Tocqueville in the Ottoman Empire: Rival Paths to the Modern State (Ottoman Empire and Its Heritage)

✍ Scribed by Ariel Salzmann

• Publisher: Brill Academic Publishers
• Year: 2003
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 265
• Series: The Ottoman Empire and Its Heritage: Politics, Society and Economy, vol. 28
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Based on three years of archival research, this work adopts a comparative framework in its examination of one of the least understood and more paradoxical polities of modern European and Middle Eastern history: the Ottoman ancien regime. Despite a profoundly decentralized state apparatus, the Ottoman State managed to rule large areas of the Middle East and southeastern Europe during a turbulent century. Framing much of her argument within European debates about tax farming, the author argues that the success of the Ottoman ancien regime, like that of its French counterpart, is due to the successful articulation of a complex financial network revolving around central state elite investments and an Instanbul-based and supervised banking system. Embedded in the theoretical arguments about Ottoman economics is an empirical study of Diyarbakir.

✦ Table of Contents

Contents......Page 8
List of Illustrations......Page 10
Preface......Page 12
List of Abbreviations......Page 14
Note on Transliteration......Page 16
Introduction: Tocqueville’s Ghost......Page 17
In Search of an Archive......Page 22
The Old Régime through an Ottoman Lens......Page 29
Vocabularies of Early Modernity......Page 40
I. On a Map of Eurasia......Page 47
Edges of Empire......Page 55
From the Inside Out......Page 69
Movements of People, Commodities, and Capital......Page 77
Eurasia in Transition......Page 88
II. The Sublime Porte and the Credit Nexus......Page 92
Palace, “Porte” and Patronage......Page 95
Hierarchies of Service......Page 109
“Corporate Patrimonialism” and the Reproduction of Power......Page 119
Deyn-ü Devlet (Debt and State): Islamicate High Finance......Page 127
Completing the Circle......Page 135
III. Government in the Vernacular......Page 139
Questions of Jurisdiction......Page 144
At the Interstices of Rural Administration......Page 156
Government in the Vernacular......Page 167
Checks and Balances......Page 180
Final Entries......Page 189
IV. Conclusion: The Paths Not Taken......Page 193
The Common Origins of the Modern State......Page 196
A Federalist Alternative?......Page 204
The Diyarbekir Commune of 1819......Page 208
Of Democracy and the New Despotism......Page 211
K......Page 226
Z......Page 227
Bibliography......Page 228
C......Page 260
F......Page 261
L......Page 262
P......Page 263
T......Page 264
Z......Page 265