the district level, on the other hand. Despite, and perhaps because of, continuous administrative nuancing which sought to reconcile the diverse local interest with those of administration and in the process re-casting those interests, the Ottoman state did not succeed in executing cadastral maps, which were central to the process of cadastral surveying. Cadastral maps remain the single-most achievement of the modern state in constituting individual ownership on land. They enabled cutting across the maze of property relations and establish administrative controls over the land, its resources and population. Above all, cadastral maps draw boundaries and leave no ambiguity as to who owns what. James Scott states that cadastral maps "... are designed to make a local situation legible to an outsider". 1 This may explain the remarkable success of cadastral mapping in the colonial contexts of the 19 th century where the map provided an outsider-state with a 'bird's eye view'. 2 In the case of the non-colonial Ottoman state, its ability to be an outsider, that is, to abstract itself from the context of power relations within the empire, was far more limited. As a result, the central government conceded to local demand in curbing its practices of registering of wealth and land. One reason it did so was probably because in the absence of a reserve army of administrators located in a colonial homeland, the Ottoman state depended largely on the services of local groups and persons notables in the instituting of the new administrative order, as was witnessed in the case of forming of commissions for the preparation of surveys. This was also true in the manning of the new administrative courts — matters related to property and land came under the jurisdiction of the courts following the issuing of the Code — by the judges of the old courts of justice, who belonged to local networks of power relations represented by local religious foundations and other claimants to revenues. The concessional politics of property which characterized the Ottoman administrative practice in the second half of the 19 th century, however, can be better understood in relation to the attempts of the central government to mediate among different interests while, at the same time, eliminating some and including others in the hegemonic order of the new state. Commissions established on different levels of provincial administration were arenas in 1 2

Scott, 1998, p. 45 For successful cadastral mapping in British India in the mid-19"' century see, Saumarez, 2003.

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which a new order of the state was cast and recast as both the old and new power groups confronted each other. For instance, in relation to administration of property and land, the central government appears to have sought to counterbalance the power of the judges at the courts of justice with those of Commissions which, for brief period between 1840 and 1842, was appointed from among local personages by muhassils or state appointed officials. Under the ancien régime judges were responsible for mediating conflicts relating to land and taxation. Judges often entered the settlements negotiated among parties in the form of amendments to survey entries, often inscribed in the margins of the survey page in judge's handwriting. The courts had also been responsible for implementing the regulations included in provincial codes. Commissions in the 19 th century appear to have usurped the tasks which formerly were performed by judges; these including the registration of property as well as the settling of disputes on land 1 . At the same time, Commissions became arenas into which the former elites, as was the case of the membership of judges in Commissions at the level of provincial administration, could be co-opted, their influence be diffused.

Conclusion Given the picture of Ottoman state practices constituting individual property mired in concessional politics of commissions and of inability to define in no uncertain terms land as object of taxation and exchange on cadastral maps, could one speak of a failure of Ottoman modernity? The answer is no. For one thing, in the second half of the 19 th the new hegemonic order of the central bureaucracy was in place. The central government's ability to tax increased considerably and the government through policies of welfare and reconstruction sought to secure the welfare of its subjects. 2 That the Ottoman central government failed and the empire collapse during the First War in the face interstate competition in Europe, should not detract from the fact a modern state order of the state emerged in the Ottoman setting. The lynchpin of the modern state environment in the 19 th century have been formation of individual ownership in land. The Ottoman government through its legal practices as well as through practices of surveying and registering, was able to constitute individual ownership in land. This article addressed the political processes which characterised the 'making' of individual property as ' For estabiishment of Commissions on the spot for the settlement of a property dispute in Y any a in the 1870s, see tslamoglu, 2000; for Commissions attending cases which were formerly referred to courts of justice, see Çakir, p. 114. 2 Ozbek, 1999/2000.

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different groups or individuals, including administrative actors 1 , confronted each other to negotiate the terms of their existence in a new hegemonic environment where the central bureaucracy strove to establish its dominance. In emphasising the political constitutions of individual property, this article questioned those understandings of administrative and legal constitutions of individual property that identified the constitutive process with that of subjugation of society to the imperatives of central government, including taxation, conscription, control for developmentalist ends. Simply, this article sought to problematize the domination of modern government as this was exercised through its various practices. As such, that domination did not imply so much an annihilation but a reconstitution of the local or society albeit in the terms of the new hegemony. Reconstitution involved confrontations among different interests and attempts at mediating those interests on the part of the central government. Politics of commissions in relation to registration and surveying of landed property was one such arena in which the local was constituted and re-constituted. It was also the arena of the constitution of a new hegemony of the central government. Law and practices of surveying and registration that were constitutive of individual property, sought to do so in terms of generality and uniformity of rules and categories. Such generality was articulating the general demands of the central government for taxation, for control over resources to the exclusion of other groups which formerly had access to these. On the one hand, the central government sought to justify the generality of its demands, by its ability to serve the general interest. On the other hand and as significantly, the self-definition of the new hegemony came to rest on an understanding of justice which no longer rested on the recognition and accomodation of particular circumstances, but referred to a justice of administration. The latter rested on a claim to administer effectively and equitably on the basis of generality and uniformity of rules, regulations, procedures which transcended the individual circumstances. This allowed for an ideological distancing of the central government or the bureaucracy and cast in it in the role of a third-party mediator among multiple interests. Attempts to mediate through the generality of procedures and regulations and reconcile the different interests, as is witnessed in relation to the politics of commissions, was the substance of administrative justice which the central bureaucracy sought to dispense through the efficacy of its administrative procedures. The central government tirelessly turned out procedures relating to administration of landed property, seeking methods of ' For an understanding of administrative actors as legal personae, see Mundy, 2004, as based on Thomas, 1998.

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surveying property and population which could reconcile its own interests in taxation and economic development, with those of different groups in society. For the most part, the outcome was a spate of compromises, of grand undertakings which could not be put into practice, as was the case with the income registers of the 1840s. Yet, a new order of the state and of property emerged out of these mediations, carrying the imprints of the politics waged by the different groups including the multiple agent of the central administration. The new hegemony was represented no longer by the just ruler but the generality and uniformity of administrative practice that imparted the bureaucrat the role of mediation. The figure of the bureaucrat came to represent the state environment, embodied its identity. This was an identity in keeping with the multinational character of the empire. It aspired to affect an erasure of all national identities. As importantly, not beclouded by the romance of nationalism, it was a thoroughly modern (in the Weberian sense) identity. It was perhaps this identity which survived until the 1980s, most notably, in the Turkish republic, the immediate successor to the Ottoman state, but has since been undermined by radical changes in the context of power relations rooted in changes in the terms of hegemony (domestically and globally). This meant a shift in the balance of power to commercial groups and introduction of new forms of government outside those of central state administrations. It also means that a search is now underway for new self-definitions of power environments (they may no longer be called state environments). This, one might say, is not very different than the situation in other world regions, that within their own trajectories of modern transformation seem to be engaged in similar searches.

Primary Sources Istanbul, Bagvekalcl Osmanli Argivi trade, Dahiliye, No. 260, 20 Zi'l-kade 1255 [25 January 1840]. irade, Mesa'il-i

Mtihimme, no. 58/15, 1261 [1845],

"Muhassilan Yedlerine I'ta Olunan Talimat-i Seniyye", MUdevver Defierleri,

Maliyeden

no. 9061, 19 Zi'l-kade 1255 [24 January 1840], pp.

2-4. "Tahrir-i Emlak ve Nufus Nizamnamesi", 14 Cumade'l-ula 1277 [28 November 1860], Dustur, I. Tertib, v. 1, 2 n d ed., Istanbul, Matbaa-i Amire, 1282 [circa 1866], pp. 889-902.

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"Tahrir Nizamnamesine Zeyl olunmak üzere Fikra-i Nizamiyyedir", 27 §aban 1282 [15 January 1866], Düstur, I. Tertib, v. 1, 2 n d ed., Istanbul, Matbaa-i Amire, 1282 [circa 1866], p. 904. "Ta§ra Mülkiye ve Mal Memurlarina Verilen Talimatdir", 15 Cumade'l-ula 1273 [11 January 1857], Düstur, I. Tertib, v. 1, 2 n d ed., Istanbul, Matbaa-i Amire, 1282 [circa 1866].

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Hastings Law Journal 8, 805-53. Çakir, Cogkun, Tanzimat Dönemi Osmanli Maliyesi, Istanbul, Küre Yaymlari, 2001. Dirks, Nicholas, "From Little King to Landlord: Property, Law and Gift under the Madras Permanent Settlement", Comparative Studies in Society and History 28 (1986), 307-33. Dursun, Selçuk, Population Policies of the Ottoman State in the Tanzimat Era: 1840-1870, M. A. Thesis, Sabanci University, March 2001. Forster, E. M., Howard's End, New York, St. Martin's Press, 1996. Foucault, Michel, "On Governmentality", in Gordon Burchell et al (eds. ), The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, London, Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991, 87-104. Genovese-Fox, Elizabeth, Origins of Physiocracy: Economic Revolution and Social Order in the Eighteenth Century France, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1976. Guéry, Alain, "Le roi dépensier, le don, le contrat et l'origine du système financier de la monarchie française de l'Ancien régime, Annales 39/6, Nov. -Dec. 1984, 1241-1269. Gülöksiiz, Elvan, "Negotiations of Property Rights in Land in Two districts in the City Of Istanbul", in Huri Islamoglu (ed. ), Constituting Modernity: Private Property in the East and the West, London, IB Tauris, 2004, 248-275. Giiran, Tevfik, 19. Yüzyil Osmanli Tarimi, Istanbul, Eren, 1998.

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Inalcik, Halil, Tanzimat ve Bulgar Meselesi, Ankara, Türk Tarih Kurumu Basimevi, 1943. Inalcik, Halil The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age 1300-1600, New York, Orion Publishing Co., 2000. Islamoglu, Huri, "Constituting Property in Comparative Perspective", in Huri islamoglu (ed. ), Constituting Modernity: Private Property in the East and the West, London, IB Tauris, 2004. Islamoglu, Huri, "Property as a Contested Domain: A Réévaluation of the Ottoman Land Code of 1858", in Roger Owen (ed.), New Perspectives on Property and Land in the Middle East, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2000, 3 61.

islamoglu-inan, Huri, State and Peasant in the Ottoman Empire, Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1994. Jones, Eric L., Growth Recurring: Economic Change in World History, Oxford, 1988. Kanth, R. K., Political Economy of Laissez-Faire: Economics and Ideology in the Ricardian Era, Totowa (New Jersey), Rowman & Littlefield, 1986. Kaya, Alp Yucel, Les enquêtes agricoles de la France et de l'Empire Ottoman au milieu du XIXe siècle, unpublished mémoire du DEA, Paris, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, 1999. Kelley, Donald R. and Bonnie G. Smith, "What was Property? Legal Dimensions of the Social Question in France (1789-1848)", Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 128/3, 1984, 200-30. Kiitiikoglu, Miibahat, "Osmanlinin Sosyal ve Iktisadi Kaynaklarindan Temettii Defterleri, " Belleten 59/225, 1995, 395-418. Mundy, Martha, "The State of Property: Late Ottoman Southern Syria (the Kazâ of 'Ajlun), 1875-1918", in Huri islamoglu (ed. ), Constituting Modernity: Private Property in the East and the West, London, IB Tauris, 2004, 214247. Maine, Henry James, Ancient Law, London, John Murrray, 1920. Ozbek, Nadir, "Osmanli ìmparatorlugunda 'Sosyal' Yardim Uygulamalari, 18391918", Toplum ve Bilim 83, Ki§, 1999/2000, 111-133. Ortayli, ilber, imparatorlugun En Uzun Yiizyili, Istanbul, Hil Yayinlari, 1983. Palairet, Michael, The Balkan Economies c. 1800-1914: Evolution without Development, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997. Parker, David, "Law, Society and the State in the Thought of Jean Bodin", History of Political Thought, v. 2, 1981, 253-285. Salzmann, Ariel, "An Ancien Regime Revisited: Privatization and Political Economy in the Eighteenth Century Ottoman Empire", Politics and Society 21/4, 1993, 393-423. Saracoglu, Safa, A Snapshot of the County of Kafirni through the Surveys of 1845, M. A. Thesis, Middle East Technical University, October 1998. Saumarez, Richard S., "Mapping Landed Property: A Necessary Technology of Imperial Rule?" in Huri Islamoglu (ed. ), Constituting Modernity: Private Property in the East and the West, London, IB Tauris, 2004, 149-179. Scott, James C., Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, New Haven, Yale University, 1998.

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WORDS THAT RULE: FROM BUREAUCRATIC 'COMMISSIONS' TO GOVERNING 'BOARDS' 1

Introduction In their travels between locations and through time, words carry with them a baggage of legitimacy. In the movement of words, it may be possible to map changing patterns of domination and the moments at which a term moves from the unacceptable and foreign to the home-grown and necessary. This should not, however, suggest that words are fixed in their relationship to the power relations prevailing in a given historical context. On the contrary, words in motion find themselves embodied in power relations other than those with which they were initially associated. As such, words are not to be understood as mere signifiers but need to be seen as agents participating in the making of new environments of power relations and implicated in the accompanying contradictions of transformation processes. In other words, while the provenance of terms matter, their lives are complex and can never be described in terms of simple movements from here to there or from one moment to the next. This is especially true of terms of governance. By focusing our attention on the systems and ideologies of rule inaugurated by these terms, as well as the unexpected shifts in their course, we can begin to track politics into unexpected territories. This essay follows the trajectory of the term komisyon during the 19th century Ottoman empire to the contemporary kurul, or board, demonstrating how both concepts were mobilized to signal a new style of governance and were associated with political processes that established the domination or hegemony of one social grouping over others, involving the different ways that domination is challenged, negotiated and mediated. In the 19 th century Ottoman Empire, parliamentary representation was rendered problematic as a form of political representation largely due to the multi-national character of the empire. Multiple nationalist allegiances prevented the formulation of any common grounds to serve as a starting point for any meaningful debate in the parliament, as the 1876 Ottoman experiment demonstrated. In this context, komisyon, borrowed from the French revolutionary concept of the 'l would like to thank Ayse favdar, Lorans Baruh and Mustafa Yola? for the research on BRSB.

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commission, emerged as a body with the capacity to represent different social groupings or positions in the formulation and implementation of the rulings of the central bureaucratic government as well as in the resolution of disputes associated with these processes. As such, by allowing societal participation in the administrative process, komisyon became an arena where social actors met state actors to contest, to negotiate and in doing so; forge the very terms of modern bureaucratic rule. In this sense, the term komisyon is identified with the process of enabling modern transformation of social reality, a transformation that the conventional historiography on Ottoman modernity reduced to Europeanization. In the latter perspective, modern transformation becomes one of an endless strife on the part of elites to adopt European forms or institutions to achieve societal change, an endeavor often seen as being resisted by large segments of society. Komisyon, however, point to a different trajectory of modern transformation, one which is entangled with local politics and carrying the imprint or input of societal struggles. It conveys an understanding of that transformation not as alien or European but one, which, regardless of the origins of the innovation, different groups through their engagement with it have made their own. The vision of modernity resting on central bureaucratic rule and its politics of administration, has undergone dramatic changes in the last twenty years, however, that are signaled in the emergence of another important governance term. Kurul, the Turkish word for "board," borrowed from the corporate world, has increasingly gone hand-in-hand with or even replaced the concept of komisyon. It belongs to the terrain of a new terminology th governing in the late 20 century and early 21 s t century. Kurul refers to an expert governing body characterized by its independence from the central bureaucracy and is associated with a new vision of modern transformation, that of global market development, pointing to a prominence of transnational actors in defiance of the domination of old bureaucracies signaled by the continued presence of the komisyon. The first part of this paper will trace the movement of komisyon from the French governing context into that of the Ottoman empire, describing the process through which the word metamorphasized to be associated with political participation in bureaucratic administration. The second part of the paper traces the predicament of present-day kuruh to their entanglement with worlds of Jacobin bureaucracy and segments of the local business elite. Such entanglement is highly disapproved of by the IMF and the present Turkish government with its transnational aspirations. Both of these bodies are currently searching for alternatives to kuruls to assume the task of enabling a transnational market order and are making it clear that a new term is now

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called for. Thus, we may see another shift in the near future, one that is intimately related to the changing project of modern transformation with its transnational focus currently associated with integration with the European Union. I argue here that the komisyon and the kurul are more common, shared, and effective throughout European political life than parliaments and have a great deal to tell us about how societies are differentially positioned vis-á-vis the project of building a new Europe in the 21 st century.

Bureaucracies Ruled Through

Commissions

The terms "commission" and "committee" refer to different histories of governing in different world regions since the 19 th century. The French revolution initiated the idea of commissions or committees as governing bodies largely responsible for formulating and deliberating the institutional framework of a new centralized administration. The relationship between commissions and democracy has never quite been settled. Both the representative character of commissions and their "expert" dimension could be alternatively emphasized depending on one's goal in terms of governance. During the revolutionary decade of the 1790s, committees were largely responsible for carrying out the actual tasks of administration; some were endowed with significant powers, as had been the case with the Committee of Public Safety. 1 With the consolidation of the power of the central bureaucracy and the army under Napoleon Bonaparte, committees were no longer responsible for direct administration and security but committee- formation was a bureaucratic prerogative invoked when a task was needed to be done. Committees or commissions were seen as essential to the new republic because they brought together representative individuals as well as those with expertise for the performance of a specified task thus providing a context for deliberation of different interests as well as for the production and dissemination of knowledge. Political formations throughout Continental Europe were receptive to the French model for administrative rationalization for the simple reason that facing interstate competition since the 15 th century, they were all compelled to address the issue of centralization of fiscal and military power to be able to finance and deploy armies effectively. Most importantly, rise to prominence of 1 Isser Wolloch, The New Regime: Transformations of the French Civic Order, 1789-1820s (New York: W.W.Norton&Company,1994). Establishment of Commissions as expert bodies especially addressing economic issues, heralded the process of bureaucratic reform or 'administrative revolution' in Great Britain beginning in 1780. John Torrance, 'Social Class and Bureaucratic Innovation : The Commissioners for Examining the Public Accounts 1780-1787', Past and Present, No.78, pp. 56-81.

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infantry armies (as opposed to cavalry of old) and widespread use of firearms, required that central governments had direct access to taxable resources to be able to provision armies and fight wars. Earlier forms of government premised on accommodation of different interests through an elaborate system of privileges and exemptions relating to taxation and military service became increasingly cumbersome. Beginning in the 18th century East European empires, among them the Ottoman Empire, embraced administrative reforms signaling a radical transformation of the state: the shift in hegemonic power from a ruling coalition of claimants to taxes or surpluses (agrarian as well as commercial and industrial) to central bureaucracies with a monopoly over those surpluses. Commissions in this region as in France have been part of the making of the hegemony of bureaucracy not only because the form has become central to practices of rule and decision-making, but also because they often set the terms under which their decisions could be challenged. If through their rulings and regulations commissions set the general categories of taxation and conscription, they were also seen to provide spaces for the contestation and deliberation of and contestation of these orderings. In the French case, increasingly a distinction was made between "committee" which referred to organs of the central government and "commissions" who refer to local bodies of deliberation. 1 The Ottomans generally employed the term commission (rendered in Ottoman spelling as komisyon) and not committee (komite) to designate both the central and local bodies. This may be due to the close association of the term committee with the revolutionary practices of the French government during the 1790s. In fact, in Ottoman usage komite came to refer to coup-etatist revolutionary bodies, such as the Committee of the Union and Progress (ittihat veTerakki Komitesi), which seized power in 1908, and komitaci referred to a political agitator. This tradition continued under the Turkish Republic, a successor state to the Ottoman Empire. The military junta, which seized power on May 27, 1960, called itself Millli Birlik Komitesi or Committee of National Unity. Currently, association of the term committee with revolutionary practice is increasingly abandoned; often komite and komisyon are used interchangeable and referring to specialized parliamentary bodies. Komisyons in the 19th century Ottoman Empire did not simply signify or represent the modern administrative order but were responsible for enabling or instituting that order. The most visible way in which this occurred was through the new administrative order of property. The Land Code of 1858 1 For a discussion of regional property commissions see, Sergei Aberdam, Aux origines du code rural,1789-1900 : un siècle de débat (Paris: Institut national de la recherche agronomique, 1982), pp. 23ff.

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which introduced individual ownership was drafted by a commission (Arazi Komisyonu)\ the commission remained in force after the code was issued and assumed responsibility for resolving disputes arising f r o m the law's implementation, as described above, taking on a role as the essential site for the mediation of divergent interests. 1 The Land commission was composed of leading Ottoman jurists who also occupied top positions in the central bureaucracy, among them Cevdet Pa§a, who was the head of the Land commission as well as the initiator of the project to draft an Ottoman Civil Code and served as Ottoman governor in the Balkans on various occasions. The text of the Land Code and the introductory statement penned by its drafters revealed an understanding of governing which was mediational and reconciliatory. Komisyons enabled such meditation and presupposed participation of different actors whose interests were to be mediated or reconciled. In fact, the work of the Land Commission — as well as of local commissions established throughout the empire in the second half of the 19 th century to settle land disputes and to register land, property, and population — became grounds for discursive constitutions of the government of the Ottoman central bureaucracy. That government and its legitimacy or ability to govern rested on the extent to which its representatives could mediate among multiple claims to land use and to revenues from land. Briefly, the Land Code established the definition of individual ownership rights and following its issuance in 1858 provided the hegemonic vocabulary through which all disputes or struggles over land were articulated. This was a vocabulary in which singular and individual ownership overrode competing claims to land use and tax revenues. To do this, the Code abandoned the previous classification of landed property on the basis of revenue grants extended to pious endowments, military commanders, to members of the Ottoman court and to various groups of tax-farmers. Instead, the land commission introduced a classification of landed property on the basis of conditions of access or use (e.g. common lands or uncultivated lands). In practice, this classification led to a separation of the revenue claim from the property claim and established the central bureaucracy as the sole claimant to taxes from land exclusion of the claims of other groups. It also established the individual titleholder as the sole claimant to access to land. Yet, both claims — -that of individual ownership and central bureaucracy's monopoly over taxes — were highly qualified in the text of the Code. First, the precepts of the Code only applied on state lands or lands over which the central bureaucracy had established its control. They did not apply to the properties of evkaf (pious endowments) and mtilk or freehold property. By introducing a separate 1

Ahmet Cevdet Paga, Ma 'ruzat. edited by Yusuf Hala9oglu (Istanbul: C'agn, 1980), p. 65-6.

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classification of state lands and the properties of vakif and freeholders, the land komisyon had the central government concede the revenue claims of holders of these properties. 1 The reconciliatory tone of the komisyon's work is also revealed in the stark contradictions in descriptions of land transactions. For instance, while certain precepts make provisions for irrevocable transfer of land, others impose restrictions on transfers in the event of indebtedness, thus attempting to prevent large-scale dispossessions in land. Once again consistent with this reconciliatory tone, in the introductory remarks, the komisyon painstakingly endeavored to emphasize that the code represented continuity rather than a rupture with past practices. Komisyon insisted that its task had been one of simply compiling old regulations relating to landed property dating back to the time of Suleiman-the-Law- Giver and bringing together what was already contained in numerous edicts of past Ottoman rulers. Yet, it was added subtly that such editing was called for by changes in the conditions of entitlement to land revenues, largely resulting from the revoking of the system of land grants. 2 Such reticence also characterized the text of the statement issued by Council of Reform (Meclis- i Tanzimat) and may account for the successful issuing of the Code at a relatively early date in 1858. By contrast, in France, the intensity of the struggle in the countryside and the intransigence of propertied classes, especially in relation to rules of tenancy, did not allow for the issuing of a rural code until well into the 1880s. Notwithstanding the moderate and reconciliatory nature of its wording, komisyon's work enabled radical changes in who had access to land use, who held titles to land, and under what conditions. As such, this work was subject to debate and negotiated further as the central government attempted to implement the Code in different parts of the empire. Numerous komisyons were established on the local level to mediate the different claims on land as these began to be formulated in light of the categories of the new Code. Cevdet Paga, the principle architect of the Land Code, provided a vivid account of the work of a komisyon in Yanya (in present-day Greece) to settle a dispute between former estate-holders with claims over revenues and sharecropping cultivators at the estate of Parga. 4 With the introduction of the Land 1 For a discussion of this issue and definitions of freehold in the Ottoman context see Huri islamoglu,'Property as a Contested Domain; A Re-evaluation of the Land Code of 1858', in Roger Owen edited, New Perspectives on Property and Land in the Middle East (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), pp. 3-61. 2 Ahmet Akgiindiiz, Mukayeseli Islam ve Osmanli Hukuku Kiilliyati (Diyarbakir: Dicle Universitesi, 1986), pp. 679-81 ^ Aberdam, Aux origines du code rural 4 Ahmet Cevdet Pa§a, Tezakir, vol. 4, ed. Cavit Baysun (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basimevi, 1986), p. 140-1.

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Code, estate-holders who had previously farmed the taxes from the estate sought to acquire title deeds over land. The cultivators objected and demanded a redefinition of their own use rights, which approximated to individual ownership under the terms of the new code. To deal with the issue, Cevdet Pa§a, who was then the governor of Yanya, formed a komisyon, which included himself as the governor, members of local councils, administrators of the estate, one representative from each of the five quarters of the town in which the estate was located, as well as the representatives of the parties to the dispute. Estate-holders were represented by a venerable Rauf Beyefendi, the son of a deceased high-ranking central government official, whose presence appears to have inspired awe even in the eyes of Cevdet Pa§a, who himself was no stranger to power circles in Istanbul. Rauf Beyefendi succeeded in getting the cultivators to recognize the ownership rights of the estate-holders, effectively ensuring that the cultivators accepted their status as tenants. Yet, ownership rights of estate-holders were significantly moderated and restricted through the deliberations of the komisyon. For one thing, cultivators resisted the specification of a time duration in lease contracts as well as any change in the amount of rent due, couching their resistance in terms of a call for adherence to local customary practices (most of which were incorporate in earlier sultanic edicts). Use rights, which such practices established on state lands generally, lasted for very long periods, often spanning the lifetimes of individual tenants and their descendants. When estate-holders laid claim to the title of the land, the cultivators expected them to abide by ancien practice which meant that holders of title to the land could not revoke a tenancy, evict a tenant, or raise the amount of rent. Nor could the title-holders, upon the death of one tenant, lease the land to another. The family of the deceased tenant was expected to continue to cultivate the land as before and pay the rent. The only condition under which a lease contract could be revoked and the tenant be evicted was when the tenant ceased cultivation and stopped paying rent. Only in such cases, and on the grounds that the present tenant was disrupting public order, could land be leased to a new tenant. Local commissions in the Ottoman Empire as well as in France were also grounds for initiating the re-formulation of various governmental or bureaucratic rulings, as had been the case with the Property Commissions. Thus, on the basis of the settlement reached by the komisyon at the Parga estate, Cevdet Pa§a recommended to the Council of State (the highest decision-making organ of the central government) that a special regulation be formulated for the Yanya province. Such a proposal for the drafting of a special regulation recognizing the demands of cultivators for heritable tenancy rights, however, amounted to compromising the universality of the

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formulations of the Code with respect to the absoluteness of individual ownership rights of title-holders. From the perspective of the central government, achieving universal applicability for absolute individual ownership rights, would result in elimination of the multiple claims to the use of and revenues from land and therefore would simplify administration of taxation and property, enabling the administration to have easy and direct access taxes estimated on the basis of the income of the property owner. Coupled with its fiscal allure, in its 19 th century perceptions individual property held the promise of increased productivity and therefore larger tax revenues. While the claims of central administration for a universal recognition of absolute individual ownership answered contemporary fiscal and military imperatives, different groups on land contested these claims and sought to place limits on them asserted their particularistic claims such as the heritable tenancy rights of cultivators. Such contestation often took place in the context of local commissions and could result in modifications of the general law to respond to local circumstances. On the other hand, while these modifications or re-formulations represented negotiations of individual precepts of the law, they did not seek to radically reject the societal ordering it introduced. The Code remained the ultimate reference point of all negotiation. As such, the new order of property was crafted not only through proclamations of general laws on the part of the central government but also through the processes of debating and negotiating those laws. In this sense, commissions as environments of political participation and deliberation were also central to the process of the establishment of the domination of the central bureaucracy, which was inseparable from the new order of property, of society. For one thing, bureaucratic domination presupposed bureaucracy's concern for legitimacy or its concern to render its actions acceptable to different societal groupings. In the 19 th century this concern often came into conflict with the government's fiscal imperatives. An accommodative political language characterized earlier Ottoman statecraft 1 and accommodation of different interests were achieved through a series of particularistic settlements negotiated between the ruler and different groups (including diverse groups in the countryside) with such negotiated settlements representing multiple (and particularistic) rulings with respect to land revenues and land use. In the 19 th century, with ascendancy of central bureaucracy to power, rulings assumed a general character representing the general claims of the bureaucracy over land revenues (as well as man-power). Commission-

1 For a discussion of the notion of justice in the early modern Ottoman state in terms of ability of the ruler to ensure social peace, see Huri islamoglu, State and Peasant in the Ottoman Empire {Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1994).

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formation became a means for including negotiations of diverse interests and in so doing, rendered the non-differentiated rulings or codes politically viable or legitimate. Such legitimacy implied that different groups participated in the realization of the new administrative order of the bureaucracy. One dramatic example of such participation was village commissions appointed for a group of six villages with each village providing one member. Expected to meet weekly in the summer and bi-weekly, village commissions, which reported to provincial councils, they decided on the distribution of taxes among households according to their abilities to pay and were responsible for reporting on changes in population and on the status of property in their region. 1 Nevertheless the order that emerged out of the participatory and deliberative environments, enabled by komisyons, was an ambivalent and politically negotiated one. It often conceded to particularistic interests, but it also relied on a principle of generality; it was this generality, which corresponded to the rule of the central bureaucracy in the first place. By taking the bureaucracy's general rulings or codes as the reference point for all deliberations and employing the vocabulary and categories of these rulings, komisyon represented both the limits and possibilities in challenging the order of property, which the bureaucratic rule introduced. In the 19 th century, making of the new order of centralized bureaucratic states in the Ottoman Empire and elsewhere, was inseparable from the makings of national market societies. Central to the latter process had been the makings of individual, private ownership. English utilitarians, most notable among them Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) 2 , were adamant in their critique of the naturalistic explanations of market societies which characterized the works of 18 th century political economists. For Bentham, market societies needed to be administratively constituted if they were not to disintegrate into arenas of self-interest and divisiveness with a potential for self-destruction. With respect to property, Bentham saw property as an expectation on the part of individuals formed in environments of commercial development. This expectation could be realized in law, which for Bentham was synonymous with administration. While Bentham saw the task of government as one of achieving the 'the greatest happiness of greatest numbers' through such administrative realizations, in practice, the realization of property and other aspects of market societies involved mediations and deliberations of the diverse interests which made administration or law possible. Commissions were 1 'Tahrir-i Hmlak ve Niifus Nizamnamesi', 14 Cumade'l-ula 1277 (28 November I860), Dustur, I. Tertib,v.\, (2nd ed., Istanbul: Matbaa-i Amire, 1282 (circa 1866), pp. 889-902. 2 Jeremy Bentham, The Theory of Legislation, ed. C. K. Ogden (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1931).

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spaces for mediations and deliberations; they were also sites where different groups or interests held the central bureaucracy or administration accountable for its actions or rulings and took part in the makings of governmental action. Since the second half of the 19 th century, most intensely following the Great Depression of the 1930s and under the welfare states, regulatory commissions where interests were reconciled and deliberated became domains for the makings of national market societies as well as the makings of the hegemony of centralized bureaucratic administrations. 1 For instance, in the regulatory commissions (relating to the finance, labor, commodity markets as well as to various welfare services) different social groups found an opportunity to participate in the administration process and in doing so rendering that process politically accessible. In the Ottoman context, due to the multi-national character of the empire, the various commissions which emerged in the second half of the 19 lh century were not ultimately constitutive of a national market society and the Ottoman bureaucratic state collapsed at the end of World War I. Commissions remained a central institution of political participation and democratic accountability in the successor states in the Balkans and the Middle East. In this sense, commissions, less visible and largely unrecognized institutions of participation rendering governments politically accountable, have been a prominent feature of modernity. More accurately perhaps, commissions represented a modern way of executing political life that was more widely shared by European and non-European regions alike, and that have been definitely more widely shared than parliaments. With the waning of the power of central bureaucracies and the ascendancy of transnational capital since the 1980s, there has been a shift in the administration of market societies from the domain of hierarchically organized bureaucracies to autonomous expert bodies. In the context of the Turkish Republic, a successor state to the Ottoman Empire, I will identify this process in terms of a shift from commissions or komisyon to boards or kurul. While the process of change is a highly conflicted and contradictory one, initially the new autonomous expert bodies or boards posed a challenge to the political character of commissions, and more generally, to the entanglements with politics or group interests which characterized the bureaucratic form of administration. Boards promised to prioritize market efficiency, which is increasingly interpreted in terms of assigning precedencc to transnational capital interests to the exclusion of the interests of national market and non-market groups. On the other hand, for boards to be effective as 1 For an excellent discussion of such regulatory commissions in the 1930s, see John R. Commons, Legal Foundations of Capitalism {New York: Macmillan Company, 1939).

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administrative bodies in the new transnational market environment they must operate as corporate bodies subject to their own rules (corporate governance) which render them accountable within themselves, suggesting a shift away from the public character of political accountability that characterized komisyom. That is, such administration is no longer to be open to participation of diverse interests. Instead, new governing bodies seek to privatize accountability. In the next section, I will try to demonstrate the contradictory character of attempts to de-politicize government and trace this development in the shift of governing activity from komisyon to kurul. The shift in terminology of governing is part of a highly complicated, often ambivalent process of change in power relations as groups within bureaucracy as well as interests rooted in national markets try to maintain a foothold in the new governing bodies in the process rushing head-long into confrontation with transnational organizations including the IMF and transnational capital interests.

From Commissions to Boards: Participatory Expert delivered Efficiency?

Legitimation

giving way to

Autonomous boards, the new governing bodies in market societies, are generally depicted as groups of 'professionals with recognized expertise and competence in a particular domain and an authoritative claim to policyrelevant knowledge within that domain or issue area'. 1 Their technicist character is stressed and held up as a foil against bureaucratic agencies. It is argued that these agencies, with their tendency to cater to diverse interests in society, became vulnerable to 'capture' by these interests. Such 'capture' refers to the 'political responsiveness' of bureaucratic agencies and the current critique of bureaucratic administration goes directly to the heart of a system of political accountability which rendered bureaucratic agencies organized under elected cabinet ministeries accountable to elected parliaments. The 'autonomy' of the new boards is to exempt them from such accountability and place them 'above polities'. The efficiency of performance expected of boards is presupposed by this quality of autonomy, which situates the boards above politics or above the concern for mediating multiple interests. The latter concern is deemed to account for the inefficiencies associated with bureaucratic modus operandi. By contrast, 'autonomy' is expected to enable the boards to pursue the singular objective of promoting the interests of business 1 Anne-Marie Slaughter, A New World Order (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), pp. 42-43

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community, preferably part of business community with transnational linkages. In this sense, boards become the locus of another 'politics' which does not call itself politics and which is limited in terms of who it includes in the arena of mediation. The measure of efficiency of a board's performance lies in its ability to remain within the confines of this 'limited' arena and pursue its designated objective. To do so, boards are expected to self-govern and develop internal patterns of accountability. In fact, boards are expected to transform into corporate bodies, subject to techniques of corporate management, and to develop strong governance practice and culture. 1 The new terminology of governing is consistently appropriated from the business or corporate world. Not only are governing bodies depicted as boards, but also citizens are referred to as stakeholders, share-holders, consumers, or customers; all of these terms point to an all-out attempt to align the social universe with the corporate world. Not withstanding their depiction as non-political and technical bodies, the boards or kuruls, have been a locus of the politics of reform and witness to the highly contentious process of forming the institutions of governing in transnationalizing societies. Turkey has been a major importer of reform packages from the IMF, World Bank, and the EU. Since the 1980s, in compliance with the dictates of these packages, attempts have been underway to cut down bureaucratic presence in the economy through privatization, reduction of agricultural subsidies, and through the liberalization of financial sector. But progress has been uneven. Despite claims that economic progress and growth is simply a matter of adopting efficient techniques of governing the economy and eliminating the old cumbersome, 'political' modes of government, the belabored nature of the reform process is largely rooted in the politics of reform itself. The Banking Regulation and Supervision Board (BRSB) has been a primary focus of political debate on kuruls to the extent that the history of the term kurul in the past four years cannot be disentangled from the tumultuous saga of BRSB. Responding to that saga, recently even the I M F has retracted its insistence on the autonomy of the kurul and expressed a preference for semi-autonomous bodies governing bodies to carry out the reform process in the financial sector. The recent attempts to establish the Incomes Administration (Gelirler idaresi), which is no longer called kurul, seems to be partly a response of the Turkish government to IMF's discontentment with the BRSB. Moreover, in the heat of recent clashes with 1 A Report by a commission set in train by the Government of the Turkish Republic and presented in August 2004, emphasize the corporate governance aspect within the BRSB, Bank Regulatory and Supervisory Board in Turkey, pointing to the need to ensure to-down accountability within the Board and to introduce measures whereby the Board could evaluate its own performance. Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Supervisory Implications of the Failure of imar Bank, by Jean-Louis Fort and Peter Hayward.

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the kurul, IMF representative also proposed the formation of a transnational board for the governing and supervision of financial services in Turkey; but as will be discussed below, this proposal was subsequently withdrawn. With respect to the tumultuous history of the BRSB, it begins when the kurul was established under the Banking Law of 1999 and started operations in 2000 with responsibilities for regulation of the banking sector, ensuring that the Banking Law is implemented in compliance with the principles of the transnational financial system, most notably with Basel Accords. BRSB was also given the responsibility for supervising the activities of financial institutions, a task which formerly rested with the Finance Ministry. In order to carry out its supervisory tasks, BRSB relied on Board of Sworn Bank Auditors (SBA) or Yeminli Murakiplar Kurulu, a very important body within the finance bureaucracy and which relocated to the new BRSB. In more concrete terms, the Banking Law empowered the BRSB to close failing banks and to issue permits to open new banks. Turkey's major financial crisis in late 2000 and early 2001 provided the context to exercise these new governing powers, placing it at the center stage of the process of rationalizing the banking system. This was the price, which the IMF demanded from the Turkish government to bail it out of the crisis. In the rash of bank closings and opening of foreign banks in Turkey, the BRSB found itself open to all manner of allegations of partiality to certain banks against others. Moreover, the kurul initially had the responsibility to collect from the private banks their debts to the government, which some private banks incurred when a number of them were accused of channeling deposits, made by the members of public to the various companies which belonged to the owners of these banks. The government under law had to make up for the losses of the depositors and pay them, while the BRSB was saddled with the task of collecting these amounts from the bank owners though such means as confiscations and sales of their properties. The legal process through which the government claims from bank owners billions of dollars that they paid to the public continues. Dramatic takeovers of the property of these owners as well as arrest warrants issued for them are the bread and butter of news and magazine programs in the Turkish media. Yet, since 2003, the current majority government, which replaced the earlier coalition government, critical of the 'excessive' autonomy of the BRSB and seeking to limit the powers of BRSB, has taken away its powers of collection and established Tasarruf Mevduati Sigorta Fonu Sati§ Komisyonu (TMSFF), or Commission of Sales for the Insurance Fund for Bank Deposits Fund. Not surprisingly, this new komisyon was brought under the jurisdiction of a cabinet ministry. Thus, out of the trials and tribulations of this period emerged the outlines of BRSB

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continuously re-defining its autonomy, in the process being embroiled in local or national power relations and developing a certain attitude (and distance) towards transnational actors. As such, kurul or board as a word and a content of the transnational market society is recast in the context of a new configuration of local or national power actors. The kurul itself was responsible for bringing about this power configuration as it became embroiled with the cases of particular bank owners. In a sense, the kurul behaved more like the old bureaucracy would, showing partiality to local business interests and suspicion of the intervention of the IMF representing global concerns, while at the same time that it continued to demand autonomy in the name of efficiency. The remaining part of this narrative tells the story of how such re-alignment of forces and of how the term kurul b e c a m e implicated in that process. From its inception, the question of whom or what body is the BRSB accountable to has dominated all discussion about the kurul} While both the Banking Law and establishment of BRSB was part of the reform agenda introduced by the IMF, it appears that the IMF preferred that in the Turkish context, unlike the practice elsewhere in more advanced market societies, activities of autonomous bodies were not to be subjected to the scrutiny of parliamentary commissions. Instead, BRSB's activities have been subjected to the scrutiny of Sayqtay or a specialized court, which is a supervising agency of the prime ministry. Only in the event when the BRSB was found to be clearly at fault, as has been the case with the kurul's handling of the Imar Bank affair, has a parliamentary commission been formed to investigate its activities with the police moving in to confiscate the kurul's documents. Simply put, Imar Bank, a private bank, evaded BRSB's supervision through corrupt bookkeeping practices, enabling the Bank to channel deposits by the members of the public to its affiliated companies. Such evasion occurred during the period when BRSB representatives were sitting on the Bank's board in order to keep the Bank's activities under close scrutiny. 2 On the other hand, loopholes or deficiencies in the mechanisms of control over BRSB's activities suggest that in the context of Turkish reforms, a greater importance was attached to the BRSB's accountability to transnational networks of governance, most notably to the IMF. It appears t h a t IMF has recently found BRSB's performance lacking. More specifically,

1 When autonomous kuruls were first established in the aftermath of the financial crisis in 2001, the then prime minister, Bulent Ecevit, known for his nationalist/ statist positions, lamented the stealing of the state by these bodies lacking political accountability. 2 For a detailed description of the Imar Bank incident, see the Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Supervisory Implications of the Failure of the imar Bank, by Jean-Louis Fort and Peter Hayward, August 2004.

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IMF has objected to BRSB's recent reluctance to deliver to the IMF all information regarding local banks, a condition which the Turkish government agreed to in the standby agreement of 1999. 1 IMF is also critical of the wording and certain provisions in the recent Banking Law, drafted by BRSB 2 . For one thing, IMF objected to provisions of the new law giving the Board certain amount of control over activities and movement of transnational financial institutions. Similarly, IMF objected to the wording of the objectives of the law, which initially read as '... also taking into account the exigencies of the economy, BRSB will seek to ensure stability and security in financial markets and ensure the effective working of the credit system.' 3 IMF took issue with the phrase 'exigencies of the economy'; it was surmised that using the pretext of special circumstances in the Turkish economy the BRSB could move to obstruct the entry of transnational banks and encourage the opening of new local banks. In response BRSB accused the IMF with promoting the interests of transnational banks at the expense of local ones. The Association of Turkish Banks supported the BRSB on this issue and the IMF retorted by suggesting that a transnational body replace the BRSB. 4 While the phrase regarding 'exigencies of the economy' was removed in the final draft law which the BRSB submitted to the government on November 24 t h ' 2004, 5 it is increasingly clear that that the autonomy of the kurul has taken a turn other than the one which its initiators had in mind and attempts are under way to limit the kind of autonomy BRSB has appropriated for itself. Moreover, in the controversy between the IMF and the BRSB, the Turkish government or the Treasury has not sided with the BRSB. Instead the Minister in charge of the Economy has declared that ultimately the responsibility for passing the law redefining the status of the BRSB lay with the parliament, thus questioning the autonomy of the kurul.6 What is at issue here is that since 2000 the term kurul has become identified with certain ways of socially negotiating political power which are rooted in the local or national environment and which increasingly are not compatible with 1

Milliyet, 24 Kasim, 2004, p. 7. News story by Ahmet Erhan Celik. For instance in the section on objectives, the draft law states BRSB will take into account the exigencies of the (Turkish) economy in its effort to secure financial stability, see Draft Law of Financial Services. IMF argued that using this wording BRSB could impede the entry of transnational banks into the sector and increase the number of local banks in operation (Milliyet, 24 November, 2004). 19 August 2004 version of Draft Law for Credit Institutions. (Milliyet, 5 December, 2004 p. 5). For a detailed discussion, see column by Yaman Toruner, a former President of the Central Bank, in Milliyet, 15 November, 2004, p. 6. ^ Draft Law of Financial Services , 24 November 2004. 2

® For instance, Ali Babacan, Minister in charge of the Economy, has taken this position. Milliyet, 12 November, 2004.

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transnational concerns. As such, the fact that the term moved from corporate environment to that of societal governance or the fact that it carries a connotation of expert neutrality, did not guarantee that its earlier association with business would automatically render it malleable to transnational concerns over local ones or that expert neutrality would readily blend into transnational vocabularies. In the case of BRSB, the kurul indeed remained true to its corporate promise but it turned its face to local and not to transnational corporate environment manifesting a markedly nationalistic flair. For one thing, the kurul, its composition as well as its modus operandi, reveals the rather incestuous relationship between the remaining strongholds of the financial bureaucracy and the local business community. The composition of the BRSB is revealing of this relationship: seven members of the kurul were appointed from among candidates proposed by the Treasury, Finance Ministry, State Planning Organization, Association of Turkish Banks, and Capital Securities Board. It is also required that board members serve in executive capacity at leading financial institutions for at least three years prior to their appointment to the Board. Moreover, the supervisory staff of the BRSB consists of auditors who are organized in the board of Sworn Public Auditors ( Y e m i n l i Murakiplar Kurulu) who have relocated from the bureaucracy of Finance ministry. 1 Auditors have assumed a central position as the kuruVs supervisory role is given priority in response to series of bank scandals involving irregularities in the banking operations. This group of experts together with the historical Finance Auditing Board (Maliye Teftq Kurulu) represents a powerful group within the bureaucracy. These bureaucratic kuruh are considered to be training grounds for experts in different bureaucratic agencies as well as in the private sector, corporations drawing their accountants and other expert personnel from these boards. There appears to be a certain amount of solidarity among the members of these bureaucratic kuruls, rooted in a male culture embellished with images of the gun-carrying upholders of bureaucratic integrity over corrupt business practices. 2 These bureaucratic kuruh in the context of the controversy involving BRSB have taken a position on the side of the interests of the national economy and national

1 For a recent discussion of its significance in the power struggles in the re-organization of the Turkish finance ministry, involving the murakip or the auditors see Milliyet, 23 November, 2004, p. 7; Milliyet, 29 Kasim, 2004, p. 8, Milliyet, 30 November, 2004, p. 7. 2 A recent article in Milliyet (12 December 2004, p. 10, points to the all male character of the Board of Financial Inspectors, claiming that women could not pass theoretical part of the examination which the inspectors had to take before being admitted to the Board. Also the article points to the fact that the job involving serious (!) dangers may be considered to be inappropriate for women.

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economic classes as opposed to transnational interests. 1 In doing so, they have become a primary target of the criticism of the IMF which demanded that the system of auditors be left out the new Banking Law. IMF blames the auditors for the failings of the operations of the BRSB (most notably in the case of the Imar Bank scandal) and for the nationalist tendencies within the BRSB. BRSB's chair retorted fiercely that elimination of auditors would weaken the supervisory process claiming that auditors are the internal affairs of BRSD that is an autonomous body. He was joined by the Association of Auditors in condemning IMF's accusations. The government has been critical of the performance of the kurul and has taken the occasion of the Imar Bank affair to order and inquiry on the matter by an international commission. The commission submitted its report on August 2004, which points to the need to radically reform the kurul and specifically to curb the power of auditors within the kurul. The report suggested that the present autonomy of the kurul has empowered the auditors, emphasizing bureaucratic inspection, which limits itself to procedural matters. This limited approach to inspection rather than one in which the BRSB takes on the responsibility for supervising activities regularly assigning a single auditor to each bank, the report concluded, has allowed the national banking sector to getaway with corrupt practices at the expense of public depositors. The report recommended that the autonomy of BRSB be recast in terms of corporate self-regulation, whereby the kurul will assume a corporate identity taking responsibility for its work. Notwithstanding the recommendations of the international commission regarding the BRSB, it does not seem likely the government will be able to curb the power of auditors within the kurul. On the one hand, government ministers insistently state that the ultimate responsibility for financial policy lies with the parliament 2 and the Commission of Sales for the Insurance Fund for Bank Deposits Fund conducts dramatic operations against former bank owners, arresting them and confiscating their properties. At the same, the 1 A recent conference on the European Community and the Turkish Economy, representing a cautious position on European accession, pointing to the priorities of the national economy and classes, was attended by the top-brass of the bureaucracy, leftist economists as well as the leadership of the social democratic party. The board traces its origins to the 19 th century to the Heyet-1 Tefti§iye-i Maliye established in 1879 and speaks for national interests in the Turkish economy. (Milliyet, 5 December, 2004, p. 9). 2

This tendency on the part of the government challenging the autonomy of governing bodies is not entirely disapproved by the IMF which seems to be apprehensive about kuruls turning into autonomous domains for the bureaucracy harboring nationalist claims. 12 November, 2004, p. 7. N e w s stoiy by Kadife §ahin; also Faik Oztrak, a former Secretary of the Treasury and a former vice-chair of B R S B , has been critical of governmental intervention in the affairs of B R S B and the challenge to its autonomy ( M i l l i y e t , 22 November, 2004, p. 8), he has also been critical of the operations of the Board and is critical of the emphasis on control at the expense of supervision. ( M i l l i y e t , 29 November, 2004, p. 8).

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government refuses to hire new inspectors in the finance ministers thus trying not to add to already existing numbers. 1 Yet, for the time being leverage of auditors (which is also the leverage of the bureaucracy) is conceded and the discussion largely revolves around the reform of the institution of auditors. 2 In line with such tacit recognition of bureaucracy's leverage, IMF also appears to have toned down its stance against BRSD, possibly reassured by the fact that the government which commands a majority in the parliament, will be able to promote transnational interests more effectively through certain concessions to the bureaucracy and to the BRSB.

Conclusion Initially komisyon and kurul were signifiers; one, of central bureaucratic administration, the other, of technical prowess and corporate efficiency. Yet both words in motion became entangled with ways in which political power was negotiated by different social actors and entered the constitutive fabric of new patterns of domination in the contexts into which they moved. As such, they ceased to signify what they were originally intended to stand for. Komisyons in the Ottoman context were implicated in the makings of an environment of participatory politics when the establishment of the bureaucracy as the dominant group in society put an end to earlier patterns of allowing a say to diverse interests in the determination of the conditions of their social existence. In fact, komisyons were identified with and constitutive of the politics of bureaucracy; such politics assumed representation and mediation of multiple interests. At the same time, commissions became the most commonly and universally shared governmental form, both a sign and practice of modern transformation which, in the Ottoman case, became associated with "Europe' as Ottoman government suffered defeats in the hands of European powers. In the self- conscious struggle for the survival of the empire, the bureaucratic governing elite resorted to adopting the institutions of the rival powers. The visible successes of the post-revolutionary French techniques of government which the Ottomans had a chance to observe first1 A t the moment there appears to be about 111 financial inspectors on duty, while there more than 4 0 0 more bureaucratic slots for new appointments, the government abstains from making these appointments. (Milliyet, 12 December, 2004, p. 10). 2

F o r a discussion of the power of auditors in the financial bureaucracy including the tax auditors, accountants, bureaucrats in income tax bureaucracies in different regions, see Giingor Uras in his column in Milliyet, 2 3 November, 2004, p. 7.

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hand during Napoleon's invasion of Egypt, rendered the French institutions, among them the komisyon, extremely attractive for import. No doubt successes of the rival endowed the komisyon with certain legitimacy. Yet, komisyons (not unlike the other imported institutions) became arenas for struggles for the establishment of the domination of the new Ottoman bureaucracy- that is, of its legitimacy in the eyes of different groups. This was also the process through which the different groups in society negotiated the conditions of their existence in the new order of the bureaucracy. As such, komisyon presents us with the full complexity of process of modern transformation with its determinations in 'foreign borrowings' (or Europeanization) and in the entanglement of the makings of the new societal order with local power relations whereby different groups participated in that process making it their own. This opening to modernity which the komisyon provides, approximates far more closely to the conflicted and the negotiated character of modern transformation than do the depictions of that process simply as 'Europeanization' or apings on the part of non-Europeans of the European ways of being, of governing. Boards, on the other hand, provide an opening for another kind of modernity, one that is premised on the establishment of the domination of transnational actors often at the expense of local or national ones. Boards or kuruh derive their legitimacy from understandings of efficient decisionmaking and dispute-resolution associated with corporate boards and are introduced as part of recent market reform packages to exercise their expertise in the service of enabling integration of local markets with transnational ones. Yet, kuruh in the Turkish context have responded to the painful process of transnationalization through a bureaucratic panache for preservation of national sovereignty and partiality to actors involved in national markets. These kuruh have become arenas where different actors negotiate the conditions of their existence- economic, social, as well as political- in the transnationalization process. The turns such political struggles are taking with sometimes rather dramatic interventions by transnational actors such s the IMF, however, does not lend it to the streamlining said to be essential to the formation of a new governmental formation, the European Union. Thus, on the one hand, kurul no longer refers to the autonomous governing bodies acting in harmony with transnational actors- a role that was intended for it when the word was borrowed from the national corporate and bureaucratic contexts with its implications of efficiency and expertise. This may explain the disenchantment with kuruls of both transnational actors and the central government, the latter no longer identified with the bureaucracy and increasingly staking its future on the success of European integration. On the other hand, kuruls embroiled in

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and constitutive of power relations continue to shape the governing practices in the transnationalizing market environment, imparting that process the turns and twists specific to the Turkish context. Thus, both komisyon and kurul in their migration to governing environments from 'foreign' contexts (one from European, the other from corporate) have become arenas for different groups or individuals to stake their claims in the processes of modern transformation, albeit in its different phases- national and transnational. Out of these arenas and the struggles they embody, emerge the specific modernity of a given region- a modernity which is part of the lived and living experience of groups and individuals in that region and which is not imposed from outside.