Tax Revolts during the Tanzimat Period (1839-76) and before the Young Turk Revolution (1904-08):...

the journal of policy history , Vol. 25, No. 3, 2013. © Donald Critchlow and Cambridge University Press 2013 doi:10.1017/S0898030613000134

e . a ttila a ytekin

Tax Revolts During the Tanzimat Period

(1839–1876) and Before the Young Turk

Revolution (1904–1908): Popular Protest and

State Formation in the Late Ottoman Empire

Th e Ottoman Empire underwent a slow but decisive transformation from the

early eighteenth century onward. Th e societal change observed during the

eighteenth century was accompanied by change in state structures during

the reign of Selim III (1789–1807) and Mahmud II (1808–39). Th e most com-

prehensive transformation of the Ottoman polity, however, took place during

the so-called Tanzimat period (1839–76). While the subsequent long reign of

Abdulhamid II (1876–1909) put a halt to some of the trends for reform, the

society and the state continued to evolve. Th e Hamidian period came to an

end with the Revolution of 1908, which made the empire a constitutional

monarchy.

Th e question of taxation was one of the issues the policymakers had to

deal with throughout the entire process of transformation. Tax-related

problems became especially pressing during two particular periods, fi rst aft er

the declaration of the Tanzimat edict in 1839, and then during the last years of

Abdulhamid’s reign. State policies regarding taxation and the popular

reaction to them became one of the most important aspects of state formation

during the Tanzimat and pre-1908 periods.

Th is is not surprising given the signifi cance of taxation for modern states.

First, the balance of state fi nances, therefore many of its capacities, depends

on the state’s ability to tax the population. A large tax base, a sound taxation

e . a ttila a ytekin | 309

system, and of course a quiescent population are therefore critical for any

modern state to function properly. Second, the ability to tax also refl ects a

state’s legitimacy in the eyes of the people. Coercion might not be suffi cient in

itself for taxation if the state does not enjoy a certain amount of legitimacy at

the societal level. Th ird, taxation is a class issue. Who is taxed how much and

who enjoys the benefi ts of the tax collected are questions that speak not only

to state structure, but also to the relations between upper classes and lower

classes. Th e latter oft en have a sharp sense of what is fair and what is not, and

that does infl uence their attitudes toward state attempts at taxation.

Th is article is roughly divided into two sections. In the fi rst section,

I focus on the tax revolts that took place during the Tanzimat period; the

second section is about the tax revolts that preceded the Revolution of 1908.

In both sections, I describe the general characteristics of the period and the

most signifi cant revolts and discuss the rebels and their demands. I also

analyze the Ottoman state’s responses to the two waves of revolt. Th e fi rst

section also includes a theoretical discussion about the state-formation

approach. Th e Tanzimat period and pre-1908 revolts are comparatively

discussed in the Conclusion.

t ax r evolts in the t anzimat p eriod: t hree p erspectives on

l ate o ttoman h istory

Th e Tanzimat is the name historians give to the period that began with the

declaration of the Imperial Rescript of Gülhane on November 3, 1839, and

ended with the promulgation of the fi rst Ottoman constitution in 1876. Th e

reform program initiated and implemented by the Ottoman state in this

period is also known as the Tanzimat .

Th e Gülhane Rescript had a quite conventional preamble that attributed

the recent problems of the Ottoman polity to deviation from sacred law.

However, despite the traditional beginning and wording, the document was

indeed a radically original one, which set forth guarantees ensuring Ottoman

subjects security of life, honor, and property; called for a regular system of

taxation and specifi cally the abolition of the tax-farming system; a regular

system for military service that would include non-Muslim subjects of the

empire; and equality between Muslim and non-Muslims.

Th e rescript turned out to be the beginning of a great series of reform. In

the subsequent decades, a new, modern bureaucracy replaced the old one

and the number of state servants increased dramatically. Decision-making

processes were gradually democratized; a number of quasi-legislative councils

310 | Tax Revolts During the Tanzimat Period

with real powers were constituted at the center as well as in the provinces. Th e

principle of equality before law was recognized, along with a new notion of

citizenship. Th ere was a massive codifi cation campaign in which either original

laws were enacted or foreign laws were adapted in the fi elds of civil law, penal

law, commercial law, procedural law, and citizenship law. A gradual but

decisive process of secularization began, seen most clearly in the religious

courts’ loss of jurisdiction to secular ones. As we shall see, not all of these

steps taken as part of the Tanzimat reform program were successful; yet the

Tanzimat as a whole irreversibly changed the nature of Ottoman polity. It was

in fact the most comprehensive attempt at modern state formation in the

Ottoman Empire to date. Scholarship, therefore, has shown a high interest in

the period. In contrast, despite such interest, the Tanzimat reform program in

particular and the late Ottoman reforms in general have not been adequately

analyzed.

Th is is partly related to the infl uence of modernization theory, which

has, until recently, dominated the fi eld of Ottoman studies. Th e proponents

of this theory have seen in the emergence of modern Turkey a success story.

All the changes that took place in diff erent spheres of life in the period,

from the late eighteenth to early twentieth centuries, have been reduced to

“modernization,” according to which a couple of reformist sultans and a

handful of Western-minded bureaucrats tried to save the empire from collapse

by emulating the successful European model and restructuring its state along

those lines. In this story, the history of the Ottoman Empire from the late

eighteenth century onward becomes one of struggle between modernizers

and forces of reaction. 1 Dependency theory has been developed as an alterna-

tive to the modernization approach. An off shoot of dependency theory,

the world-system perspective, produced by Immanuel Wallerstein and his

colleagues at SUNY Binghamton from 1970s, has had a short-lived, yet

important, impact on Ottoman studies. 2 With their stress on economic relations,

world-system scholars have shown that the late Ottoman Empire cannot be

understood solely in terms of political modernization. Th eir works that focus

on the incorporation of the Ottoman lands into world capitalism have pointed

out those aspects of the transformation of Ottoman polity that had hitherto

been in the dark. In contrast, using world-system theory to analyze late

Ottoman history has its problems, some of which are related to its basic

concepts. Th e concepts of “incorporation” of the Ottoman Empire into the

world capitalist system, or, even more so, the “penetration” of capitalism into

the Ottoman territories, suggest that the process was essentially external to the

Ottoman social formation. Th us, the contribution of the studies infl uenced


by the world-system approach to Ottoman studies has been overshadowed by

the implicit assumption on which they are based: the internal dynamics of the

empire was not strong enough to create a profound change by themselves.

Although the world-system approach by and large lost its appeal among

Ottomanist historians, terms such as “incorporation” became staples especially

in the analyses of the nineteenth-century Ottoman economy.

In contrast to the world-system approach that made a strong entrance to

the fi eld yet left the scene largely unnoticed, 3 the modernization approach

has been subject to sustained criticism. As a result, the more open forms of

the modernization approach have been largely abandoned in the last two

decades. Many of its less-explicit assumptions, however, continue to exert

their infl uence on the study of the Tanzimat period. Th e Tanzimat is still

seen as just another step in a series of reform attempts that stretched from

1789 (the accession of Selim III) to 1923 (the establishment of Republic of

Turkey). Moreover, it is still common to consider the Tanzimat reform pro-

gram as a state initiative formulated and implemented top-down by state

offi cials. 4 In a similar vein, the social unrest that followed the declaration of

reforms is seen as mere reactions to it. 5 Balkan nationalist historiographies,

by contrast, have tended to see the post- Tanzimat uprisings in the Balkans as

part of, or prelude to, the “national awakening” led by nationally-conscious

urban intellectuals and middle classes. Both approaches have relegated

cultivators to being passive recipients of (national or central) state-building

projects of the elite.

Th e modernization approach, therefore, has refused to look into the

social dynamics of late Ottoman reform. Th e world-system perspective, on

the other hand, has conducted the analysis at too high a level of abstraction

and failed to address the internal dynamics of development. In this article,

I discuss the outlines of an alternative approach to late Ottoman history,

derived from the state-formation approach developed by sociologist Derek

Sayer (with his colleague Philip Corrigan and also Harvey Ramsay) based on

a close reading of the works of Marx and Engels as well Weber and Durkheim.

Th eir approach is particularly suitable for the empirical study of historical

phenomena as it assumes that concepts are empirically open-ended and

necessarily historical. Th is means that to defi ne a social phenomenon, in the

fi nal analysis, is to write its history. 6 Th ere is no ground for excluding any

kind of social relation from being a relation of production, or for assigning,

a priori , some social relations to “base” and others to “superstructure.” 7

According to Sayer, the question of what is a relation of production could

only be resolved for particular historical forms using empirical criteria.


Th eir approach contravenes both the liberal notion of state, which views

it structurally separate from the (civil) society, and the Marxian views that see

the state either as an instrument in the hands of the ruling class or super-

structural. Th e state-formation approach stipulates that the state, instead, is

necessarily and internally related to capitalist economy. Although state forms

appear separate from the economy and above the society, the former appear-

ance is a result of the fetishized nature of social relations under capitalism,

and the latter is related to the organizing role of the state under the capitalist

mode of production: “Th e State within capitalist production, regulates and

orchestrates—in short, organizes— in such a way that the defi ning material

characteristics of capitalist production relations (individualization, formal

equality, and a host of social forms) are made to appear the only way those

social activities could be conducted and arranged.” 8 In fact, the state could

organize only by appearing outside economy and above sectional interests in

society.

In their major historical study, Th e Great Arch , Corrigan and Sayer apply

this perspective, which sees the state not as a thing but as a reifi ed, organized,

imposed, and regulated form of social relations of production to English state

formation. 9 Th ey underline that English state formation did not consist only

of repression. Legal regulation, that is, the law, and moral regulation also

played a signifi cant part in the long process of English state formation from

medieval to modern times. Legal and moral regulation reduces all people

to individuals and delegitimizes and even criminalizes alternative forms of

existence. Th ey create a sense of sameness and commonness while keeping

deep social divisions intact. During state formation, the nation as a politically

defi ned entity is also created. On the one hand, nationalism disintegrates

other identities and subjectivities. 10 On the other hand, those who are deemed

worthy to be included in the political nation are included and those who are

considered unworthy or dangerous are excluded or disciplined through

jurisdiction. 11 In the English case, this double process of inclusion-exclusion

was imposed most importantly on the working class and women.

Corrigan and Sayer show that state forms are extremely fl exible and, as

such, they are constructed through struggle and contention between actors.

One aspect of this contentious process is “the constant ‘rewriting’ of history

to naturalize what has been, in fact, an extremely changeable set of State rela-

tions, to claim that there is, and has always been, one ‘optimal institutional

structure’ which is what ‘any’ civilization needs.” 12 To turn to the Ottoman

case, the preamble of the Tanzimat rescript is quite revealing in this respect.

Th e authors of the text are at pains to argue that they are off ering nothing new


and it is the same old imperial state that had some problems recently and

needs only some “maintenance” to return to its old glorious days:

All the world knows that in the fi rst days of the Ottoman monarchy,

the glorious precepts of the Kuran and the laws of the empire were

always honored.

Th e empire in consequence increased in strength and greatness,

and all its subjects, without exception, had risen in the highest

degree to ease and prosperity. In the last one hundred and fi ft y years

a succession of accidents and divers causes have arisen which have

brought about a disregard for the sacred code of laws and the regu-

lations fl owing therefrom, and the former strength and prosperity

have changed into weakness and poverty; an empire in fact loses all

its stability so soon as it ceases to observe its laws.

Th e Ottoman state’s reaction to agrarian unrest is of particular impor-

tance for the present article. As Corrigan and Sayer write about the English

state: “Th e state is involved in regulating into silence, eccentricity, marginality

or crime all doctrines and practices within the realm of cultural life that

provide glimpses of an alternative set of social relations.” 13 Th e Ottoman

state’s attitude to post- Tanzimat rural unrest was quite similar. Th e state tried

to marginalize all forms of protest, violent or otherwise, and to discursively

reduce social unrest to ordinary crimes through the use of terms such as

“ fesad ” (mischief) and “ müfsid ” (troublemaker). By contrast, it is noticeable

that the actions of protest and resistance themselves and the “ringleaders”

were criminalized, not the large masses who got involved in or supported the

actions in one way or another. In the revolts of non-Muslims, religious diff er-

ence allowed the Ottoman state to blame foreign-agent provocateurs who

supposedly exploited the naïveté of peasants and incited them to revolt. Th is

gesture of the state served a double purpose; it made ignoring the root causes

of unrest possible and prevented the identification of large segments of

the population, or a defi nite ethnic/religious group, with the “crime.” Th is

material and discursive separation of the “crime” from those who committed

it also enabled the state to hold a small group of “instigators” responsible for

cultivator protest and severely punish them, while at the same time showing

imperial “mercy” and “benevolence” to masses.

As I have noted above, state formation is not limited to violence or

repression in general. Modern states provide services and improvements for

the general public, such as mass education, health system, and better urban

sanitation. Th e Tanzimat period witnessed attempts to improve the living


conditions of Ottoman subjects. Many signs of the existence of a modern

state, including mass schooling, postal service, railways, clock towers,

museums, censuses, passports and so on, 14 were introduced either during the

Tanzimat or could be associated with the trends that the Tanzimat initiated.

Th ese changes were most visible in urban areas, as a new urbanism approach

changed the face of cities. 15 But these benefi ts of the modern state “were never

off ered in vacuo as ‘social goods’; they were made available in specifi c social

forms of State provision which, moreover, marginalized and suppressed

pre-existing class and other alternatives.” 16

According to the state-formation approach, a crucial component of

modern state formation is individualization. Only citizens could become

part of the political nation, and people could become citizens only by fi rst

becoming individuals. In other words, people could enjoy the bundle of

rights associated with citizenship only by expressing themselves solely as

individuals. Th e individual, a politico-legal construct, comes into existence

through a process of abstraction, which forces human beings to exist only as

individuals, abruptly and arbitrarily isolated from their constitutive social

relations. 17 Th e Tanzimat -period Ottoman state was also involved in a double

process of conversion. Th e principle of equality before the law, measures to

provide Muslim–non-Muslim equality, and steps such as the citizenship law

aimed to make subjects into citizens, but people had to “become individuals”

to enjoy citizenship rights. However, the individualization tendency of the

Tanzimat is most clear in the Land Code of 1858. Th e Code recognized only

the abstract individual as a legal subject and the entire realm of the new

Ottoman land law was based on this notion. 18

Individualization was increasingly accompanied by state intervention into

people’s lives. Th is intervention oft en took the form of collecting information.

Th e modern state tries to collect, classify, and interpret as much information

about its citizens as possible. As a result, the areas of information collection

of the state and the number and extent of the records it keeps grow rapidly.

Ottoman bureaucracy grew rapidly during the Tanzimat in terms of per-

sonnel, the areas it tried to cover, and the volume of records it produced. 19

Th e number of documents preserved in the Ottoman archives attest to the

dramatic increase in the production of offi cial documents aft er 1839. Needless

to say, this was not a spontaneous or neutral process. Michel Foucault has

shown through his concept of governmentality that the seemingly neutral

and routine practices of collecting and classifying information are actually

part of a discourse of power and techniques by which population groups are

rendered governable. 20 As Corrigan and Sayer put it, “Th e power involved in


recording, preserving and retrieving ‘facts’—defi ning realities—is one that grows

rapidly by being used; behind the individual records is a formal authority

which establishes routines and rituals, each buttressing the other.” 21 As such,

collecting and recording information were part and parcel of state regulation

of its citizens’ lives and bodies and one needs to look at the Tanzimat state

from this angle, too.

Finally, the displacement of religion as the basis of legitimacy was

observed in the Ottoman as well as the English cases of state formation.

Despite the mention of sacred law in the text of the Tanzimat edict, the reform

program itself included a tendency toward secularization. Secularization was

gradual and less visible than some other aspects of the reform program, but it

was unmistakable. Religious courts headed by the kadi s increasingly lost

ground to newly established secular Nizamiye courts. Secular elements were

introduced in some of the new laws. Th e gradual erosion of the Muslim–non-

Muslim hierarchy and the increasing recognition of the rights of non-Muslim

subjects were also elements of secularization. Religion was not immediately

sidelined as the main pillar of legitimacy but was gradually replaced by law,

citizenship, and allegiance to the state.

The Tanzimat -Era Revolts

Th e Tanzimat reform program was not implemented everywhere at the same

time. First the central provinces were included and then gradually more

remote provinces were incorporated into the coverage of reforms. Almost

everywhere that the new regulations concerning taxation were implemented,

there were instances of unrest, at times in the form of tax strikes and revolt.

Below I present an overview of some the major tax revolts that occurred in

the Tanzimat period.

The revolts took place in different parts of the empire, including the

Balkans and Anatolia. One such revolt occurred in 1840 in Akdağ in central

Eastern Anatolia. Although there were accusations of corruption against the

chief tax collector, and the populace complained about the requirement to

billet troops and tax collectors in villages, the main dynamic of the revolt was

the local people’s reluctance to pay the newly allocated taxes. It is interesting

that the revolt started with the townspeople’s argument that “the state has

forgiven our annual taxes.” 22 Once the tax strike spread to rural areas, it

became a full-fl edged revolt. Th e rebellion could be subdued only using

signifi cant military force. Th e offi cial report prepared aft er the revolt pointed out

several inconsistencies with regard to tax collection, including the deliberate


use of unsound devices to measure land and forcing technicalities in tithe

collection. 23 Th ese were not only instances of corruption on the part of local

offi cials, but they attest to one of the problems of the reform program. Th ere

were “technical” obstacles to the Tanzimat all along.

Th ere was another case of tax resistance in the Çarşanba (in present-day

Macedonia) district in the Balkans in the same year. Th e populace com-

plained of excessive taxation in the new system, and wrote in a petition that

“not only don’t we have the means to pay this amount; there is no [imperial]

edict for its collection either,” 24 both declaring their inability to pay and

questioning the legitimacy of the tax. In the Anatolian town of Tokat, there

was a tax-related incident in 1840, in which the chief tax collector was lynched.

Demonstrating an interesting sense of justice, the rebels not only killed

him but dragged his corpse to the court! Th ere were shorter episodes of tax

resistance in the neighboring areas of Amasya and Zile. 25

One of the biggest post- Tanzimat tax revolts took place in Niş (Niš), in

the northern central part of the Balkans, in 1841. 26 Th e area was comprised

of fertile plains, which, along with the international route that linked the

Balkans to central Europe, made the city and the region surrounding it an

important center. Th e unrest began with the objections of Muslims and

foreigners against the new system of taxation in that they would be liable for

taxation for the fi rst time. Th en local Christians gathered in a church and

demanded to see the tax registers. 27 Th e revolt soon spread to the countryside

and engulfed fi rst the districts of Niş and Leskofça (Leskovac) and then the

district of Şehirköyü (Pirot). Interestingly enough, people living in places

where the new system of taxation had not been put into eff ect also rose up in

revolt, apparently preemptively. Th e peasants left their villages, gathered in

some villages, and positioned themselves around certain bridges and important

mountain passes, occasionally resorting to violence. Th e peasants insisted

that their revolt was by no means against the Sultan but rather against the

oppressive and exploitative actions of local magnates and functionaries. Th e

insurgents initially scored some military victories. Nevertheless, they were

eventually defeated through massive military response; 225 villages were

burned down and an estimated 8,000 people fl ed to Serbia. 28

Taxation continued to constitute a major social and political problem in

the Niş area even aft er the end of the revolt. Around ten years aft erward, a

single case in the Leskofça district created a big commotion. It was a dispute

between a certain Zekeriya Bey, bearing the title of sipahi, and the peasants

of at least seven villages. 29 According to the latter’s claim, once they started to

pay their tithe to tax collectors instead of Zekeriya in accordance with the


new tax regime, he was supposed to get his stipend from the central treasury.

He, however, claimed the villages as his property and pressured the villagers

to pay rent in addition to tithe. 30 In 1855, the peasants once more refused to

pay the amount Zekeriya claimed. 31 Two years later, in late March 1857, the

confrontation was renewed. Th e cultivators in two villages refused to pay the

“rent” and the so-called kesim tax. 32 An imperial order concerning the land

question in Niş and Leskofça was promulgated on November 7, 1858. 33 Despite

this, the tax revolts in the area continued sporadically. In a separate incident,

by early 1859, a large group of peasants were noted for not paying taxes for a

year and a half. Th ey had also reportedly formed an association to defend

their cause. 34

Th e Vidin Revolts of 1849 and especially 1850 were perhaps the most

violent revolts during the Tanzimat period. 35 In the nineteenth century, the

town of Vidin was an important economic center and a port city on the river

Danube in the northern-central section of the Ottoman Balkans. In rural

Vidin, an “archaic” land regime called gospodarlık , which was based on a

complex set of relations of exploitation, including corvée, and the exclusion

of Christian cultivators from controlling arable land was in eff ect.

Following the unrest of April 1849, a bigger and more violent uprising

broke out in 1850. Up to ten thousand people joined the insurgency. 36 In

response, the governor sent out a group of negotiators composed of Muslim

and Christian notables and Christian clergy to listen to the rebels’ demands

and to try to persuade them to give up. Th e rebels, however, refused to talk to

people from Vidin. Although the central state ordered the governor to act

moderately and not to use excessive force, the landlords took total control of

the local council and dealt with the revolt heavy-handedly, using irregular

troops. 37 Large-scale massacres of Christian peasants and even townspeople

followed. 38

Another tax-related confl ict took place in Canik, a central Anatolian

region on the Black Sea coast, from the 1840s to the 1860s. Th e majority of

the population was Muslim, with a signifi cant presence of Greek Orthodox

and Armenian populations. Due to the fertility of land, the main economic

activity in the region was agriculture, though the importance of the Samsun

port and customs increased in the second half of the century. 39

In the fi rst half of the nineteenth century, the Hazinedar magnate family

controlled a number of bureaucratic posts, including the crucial one of

governorship of Trabzon, the jurisdiction of which covered Canik. 40 Th e

family and their entourage had tax farming rights over wide tracks of arable

land. Th e already-existing tension in the region was intensifi ed when the


Tanzimat reforms were declared applicable to Trabzon province. 41 Th e former

tax farmers who had been authorized to collect taxes in the area before the

introduction of the new “ a la Tanzimat ” taxation system, now claimed to

own the villages that had fallen under their authority in the old system.

Accordingly, they tried to impose double the regular tithe and an additional

tax called kesim on villagers. 42 Th e peasants responded in a number of ways

and employed different strategies in their struggle against the magnate

families, but tax strikes were the most important part of the Canik peasants’

protest. In certain cases, they were able to stop payments for years in a row.

Th e disturbances that began in late 1840s in Canik lasted well into the 1880s

without a real response given by the Ottoman state to peasants’ demands and

complaints. 43

The Tanzimat State, Taxation, and Peasants

Th e Tanzimat was an ambitious reform program that aimed at transforming

important aspects and policies of the Ottoman state, including taxation. Th e

Tanzimat -era Ottoman state policies had two goals with regards to taxation:

to connect the individual with the state directly through taxation and to move

from collective taxation to individual taxation. 44 Th e Ottoman state failed in

both objectives. Th e institution of chief tax collector ( muhassıl ), designed as

a means to eliminate intermediaries, failed because of excessive resistance.

Moreover, military force ( zaptiye ) got involved from 1840s into tax collection. 45

Th e tax surveys of 1840 and 1845 were still based on collective taxation. 46 Th e

tithe, which was traditionally collected in kind, could not be abolished until

as late as the end of the fi rst quarter of the twentieth century.

Th ese failures should not be seen only as technical ones, or problems

stemming from the “weakness” of the Tanzimat -era Ottoman state. True,

there were issues that prevented the implementation of some state policies.

We have seen above one example related to the problems created by the

absence of standardization in measuring devices. In addition, fi nancial

shortage accompanied almost every move of the state. And third, despite

several successful campaigns against magnates and autonomous rulers of

peripheral areas in the fi rst decades of the nineteenth century, the state was

far from enjoying a monopoly over the use of legitimate force. Th e frequent use

of irregular troops by local notables and offi cials against popular movements

clearly exemplifi ed this problem.

Yet, rather than being unable to implement certain policies, the attitude

of the state toward the agrarian question itself was the source of much of the


problem. For example, Nadir Özbek argues that the Tanzimat -era state tried

to move the burden of taxation from the agrarian to the urban economy. 47

But the actions and policies of the Ottoman state regarding peasants do not

suggest that there was such an attempt. Indeed, the state tried to solve prob-

lems created by its own policies, usually to the detriment of peasants. Th is

was especially true for non-Muslim peasants, who in general were more

vulnerable in their dealings with the state and the magnates. Th e real reasons

for the inability of the Tanzimat state to reform taxation, then, should be

sought less in its “weakness” or failure to modernize but in the class compo-

sition of the political support for reforms. Th e alliance that supported the

Tanzimat reforms as well as the preceding ones consisted of the central state

bureaucracy, the petty gentry, and the wealthier merchants. 48 It was fragile and

there were groups within the alliance that could be adversely aff ected by some

of the reforms. Th e central state could not aff ord to alienate any element of the

alliance and as a result, its policy toward the upper classes was determined

by permissiveness 49 and salutary neglect 50 rather than weakness. As a result,

attempts to modernize taxation were hardly backed with an unambiguous

political will to restrain former tax farmers or local gentry, leading to violent

reactions on the part of the cultivators.

Th e problems in rural Vidin stemmed from the systematic exclusion of

Christians from land ownership. Perpetuating this ethno-religious exclusion,

however, became increasingly contradictory in the face of the Tanzimat prin-

ciples that promised equality before law. Despite this contradiction, except

for a brief period aft er the rebellion, the government was determined to pre-

vent land acquisitions by Christian cultivators, which was one of the prime

reasons why the conflict remained unresolved for a long while. The culti-

vators of Vidin reacted to this apparent contradiction by withholding tax

payments. Indeed, the fi rst goal of the peasants who rose up in revolt was to

defend their livelihood. However, the revolt was not a desperate attempt for

survival. Th e Tanzimat was indeed an essential component of the back-

ground that paved the way for the peasant rebellions in Vidin and elsewhere.

Moreover, it figured predominantly in the way the rebels perceived the

conflicts and configured their demands. The Vidin peasants “read” the

reforms differently and argued that the sultan had given them the land.

Moreover, they did not accept the double taxation situation where they

would be paying the new Tanzimat taxes as well as the old dues. As a result,

they refused to pay and were able to avoid paying the claims of the land-

owners for as much as seven years. Th ey thereby did not agree to extractions

they considered illegitimate.


In Canik, the disturbances intensifi ed aft er the Tanzimat program began

to be applied in the Trabzon province in 1857. 51 In order to preempt the Tanzimat

decision to liquidate tax farming, old tax farmers and notables feeling the

threat of disenfranchisement under the reformed polity set out to claim

peasant land as their private estates. In the short term this entailed double

taxation for peasants, with worse potential result in the long run. Th e tax

revolt in this case was against a situation in which they not only could not

benefi t from the reforms but actually end up worse off than the prereform

status quo.

Contrary to the widespread notion, tax revolts of Ottoman peasants that

took place in the Tanzimat period were not against the reforms. Instead, they

accepted the reforms and adopted the prose of the Tanzimat . Th e insurgent

peasants perhaps interpreted the Tanzimat in a more radical way than its

architects wanted. Yet this was much more than a case of misunderstanding

on the part of mostly illiterate peasants. Th rough tax revolts, the peasants

were indeed collectively pushing to get all of what they believed they deserved

as part of the reforms.

t ax r evolts b efore the r evolution of 1908

The Ottoman Empire during the last years of the Hamidian reign was of

course much different from what it had been in 1840s and 1850s. Major

changes took place in the political and economic structures of the empire

between the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth century. Th e empire continued

to be the playground of the Eastern Question. Th e Eastern Question did not

bring about the disintegration and colonization of the Ottoman Empire and

the latter could protect its territorial integrity until aft er World War I. Yet the

borders of the empire did change. Although the Ottoman state retained large

territories in the Balkans until the Balkans War of 1912–13, it nevertheless

suff ered from signifi cant losses of territory in the late nineteenth century,

especially in 1878, which shift ed the economic, political, and cultural center

of gravity of the empire eastward toward Anatolia. 52 Moreover, in the mean-

time, the empire received millions of Muslim refugees from the Balkans and

from Russia, making a hitherto much more cosmopolitan society increasingly

a Muslim one. Such factors gave way to a gradual deterioration of relations

between ethno-religious communities.

There was also much change in the economic structure. During the

period, the Ottoman economy became increasingly internationally oriented

and the fi scal fate of the state came to depend on foreign sources. Agriculture,


the dominant sector of the economy, witnessed significant change. The

opening of the empire’s economy to external markets, and the rising Western

European demand for agricultural products, accelerated commercialization

of Ottoman agriculture. Especially in regions that could produce cash crops

and have transportation advantages, commercialization went further. As a

result, external trade of agrarian goods dramatically increased. In a similar

vein, one could see a sharp upturn in the production of crops such as cotton,

tobacco, grapes, and corn. Th e manufacturing sector was forced to operate

within parameters imposed by the international capitalist system. Such con-

ditions did give way to a decline, but it was a relative one stemming from the

failure of Ottoman manufacturing to catch up with the booming economies

of countries such as Britain. Manufacturing, therefore, did not collapse and

managed to survive by transforming itself in terms of spatial organization,

organization of production, and the nature of the workforce. 53

Another element of the opening up of the Ottoman economy was the

foreign treaties to which the empire was a party. After the Tanzimat, the

Ottoman state signed dozens of trade treaties with foreign states. Finally, a

novelty introduced in the Tanzimat period was foreign borrowing. Th e fi rst

formal foreign borrowing took place in 1854 and the empire increased its debt

rapidly aft er that. 54 Th e process resulted in the fi rst fi scal bankruptcy of the

state in 1875. Such close ties with world capitalism in general and foreign

credit sources in particular were important determinants of the place and

role of the Ottoman state within the international system.

The Regime of Abdulhamid II and Its Dusk

Many of the changes in the social, economic, and political structure of the

empire began, accelerated, or came to a head during the long reign of Sultan

Abdulhamid II (1876–1909). Assessing Abdulhamid has been one of the most

diffi cult problems of Ottomanist historiography. For the modernization

school-inspired historiography, it is an anomaly in that it does not fi t into the

narrative about the gradual modernization of the Ottoman-Turkish state

and society from 1789 to 1923. Conservative authors have approached the

Hamidian era mostly uncritically, creating an almost saintlike fi gure in the

sultan. Recently, however, historians have begun to consider the Hamidian

period not as a deviation from but as part of the general trends of nineteenth-

century Ottoman history.

Abdulhamid’s regime was a highly oppressive and uncompromisingly

absolutist one, however. Aft er the transitional period of 1876 to 1886, during


which time the constitution was suspended and military and civilian bureau-

crats suspected of liberal ideas were eliminated, a full-blown absolutist regime

was established. Th e regime maintained an unmistakable hostility to all forms

of liberalism. Th ere were heavy limitations on the use of personal rights and

freedoms, which were enforced by relentless censorship of the press and an

overdeveloped spy network accountable directly to the Sultan. Abdulhamid

established tight control over ministers, and central as well as provincial

bureaucrats, and tried to suppress all autonomist tendencies in the provinces.

Th e Hamidian Regiments, quasi-regular units recruited from certain Sunni

Kurdish tribes incorporated into the army, engaged in widespread massacres

against Armenians in Eastern Anatolia. An estimated one hundred thousand

Armenians died in the 1895–96 massacres, at best initiated by civilians and

ignored by state forces, but oft en provoked, facilitated, and even carried out

by them. In short, the reign of Abdulhamid put a long halt to the processes of

democratization of decision-making and enlargement of civil and political

liberties in the Ottoman Empire that had been initiated with the Tanzimat .

However, it is problematic to see the Hamidian period as a “stray

from the track” as a whole. There were serious attempts at economic and

technological progress, in particular in agriculture and transportation.

There was a significant increase in investment in education. Programs of

social welfare were initiated. 55 The regime paid great attention to both

internal legitimation and international symbolic competition through

the emphasis on the Sultan’s title of caliphate, public displays of grandeur,

and elaborate ceremonies. 56

Despite such attempts, however, the regime in its final years had

increasing diffi culty containing discontent. Th e last period of the Hamidian

regime indeed witnessed much social unrest and growing political opposition.

Th e main opposition group was called the Young Turks, an umbrella organiza-

tion that brought together diverse groups against the regime. Despite impor-

tant internal tensions, the opposition made important headway in organizing

at home and unifying their forces. Th e 1907 alliance between the Committee

of Union and Progress (CUP) and the Armenian Revolutionary Federation

was especially important in this respect. Th e liberal revolutions of 1905 in

Russia and of 1906 in Iran did not help the Hamidian regime either. Th ey

caused a good deal of concern in the regime and inspired hope in the opposi-

tion. Th ey were particularly infl uential in Eastern Anatolia. 57 Th ere were

several serious instances of mutiny in the armed forces, especially in the navy,

between 1906 and 1908. 58 In addition to tax revolts, there were other forms of

social unrest. In Eastern Anatolia, there were uprisings against the notorious


Hamidiye Regiments. 59 Food riots took place in Erzurum, Aleppo, and Beirut

in 1907 and in Sivas in 1908. 60

The Pre-1908 Tax Revolts

A frequent form of social unrest during the last years of the Hamidian period

was tax strikes and revolts, which took place mostly in urban areas across

the empire. Th e fi rst signs of discontent were seen in 1904 in Izmir and then

instances of tax resistance were witnessed in almost all parts of the empire:

Dersim, Van, Selanik (Th essaloniki), Edirne, İstanbul, Hınıs, 61 İzmir, 62 Midilli

(Lésvos), Basra, Trablusgarp, 63 İşkodra, 64 Musul, Bayburt, Narman, Hasankale,

Trabzon, Sivas, Giresun, Kayseri, Zeytun, Macedonia, Bitlis, Samsun, Ankara,

Muş, Van, Aydın, Muğla, 65 Yemen, Albania, Prizren, 66 and Kastamonu. 67

Despite the large geographical extent of the tax strikes, there were more tax

revolts in Central and Eastern Anatolia than other regions and the former

ones tended to be more violent and to last longer.

Th e biggest and longest tax revolt took place in the eastern city of

Erzurum. Th e main goal of the revolt was to counter the two taxes the govern-

ment introduced: hayvanat-ı ehliye rüsumu (animal tax) and rüsum-ı sahsiye or

vergi-i şahsiye (personal tax). 68 What began as a tax strike in Erzurum soon spi-

raled into an open revolt; the people, including women, armed themselves. 69

Th e rebellion acquired a revolutionary character in its second outbreak and

the rebels killed policemen and captured the governor himself, practically

ruling the town for weeks. 70 In response, the government fi rst tried accommo-

dation and then switched to repression; neither worked to subdue the revolt.

Despite the central government eff orts, the local garrison did not intervene

into the insurgency, 71 echoing other instances of mutiny in the army.

Although the popular unrest that engulfed the empire from 1904 to the

Revolution had diverse causes and was a sign that the Hamidian regime was

losing its legitimacy in the eyes of Ottoman subjects, as in Erzurum, the main

reason of the big revolts was to oppose government attempts to introduce a

new tax, namely, the personal tax. Th e demand to abolish this tax was the

main rallying point of the rebels in many towns. Th e rebels condemned

the tax as excessive and unfair, arguing that it had not been set according to

the income levels of the population and the powerful and the richest were

fi nding ways to avoid it. 72

Th e personal tax was introduced in 1903 as an attempt to change the

predominantly collective character of taxation in the Ottoman Empire. Inter-

estingly enough, the Ottoman attempts at tax reform correspond to similar


attempts seen in major industrialized countries in the early twentieth century. 73

Yet in its original formulation, the tax still retained its collective characteristic

and all peasants were required to pay the same amount. 74 Faced with intense

protests and demands, the government tried to fi x some of the problems with

two amendments. Th e 1905 amendment simplifi ed the rules and, importantly,

exempted all peasants. 75 Th e 1906 amendment, in contrast, laid out quite

detailed rules for the collection of this tax and apparently tried to render

it fairer. 76

As I have touched on above, Özbek sees continuity in the general taxa-

tion policies of the Tanzimat and Hamidian states and considers this tax as

part of the attempts to remove the collective character of taxation in the

empire and move the burden of taxation from the rural to the urban economy.

Th ere are certain problems related to this point. First of all, although the

peasants were exempted with the 1905 amendment, the original tax applied to

peasants as well. Moreover, Özbek argues that it was mostly the upper-income

groups in the towns that strongly objected to the tax. Yet, if it was the case,

why the Hamidian regime would want to tax the upper classes more heavily

needs to be elaborated. Such a shift in the tax burden from the upper to lower

classes might be a result of the changing balance of power among classes,

where the lower classes would come to exercise more political power or have

more political signifi cance than before. Alternatively, a shift in tax policy

might refl ect the views of the ruling groups about raising more revenues for

the state and at the same time being fair. 77 Th us, the point that the Hamidian

regime changed the class character of its taxation policy might not be wrong,

but it needs to be accompanied by a discussion on the class composition

of the social base of the Hamidian regime and/or the attitude of the regime

on taxation issues. Unfortunately, the existing literature and the evidence it

provides does not allow for an adequate discussion.

Who Were the Rebels?

Th e tax revolts that preceded the Revolution of 1908 were predominantly

urban revolts with limited peasant participation. Th e merchants and artisans

played a signifi cant role in the revolts; indeed there is evidence that many of

the acts of protest were led by them. Petrosyan contextualizes the leadership

of merchants with the argument that aft er the 1894–95 Armenian massacres,

the bulk of commerce in Anatolia came to be controlled by Turkish merchants. 78

One needs to be careful with this argument in that the Turkish merchants

were quite active in local and regional commerce well before the Armenian


massacres. However, the massacres might have eliminated some competition. In

any case, the role that wealthy merchants played in the revolts is unmistakable. 79

Of course, other groups such as liberal intellectuals, members of the under-

ground opposition, and some Muslim clergymen also participated in the tax

revolts. Th e coexistence of bread riots alongside the tax strikes in some cases,

and working-class participation in rare cases, suggests that urban lower

classes were part of the rebels in certain areas. 80

A question that needs to be answered is whether urban aristocracies, for

example, the biggest merchants in the towns, were also involved in the revolts.

In one account of the Kastamonu revolt, it is reported that the rebels accused

the richest merchants of dodging the personal tax. 81 Moreover, an account of

the Erzurum uprising reports that the wealthiest people in Erzurum were

forced to leave the city during the revolt. 82 However, these points should

not be considered as evidence that the uppermost segment of the urban bour-

geoisie was not involved in the tax revolts at all. Th e account of Kastamonu

rebels accusing the rich merchants is not corroborated by other contemporary

accounts. With regards to Erzurum, it seems that the rich who were forced

to fl ee had been engaged in intensive moneylending. Th us, that particular inci-

dent could be related to a specifi c anti-moneylender feeling. But more probably,

it was politics, especially the stance toward the Hamidian regime that determined

whether the bourgeois were for or against the revolts. Th e tax revolts were highly

charged political events that had clear anti-Hamidian-regime dimensions.

It is therefore logical to assume that the urban bourgeoisie in those cities

were divided along political, and not class, lines when the uprisings began.

Özbek’s criticism of Kansu suggests that more research is necessary on

the class backgrounds and political leanings of the rebels. 83 Th e demands

of the diff erent groups that participated in the revolts should be carefully

analyzed before assessing the general character of the tax revolts. Yet the

political character of the revolts should not be underestimated. First of all, on

a general level, taxation itself is a political issue that touches upon the moral

economy of the lower classes, class relations, the legitimacy of the state,

and so forth. Second, there is strong evidence that more was at stake in the

pre-1908 revolts than simply the complaints about taxation. In Erzurum, as

we have seen, despite the initial policy of accommodation of the state, the

revolt continued and did not stop even when the government off ered important

concessions about the collection of the new taxes. 84 In Kastamonu, the rebels

campaigned for a boycott of the municipal elections, arguing: “We don’t know

anything about our municipality. We don’t know about its income or

spending. How can we elect its offi cials?” 85 Moreover, they implicitly threatened


a boycott of military service. Perhaps most important, the rebels directly

questioned the legitimacy of the state when they occupied the telegram offi ce

and demanded that they be put into contact with the Sultan himself:

“We want our sultan; why doesn’t he come by the telegram? Perhaps we don’t

have a sultan.” 86 Also signifi cant is the fact that the empire-wide unrest did

not fade when the government totally abolished the personal tax in March

1907. 87 Obviously what was at stake was more than just taxes. Th at so many

simultaneous tax revolts took place in diff erent parts of the empire under

a highly centralized and autocratic government shows that by 1908, the

Hamidian regime had lost its ability to govern.

If the tax revolts had a directly political dimension, what, then, was the

role of the CUP and the Young Turk opposition in general in the revolts?

The few scholars who have worked on the issue have presented diff ering

views about the relative weight of the CUP / Young Turk organization and

propaganda in the outbreak of tax strikes and revolts in the empire. One can

conclude from the literature that the presence and activities of the opposition

in the provinces certainly infl uenced the tax-related events there. First of all,

although still based in exile and more powerful in Macedonia, the opposition

was engaged in intensive attempts to organize in the Anatolian provinces,

which witnessed the biggest uprisings. Th ere was widespread underground

propaganda in the towns led by the CUP and other groups such as the Prince

Sabahaddin faction. Th is was especially true for the Eastern Anatolian cities

of Trabzon and Erzurum. 88 Another factor was the presence of opposition

members who had been exiled in the Anatolian towns. 89 Th ere were a large

number of exiles in the town of Kastamonu, for example, where the second

biggest tax strike took place. 90 Finally, among the points agreed upon by

different opposition groups in the Young Turk Congress held in Paris in 1907

were organizing revolts, acts of civil resistance, and tax strikes.

Such attempts on the part of the Young Turk opposition notwithstanding,

the tax strikes began earlier than the Young Turk opposition’s decision to

organize such actions or even before they intensifi ed their attempts to organize

at home and in Anatolia. Second, it is not clear to what extent the CUP

endeavors to organize in Anatolia were successful, with the possible exception

of Diyarbekir. 91 It seems that the level of support the CUP enjoyed in the

Balkans was still considerably higher than Anatolia. Indeed, there is no decisive

evidence that shows direct Young Turk or CUP involvement in the revolts.

For example, the biggest of the revolts, the one in Erzurum, was organized by

an obscure organization, which was more likely a local independent one than

a part of the Young Turk network. 92 Th e CUP and in certain places other


members of the opposition tried to create a fertile ground for insurgency

through their pamphlets and other propaganda activities. Th ey supported the

tax revolts and strived to strengthen and spread them whenever possible, but

they did not organize the revolts. Th at even Kansu, the most prominent his-

torian who argues that the 1908 Revolution was a popular revolution initiated

by masses organized and led by the CUP, cannot present unambiguous

evidence about direct CUP involvement in the tax revolts is quite telling in

this respect. Th e strikes were mostly spontaneous crowd actions regulated

and led by certain groups and individuals in their course.

c onclusion

Several popular rebellions took place in the Ottoman Empire around the mid-

nineteenth century. Many of these rebellions included a collective refusal to pay

taxes to the state and/or local magnates. In the literature, the revolts have mostly

been considered either as nationalist or proto-nationalist uprisings or conser-

vative reactions to the Tanzimat reform program. Another crucial moment was

the wave of tax revolts that took place on the eve of the Young Turk Revolution

of 1908. From 1906, there were important tax revolts in several Anatolian towns

as well as Macedonia and Mosul, largely in response to attempts to introduce

two new taxes. Historians have not paid enough attention to those revolts. In

fact, the tax-related popular protest and state response in both periods were

crucial instances in the slow and painful birth of the Ottoman modern state.

Although taxation was the root cause in both waves of reforms, there

were four signifi cant diff erences between the post- Tanzimat rescript and the

pre-1908 Revolution tax strikes and revolts:

1. Th e Tanzimat period tax revolts occurred in all of the three historical-

geographic regions of the empire, namely, the Balkans, Anatolia, and

the Arab-speaking provinces. Th e revolts were concentrated more in

the Balkans than the two other regions and the biggest ones seem to

have taken place there. Th e pre-1908 revolts, however, were largely

confi ned to Anatolia. In any case, the major ones occurred there.

2. Although there were instances of noteworthy Muslim participation

in the Tanzimat revolts, most rebels were non-Muslim. In contrast,

the rebels in the revolts that occurred before the 1908 Revolution

were by and large Muslim.

3. Th e post- Tanzimat uprisings were peasant revolts with limited

townspeople participation. Th e early twentieth-century tax strikes,


however, were manned and led by the urban middle classes. Rural

participation in those instances of unrest was quite negligible.

4. Contrary to the assumption that the insurgent peasants reacted

against the Tanzimat , the rebels in some of the major revolts rather

endorsed the prose of reform, oft en referring to the promises of

equality and protection of the well-being of subjects. Th ey oft en

rebelled not to halt the reforms but to preempt a particular way

of understanding them. Peasants and other cultivators in several

provinces in fact comprehended the transformation the reforms

entailed, endorsed them, and the tax revolts were part of their

endeavors to reinterpret the Tanzimat. In response to the midcen-

tury revolts, the Ottoman state strived to delegitimize the revolts

as foreign instigation or agitation by a handful of ill-intentioned

people, criminalized what it saw as their ringleaders and oft en used

excessive force to subdue them. Because of the fragmented and

fragile structure of the ruling class, it could not oppose the local

gentry and, given the harsh reaction of some segments of the popu-

lation to double taxation, it was forced to abolish the new taxation

system aft er a short while. Th us, the midcentury peasant revolts

and the state’s response in the form of legal regulation, moral reg-

ulation, and concessions to the upper classes should be considered

as an integral part of Ottoman state formation during the Tanzimat

period. Th e 1904–8 revolts, in contrast, took place amid intense

agitation by political opposition toward the end of the autocratic

reign of Abdulhamid II. Th e revolts shook an increasingly oppres-

sive regime. Th e state responded to those revolts with a mixture of

violence and helplessness. It was soon forced to abolish the newly

introduced taxes, but it was not enough for the survival of the

already weak regime. Th e tax revolts thus paved the way for the

constitutional revolution of 1908.

Th e diff erences between the two waves of tax revolts attest to three dimen-

sions of the relationship between late Ottoman social change and state forma-

tion. First, it seems that in the mid-nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire the

biggest part of the social question was the agrarian question. In the early

twentieth century, however, the agrarian question was not as important as it

used to be. Instead, the urban bourgeoisie was ready to assume the leadership

role in the new wave of tax revolts. The latter fact indeed shows that the

socioeconomic development of the empire in general and capital accumulation


by the urban middle and upper classes in particular had advanced beyond a

certain degree by the fi rst decade of the twentieth century.

Second, that Tanzimat was adopted by peasants who did not refuse the

reforms but indeed tried to radicalize it show that the Tanzimat -era state

enjoyed a large degree of legitimacy among the rural lower classes, Muslim

and non-Muslim alike. Th e revolts preceding the Young Turk Revolution,

however, show that the ancient regime had lost legitimacy even among

Muslims, whom it had considered as its main social support base.

Th ird, around the mid-nineteenth century, the discontent of non-Muslims

could still be voiced in non-nationalistic terms. Yet, as a result of certain

important political developments, this situation had changed by the late

nineteenth and early twentieth century. Th e signifi cant loss of territories in

1878, the development of the Macedonian Question as a burning problem

facing the empire and its citizens, and the emergence of the Armenian question

as a national question and the subsequent massacres of Armenians in the 1890s

all made the emergence of non-nationalized social movements very diffi cult.

As it happened in important central and Eastern Anatolian towns, only

among Turkish-speaking Muslims did the tax strikes not acquire a national

or at least an ethnic character.

Middle East Technical University

n o t e s

1. Some of the well-known works produced within the modernization paradigm

are: Stanford Shaw and Ezel Shaw , History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey

( Cambridge , 1976 ) ; Bernard Lewis , Th e Emergence of Modern Turkey ( New York , 2002 ).

2. Some representative works that use the world-system perspective to understand

Ottoman history are: Donald Quataert , Social Disintegration and Popular Resistance in

the Ottoman Empire, 1881–1908: Reactions to European Economic Penetration ( New York ,

1983 ) ; Resat Kasaba , Th e Ottoman Empire and the World Economy: Th e Nineteenth Century

( Albany, N.Y ., 1988 ) ; Immanuel Wallerstein and Resat Kasaba , Incorporation into the

World-Economy: Change in the Structure of the Ottoman Empire, 1750–1839 ( Binghamton,

N.Y. , 1980 ).

3. One exception is the criticism that the world-system-inspired approaches was

subjected to in relation to the so-called çift lik debate. See E. Attila Aytekin , “ Historiography

of Land Tenure and Agriculture in the Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Empire , ” Asian

Research Trends, New Series 4 ( 2009 ): 1 – 19 .

4. Even otherwise good and innovative studies reproduce this notion of Tanzimat .

For example, see Ussama Makdisi , Th e Culture of Sectarianism: Community, History, and

Violence in Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Lebanon ( Berkeley and Los Angeles , 2000 ).


5. Th e classical example of this approach that reduces post- Tanzimat unrest to

(conservative) reaction to reform is an article by Halil İnalcık, arguably the foremost

Ottomanist historian. In this article, although İnalcık recognizes the social-reformist aspect

of some of the uprising in the Balkans, he nevertheless generalizes post- Tanzimat unrest as

conservative resistance of the privileged strata of the old regime, such as notables,Christian

çorbacıs , Muslim landlords, and ulema . Halil İnalcık, “ Tanzimat’ın Uygulanması ve Sosyal

Tepkiler , ” in Tanzimat’tan Cumhuriyet’e Türkiye Ansiklopedisi , vol. 6 (İstanbul, 1985),

1536–44.

6. Philip Corrigan , Harvie Ramsay , and Derek Sayer , “ Th e State as a Relation of

Production , ” in Capitalism, State Formation, and Marxist Th eory , ed. Philip Corrigan

( London , 1980 ), 1 – 25 , 21 – 22 .

7. Th e state-formation approach is against both the reductionist approaches, which

elevate the metaphor of base-superstructure to a theoretical model, and the Althusserian

correction to it. Sayer argues against those versions of Marxism that consider relations of

production to consist solely of economic relations and, together with productive forces,

to form the “base.” According to him, Marx himself includes “superstructural” elements

into “production relations.” In Marx’s analysis of the feudal mode of production, for

example, it is clear that the relations of personal dependence are essential relations of

production. Jurisdiction can be conceived in similar terms, too. See Derek Sayer , Th e

Violence of Abstraction: Th e Analytic Foundations of Historical Materialism ( Oxford , 1987 ),

63 , 72 – 75 .

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

9. Philip Corrigan and Derek Sayer , Th e Great Arch: English State Formation as

Cultural Revolution ( Oxford , 1985 ).

10. Ibid., 195.

11. Ibid., 30ff .

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

13. Corrigan and Sayer, Th e Great Arch , 41.

14. Selim Deringil , Th e Well-Protected Domains: Ideology and the Legitimation of

Power in the Ottoman Empire, 1876 – ( London , 1998 ).

15. Sevilay Kaygalak , Kapitalizmin Taşrası: 16. Yüzyıldan 19. Yüzyıla Bursa’da

Toplumsal Süreçler ve Mekansal Degişim ( İstanbul , 2008 ).

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

17. Philip Corrigan and Derek Sayer , “ How the Law Rules , ” in Law, State, and Society ,

ed. Bob Fryer et al . ( London , 1981 ).

18. E. Attila Aytekin , “ Agrarian Relations, Property, and Law: An Analysis of the Land

Code of 1858 in the Ottoman Empire , ” Middle Eastern Studies 45 ( 2009 ): 935 –51 (936–37)

19. For the standard account of Ottoman offi cialdom, see Carter Findley , Ottoman

Civil Offi cialdom: A Social History ( Princeton , 1989 ). For a prosopographical study of

high-level bureaucrats, see Olivier Bouquet , Les pachas du sultan: Essai sur les agents

superieurs de l’Etat ottoman (1839–1909) ( Paris , 2007 ).

20. See Michel Foucault, “Governmentality,” in Th e Foucault Eff ect .

21. Corrigan and Sayer, Th e Great Arch , 21.

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

23. Ibid., 26.

24. Ibid., 16.


25. Ibid., 31.

26. C.DH 1810. Hereaft er, unless otherwise noted, all archival references are to Prime

Ministry Ottoman Archives, Istanbul.

27. Uzun, Tanzimat ve Sosyal Direnişler , 47.

28. Ibid.

29. A.MKT.NZD 4/45; A.MKT.UM 51/10; A.MKT.UM 103/55. By that time, the title of

sipahi (prebendal cavalryman) had become anachronistic.

30. A.MKT.UM 103/55.

31. A.MKT.UM 189/36.

32. A.MKT.UM 279/10.

33. C.DH 1523.

34. I.DH 28069.

35. I have discussed the agrarian unrest in Vidin and Canik in detail in E. Attila Aytekin ,

“ Peasant Protest in the Late Ottoman Empire: Moral Economy, Revolt, and the Tanzimat

Reforms , ” International Review of Social History 57 , no. 2 ( 2012 ): 191 – 227

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

37. Ibid., 50–52. See also G. Arbuthnot , Herzegovina; or Omer Pacha and the Christian

Rebels ( London , 1862 ), 122 .

38. FO 195/296 04.09.1850, from Bennett to Neale; FO 195/296 08.09.1850 from

Bennett to Neale. [Th e National Archives, London.]

39. Emin Yolalıcı , XIX. Yüzyılda Canik (Samsun) Sancağı’nın Sosyal Ekonomik Yapısı

( Ankara , 1998 ), 116 –17.

40. Canay Şahin , “ Ondokuzuncu Yüzyıl’da Samsun’da Çift lik Sahibi Hazinedarzadeler

ile Kiracı-Köylüler Arasındaki Arazi ve Vergi İhtilafı Üzerine Bazı Gözlemler ve Sorular , ”

Kebikeç 24 ( 2007 ): 75 – 88 (78).

41. Ibid., 79.

42. HR.MKT 98/85.

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

44. Nadir Özbek , “‘ Anadolu Islahatı,’ ‘Ermeni Sorunu’ Ve Vergi Tahsildarlığı, 1895–1908 ,

” Tarih ve Toplum Yeni Yaklaşımlar 9 ( 2009 ): 59 – 85 , 61–62.

45. Ibid., 66.

46. Ibid., 52–53.

47. Nadir Özbek , “ Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nda Gelir Vergisi: 1903–1907 Tarihli

Vergi-i Şahsi Uygulaması , ” Tarih ve Toplum Yeni Yaklaşımlar 10 ( 2010 ): 43 – 80 (51).

48. For a fuller discussion of this issue, see E. Attila Aytekin , “ Cultivators, Creditors,

and the State: Rural Indebtedness in the Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Empire , ” Journal

of Peasant Studies 35 ( 2008 ): 292 – 313 (305–8).

49. Corrigan and Sayer, Th e Great Arch , 91

50. Rifa’at Ali Abou-El-Haj , “ Geçiş Dönemleri Üzerine Bir Not , ” in Tarih, Sınıfl ar ve

Kent , ed. Besime Şen and Ali Ekber Doğan ( Ankara , 2010 ), 31 – 33 .

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

52. Th e Ottoman Balkans was of course one of the theaters of the Eastern Question.

Yet one should not exaggerate the role of imperialist politics in the emerging Balkan

nationalism and the subsequent independence of Balkan states. Th e economic and

social dynamics of the region, especially the class structure, played an important part in

pre-nationalist uprisings and the later nationalist ressitance to the Ottoman central state.


53. Donald Quataert , Ottoman Manufacturing in the Age of the Industrial Revolution

( Cambridge , 1993 ).

54. Seyfettin Gürsel , “ Osmanlı Dış Borçları , ” in Tanzimat’tan Cumhuriyet’e Türkiye

Ansiklopedisi ( Istanbul , 1985 ): 672 –87.

55. Nadir Özbek, “Th e Politics of Welfare: Philantrophy, Voluntarism, and

Legitimacy in the Ottoman Empire, 1876–1914” (Ph.D. diss., State University of New York

at Binghamton, 2001).

56. Selim Deringil , “ Legitimacy Structures in the Ottoman State: Th e Reign of

Abdulhamid II (1876–1909) , ” International Journal of Middle East Studies 23 ( 1991 ): 345 –59;

and Deringil, Well-Protected Domains .

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

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

223 .

59. Ibid., 22.

60. Aykut Kansu , 1908 Devrimi ( İstanbul , 1995 ), 90 – 91 ; Kars, Halk Dinamiği , 22, 38 .

61. Kars, Halk Dinamiği , 73.

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

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

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

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

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


68. Ibid., 24ff .

69. Ibid., 143.

70. Kansu, 1908 Devrimi .

71. Kars, Halk Dinamiği .

72. Ibid., 64ff ., 146.

73. Sven Steinmo , “ Th e Evolution of Policy Ideas: Tax Policy in the 20th Century , ”

British Journal of Politics and International Relations 5 , no. ( 2003 ): 206 –36 (209–10).

74. Özbek, “Gelir Vergisi,” 61.

75. Ibid., 66–67.

76. Ibid., 71–72.

77. Steinmo, “Th e Evolution of Policy Ideas,” 210.

78. Petrosyan, Sovyet Gözüyle , 234.

79. Kars, Halk Dinamiği , 12–13.

80. Agrarian workers and porters joined shopkeepers in Bingazi protests against the

personal tax in 1905. Özbek, “Gelir Vergisi,” 64.


82. Ibid., 147.

83. He criticizes Kansu for generalizing the rebels under the name “people” and

for simply seeing the revolts, especially the one in Erzurum, as a revolutionary uprising

against the established order. Özbek, “Gelir Vergisi,” 76.


85. Ibid., 64.

86. Ibid.

87. Özbek, “Gelir Vergisi,” 136.


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

89. Petrosyan, Sovyet Gözüyle , 234.

90. Kansu, 1908 Devrimi , 40.

91. Kars, Halk Dinamiği , 46–47.

92. Even the name of the organization is not clear. It was either Canveren or Canverir .

See ibid., 40–41.

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