Tradition and Rural Change in Southeastern EuropeDuring Ottoman Rule*

It is a historical commonplace that the Ottoman Empire, once a rival of Western powers, had become by the nineteenth century "thesick man of Europe" and the Ottoman lands the backwater of the continent. In fact, already at the beginning of the seventeenth century, the Ottomans themselves had made imperial decay a key topic of their political writing. At that time, worried observers as well as responsible men of the ruling class tended to attributethe social, economic and political "degeneration" to change, to "pernicious innovations" in the traditional institutions of the Empire.1 By the beginning of the nineteenth century, however, the problem had become more complex, and the solution did not seem to be feasible in the traditional context. Officials at the Porte recognized now that change was inevitable and that perhaps the only hope of saving the crumbling Empire lay in political and economic "Westernization."2 Once even the Ottoman bureaucrats

* First published in Daniel Chirot (ed.), The Origins of Backwardness in Eastern Europe . Economics and Politics from the Middle Ages Until the Early Twentieth Century (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1989), pp. 131-176.1 See the memorandum of the Grandvizier Yemişçi Hasan Paşa to Mehmed III in Cengiz Orhonlu, Osmanlı tarihine âid belgeler: Telhîsler (1597-1607) (İstanbul: İstanbul Üniversitesi Yayınları, 1970), p. 32.For literature on Ottoman decline at that time see Vasilij Dmitrievič Smirnov, Kočybeg Gjumuldžinskij i drugie osmanskie pisateli XVII veka o pričinach upadka Turcii (St. Petersburg 1873); Klaus Röhrborn, Untersuchungen zur osmanischen Verwaltungsgeschichte (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1973), pp. 88-95. 2 Among the many titles on Ottoman modernization in the nineteenth century see Roderic H. Davison, Reform in the Ottoman Empire, 1856-1876 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), and Niyazi Berkes, The Development of Secularism in Turkey (Montreal: McGill University Press,1964), especially pp. 138-223.

admitted the necessity of following the West, it is understandablethat the national elites of the emerging independent Balkan stateseasily succumbed to the temptation of blaming the centuries old "Ottoman yoke" for everything backward in their countries. Likewise, many a difficulty in the Republic of Turkey in the twentieth century has conveniently been attributed to the misrule of the preceding age.

The contemporary historian, more receptive since World War II to the methods and findings of the social sciences, is studying processes such as the Ottoman decline increasingly in a comparative perspective,3 not least in the hope of understanding better the phenomena of underdevelopment in today’s Third World. Thus, research on the problems of modernization in the sense of catching up with the industrialized West4 has focused on the Ottoman experience as well.5 The elaboration since the 1960s of a structural theory of imperialism with its central concepts of "core" and "periphery" has permitted new insights into the

3 Of special interest in this connection are two studies on Spain: J. H. Elliott, "The Decline of Spain", in: Crisis in Europe, 1560-1660: Essays from Past and Present, Trevor Aston, ed. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1965), pp. 167-193, and Henry Kamen, "The Decline of Spain: A Historical Myth?", Past and Present 81 (1978), pp. 24-50. 4 Free ownership of land, commercialization of agriculture, urbanization, social mobility, and a high level of literacy are seen as the prerequisites for successful industrialization. See Peter Flora, Modernisierungsforschung: Zur empirischen Analyse der gesellschaftlichen Entwicklung (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1974); Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Modernisierungstheorien und Geschichte (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1975). See also the contributions in Modernisierung und nationale Gesellschaft im ausgehenden 18. und im 19. Jahrhundert: Referate einer deutsch-polnischen Historikerkonferenz, Werner Conze, Gottfried Schramm, Klaus Zernack, eds. (Berlin: In Kommission bei Duncker & Humblot, 1979). 5 Bernard Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey (London: Oxford University Press, 1961); Robert E. Ward and Dankwart A. Rustow, eds., Political Modernization in Japan and Turkey (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964); William R. Polk and Richard L. Chambers, eds., Beginnings of Modernization in the Middle East: The Nineteenth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968).

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subject.6 In the last decade, the work of Immanuel Wallerstein hasstimulated particularly productive discussions in this field.7 With respect to the Ottoman Empire, Wallerstein sees the historianconfronted with an apparently simple problem:

At one point in time, the Ottoman Empire was outside the capitalist world-economy. At a later point in time, the Ottoman Empire was incorporated into the capitalist world-economy. How do we know what these points in time were? And by what process did the transition from T1 to T2 take place?8

To furnish an answer to this question, considerable efforts have been undertaken.9 Yet, the professed aim - to explain convincingly6 André Gunder Frank, Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1967); Arghiri Emmanuel, L’Échange inégal. Essai sur les antagonismes dans les rapports économiques internationaux (Paris: F. Maspero, 1969); Samir Amin, L’accumulation à l’échelle mondiale. Critique de la théorie du sous-développement (Dakar: IFAN, 1970); Johan Galtung, "A Structural Theory of Imperialism", Journal of Peace Research 8:2 (1971): 81-113. A German translation of this article appeared, beside several Latin American contributions on dependencia, in Dieter Senghaas, ed., Imperialismus und strukturelle Gewalt: Analysen über abhängige Reproduktion (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1972). See further Senghaas, ed., Peripherer Kapitalismus. Analysen über Abhängigkeit und Unterentwicklung (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1974). 7 Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World System. Vol. 1: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century. Vol. 2: Mercantilism and the Consolidation of the European World-Economy, 1600-1750 (New York: Academic Press, 1974-1980). 8 Immanuel Wallerstein, "The Ottoman Empire and the Capitalist World-Economy: Some Questions for Research", in Social and Economic History of Turkey (1071-1920), Papers presented to the First InternationalCongress on the Social and Economic History of Turkey, Hacettepe University, Ankara, July 11-13, 1977, Osman Okyar and Halil İnalcık, eds. (Ankara 1980), p.117. 9 Huri İslamoğlu, Çağlar Keyder, "Agenda for Ottoman History", Review, 1 (1977), pp. 31-55; Şevket Pamuk, "Foreign Trade, Foreign Capital and the Peripherilization of the Ottoman Empire, 1830-1913" (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1978); Immanuel Wallerstein, Hale Decdeli, and Reşat Kasaba, "The Incorporation of the Ottoman Empire into the World-Economy", Paper

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the transformation of the Empire from the imperial greatness of the "classical age"10 to the status of a semicolony in the nineteenth century - has not, in my opinion, been achieved. This might be due to weaknesses inherent in the conceptual framework ofthe analysis11 and/or to insufficient familiarity with the current level of research in the specific fields.12 Indeed, as students ofOttoman history would readily admit, investigation into the causesand modalities of socioeconomic change and political decline remains a challenging task. Some scholars feel that conclusive

prepared for International Conference on Turkish Studies, Madison,Wisc., May 25-27, 1979; Immanuel Wallerstein, Reşat Kasaba, "Incorporation into the World-Economy: Change in the Structure of the Ottoman Empire, 1750-1839", in: Economie et société dans l’Empire ottoman. Actes du colloque de Strasbourg 1980, J. L. Bacqué-Grammont and Paul Dumont, eds. (Paris: CNRS, 1983), pp. 335-354; İlkay Sunar, "Anthropologie politique et économique: l’Empire ottoman et sa transformation", Annales ESC 35 (1980), 551-579. See also Halil İnalcık, "Impact of the Annales School on Ottoman Studies and New Findings", Review 3-4 (1978): 69-96. 10 Halil İnalcık, The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age, 1300-1600 (London-NewYork: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1973). 11 For a critique of the so-called commercialization model see the articles of Robert Brenner, "Agrarian Class Structure and EconomicDevelopment in Pre-Industrial Europe", Past and Present 70 (Feb. 1976):30-75; "The Origins of Capitalist Development: A Critique of Neo-Smithian Marxism", New Left Review 104 (July-Aug. 1977): 25-92; and "The Agrarian Roots of European Capitalism", Past and Present 97 (Nov. 1982): 16-113. With respect to the Ottoman history see Ahmetİnsel, "Tanrı’nın hikmetinden sermayenin hikmetine: Wallerstein Tarihi’nin bir eleştirisi", Toplum ve Bilim 25-26 (Spring-Summer 1984): 133-148. 12 Wallerstein’s treatment of Eastern Europe, for example, has beencriticized for this reason by Hans-Heinrich Nolte, "Zur Stellung Osteuropas im internationalen System der frühen Neuzeit. Außenhandel und Sozialgeschichte bei der Bestimmung der Regionen",Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 28 (1980): 161-197. See also Holm Sundhaussen, "Zur Wechselbeziehung zwischen frühneuzeitlichem Außenhandel und ökonomischer Rückständigkeit in Osteuropa: Eine Auseinandersetzung mit der ‘Kolonialthese’", Geschichte und Gesellschaft 9 (1983): 544-563. For general information on controversial

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judgements on the true causes and character of Ottoman retardation, especially with respect to the crucial seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, cannot be reached yet because of the inadequate source material available.13 Others approach the problem from a rather different angle: they question the tenability of views of Ottoman backwardness in relation to the centuries preceding the modern industrial period.14

This essay, although inspired by such highly theoretical interpretations of Ottoman decline, does not itself claim to be a contribution to the theoretical discussion that aims at establishing the laws of socioeconomic development in the preindustrial period. Rather, its primary intent is to shed some new light on certain controversial aspects of the discussion on rural change in the Ottoman Balkans.

The geographical area under consideration is basically the Balkan Peninsula south and southwest of the line defined by the Danube and Sava rivers. Occasionally, information pertaining to developments in Anatolia and the Middle East is also referred to by way of comparison.

positions see Dieter Senghaas, ed., Kapitalistische Weltökonomie. Kontroversen über ihren Ursprung und ihre Entwicklungsdynamik (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1979); Jochen Blaschke, ed., Perspektiven des Weltsystems. Materialien zu Immanuel Wallerstein, "Das moderne Weltsystem" (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 1983); T. H. Aston and C. H. E. Philpin, eds., The Brenner Debate: Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-Industrial Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). Foran overview of related literature on countries of the European periphery see Holm Sundhaussen, "Neuere Literatur zu Problemen derIndustrialisierung und der nachholenden Entwicklung in den Ländernder europäischen Peripherie", Südost-Forschungen 43 (1984): 283-303. 13 See Roger Owen, The Middle East in the World Economy 1800-1914 (London: Methuen, 1981), pp. 1-23. 14 Fernand Braudel is of the opinion that "il n’y aura eu décadencefranche de l’Empire turc qu’avec les premières années du XIXe siècle". See his article "L’Empire turc est-il une économie-monde?", in Mémorial Ömer Lûtfi Barkan, R. Mantran, ed. (Paris: A. Maisonneuve, 1980), p. 49. For a similar line of thought see Peter F. Sugar, Southeastern Europe under Ottoman Rule, 1354-1804 (Seattle: University of Washington Press 1977), p. 282.

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The essay is organized into four sections: (1) agriculture and settlement at the time of the Ottoman conquest; (2) the "classical" Ottoman land regime; (3) rural change during the seventeenth century; and (4) export-oriented agriculture and the Ottoman landholding category çiftlik.

AGRICULTURE AND SETTLEMENT AT THE TIME OF THE OTTOMAN CONQUEST

The Ottoman conquest of the Balkans, a process lasting approximately from the middle of the fourteenth to the middle of the sixteenth century, meant, as is well known, the disappearance of several medieval states in the region. Modern historians from the modern Balkan states understandably stress the destructive aspects of this process, interpreting it on the whole as a national catastrophe.15 Such a view, the focal point of which liesdecidedly in the field of political developments, also seems to beroughly in line with the tradition of European historiography on Christian-Muslim (respectively Ottoman) relationships.16 It is perhaps not surprising, therefore, that value judgements of a cultural, religious or nationalistic nature should creep into the fabric of argumentation even in studies devoted strictly to the economic and social history of the area. The following assertion in an otherwise excellent book on the economic history of Southeastern Europe, for example, perpetuates the traditional image of the Ottoman conquest:

Unlike previous medieval struggles between the Byzantine Empire and the Bulgarian or Serbian Kingdoms, the Ottoman onslaught from the late fourteenth century forward destroyed peasant villages and

15 Such a judgment seems to be colored by the projection of a modern ideological situation onto a distant past. A recent exampleof this method can be found in Istorija na Bălgarija, t. IV: Bălgarskijat narod pod osmansko vladičestvo (ot XV do načaloto na XVIII v.), Christo Gandev, ed. (Sofija: Bălgarska akademija na naukite, 1983). 16 Ernst Schulin, Die weltgeschichtliche Erfassung des Orients bei Hegel und Ranke (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1958); Hans Heinrich Schaeder,"Die Orientforschung und das abendländische Geschichtsbild", in H.H. Schaeder, Der Mensch in Orient und Okzident: Grundzüge einer euroasiatischen Geschichte, Grete Schaeder, ed. (München: Piper, 1960), pp. 397-423;Norman Daniel, Islam and West. The Making of an Image (Edinburgh: University Press, 1962).

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generally disrupted settlement in the grain-growing lowlands. Surviving peasants often fled to higher, safer ground where they supported themselves by raising livestock. Many returned, how manywe cannot say, during the generally peaceful sixteenth century.17

This interpretation of the effects of the conquest, the adoption of which obviously has profound implications for our overall view of rural life in the Ottoman Balkans, requires, in my opinion, a critical revision.

The Balkan Peninsula had experienced demographic and economic decline long before the foundation of the Ottoman state. Without overemphasizing the importance of demographic fluctuations as a factor in long-term economic and social change,18 I would like to point out that Southeastern Europe was by no means spared the dramatic population decrease and desertion of land that affected most parts of Europe in the late medieval period.19 Indeed, in the

17 John R. Lampe and Marvin R. Jackson, Balkan Economic History, 1550-1950.From Imperial Borderlands to Developing Nations (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982), p. 33. 18 Conceptually, I am following here Guy Bois, Crise du Féodalisme: Économie rurale et démographie en Normandie orientale du début du XIVe au milieu du XVIe siècle (Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1976) 19 For overviews see J. C. Russell, "Population in Europe 500-1500", in The Fontana Economic History of Europe. Vol. 1, The Middle Ages, C. M. Cipolla, ed. (Glasgow:Collins, 1972), pp. 25-70; David Grigg, Population Growth and Agrarian Change: An Historical Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980). Important works on different geographic areas are M. Postan, "Revisions in Economic History: The Fifteenth Century", Economic History Review 9 (1939): 160-167; Wilhelm Abel, Die Wüstungen des ausgehenden Mittelalters (Stuttgart: G. Fischer, 3rd rev. ed., 1976): Maurice Beresford, The Lost Villages of England (London: Lutterworth, 1954); Wł³ adysł³aw Rusińñski, "Wüstungen: Ein Agrarproblem des feudalen Europa", Acta Poloniae Historica 5 (1962): 48-78; Villages désertés et histoire économique. XVe-XVIIe siècles (Paris: S.E.V.P.E.N., 1965); Rodney H. Hilton, "Villages désertés et histoire économique: recherches françaises et anglaises", Études Rurales, 32 (1968): 104-109; Deserted Medieval Villages, studies ed. by M.W. Beresford and J. G. Hurst (London: Lutterworth, 1971); John Day, "Malthus démenti? Sous-peuplement et calamités démographiques

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Balkans a downward trend had set in apparently even earlier than in other parts of the continent. As usual, arable farming sufferedmost, with peasants abandoning the "marginal" soils often located in marshy plains and river valleys. Particularly, Thessaly, the lowlands of Macedonia, and Danubian Bulgaria had become already bythe twelfth century the grazing grounds for herds of the Wallachians; it is not by chance that sources of the late medievalperiod refer to these areas as magna valachia.20 No doubt, internal strife as well as invading armies must have contributed to the contraction of the arable land, but the process could be observed even in areas untouched by warfare.21

en Sardaigne au bas Moyen-âge", Annales ESC 30 (1975): 684-702. On developments in the Balkans see David Jacoby, "Phénomènes de démographie rurale à Byzance aux XIIIe, XIVe et XVe siècles", ÉtudesRurales 5-6 (1962): 171-186; Hélène Antoniadis-Bibicou, "Villages désertés en Grèce: Un bilan provisoire", in Villages désertés et histoire économique, pp. 343-417; Angeliki E. Laiou-Thomadakis, Peasant Society in the Late Byzantine Empire: A Social and Demographic Study (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977). 20 Alfred Philippson, Die griechischen Landschaften, I/1: Thessalien und die Spercheios-Senke (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1950), p. 225; Božidar Ferjančić, Tesalija u XIII i XIV veku (Beograd: Srpska akademija nauka i umetnosti, 1974), pp. 198-205; P. S. N±ăsturel, "Les Valaques balkaniques aux Xe-XIIIe siècles (Mouvements de population et colonisation dans la Romanie grecque et latine)", Byzantinische Forschungen 7 (1979): 89-112; Borislav Primov, "Săzdavaneto na vtorata bălgarska dăržava i učastieto na Vlasite",in Bălgaro-rumănskite vrăzki i otnošenija prez vekovete. Izsledvanija. t. I (XII-XIX v.), D.Angelov et al., eds. (Sofija: Bălgarska akademija na naukite, 1965), pp. 24-28. 21 Interesting examples are the islands of Euboia and Crete under Venetian rule, both of which experienced pronounced population decline during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. See Alfred Philippson, Die griechischen Landschaften, I/2: Das östliche Mittelgriechenland und die Insel Euboea (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1951), p. 635; Elijahu Ashtor, "Observations on Venetian Trade in the Levant in the XIVth Century", Journal of European Economic History 5 (1976): 533-586.Johannes Koder claims that attacks by Turkish pirates as well as epidemics were the chief factors of population decrease on Euboia in the fifteenth century. He points out, however, that thanks to

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The extensive application of jus valachicum during the early Ottoman period has to be seen in this connection.22 Since the stock-raising population, the majority of which practices transhumance,23 could deliver only small tithes of agricultural produce, the state demanded the payment of a money rent, one gold piece (filuri) per household per annum. In addition, as a labor rent,the peasants subject to the Wallachian Law were obligated to send to the Sultan’s army one voynuk for every five or, in some places, ten households.24

the immigration of Albanians from the mainland, the fall in population did not reach critical dimensions. See J. Koder, Negroponte: Untersuchungen zur Topographie und Siedlungsgeschichte der Insel Euboia während der Zeit der Venezianerherrschaft (Wien: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1973), pp. 170-173. For critical revisions of the widespread assumption that the devastations of war caused lasting demographic and socioeconomic decline during the Late Middle Ages see G. Bois, Économie rurale et démographie en Normandie orientale, pp. 10-11; Svend Gissel et al., Desertion and Land Colonization inthe Nordic Countries, c. 1300-1600: Comparative Report from the Scandinavian Research Project on Deserted Farms and Villages (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1981), pp. 135f., 206-209, 238f. 22 For terminology and translated texts see Nicoară Beldiceanu, "Larégion de Timok-Morava dans les documents de Mehmed II et de SelimI", Revue des études roumaines 3-4 (1957): 111-129; Kanuni i kanun-name za bosanski, hercegovački, zvornički klişkikliški, crnogorski i skadarski sandžak, B. Djurdjev et al., eds. (Sarajevo, 1957) [Monumenta turcica historiam slavorum medionalium ilustratia, serija I: Zakonski spomenici, xv. 1] 23 M. Gyóni, "La transhumance des Vlaques balkaniques au Moyen-Age", Byzantinoslavica 12 (1951), 29-42: ; Vasil Marinov, "Ethnographische Charakteristik der Transhumanz in den Ländern derBalkanhalbinsel", in AIESEE, Actes du premier congrès international des études balkaniques et sud-est européennes, t. VII (Sofia: Académie Bulgare des Sciences, 1971), pp. 535-548; and Nicolae Dunăre, "Typologie des traditionellen Histenlebens im karpatobalkanischen Raum", Zeitschrift für Balkanologie 11:2 (1975): 23-28. 24 Halil İnalcık, Fatih devri üzerinde tetkikler ve vesikalar I (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1954): 154-156; Nicoară Beldiceanu and Irène Beldiceanu-Steinherr, "Quatre actes de Mehmed II concernant les Valaques des Balkans slaves", Südost-Forschungen 24 (1965): 116-118;

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Also the settlement of a substantial number of Turkish peasants and nomads in certain parts of the Balkans can be understood best in light of the preceding depopulation of these areas. By the beginning of the fifteenth century northeastern Bulgaria, Thrace, the flatlands of Macedonia and Thessaly had acquired a predominantly Turkish character.25 Some of the newcomers, who often stemmed from religiously heterodox and therefore politicallyunreliable groups in Anatolia, had been deported to the sparsely populated lowlands of Rumelia as punishment.26 Many of them had yürük status with rights and duties similar to those under jus valachicum; for the yürük were, just like the Wallachians, stock raisers practicing transhumance.27

Direct information about land and cultivation during the early Ottoman period is scanty. We know that military chiefs were awarded large estates (gazi mülk), which they usually converted into religious endowments (vakıf).28 On uncultivated land in the plains, near river crossings and in woodlands numerous dervish

Dušanka Bojanić-Lukač, Turski zakoni i zakonski popisi iz -XV i XVI veka za smederevsku, kruševačku i vidinsku oblast (Beograd: Istorijski institut, 1974), p. 112. 25 Ernst Werner, Die Geburt einer Großmacht: Die Osmanen (1300-1481). Ein Beitrag zur Genesis des türkischen Feudalismus, 4th rev. ed. (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1985), pp. 146-148. 26 Ömer L. Barkan, "Osmanlı İmparatorluğunda bir iskân ve kolonizasyon metodu olarak sürgünler", İktisat Fakültesi Mecmuasî 11 (1949-1950): 524-570; 13 (1953-1954), 209-237. See also Halil Înalcîk, "Ottoman Methods of Conquest", Studia Islamica 2 (1954): 103-129, especially 122-125. 27 Salahaddin Çetintürk, "Osmanlı Îİmparatorluğunda yürük sınıfı vehukukî statüleri", Ankara Üniversitesi Dil ve Tarih-Coğrafya Fakültesi Dergisi 2 (1943): 107-116; M. Tayyib Gökbilgin, Rumeli’de Yürükler, Tatarlar ve Evlâd-ı Fâtihân (İstanbul: İstanbul Üniversitesi Yayınları, 1957); Metodije Sokoloski, "Za jurucite i juručkata organizacija vo Makedonija od XV-XVIII vek", Istorija 9:1 (1973): 85-99; Enver M. Şerifgil, "Rumeli’de eşkinci yürükler", Türk Dünyası Araştırmaları 12 (June 1981): 65-83. 28 M. Tayyib Gökbilgin, XV-XVI. asırlarda Edirne ve Paşa Livası. Vakıflar - Mülkler - Mukataalar (İstanbul: İstanbul Üniversitesi Yayınları, 1952). See also Werner, Die Geburt einer Großmarcht, pp. 167f.

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recluses came into existence, which served as nuclei for later settlements.29 Christian monastic property, too, had a status similar to that of the vakıf land.30 Yet it seems that despite the state’s interest in settled rural life, pastoralism persevered. The revolts of Şeyh Bedreddin and Börklüce Mustafa at the beginning of the fifteenth century were basically antifeudal resistance movements of stock-raising groups, Christian and Muslimalike.31

The existence of a large pastoral population beside the peasantry engaged in arable farming has significance in two respects for thehistory of the Balkans during Ottoman rule: in the first place, the herders, being a mobile group unattached to the soil and obligated to pay a money rent instead of the usual peasant tithes,were from the beginning in a much better position than the common peasantry to develop commercial interests and connections. In fact, the caravan trade throughout the Balkans was a typically Wallachian pursuit, and Traian Stoianovich’s “conquering orthodox

29 Ömer L. Barkan, "Osmanlı İmparatorluğunda bir iskân ve kolonizasyon metodu olarak vakıflar ve temlikler", Vakıflar Dergisi 2 (1942): 279-365. 30 Elizabeth A. Zachariadou, "Early Ottoman Documents of the Prodromos Monastery (Serres)", Südost-Forschungen 28 (1969): 1-12; "Ottoman Documents from the Archives of Dionysiou (Mount Athos) 1495-1520", Südost-Forschungen 30 (1971): 1-35 plus 14 plates; Zdenka Veselâá-Přøenosilová, "Sur l’activité du Monastère de Ste. Catherine de Sinaï en Bosnie", Prilozi za orijentalnu filologiju 28-29 (1978-1979): 257-267; Fehim Dž. Spaho, "Nekoliko turskih dokomenata o Monastiru Mileševo", Prilozi za orijentalni filologiju 28-29 (1978-1979): 363-374; Vančo Boškov, "Pitanje autentičnosti Fojničke ahd-name Mehmeda II iz 1463. godine", Godišnjak društva istoričara Bosne i Hercegovine 28-29 (1977-1979): 87-105; and "Dokumenti Bajazita II u Hilandaru (Sveta Gora) - Komentar i regesti", Prilozi za orijentalnu filologiju 31 (1981): 131-154. 31 Franz Babinger, "Scheijch Bedr ed-din, der Sohn des Richters vonSimaw", Der Islam 11 (1921): 1-106; Abdülbâki Gölpınarlı, Sımavna Kadısıoğlu Şeyh Bedreddin (İstanbul: Eti Yayınevi, 1966); Nedim Filipović, Princ Musa i Sejh Šejh Bedreddin, (Sarajevo: Svjetlost, 1971); Werner, Die Geburt einer Großmacht, pp. 217-233; Kurdakul, Necdet, Bütün yönleriyle Bedreddîn (İstanbul: Döler Reklam Yayınları, 1977).

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Balkan merchant” was a person more often than not of pastoral (Wallachian) origin.32 Secondly, the stock raisers with Wallachianor yürük status were organized into quasi-military categories and developed a consciousness of higher social status.33 These semimilitary pastoral groups felt socially superior to the reaya peasants, the common taxpaying subjects of the sSultan, and they resisted fiercely whenever their “privileges” were in jeopardy.34

THE CLASSICAL OTTOMAN LAND REGIME

The Ottoman state had, until the middle of the fifteenth century, structural features not unlike those of the contemporary feudal states of Europe. The sultan was the overlord of powerful Turkish beys of Anatolia who formed a virtual nobility.35 In the Balkans, similarly, there were Christian princes bound in vassalage to the sultan. (Incidentally, this feudal framework might explain why leaders of Christian peoples in the Balkans supported varying 32 Mihailo Dinić, "Dubrovačka srednjovekovna karavanska trgovina", Jugoslovenski istoriski časopis 3 (1937), 119-146; Traian Stoianovich, "The Conquering Balkan Orthodox Merchant", Journal of Economic History 20 (1960): 234-313; Francis W. Carter, Dubrovnik (Ragusa): A Classic City-State (London and New York: Seminar Press, 1972), pp. 138, 151ff.; Max Demeter Peyfuss, "Balkanorthodoxe Kaufleute in Wien: Soziale und nationale Differenzierung im Spiegel der Privilegien für die griechisch-orthodoxe Kirche zur Heiligen Dreifaltigkeit", Österreichische Osthefte 17 (1975): 258-268. 33 This consciousness was common to all "peasant-soldiers". A well-known example are the Hungarian haiduks in the early modern period. See István Rácz, A hajdúk a XVII. században (Debrecen: Universityof Debrecen, 1969); and several contributions in Aus der Geschichte der ostmitteleuropäischen Bauernbewegungen im 16.-17. Jahrhundert, Gusztáv Heckenast, ed. (Budapest: Akadémia Kiadó, 1977). 34 See Fikret Adanır, "Heiduckentum und osmanische Herrschaft. Sozialgeschichtliche Aspekte der Diskussion um das frühneuzeitliche Räuberwesen in Südosteuropa", Südost-Forschungen 41 (1982): 43-116. 35 Mustafa Akdağ, Türkiye’nin iktisadî ve içtimaî tarihi, I: 1243-1453 (İstanbul:Cem Yayınevi, 1974), pp. 285-386. For an example of a Turkish aristocratic family see İsmail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı, Çandarlı vezir ailesi (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1974).

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Ottoman factions during the chaotic years of the Iinterregnum from1402 to 1413, instead of joining forces to take advantage of Ottoman weakness.)36 In this respect, the reign of Mehmed II marks a turning point in Ottoman history. With the capture of Constantinople in 1453 Mehmed II, perhaps also in awareness of being heir to the Eastern Roman tradition, began to implement a centralistic imperial policy, laying thereby the foundations of the classical Ottoman state.37

The Ottoman landholding system, known under the name of timar,38 wasperfected during the period starting in the second half of the fifteenth century and lasting approximately until the last quarterof the sixteenth. The rights and obligations of the reaya, laid down in detail in provincial kanunnames, the data contained in various land surveys, and the extant registers of kadı courts permittoday the reconstruction of a picture of the conditions prevailingin the countryside. The individual peasant disposed of his house, barn, shop, vineyard, orchard, or vegetable garden as mülk, a term of Islamic law corresponding to dominium plenum in re potestatem of Roman

36 On the Interregnum see Paul Wittek, "De la défaite d’Ankara à laprise de Constantinople", Revue des études islamiques 12 (1938): 1-34.37 See Franz Babinger, Mehmed der Eroberer und seine Zeit. Weltensturmer einer Zeitenwende (München: F. Bruckmann, 1953), p. 266; Halil İnalcık, "The Rise of the Ottoman Empire", in A History of the Ottoman Empire to 1730 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), pp. 40-53; Osman Turan, Türk cihân hâkimiyeti mefkûresi tarihi, 3d ed. (İstanbul: Nakışlar Yayınevi, 1979), pp. 363-399; Bistra Cvetkova, "Sur certaines réformes du régime foncier au temps de Mehmet II", Journal of Economic and Social History of the Orient 6 (1963): 104-120; Ernst Werner, Sultan Mehmed der Eroberer und die Epochenwende im 15. Jahrhundert (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1982). 38 Ömer L. Barkan, "Timar", İslâm Ansiklopedisi, Volvol. 12 (İstanbul, 1972), pp. 287-333; and "Deodal düzen ve Osmanlı timarı", in Türkiye iktisat tarihi semineri, Ankara, 8-10 Haziran 1973. Metinler/Tartışmalar, O. Okyar, Ü. Nalbantoğlu, eds. (Ankara: Hacettepe Üniversitesi Yayını, 1975), pp. 1-24; Hamid Hadžibegić, "Rasprava Ali Čauša iz Sofije o timarskoj organizaciji u XVII stoljeću", Glasnik Zemaljskog muzeja u Sarajevu 2 (1947): 139-206. On the origins of the institutionsee Nicoară Beldiceanu, Le timar dans l’État ottoman: début XIVe-début XVIe siècle(Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1980).

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law, that is, as private property with all the rights implied by the terms jus utendi, fruendi et abutendi.39 By contrast, the agricultural land was “state land” (mirî), only the usufruct of which belonged to the peasant.40 However, the cultivator held the land in the formof a perpetual lease and could, within the limits of local custom,freely determine the crop pattern, provided he fulfilled his obligations toward the sipahi cavalryman, to whom the state had apportioned a certain amount of the agricultural surplus of an area as compensation for military service.

To the sipahi the peasant had to deliver in the first place the tithes of all agricultural produce. Next in importance was a land tax called çift resmi when due to be paid by Muslims and ispence in the case of Christians. In the Balkans, the çift resmi amounted to 22 akçes and the ispence to 25 akçes. Both taxes were in reality the money equivalents of the traditional labor services, which no longer played an important role in the Ottoman system.41

As for the obligations of the reaya toward the state, the Christian adult males were supposed to pay a head tax (cizye), the amount ofwhich was fixed by Islamic law at three levels: 12, 24, or 48 dirhem silver (1 dirhem = 3.2 grams of silver) according to the economic capacity of the taxpayer.42 Expressed in Ottoman currency, akçe, which had a silver content for most of the 39 F. A. Belin, "Étude sur la propriété en pays musulmans et spécialement en Turquie", Journal asiatique 18 (1861): 410. See also Colin Imber, "The Status of Orchards and Fruit Trees in Ottoman Law", Tarih Enstitüsü dergisi 12 (1981-1982): 763-774.40 See, also for the following, Ömer L. Barkan, "Osmanlı İmparatorluğunda çiftçi sınıfların hukukî statüsü", Ülkü 9 (1937): 33-48, 101-116, 329-341; 10 (1937), 147-159, 293-302, 414-422; Barkan, "Türkiye’de toprak meselesinin tarihi esasları", Ülkü 11 (1938): 51-63, 233-240, 339-346.41 Halil İnalcık, "Osmanlılarda raiyyet rüsûmu", Belleten 23 (1959): 575-610; Vera Mutafčieva, "De l’éxploitation féodale dans les terres de population bulgare sous la domination turque au XVe et XVIe s.," Études historiques 1 (1960): 145-170; Vera Mutafčieva, Agrarnite Otnošenija v Osmanskata imperija prez XV-XVI v. (Sofija: Bălgarska akademija na naukite, 1962); D. Bojanić-Lukač, "De la nature et del’origine de l’ispendje", Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 68 (1976): 9-30.

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sixteenth century of 0.6 grams,43 the respective equivalents were 64, 128, and 256 akçes. During that century, however, the Christianpopulation in the Balkans actually paid, in lieu of the head tax, a household tax amounting to 60 to 70 akçes annually, which, incidentally, was the approximate equivalent of a Venetian ducat.44

Christians and Moslems alike paid to the treasury a tax on small animals like sheep and pigs, one akçe for every two heads, a very low amount.45 It is remarkable that this tax remained practically unchanged until 1857 and that the typical animal raisers, the Wallachians, were often exempted from the tax on sheep altogether.46

The most significant in the long run were the so-called extraordinary or irregular taxes (avarız-i divaniyye), levied upon avarız haneleri, fiscal units consisting of three, five, or ten households each. For most of the sixteenth century, these taxes retained the character of irregular payments, collected usually tocover the costs of military campaigns. Sometimes corn, barley, or

42 B. C. Nedkoff, "Osmanlı İmparatorluğunda cizye (baş vergisi)", Belleten 8 (1944): 599-649: Ömer L. Barkan, "894 (1488-1489) yılı cizyesinin tahsilatına âit muhasebe bilançoları", Belgeler 1:1 (1964): 1-117; Hamid Hadžibegić, Glavarina u Osmanskoj državi (Sarajevo: Orijentalni institut, 1966). 43 See table 1 in Ljuben Berov, Dviženieto na cenite na Balkanite prez XVI-XIX vek i evropejskata revoljucija na cenite (Sofija: Bălgarska akademija na naukite, 1976), pp. 183-185. 44 Hamid Hadžibegić, "Džizja ili harač", Prilozi za orijentalnu filologiju 3-4 (1952-1953): 55-136, 5 (1954-1955), 43-102; Gyula Kaldy-Nagy, ed.,Kanuni devri Budin tahrir defteri, 1546-1562 (Ankara: Ankara Üniversitesi Yayınları, 1971), p. 1; Adem Handžić, "O društvenoj strukturi stanovništva u Bosni početkom XVII stoljeća", Prilozi za orijentalnu filologiju 32-33 (1982-1983): 129-146. 45 For example, in the sancak of Srem, where stock raising was important in the sixteenth century, the contribution of this tax to the total of normal tax revenues was only 7 percent. See Bruce W. McGowan, ed., Sirem sancağı mufassal tahrir defteri (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1983), p. lxiv. 46 Hamid Hadžibegić, "Porez na sitnu stoku i korištenje ispaša", Prilozi za orijentalnu filologiju 8-9 (1958-1959): 63-109.

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hay had to be delivered for the army; at other times a sum of money, the avarız akçesi, was required. The general trend was a gradual shift toward payments in cash.47

The exemption from the irregular taxes constituted the most commonform of granting “privileges” to population groups with special duties, the so-called muaf reaya. Miners, rice cultivators, horse breeders, tar extractors, saline workers, producers of gunpowder, of lubricating greases and oils, of charcoal, sometimes whole villages near mountain passes or at river crossings enjoyed some sort of tax immunity.48 According to one estimation, about 13 percent of all households belonged to the muaf category.49 In the sancak of Sirem (Sirmium) on the middle Danube, for example, forty settlements were thus privileged, “a goodly portion of the total population of Srem and a substantial alienation of revenue.”50

The prebendal system of surplus extraction in the Ottoman Empire, which depended for its functioning on the state’s ability to control the mechanisms of redistribution in the society, seems to have permitted quite tolerable conditions of life in the countryside. It is generally acknowledged that the tax load of thepeasantry was not unduly heavy.51 It should, however, be

47 Ömer L. Barkan, "Avarız", İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 2 (İstanbul, 1943), pp. 13-19; Bistra Cvetkova, Izvănredni danăci i dăržavni povinnosti v bălgarskite zemi pod turska vlast (Sofija: Bălgarska akademija na naukite, 1958). 48 İnalcık, "Osmanlılarda raiyyet rüsûmu", p. 598; Vera P. Mutafčieva, "Kategoriite feodalno zavisimo naselenie v našite zemipod turska vlast prez XV-XVIv.", Izvestija na Instituta za istorija pri Bălgarskata akademija na naukite 9 (1960): 80. 49 Ö. L. Barkan, "Osmanlı İmparatorluğunda çiftçi sınıfların hukukîstatüsü", Ülkü 9 (1937): 103 fn. 1. 50 McGowan, Sirem sancağı, p. lxxii. 51 Traian Stoianovich, "Balkan Peasants and Landlords and the Ottoman State: Familial Economy, Market Economy and Modernization", in La révolution industrielle dans le Sud-Est Européen - XIX. S. N. Todorov et al., ed. (Sofia: Institut d’Études Balkaniques, 1977), p. 174f. As Lampe and Jackson have pointed out, "the systemleft the Balkan peasant almost a century to cultivate grain in thelowlands on better terms, if not with more modern methods or even

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remembered that this “golden age” of Ottoman rule was not a phenomenon unique to the Ottoman Empire, but coincided with the general demographic and agricultural upswing in the rest of Europe. Practically everywhere the sixteenth century was a period of population rise and intense land reclamation.52 In the Balkans,the rapid urbanization, the demands of a large army frequently engaged in long campaigns, and the occasional opportunity to export corn to Italy and other Mediterranean countries were among the inducements to extend the arable land.53

The land registered in the contemporary surveys under the categorymezraa deserves special attention when discussing the nature and extent of this process. However, there is still uncertainty in theliterature as to the exact meaning of mezraa. For Halil İnalcık, who offered a definition already in the mid-1950s, the term denoted the land of a deserted or destroyed village; more recently, he has employed it in the sense of “abandoned arable lands of mîrî status.”54 Following İnalcık, Bistra Cvetkova added

greater commercial incentive, than the shifting balance of feudal power between native lords had afforded them in the late medieval period." Balkan Economic History, p. 33. 52 B. H. Slicher van Bath, The Agrarian History of Western Europe. A.D. 500-1850(London: Arnold, 1963), pp. 195-206; Peter Kriedte, Spätfeudalismus und Handelskapital. Grundlinien der europäischen Wirtschaftsgeschichte vom 16. bis zum Ausgang des 18. Jahrhunderts (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1980), pp. 28-78. 53 Maurice Aymard, Venise, Raguse et la commerce du blé pendant la seconde moitié du XVIe siècle, Paris 1966, pp. 125-140; Jorjo Tadić, "L’unité économique des Balkans et de la région méditerranéenne", in AIESEE, Actes du premier congrès international des études balkaniques et sud-est européennes, vol. III (Sofia: Académie Bulgare des Sciences, 1969), pp. 663-640; Nikolaj Todorov, Balkanskijat grad, XV-XIX vek. Socijalno-ikonomičesko i demografsko razvitie (Sofija: Nauka i izkustvo, 1972); Aleksandar Stojanovski, Gradovite na Makedonija od krajot na XIV do XVII vek - Demografski proučuvanja (Skopje: Institut za nacionalna istorija, 1981). 54 See Halil İnalcık, Hicrî 835 tarihli suret-i defter-i Sancağ-ı Arvanid (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1954), p. xxix, and "The Emergence of Big Farms, Çiftliks: State, Landlords and Tenants", in Contributions à l’histoire économique et sociale de l’Empire ottoman (Collection Turcica, III) (Louvain: Peeters, 1984), p. 112.

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that these “terres arables non habitées” were the result of the depopulation of the countryside during the period of Ottoman conquest.55 Christo Gandev pushed this interpretation to its extreme: he counted every mezraa in Bulgaria mentioned in the Ottoman registers as a former village that had been destroyed by the Turks, thus arriving at a total of 2,608 “lost villages” with an annihilated Bulgarian population of 560,720 persons.56

A rather different reading of the term mezraa was offered by Lajos Fekete. He took the word to denote simply “uninhabited land” and translated it, as far as Hungary was concerned, as puszta.57 It is evident that uninhabited land and land of an abandoned village do not mean the same thing.

We owe further clarification of the term to two Bulgarian historians. Petŭr St. Koleradov considered mezraa as corresponding to the Byzantine zeugelateion and the Old Slavonic zevgelïa, both of which originally - during the period of agricultural expansion in the Middle Ages - denoted “a secluded farm.”58 In view of certain historiographic tendencies in his country, Koleradov made it a point to stress that the mezraa of the Ottoman period could not have been the land of a former Bulgarian village.59 Strašimir Dimitrov supported this concept. Arguing explicitly against Gandevand Cvetkova, he pointed out that the mezraa in the Ottoman sourcessignified cultivated, not abandoned, land. He explained the

55 Les Institutions ottomanes en Europe (Wiesbaden: F. Steiner, 1978), p. 15.56 Bălgarskata narodnost prez 15i vek. Demografsko i etnografsko izsledvane (Sofija: Nauka i izkustvo, 1972), pp. 20-56. 57 Die Siyaqat-Schrift in der türkischen Finanzverwaltung. Vol. 1, Einleitung, Textproben (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1955), p. 77. On the varying meanings of the term "puszta" in the context of historical geography see Péter Gunst, "Das ungarische Wort ‘puszta’ und seineBedeutung", in Wirtschaftliche und soziale Strukturen im saekularen Wandel. Festschrift für Wilhelm Abel zum 70. Geburtstag, Ingomar Bog et al., eds. (Hannover: M. & H. Schaper, 1974), pp. 212-216. 58 "Kăm văprosa za razvitieto na selištnata mreža i na nejnite elementi v središtnata i iztočnata čast na Balkanite ot VII do XVIII v.", Izvestija na Instituta za istorija pri Bălgarskata akademija na naukite 18 (1967): 89-146, particularly 135. 59 "Kăm văprosa za razvitieto...", 136.

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relative density of mezraas in Bulgaria in the late fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries as proof of the advanced sedentation process of the nomads.60

A similar view was taken by the German geographer and historian Wolf-Dieter Hütteroth. Studying settlement patterns in central Anatolia, he considered mezraas to have been arable spots inhabitedonly temporarily by cultivators of nomadic origin.61 Later, with respect to southern Syria, he defined mezraa as “usually small arable areas, dispersed amongst the hills, lying within the village area but apart from the main fields belonging to the village, as is still the case today.”62 Suraiya Faroqhi, writing about the situation in the Balkans and Anatolia, elaborated on this definition: The mezraa

was in most cases a temporary settlement where certainfamilies lived during the summer to cultivate the surroundingfields and pasture their flocks. Occasionally a family or twowas registered as domiciled in such a place. In areas ofstrong nomad preponderance, actual villages were often few andfar between, and the mezraa constituted the dominant type. Inplaces where settled peasantry predominated, a village oftenhad one or more mezraas attached to it. . . . There was atendency for mezraas to form the core of new villages in timesof population expansion and for villages to continue theirexistence as mezraas in time of decline.63

60 Strašimir Dimitrov, "Mezrite i demografskijat kolaps na bălgarskata narodnost prez XV v.", Vekove 2:6 (1973): 50-65. 61 Ländliche Siedlungen im südlichen Inneranatolien in den letzten vierhundert Jahren (Göttingen: Göttinger Geographische Abhandlungen, 46, 1968), pp. 169ff. 62 Wolf-Dieter Hütteroth and Kamal Abdulfattah, Historical Geography of Palestine, Transjordan and Southern Syria in the Late 16th Century (Erlangen: Erlanger Geographische Arbeiten, 5, 1977), p. 29. This view is supported by Ehud Toledano, "The sanjaq of Jerusalem in the Sixteenth Century. Aspects of Topography and Population", Archivum Ottomanicum 9 (1984), 279-319. 63 Suraiya Faroqhi, "Rural Society in Anatolia and the Balkans during the Sixteenth Century, II", Turcica 11 (1979): 104f. See also Faroqhi, "The Peasants of Saideli in the Late Sixteenth Century", Archivum Ottomanicum 8 (1983): 225f.

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In my opinion, the interpretation of the term mezraa developed by the group of scholars from Fekete to Faroqhi is more convincing64 Of particular importance for this paper is the correlation they establish between the mezraa and transhumance or the nomadic way oflife. In most cases, the emergence of new villages and the extension of the arable land were indicators of sedentation of pastoral groups. For instance, Strašimir Dimitrov has shown that asubstantial number of mezraas in Bulgaria, cultivated mostly by nomadic yürük during the fifteenth century, had gradually developedinto permanent settlements.65 The sancaks of Semendire, Sirem, and Segedin on the Middle Danube, once known as livestock-raising provinces par excellence, became corn surplus areas in the second half of the sixteenth century, after the population subject to theWallachian Law had turned to agriculture.66 In central Anatolia, the mezraas of the Atçeken nomads had acquired by the last quarter of the sixteenth century the status of ordinary agricultural settlements.67 Similarly, in the sixteenth century the huge Cilician plain in southern Anatolia came under the plow for the 64 To be sure, the phenomenon of deserted villages - this has been shown above - was not unknown in the Balkans. But the Ottoman surveys, as a brief review of published tahrir defterleri would suggest, registered them as such, and not as mezraa. For many examples see Gy. Kaldy-Nagy, Kanuni devri Budin tahrir defteri, pp. 61, 62, 63, 114, 152, 224, 322, 323, 336; Opširni popisni defteri od XVI vek za kustendilskiot sandžak (Turski dokumenti za istorijata na makedonskiot narod, t. V, kn. II), Metodi Sokoloski, trans. and ed. (Skopje: Archiv na Makedonija, 1980), pp. 101, 178, 234, 311, 469, 493, 558, 588; B. McGowan, Sirem sancağî mufassal tahrir defteri, pp. 85, 111, 340, 463, 492, 505. For an especially interesting example see p. 37, where the village "Beleveg" in the nahiye of "Ilok" is registered as deserted (hâli ez râya), but in its vicinity also a mezraa is registered, practicallyunder the same name as mezraa-i belevega - a good indication of the fact that the Ottomans differentiated between the two terms. 65 Dimitrov, "Mezrite i demografskijat kolaps", pp. 52ff. For many examples for yürük settling on the mezraas see Opširni popisni defteri od XVIvek za Kustendilskiot sandžak. 66 See Bruce McGowan, "Food Supply and Taxation on the Middle Danube, 1568-1579", Archivum Ottomanicum 1 (1969): 139-196. 67 W.-D. Hütteroth, Ländliche Siedlungen im südlichen Inneranatolien, p. 170f.; Faroqhi, "The Peasants of Saideli", p. 230f.

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first time since late antiquity; again, the new cultivators were former nomads who had settled on the mezraas.68

It seems that the term mezraa played an important role in connection with the şenlendirme policy of the state, that is, the “revivification” of wasteland. The state encouraged the restitution of unused lands to agriculture, recognizing the right of private ownership (mülk) on such lands.69 Enterprising members of the ruling elite invested considerable amounts of capital in land reclamation, especially for the purpose of rice cultivation, which was introduced into the Balkans during Ottoman times.70 In this way some unused land in river valleys was turned into rice paddies. Once the reclamation project had been authorized by the central government, much capital was needed, primarily for the construction of canals and other types of water conducting systemsand, later on, for their maintenance. More difficult, however, wasfinding the labor. As Halil İnalcık has noted, “the peasantry usually sought to escape rice cultivation not only because of the heavy physical nature of the work and the health hazards connectedwith it, but also because of intensive exploitation of their labor.”71 On the other hand, the Ssultan’s authorization document contained as a rule a stipulation that no peasant could be employed against his will on such an enterprise. Consequently, thespecial category of rice cultivators (çeltükçi-reaya) came into being, which allowed the parties involved a modus vivendi

68 Yusuf Halaçoğlu, "Tapu-tahrîr defterlerine göre XVI. yüzyılın ilk yarısında Sis (= Kozan) sancağı", Tarih Dergisi 32 (1979): 819-892;Mustafa Soysal, Die Siedlungs- und Landschaftsentwicklung der Çukurova. Mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Yüreğir-Ebene (Erlangen: Erlanger Geographische Arbeiten, 4, 1976). 69 Ömer L. Barkan, "Mülk topraklar ve sultanların temlîk hakkı", İstanbul Hukuk Fakültesi Mecmuası 7 (1941): 157-176. See also Klaus Schwarz, "Eine Herrscherurkunde Sultan Murads II. für den Wesir Fazlullâh", Journal of Turkish Studies 5 (1981): 45-60. 70 Halil İnalcık, "Rice Cultivation and the çeltükçi-re’âyâ System in the Ottoman Empire", Turcica 14 (1982): 69-141. See also Nicoară Beldiceanu und I. Beldiceanu-Steinherr, "Riziculture dans l’Empireottoman (XVe-XVIe siècle)", Turcica 9-10 (1978): 9-28. 71 İnalcık, "Rice Cultivation", pp. 83-84.

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(excepting, of course, the servile labor72 - war prisoners or otherslaves - employed to a limited degree on some demesnes). The main attraction for peasants to turn to rice cultivation was the exemption from the extraordinary government levies. It is interesting that despite this “privilege” the majority of the rice-growing population in the lowlands of Thrace and Macedonia aswell as in comparable locations of Anatolia was not of settled peasant background, but of nomadic origin.

RURAL CHANGE DURING THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

The transformation of classical Ottoman agrarian relations is generally considered to have set in during the last quarter of thesixteenth century.73 The causes of this complex process and the factors influencing it are, as has been indicated, a matter of lively discussion. That the process cannot be understood without reference to the underlying class interests is not disputed. Equally important from the historian’s point of view are the questions: why did the transformation set in at the time it did, and how can the specific results that it brought about be explained?

A basic, but not necessarily the decisive, factor to be consideredwhen studying agrarian change is the legal framework affecting thefree movement of the population in the countryside. The Ottoman reaya peasants enjoyed a remarkable degree of mobility. Although they were supposed to pay a special tax to the sipahi when they left their farmsteads, this did not necessarily mean bondage to the soil.74 On the contrary, stipulations in some provincial

72 Halil İnalcık, "Servile Labor in the Ottoman Empire", in The Mutual Effects of the Islamic and Judeo-Christian Worlds: The East European Pattern, Abraham Ascher, Tibor Halasi-Kun, Béla K. Király, eds. (Brooklyn, N.Y.: Brooklyn College Press, 1979), pp. 25-52. 73 Mustafa Akdağ, "Timar rejiminin bozuluşu", Ankara Üniversitesi Dil ve Tarih-Coğrafya Fakültesi Dergisi 3 (1945): 419,431; Halil Cin, Osmanlı toprak düzeni ve bu düzenin bozulması (Ankara: Kültür Bakanlığı Yayınları, 1978); Halil İnalcık, "Military and Fiscal Transformation in the Ottoman Empire, 1600-1700", Archivum Ottomanicum 6 (1980): 283-337. 74 Nikolaj Todorov wrote: "La loi même et la pratique courante permettaient aux personnes qui s’établissaient ailleurs d’y

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kanunnames providing for a “compensation” for fief holders were post factum measures, indicating not only that peasants left the land in significant numbers, but also that they could do so legally, whenever it seemed economically prudent.75 The following passage from the kanunname of Požega, dated 1545, illustrates this point quite well:

And many reaya after being registered as the reaya of a sipahi andbound to production, become woodsmen, or potters, orfishermen, or millers, or stoneworkers, and some do day laboror busy themselves in some other way for a living. And havingabandoned agriculture no tithes or taxes from them go to thesipahi. Because of their untrustworthiness 80 akches in cash havebeen customarily taken from the poorer of these under the nameof chift bozan (“farm-breaking”) and 120 akches from the betteroff; and for this reason this has been entered into the newimperial survey in that fashion.76

exerces librement une autre profession" and further: "La circulation de la main-d’oeuvre n’était pas sérieusement entravée par les rapports agraires existants". See his "Sur quelques aspects du passage du féodalisme au capitalisme dans les territoires balkaniques de l’Empire ottoman", Revue des études sud-est européennes 1 (1963): 118, 121. Bistra Cvetkova, too, pointed out that, under the condition of paying a special tax, a peasant couldat any time "abandone l’agriculture pour devenir artisan, transporteur ou ouvrier". See "Actes concernant la vie économique de villes et ports balkaniques aux XVe et XVIe siècles", Revue d’études islamiques 4 (1972): 356. On the relative freedom of the Balkanpeasants in this period see also Peter F. Sugar, Southeastern Europe, pp. 212, 218f. 75 Aleksandar Matkovski, who starts from the thesis that the reaya were serfs bound to the land - see his Kreposništvoto v Makedonija vo vreme na turskoto vladeenje (Skopje: Institut za nacionalna istorija, 1978) - studies phenomena of peasants giving up agriculture primarily in the context of social protest against the Ottoman feudal system. See his Otporot v Makedonija vo vremeto na turskoto vladeenje. Vol. 1, Pasivniot otpor (Skopje: Misla, 1983), passim. The opposite standpoint on the question of serfdom in the Ottoman Empire, represented by Ömer L. Barkan, "Türkiye’de ‘servaj’ var mî idi?", Belleten 20 (1956): 237-246, suffers from a strictly juridical approach to the subject.

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How was this mobility of the peasantry related to demographic fluctuations during the early modern period? There is unanimity ofopinion that the population of the Ottoman Balkans as well as of Anatolia increased considerably in the course of the sixteenth century.77 It seems that until about the 1580s the production of cereals could keep pace with this development; in fact, the periodbetween 1548 and 1564 saw a boom of Ottoman wheat exports to Italy.78 From then on, however, the authorities were frequently compelled to issue a ban on grain exports, apparently because theywere having increasing difficulties in provisioning the urban centers, especially the capital of the Empire.79 In order to secure the regular flow of staples to lstanbul, a complicated system of preemptive purchases by state agents had to be elaborated, which relied as the main areas of supply on the Bulgarian Black Sea shore, the northern coast of the Aegean, and the eastern shores of the Sea of Marmara.80

76 Bruce McGowan, Economic Life in Ottoman Europe: Taxation, Trade and the Struggle for Land, 1660-1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 53. 77 See Ömer L. Barkan, "Essai sur les données statistiques des registres de recensement dans l’Empire ottoman aux XVe et XVIe siècles", Journal of Economic and Social History of the Orient 1 (1957): 9-36, especially pp. 26-31; Josiah C. Russell, "Late Medieval Balkan andAsia Minor Population", Journal of Economic and Social History of the Orient 3 (1960): 265-274; Leila Erder and Suraiya Faroqhi, "Population Riseand Fall in Anatolia, 1550-1620", Middle Eastern Studies 15 (1979): 322-345. 78 Aymard, Raguse et la commerce du blé, pp. 125ff. 79 For a list of the periods of dearth and famine in the Ottoman Empire between 1578 and 1637 see Lûtfi Güçer, XVI-XVII asırlarda Osmanlı İmparatorluğunda hububat meselesi ve hububattan alınan vergiler (İstanbul: İstanbul Üniversitesi Yayınları, 1968), pp. 8-9. 80 On the system of provisioning Istanbul see Lûtfi Güçer, "XVI. yüzyıl sonlarında Osmanlı İmparatorluğu dahilinde hububat ticaretinin tabi olduğu kayıtlar", İktisat Fakültesi Mecmuası 13 (1951-52): 79-98; Robert Mantran, Istanbul dans la seconde moitié du XVIIe siècle: Essai d’histoire institutionelle, économique et sociale (Paris: A. Maisonneuve,1962), pp.181-213; M. M. Alexandrescu-Dersca, "Quelques données sur le ravitaillement de Constantinople au XVIe

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Toward the end of the sixteenth century, the rise in population reached its peak. This is indicated, among other things, by the relatively high number of “half-farms” (nim çift) in some tax registers of the period, apparently a result of the splitting up of farmsteads.81 According to Suraiya Faroqhi, who has studied land surveys pertaining to central Anatolia, the rise in population was accompanied by a general impoverishment of the peasantry. For example, the survey of 1584 registered, in comparison with earlier records, considerably higher percentages of the population as landless and unmarried.82 Interestingly, wantof land or exorbitant landholding relations were not the chief cause of this development; in fact, land was abundant, but

it was fairly difficult at times for an Anatolian peasant totake new land under cultivation. The provision of fodder fornew plough animals was a limiting factor, as was the scarcityof cultivable land lying within manageable distance from asite well enough provided with water to support a settlement.83

Keeping this in mind, one can understand why M. A. Cook even speaks of “population pressure” for certain parts of Anatolia in the late sixteenth century.84 According to his calculations, the ratio of bachelors to adult males had risen from approximately 3 percent at the end of the fifteenth to 48 percent at the end of the sixteenth century.85 One can assume, therefore, that under theprevailing conditions many unmarried men left the villages in search of new occupations, thus contributing to the swell in the

siècle", in AIESEE, Actes du premier congrès international des études balkaniques et sud-est européennes, vol. III (Sofia: Académie Bulgare des Sciences,1969) pp. 661-673; Suraiya Faroqhi, "İstanbul’un iaşesi ve Tekirdağ-Rodosçuk limanı (16.-17. yüzyıllar)", ODTÜ Gelişme Dergisi 1979-80 Özel Sayısı : 139-154; McGowan, Economic Life in Ottoman Europe, pp.10-15. 81 See the data given by Faroqhi, "The Peasants of Saideli", pp. 221-223. 82 Faroqhi, "The Peasants of Saideli", p. 224f. 83 Faroqhi, "The Peasants of Saideli", p. 224. 84 M. A. Cook, Population Pressure in Rural Anatolia, 1450-1600 (London: OxfordUniversity Press, 1972). 85 Cook, Population Pressure, pp. 25-27.

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urban population.86 But some took up a profession unusual for peasant youth - they became soldiers.

The “price revolution,” which hit the Ottoman Empire about this time - 1584 saw a massive devaluation of the currency - was a further factor that affected profoundly the redistributive mechanisms of the Ottoman system."87 Especially the timar fiefs, defined in terms of fixed income, soon became economically obsolete. (Eventually, the state was going to have difficulties infinding interested persons for vacant timars in some regions of theEmpire.)88 In turn, less and less sipahis heeded the summons to joina military campaign.89 Thus, the timar system gradually lost its previous significance as the basis of Ottoman military might. The central government was confronted with the problem of financing a new army of paid soldiers at a time when the treasury was practically empty.90 It responded by farming out the taxes of moreand more timars.91

86 See Suraiya Faroqhi, Towns and Townsmen of Ottoman Anatolia. Trade, Crafts, and Food Production in an Urban Setting, 1520-1650 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 267-287. 87 Ömer L. Barkan, "The Price Revolution of the Sixteenth Century: A Turning Point in the Economic History of the Near East", International Journal of Middle East Studies 6 (1975): 3-28, and "Les mouvements des prix en Turquie entre 1490 et 1655", in Histoire économique du monde méditerranéen 1450-1650. Mélanges en l’honneur de Fernand Braudel, vol. I (Toulouse: E. Privat, 1973), pp. 65-79. 88 This was the case at the beginning of the eighteenth century. See Strašimir Dimitrov, "Politikata na upravljavaštata vărchăška vTurcija sprjamo spachijstvoto prez vtoroto polovina na XVIII v.", Istoričeski pregled 18:5 (1962). 32-60, particularly 37-39. 89 Vera Mutafčieva and Strašimir Dimitrov, Sur l’état du système des timars des XVIIe-XVIIIe ss. (Sofia: Académie Bulgare des Sciences, 1968), pp. 21ff. 90 İnalcık, The Ottoman Empire, p. 49f. 91 See Bistra Cvetkova, "Recherches sur le système d’affermage (iltizam) dans l’Empire ottoman au cours du XVIe-XVIIe siècle par rapport aux contrées bulgares, Rocznik orientalistyczny 27:2 (1964): 111-132.

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The growing importance of the infantry equipped with firearms to the detriment of the traditional cavalry accounts to a great extent for the emergence of a new class of peasant-soldiers (levendat) who contributed to the destabilization of rural society.92 According to Halil İnalcık, the state’s demand for moreand more mercenaries equipped with muskets in order to be a match for the Austrian infantry was the chief factor enticing the underemployed village youth to abandon the land. Provincial governors began to recruit private troops from among such young men, reducing in this way their dependence on the unenthusiastic -and outdated - sipahi as a fighting force. Such irregular peasant units were relatively cheap, since they were disbanded as soon as the campaigning season was over, or, when kept, the burden of feeding them was imposed on the peasantry.93 Understandably, villagers resented visits by military leaders and their retinues. The latter reacted by forming marauding bands, joined by hungry, unruly students (suhte) and often by some disgruntled sipahi; they terrorized the countryside. This situation, which climaxed in the celâlî revolts of 1603-1610, caused the depopulation of wide stretches of land in Anatolia.94

92 On the emergence of the levendat see Mustafa Cezar, Osmanlı tarihinde levendler (İstanbul: Güzel Sanatlar Akademisi Yayınları, 1965), pp. 30-40. 93 See İnalcık, "Military and Fiscal Transformation", pp. 287ff., and "The Socio-Political Effects of the Diffusion of Fire-Arms in the Middle East", in War, Technology and Society in the Middle East, J. Parry and M.E. Yapp, eds. (London: Oxford University Press, 1975), pp. 195-217. By contrast, Niels Steensgaard has advanced the hypothesis that not the technological response to Austrian military superiority, but the government’s increased liquidity as a result of inflation during the price revolution prepared the ground for the mercenary system in the Ottoman Empire. See his The Asian Trade Revolution of the Seventeenth Century. The East India Companies and the Decline of the Caravan Trade (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1974), p. 80. 94 The classical work on the celâlî movement is that of Mustafa Akdağ,Celâlî isyanları (1550-1603) (Ankara: Ankara Üniversitesi Yayınları, 1963). See also William J. Griswold, The Great Anatolian Rebellion, 1000-1020/1591-1611 (Berlin: K. Schwarz, 1983).

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However, also in the Ottoman Balkans, which had not experienced anything like the devastations of the celâlî revolts, the contractionof the arable land, coupled with a population decrease that reached alarming levels, was a common phenomenon. Bruce McGowan mentions the following hypothetical explanations for the drop in population of about 25 percent in the Macedonian district of Manastır before 1641: overtaxation, brigandage, climate change, crop failures, famines, and epidemics such as typhus.95

No doubt, preindustrial rural societies were highly vulnerable to the vicissitudes of nature. Crop failure followed by famine and epidemics was a constant threat.96 As regards the Balkans, evidence in contemporary travel accounts corroborates this view. For example, nearly all the peasants whom the Austrian envoy to the Porte encountered between Belgrade and Aleksinac in the summerof 1608 seemed to be ill. Apparently they were suffering from a fever that the Austrians associated with the unwholesome air, food, and water of the region.97

With respect to the overtaxation of the peasantry as a possible factor of population decline, it is important to know that the seventeenth century was the period during which the extraordinary taxes (avarız) became the main source of revenue for the state. To 95 McGowan, Economic Life in Ottoman Europe, pp. 86f., 131-134. 96 See Wilhelm Abel, Agrarkrisen und Agrarkonjunktur: Eine Geschichte der Land- und Ernährungswirtschaft Mitteleuropas seit dem hohen Mittelalter (Hamburg-Berlin:P. Parey, 1978), pp. 129-135, and Massenarmut und Hungerkrisen im vorindustriellen Europa: Versuch einer Synopsis (Hamburg-Berlin: P. Parey, 1974), pp. 17-32. Cf. also some critical evaluations regarding theinfluence of the climate on agricultural productivity in T. M. L. Wigles et al., eds., Climate and History: Studies in Past Climates and Their Impact on Man (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981). 97 The envoy wrote, "Von Griegischen Weissenburg [Belgrade] bis daher [Aleksinac] sein uns stetig viel Leuth, entweder der ungewähnlichen Lufft, Speis oder Tranck und großer Hitz, die gewest, erkranckt, alle miteinand hitzige Kranckheiten". See Karl Nehring, Adam Freiherrn zu Herbersteins Gesandtschaftsreise nach Konstantinopel. Ein Beitrag zum Frieden von Zsitvatorok (1606) (München: R. Oldenbourg, 1983), p.114. For a list of epidemics in the Balkans during the seventeenthcentury see Vladimir Bazala, "Calendarium pestis (II)", Acta historica medicinae, pharmaciae, veterinae 2 (Beograd, 1957): 72-87.

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cover the enormous costs of the wars of 1593-1606, 1645-1669, and 1683-1699, the central authority resorted to the annual collectionof extraordinary taxes, exacting, for instance, about 900 akçes from each nominal tax household in the middle of the century, a rate which was about three times as high as the average rate in the sixteenth century, even when calculated in constant prices.98 Furthermore, the head tax (cizye), paid in the Balkans as a household tax, was reverted at the end of the seventeenth century to its original form of a personal tax, thus becoming a heavier burden.99 Despite the increasing tax load, however, it seems unlikely that the level of taxation could have had a decisive influence on demographic development already during the first decades of the seventeenth century, considering that the most important tax imposed on the Christian population, the cizye, remained a household tax until 1691 and that the extraordinary taxes became a great burden for the Balkan peasantry only with theCretan War of 1645-1669.100

The rise in the level of taxation was accompanied by a virtual leveling of differences in social status in the countryside. As has been mentioned, various reaya groups had enjoyed tax exemptions in the context of the traditional system, often as compensation for special tasks fulfilled. In the course of the seventeenth century such “privileges” were abolished one by one. The loss of privileges, especially in the case of semi-military groups, was one of the chief causes of what Eric Hobsbawm calls “social banditry,” which plagued the Balkan countryside during that period.101

98 McGowan, Economic Life in Ottoman Europe, pp. 108-110. Cf. İnalcık, "Military and Fiscal Transformation", pp. 313-317. For informationon nüzul, an important category of the extraordinary taxes on cereals, see Güçer, XVI.-XVII. asırlarda Osmanlı İmparatorluğunda hububat meselesi, pp. 69-92. 99 On cizye reform of 1691 see McGowan, Economic Life in Ottoman Europe, pp.80-85. 100 Avdo Sućeska, "Die Entwicklung der Besteuerung durch die Avâriz-i dîvanîye und die Tekâlîf-i örfîye im Osmanischen Reich während des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts", Südost-Forschungen 27 (1968): 89-130, particularly 97ff.

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To what extent were the described developments comparable to thosein the rest of contemporary Europe? Without delving into the controversial discussion of “the crisis of the seventeenth century,”102 one can safely state that the contraction of the arableland was a common phenomenon in many parts of the continent.103 In Poland, for example, the production of cereals had reached its peak already in the second half of the sixteenth century; in the following period stagnation and even a perceptible fall set in which led to the catastrophic decline of the 1650s.104

The agricultural land abandoned in the Ottoman Empire at the turn of the sixteenth to the seventeenth century was generally of the “marginal” - mezraa - type. Such land had only recently been brought under cultivation and, for that matter, mostly by nomads. For instance, the old settlements at the edge of the Cilician plain remained unaffected by the regressive trend during the seventeenth century, whereas the plain itself was reverted to

101 Bistra Cvetkova, Chajdutstvoto v bălgarskite zemi prez 15/18 vek (Sofija: Nauka i izkustvo, 1971); John K. Vasdravellis, Klephts, Armatoles and Pirates in Macedonia during the Rule of the Turks (1627-1821) (Thessalonikē: Makedonikē bibliothēkē, 43, 1975); Aleksandar Matkovski, Otporot vo Makedonija vo vremeto na turskoto vladeenje, vol. 3, Ajdutstvoto (Skopje: Misla, 1983). See also Adanır, "Heiduckentum und osmanische Herrschaft".102 See T. Ashton, ed., Crisis in Europe, 1560-1660. Essays from Past and Present (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1965); Jean de Vries, Economy of Europe in an Age of Crisis, 1600-1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976); The General Crisis of the Seventeenth Century, Geoffrey Parker and Lesley M. Smith, eds. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978); Miroslav Hroch and Josef Petráòň, Das 17. Jahrhundert - Krise der Feudalgesellschaft? (Hamburg: Hoffmann & Campe, 1981).103 See Slicher van Bath, Agrarian History, pp. 206-221; Henry Kamen, The Iron Century: Social Change in Europe 1550-1660 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1971), pp. 223-228; Kriedte, Spätfeudalismus und Handelskapital, pp. 83-89. 104 See Jerzy Topolski and Andrzej Wyczański, "Les fluctuations de la production agricole en Pologne XVIe-XVIIIe siècles", in Prestations paysannes, dîmes, rente foncière et mouvement de la production agricole à l’époque préindustrielle, Joseph Goy and Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, eds. (Paris: Cahiers des Études rurales, 4, 1983), pp. 129-134.

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traditional grazing grounds for the flocks of the nomads.105 The same applies to the central Anatolian plain where hundreds of settlements, which had emerged during the period of agricultural expansion, disappeared now for good.106

But also land cultivated by the reaya since generations was divertednow to other uses, such as viticulture or animal husbandry. Indeed, this seems to have been the characteristic development in the first half of the seventeenth century. At that time the reaya, while increasing the village commons, apparently reduced the tillage in most regions. The Austrian envoy, who traveled in the summer of 1608 from Vienna to Istanbul, left us some interesting observations concerning the situation in the Balkans. He and his entourage found developed agriculture only in the Thracian plain around Plovdiv, which was covered with rice paddies.107 By contrast, the plain between Dragoman and Sofia was a heath,108 and wide stretches between Belgrade and Niš were practically wilderness.109 But, around Slankamen the Austrians observed peasants planting vines anew in a landscape dominated by vineyardsthat apparently had been neglected on account of the “Long War” between the Ssultan and the Eemperor.110 In the hill country between Niš and Sofia, they encountered a relatively prosperous peasantry. Here the Austrians were especially impressed by the abundance of fruit.111 Also the plain between Pirot and Dragoman,

105 Soysal, Die Siedlungs- und Landschaftsentwicklung Çukurovas, p. 38. 106 Hütteroth, Ländliche Siedlungen im südlichen Inneranatolien, pp. 163-208. 107 The envoy wrote, "... ein schön eben Land, da viel Reis wechst..., von vielen Dörfern besetzt und die Velder wol sonderlich mit Reis erbauen." Nehring, Adam Freiherrn zu Herbersteins Gesandtschaftsreise nach Konstantinopel, p. 118. 108 The envoy wrote, "... ein braite Hayden zwischen zweyen Gebürgen", Nehring, Adam Freiherrn, p. 116. 109 A frequent entry in the itinerarium of the envoy read: "Diesen Tag haben wier auch bis daher durch ein ungebauet waldechtig Land gefahren, auch den ganzen Tag kein Dorff noch Haus gesehen." Nehring, Adam Freiherrn, p. 113. 110 Nehring, Adam Freiherrn, p. 103. 111 The ir envoy's comment was, "... da uns die bulgarischen Weiber in großer Menge allerley Obs vom Gebürg herab zu kauffen

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with villages located on higher round on the hillsides, left a positive impression upon them.112 But even here, field cultivation seemed on the decline. Around Pirot, for example, agriculture was in a poor state, whereas vineyards were numerous.113

These rural conditions could not have been restricted to the landsalong what was the major military road of the Empire,114 as one might easily be led to assume, thinking that the villagers would have been scared away by plundering soldiers. Not only the flourishing rice cultivation in the plain of Plovdiv contradicts such an assumption, but also the fact that the Bulgarian women in the hilly country, who sold fruit to travelers on this same military road, could not have been out of reach of the Ottoman military. One must, therefore, look for still other factors in order to account for the rural change during the seventeenth century.

The research done by Suraiya Faroqhi on the agricultural activities of a dervish tekke in western Thrace gives us an indication of the actual trends of development.115 At the end of the fifteenth century, this tekke consisted of a complex of mezraas, with only twenty-one Christian peasants settled on one of them, who tilled the land and paid the tekke the tithes.116 (Incidentally,since the community was entrusted with the guarding of a nearby

gebracht", Nehring, Adam Freiherrn, p. 115. 112 The envoy reported, "... ein schön wolgebauet Thal, herumb etliche Dorffer auf den Höhen liegen." Nehring, Adam Freiherrn, p. 116. 113 The report said, "... ein schön gelegen, doch gar wenige gebauetThal..., darin zimlich viel Weingärten zu sehen gewest," Nehring, Adam Freiherrn, p. 116. 114 Constantin J. Jireček, Die Heerstraße von Belgrad nach Constantinopel und die Balkanpässe: Eine historisch-geographische Studie (Prag, 1877); Olga Zirojević, Carigradski drum od Beograda do Sofije, 1459-1683 (Beograd: Zbornik Instituta muzeja Srbije, vol. 7, 1970); Zirojević, Carigradski drum od Beograda do Budima u XVI i XVII veku (Novi-Sad: Institut zaizučavanje istorije Vojvodine, 1976). 115 "Agricultural Activities in a Bektashi Center: the tekke of Kızıl Deli 1750-1830", Südost-Forschungen 35 (1976): 69-96. 116 "Agricultural Activities in a Bektashi Center", p. 72.

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mountain pass, it enjoyed exemption from the extraordinary state taxes.)117 During the sixteenth century, the number of Christian peasants working the lands of the dervishes increased, as did the income accruing from the tithes of various agriculturalproducts.118 Unfortunately, little is known about the changes in the economic situation of the tekke during the seventeenth century. But records from the beginning of the eighteenth century show that, in the meantime, the dervishes had acquired large flocks of sheep; for example, it is known that they had secured exemption from the sheep tax for at least a thousand animals.119 Stock breeding was therefore a new activity which Suraiya Faroqhi interprets as a sign of adaptation to changing economic circumstances by means of diversification.

Commenting on similar developments in Bulgaria in the seventeenth century, Bistra Cvetkova noted:

Afin d’éviter certaines obligations fiscales importantes, telles que l’öşür et l’impot foncier, les raïas s’efforçaient de modifier l’aspect des terres qu’ils possédaient - de les transformer de champs en vignes, en jardins maraîchers et en pâturages communaux.120

[In order to avoid certain burdensome fiscal obligations such as the öşür and the land tax, the reaya tried hard to change their land usage - to turn ordinary fields into vineyards, vegetable gardens, or communal pasture.]

But this was the common development in most parts of Europe. Regarding the situation in Upper Hungary under Habsburg rule, where agricultural decline had apparently begun at about the same time as in the Balkans, the authors of a recent study reach the following conclusion:

117 "Agricultural Activities in a Bektashi Center", p. 71f. 118 "Agricultural Activities in a Bektashi Center", p. 72. 119 "Agricultural Activities in a Bektashi Center", p. 75. 120 Bistra Cvetkova, "Documents turcs concernant le statut de certaines localités dans la région de Veliko-Tărnovo au XVIIe siècle", in Mémorial Ömer Lûtfi Barkan, p. 70.

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En dernière analyse, deux phénomènes apparaissent nettement: l’abandon progressif des terres marginales et la croissance continuelle de l’élevage - et peut-être aussi de la viticulture - au détriment de la production de céréales panifiables.121

[In conclusion, two phenomena seem clear: the gradual abandonment of marginal lands and the continual growth of animal husbandry - and perhaps also of viticulture - to the detriment of the cereals with which bread was made.]

The general trend in agriculture away from arable farming to livestock raising could have been stimulated by changing trade patterns. With respect to the expanding animal husbandry in the Balkans, for example, McGowan highlights the growing significance of the wool trade. In his opinion, European demand for wool was a stimulus that contributed to “changing modes of using the land” onthe Balkans.122 Ragusa and Durazzo served as the major outlets for wool, but also fur cattle hides, sheep skins, or goat’s' hair, coming from the Balkan hinterland as far away as Bulgaria and headed for French and English markets.123

But already the fall in grain prices on the internal Balkan markets during the first half of the seventeenth century would serve well to explain the general trend away from the cereal farming.124 Whatever the reasons might have been, the changes in agriculture had far-reaching implications for the income of the sipahi, not only because the amount of the tithes diminished, but also because the sheep tax, which now returned a higher revenue, was due by law to the central treasury. And when the sipahi tried to 121 L. Makkai, V. Zimányi, "Les registres de dîme, sources de l’histoire de la production agricole en Hongrie 1500-1848", in Goyand Le Roy Ladurie, eds., Prestations paysannes, p. 105. 122 McGowan, Economic Life in Ottoman Europe, p. 39. 123 McGowan, Economic Life in Ottoman Europe, pp. 39ff. See also F. W. Carter, Dubrovnik (Ragusa), pp. 361-371, and Snežka Panova, Bălgarskite tărgovci prez XVII vek (Sofia: Nauka i izkustvo, 1980), pp. 95-136. 124 The cereal prices fell rapidly during the first decades of the seventeenth century and then kept their low level throughout the century. See Berov, Dviženieto na cenite na Balkanite prez XVI-XIX v., pp. 289-291.

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compensate his “loss by demanding, for example, a pasture tax fromthe peasantry, the central government was often against him, as court registers of the period illustrate.125

The response of the Ottoman state to the socioeconomic changes in the countryside consisted essentially of fiscal and administrativemeasures. Their results were peculiar to Ottoman lands. The new landholding category çiftlik was such a characteristically Ottoman phenomenon; it can be understood best in terms of Ottoman agrariantradition.

EXPORT-ORIENTED AGRICULTURE AND THE OTTOMAN LANDHOLDING CATEGORYÇIFTLIK

The Emergence of Çiftliks (Large Farms). When discussing the landholding relationships in the Balkans, there is consensus among scholars that the dissolution of the timar system had adverse effects on the well-being of the rural population. The extension of tax-farming to tithe collection is thought to have led to mounting tax rates, and it is often assumed that the tax-farming interests, represented by the emerging groups of âyan and other provincial notables, strived under all circumstances to effect a decentralization of the Ottoman state.126 What had happened is seenbasically as a class struggle, waged for the control of land and labor:

As a result of a combination of forceful appropriation, usury,and abandonment of land by peasants, the size of the land-units controlled by the tax-farmers grew, most notably inRumelia. These large agricultural estates were called çiftliks .... The çiftliks ... entailed enserfment of labor and share-cropping relations, perpetuated essentially by the mechanism of usury.127

125 See Cvetkova, Les institutions ottomanes, p. 90. 126 For a recent example of this interpretation see Richard J. Crampton, Bulgaria 1878-1918. A History (Boulder, Colo.: East European Monographs, 1983), p. 2. 127 Immanuel Wallerstein, Hale Decdeli, Reşat Kasaba, "The Incorporation of the Ottoman Empire into the World-Economy" (Paperprepared for International Conference on Turkish Studies, Madison,Wisc., May 25-27, 1979), p. 5.

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Thus the çiftlik, symbolizing both a de facto refeudalization of the society and the beginning of commercial agriculture in the Balkans,128 is one of the central themes in analyses of the socioeconomic structure of the Empire in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Nevertheless, some important aspects of the çiftlik economy do not seem to have been studied adequately yet. For example, our knowledge about the percentage of the arable land occupied by these estates, the number of people working on them and the quality of the soil cultivated is still rather preliminary. It would be premature, therefore, to pass comprehensive judgments when assessing the socioeconomic role of the çiftlik in a Balkan context; it would be even more dubious to attempt to subsume this Ottoman landholding category either under the late medieval Grundherrschaft, the early modern Gutsherrschaft of the East Elbean type, or the modern capitalist mode of production in agriculture.129

The argumentation of this paper has accentuated from the beginningthe relationship between agriculture and extensive animal husbandry, between the arable and the pastureland. This division is also relevant when discussing the çiftlik phenomenon. Was the çiftlik apredominant unit of production in agriculture, comparable to the grain-producing demesnes in Poland during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries? Or was it an institution on the fringe of Balkan agrarian life? The question of “location” should be understood in both an economic and legal, as well as geographic sense.

The process of çiftlik formation had its origins in the sixteenth century. Influential persons in the countryside developed at that time an interest for new land, which was usually to be found on mezraas.130 Often a water mill to grind grain together with a

128 "Çiftliks were examples of commercial farming where enserfed peasantry or share-cropping were employed." İslamoğlu and Keyder, "Agenda for Ottoman History", p. 52. 129 For a critique of such tendencies in recent scholarship see İnalcık, "Impact of the Annales School on Ottoman Studies", pp. 69-96. See also Lampe and Jackson, Balkan Economic History, pp. 33ff.

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surrounding meadow served as the nucleus of a farm.131 Also property of the mülk category bought from peasants - houses, vineyards, or gardens that could even be situated in different locations - is sometimes registered as belonging to a single çiftlik.132 A striking feature of these estates was their modest size;not seldom, fields were small enough to be tilled with a single plow in one day, and meadows would yield only one wagonload of hay.133

But also larger estates, established on land classified as mevat - waste or unused land - and owned by members of the ruling class, were not unknown in the sixteenth century.134 The cultivation of rice or cotton135 seems to have been the economic stimulus behind land reclamation schemes of this order. The question of the necessary working force was apparently solved in most cases by sharecropping arrangements, but also by employment of farm hands or sometimes even of servile labor.136

However, çiftlik farms, whether large or small, were far too few at that time to be considered in any sense characteristic of the prevailing land regime. (The exporters of Ottoman grain in the second half of the sixteenth century were mostly members of the

130 Almost all the çiftliks mentioned in the survey of the sancak of Srem are shown located on a mezraa. For example, see Bruce McGowan,Sirem sancağı mufassal tahrir defteri (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1983), p. 208. 131 McGowan, Sirem sancağı mufassal tahrir defteri, pp. 26, 34, 90. 132 McGowan, Sirem sancağı mufassal tahrir defteri, pp. 27f., 91, 192, 283. 133 McGowan, Sirem sancağı mufassal tahrir defteri, pp. 28, 34, 59, 75f. 134 See İnalcık, "Emergence of Big Farms", pp. 108-111. 135 On cotton growing in this period see Suraiya Faroqhi, "Notes on the Production of Cotton and Cotton Cloth in XVIth and XVIIth Century Anatolia", Journal of European Economic History 8 (1979), 405-417; Halil İnalcık, "Osmanlı pamuklu pazarı, Hindistan ve İngiltere: Pazar rekabetinde emek maliyetinin rolü", ODTÜ Gelişme Dergisi, 1979-80 Özel Sayısı, pp. 1-65, especially pp. 4-7; Maureen F. Mazzaoui, The Italian Cotton Industry in the Later Middle Ages, 1100-1600 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 44-55. 136 See İnalcık, "Rice Cultivation" and "Servile Labor".

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ruling class who had a surplus originating from the tithes of their has fiefs and not from direct production on their own estates.)137

By contrast, çiftliks emerged in substantial numbers during the seventeenth century. These were, however, ranches devoted primarily to stock breeding. Since the areas pastured were often the cultivated mezraas of the previous century, and since the ranches, owned mostly by members of the military class, had appeared, as far as Anatolia is concerned, in the wake of the celâlî disorders, this process is generally considered a result of a violent disruption of agriculture and forcible seizure of land by powerful social groups during a period of internal strife.138 But, as we have seen, desertion of land followed by extensive animal husbandry was a general trend in most of Europe in the seventeenthcentury. It would be stretching the point to consider çiftlik formation at this stage a result of the “usurpation” of the land of peasants.139

Too much emphasis, however, on the relationship between receding agriculture, expanding animal husbandry, and the increasing numberof çiftlik ranches must not obscure the obvious fact that arable farming continued. Urban centers, especially the huge city of Istanbul with an estimated population of 700,000 in the seventeenth century,140 had to be supplied with all kinds of

137 Aymard, Venise, Raguse et le commerce du blé, p. 127. 138 Akdağ, Celâlî İsyanları, pp. 37-44. 139 The leading exponent of this thesis is Christo Christov. See hisAgrarnite otnošenija v Makedonija prez XIX i načaloto na XX vek (Sofia: Bălgarska akademija na naukite, 1964) and Agrarnijat văpros v bălgarskata nacionalna revolucija (Sofija: Nauka i izkustvo, 1976). For a discussion of further pertinent literature see Fikret Adanır, "Zum Verhältnis von Agrarstruktur und nationaler Bewegung in Makedonien 1878-1908", in Der Berliner Kongreß von 1878: Die Politik der Großmächte und die Probleme der Modernisierung in Südosteuropa in der zweiten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts, R. Melville and H.-J. Schröder, eds. (Wiesbaden: F. Steiner, 1982), pp. 445-461. 140 See Barkan, "Essai sur les données statistiques", p. 27; Mantran, Istanbul dans la seconde moitié du XVIIe siècle, p. 47; Fernand Braudel, Le Méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen à l’époque de Philippe II, 2d.

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staples. Commercial agriculture could thus not have been unknown in the vicinity of large towns. For example, a court record from 1641 indicates that a certain Mehmed Ağ›a had 150 paid laborers working on his farm near Manastır in western Macedonia.141

As a rule, however, the provisioning of the cities fell into the sphere of the Ottoman “command economy.”142 The official purchases of grain were effected at prices that were usually lower than the actual market prices. For the supplying areas, such purchases wereoften “a financial burden similar to a tax.”143 And, as Bruce McGowan has rightly observed, the complex provisioning system for the cities was “one Ottoman institution of the sixteenth century which became more powerfully organized with the passage of time.”144

Under these conditions, the production of cereals for free urban markets could not have been a great stimulus to the development ofthe çiftlik economy.

A new wave of çiftlik formation has been associated with the rise of the âyan to political prominence during the seventeenth and especially the eighteenth century.145 The role of the âyan is

ed. (Paris: A. Colin, 1966), 1:318. According to Traian Stoianovich, however, Istanbul must have had a population of less than 400,000 people in the mid-seventeenth century. See "Model andMirror of the Premodern Balkan City", in La ville balkanique XVe-XIXe ss., N. Todorov, ed. (Sofia: Académie Bulgare des Sciences, 1970), p. 91. 141 Mcgowan, Economic Life in Ottoman Europe, p. 136. 142 On the economics of the Ottoman system see Lampe and Jackson, Balkan Economic History, pp. 23-32. 143 Tevfik Güran, "The State Role in the Grain Supply of Istanbul: The Grain Administration, 1793-11839", International Journal of Turkish Studies 3:1 (Winter, 1984-1985): 27-41, particularly p. 32. 144 McGowan, Economic Life in Ottoman Europe, p. 14f. 145 On the âyan see Yücel Özkaya, Osmanlı İmparatorluğunda âyânlık (Ankara: Ankara Üniversitesi Yayınları, 1977); Kemal H. Karpat, "Some Historical and Methodological Considerations Concerning Social Stratification in the Middle East", in Commoners, Climbers and Notables. A Sampler of Studies on Social Ranking in the Middle East, C. A. L. Nieuwenhuijze, ed. (Leiden: Brill, 1977), pp. 83-101; Avdo Sućeska, Ajani. Prilog izučavanju lokalne vlasti u našim zemljama za vrijeme turaka

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related to the institution of tax-farming. The system of allocating the avarız taxes on the district level would have hardly functioned without the cooperation of the local population. With the sociopolitical eclipse of the sipahi and the deterioration of public order in the countryside, the local notables began to assume a more important role in administering provincial affairs.146

In time, these men were able to purchase mukataas, tax-farming units, and, later on, malikânes, tax-farms leased on a hereditary basis.147 No doubt, the âyan were in many respects in a strong position to accumulate land, and the relative economic boom duringthe eighteenth century seems to have been a great enticement to doso.

Especially the period from 1710 to 1760 seems to have been a time of considerable growth for all sectors of the Ottoman economy.148 An upsurge of commercial activity throughout the Empire was accompanied by a remarkable rise in textile manufacturing as well as in the exports of important textile materials such as cotton, wool, and silk, either as processed goods in the form of cloth or yarn or as unprocessed raw materials, the latter becoming the dominant form toward the end of the century due to “Indian competition, protective duties in Britain and France and, increasingly, technological progress in the West.”149 The effects

(Sarajevo: Naučno društvo SR Bosne i Hercegovine, 1965), and "Bedeutung und Entwicklung des Begriffes A’yân im Osmanischen Reich", Südost-Forschungen 25 (1966): 3-26; D. R. Sadat, Urban Notables in the Ottoman Empire: the Ayan (Ph.D. diss., Rutgers University, 1969). 146 For a discussion of the fiscal role of the âyan see Michael Ursinus, Regionale Reformen im Osmanischen Reich am Vorabend der Tanzimat: Reformen der rumelischen Provinzialgouverneure im Gerichtssprengel von Manastir (Bitola) zur Zeit der Herrschaft Sultan Mahmuds II., 1808-1839 (Berlin: K. Schwarz,1982), pp. 8-100. 147 See Avdo Sućeska, "Malikana", Prilozi za orijentalnu filologiju 8-9 (1958-1959): 111-141; Mehmet Genç, "Osmanlı maliyesinde malikâne sistemi", in Türkiye iktisat tarihi semineri, pp. 231-291. 148 Mehmet Genç, "XVIII. yüzyılda Osmanlı ekonomisi ve savaş", Yapıt 49:4 (1984): 52-61. 149 Charles Issawi, "Population and Resources in Ottoman Empire and Iran", in Studies in Eighteenth Century Islamic History, Thomas Naff and Richard Owen, eds. (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University

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of this development on agriculture were obvious, particularly in the case of cotton.150 Equally important in this respect were the introduction of a new crop like maize151 and the repeal of the imperial decrees that had prohibited tobacco cultivation in the seventeenth century.152 An increase in the production of cereals was also discernible, allowing the government to revoke frequentlythe traditional ban on the export of grain.153 However, even when export restrictions were in force, wheat from the Archipelago and the coastal regions of the Aegean continued to reach Marseille as late as the closing years of the eighteenth century.154 In 1790, for instance, the British ambassador reported that a considerable quantity of wheat, barley, and lentils have been clandestinely exported to France and different parts of Italy."155

One should bear in mind, however, that the proportion of the totalagrarian production going into exports during the eighteenth

Press, 1977), p. 160. 150 McGowan, Economic Life in Ottoman Europe, pp. 42-44. For a more detailed treatment, on the basis of French sources, see Nicolas Svoronos, Le commerce de Salonique au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: PUF, 1956); Robert Paris, Histoire du commerce de Marseille, vol. 5: De 1660 à 1789. Le Levant (Paris: Plon, 1957); J.-P. Filippini et al., Dossiers sur le commerce français en Méditerranée orientale au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: PUF, 1976). See also A. E. Vacalopoulos, History of Macedonia, 1354-1833 (Thessaloniki: Institute for Balkan Studies, 1973), pp. 387-425. 151 Jean-Jacques Hemardinquer, "Les débuts du maïs en Méditerranée (Premier aperçu)", in Histoire économique du monde méditerranéen 1450-1650: Mélanges en l’honneur de Fernand Braudel, vol. 1 (Toulouse: E. Privat, 1973), pp. 227-233; Traian Stoianovich, "Le maïs dans les Balkans", Annales ESC 21 (1966): 1026-1040. 152 Hans-Joachim Kissling, "Zur Geschichte der Rausch- und Genußgifte im Osmanischen Reiche", Südost-Forschungen 16 (1957): 342-355; Aleksandar Matkovski, "Auftreten und Ausbreitung des Tabaks auf der Balkanhalbinsel", Südost-Forschungen 28 (1969): 48-93. 153 Genç, "XVIII. yüzyılda Osmanlı ekonomisi ve savaş", p. 54. 154 Spyros I. Asdrachas, "Marchés et prix du blé en Grèce au XVIIIe siècle", Südost-Forschungen 31 (1972): 178-209, particularly 201-209. 155 Quoted in Issawi, "Population and Resources", p. 158.

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century was virtually negligible.156 Likewise, it would be wrong toassume that the çiftliks played more than a modest role in the agricultural upswing during that period. This was due to a large extent to the fact that neither the social nor the political status of the âyan depended primarily on çiftlik ownership, although some powerful âyan certainly owned such estates. Land turned into çiftlik did not acquire a legal quality different from the ordinary mirî land worked by the peasantry. For example, in the seventeenth century the central government demanded from persons who had takenover land previously held by the reaya the same taxes as the peasants had had to pay:

As for those sipahis and other Muslims who have taken over Christian holdings and made use of them, then make excuses when the time comes to collect the jizye and ispenje and don’t giveit and have the poor indemnify them, let jizyes and ispenjes be collected from such as these without fail whether they are bailiffs, sipahis, or whoever they happen to be.157

Why should the âyan have been very interested in acquiring land if the land they managed to bring under their control did not enjoy any sort of fiscal immunity, and, furthermore, if they did not have at their disposal the services of a sufficient labor force? Writing about the çiftlik estates in the possession of some leading âyan of western Anatolia during the latter half of the eighteenth century, Halil İnalcık concludes:

Because of the high costs of maintaining agriculture and the shortage of agricultural labor in many areas, çiftlik owners preferred to convert their farms into cattle ranches or dairy farms (mandıra) supplying oxen for neighboring villages and dairy products to nearby towns.158

156 Şevket Pamuk, Osmanlı ekonomisi ve dünya kapitalizmi, 1820-1913 (Ankara: Yurt Yayınevi, 1984), p. 16. Wheat exports from Macedonia to France and Italy during the "boom" years 1763-1766 averaged approximately 2000 tons annually. Towards the end of the century, grain exports were no longer a profitable business. See Asdrachas,"Marchés et prix du blé", pp. 202. 209. 157 Dušanka Bojanić, "Edno Ohridsko kanunname", Glasnik na institutot za nacionalna istorija 3 (1959): 295 (translation by B. McGowan in Economic Life in Ottoman Empire, p. 137).

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Significantly, the most powerful âyan of the region, as İnalcık - in concurrence with Gilles Veinstein159 - points out, did not owe his wealth to the agricultural production of his estates, but to “financial operations as usurer, tax-farmer and controller of trade between European merchants and Turkish producers.”160 This view is confirmed by further research on the subject.161 It seems, therefore, that picturing Ottoman provincial notables as a landowning class operating in a social context analogous to that of the “second serfdom” in Eastern Europe would be overtaxing the sources.162

The Çiftlik Economy in the Era of Free Trade. The period from the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 until about 1860 was one of profound social and economic change in Ottoman Europe.163 European

158 İnalcık, "The Emergence of Big Farms", p. 124. 159 "Ayan de la région d’Izmir et commerce du Levant (deuxième moitié du XVIIIe siècle)", Revue de l’Occident musulman et de la Méditerranée 20 (1975): 131-147. This article appeared also in Études balkaniques 12:3 (1976): 71-83. 160 İnalcık, "The Emergence of Big Farms", p. 124. 161 In the lists of property and money left by the leading families of Sarajevo during the first half of the nineteenth century çiftliks play a subordinate role. See Yuzo Negata, Materials on the Bosnian Notables (Tokyo: Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, 1979). The same can be inferred from a recent monography on an Anatolian âyan "dynasty"; Necdet Sakaoğlu, Anadolu derebeyi ocaklarından Köse Paşa hanedanı (Ankara: Yurt Yayınevi, 1984). 162 That is why I would characterize the âyan not so much as a factorcentrifugal in tendency, but essentially as an integrating force in the service of the central government. Without the âyan and their Christian counterpart, the çorbacıs, the Ottoman command economy would not have functioned. Regarding the sociopolitical rise of the âyan, Huri İslamoğlu and Çaglar Keyder speak in a similar vein of "the localization of power, [which] did not indicate a transition to feudalism." See "Agenda for Ottoman History", Review 1:1 (1977): 46. 163 On questions of periodization in Ottoman economic history of thenineteenth century see Şevket Pamuk, "Kapitalist dünya ekonomisi ve Osmanlı dış ticaretinde uzun dönemli dalgalanmalar", ODTÜ Gelişme

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capitalism made important inroads into the sphere of the traditional command economy. A milestone in this process was the Anglo-Ottoman commercial convention of 1838; it ushered in the eraof free trade.164 The reforms of the tanzimat period (1839-1876), which strengthened the position of the central bureaucracy vis-à-vis the political influence of the âyan in the provinces, were conducive to increasing production in agriculture for export markets.165 The Crimean War of 1853-1856, during which large European armies on Ottoman territory had to be provisioned, created a strong demand for staples.166 With the Land Law of 1858 large estates established on abandoned land were recognized to allintents and purposes as private property.167 In an attempt to boost

Dergisi 1979-80 Özel Sayısı, pp. 161-204, and "World Economic Crises and the Periphery: The Case of Turkey", in Ascent and Decline in the World-System, Edward Friedman, ed. (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1982), pp. 147-161. 164 For a monographic treatment of the subject see Mübahat S. Kütükoğlu, Osmanlı-İngiliz iktisadî münâsebetleri, II (1838-1850) (İstanbul: İstanbul Üniversitesi Yayınları, 1976). On negative effects of free trade see Salgur Kançal, "La conquête du marché interne ottoman par le capitalisme industriel concurrentiel (1838-1881)", in Économie et société dans l’Empire ottoman, pp. 355-409. The argument about the disastrous effects of the treaty of 1838 has been critically reviewed by Orhan Kurmuş, "The 1838 Treaty of Commerce Re-Examined", Économie et société dans l’Empire Ottoman, pp. 411-417. 165 Tevfik Güran, "Tanzimat döneminde tarım politikası, 1839-1876", in Osman Okyar and Halil İnalcık, eds. Türkiye’nin sosyal ve ekonomik tarihi/Social and Economic History of Turkey (1071-1920) (Ankara: Meteksan, 1980), pp. 271-277. On the Ottoman reform movement see, apart fromthe classical work of R. H. Davison, Reform in the Ottoman Empire, 1856-1876 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1963), two interesting recent studies: Marija Todorova, Anglija, Rusija i Tanzimatăt (Sofija: Nauka i izkustvo, 1980), and Irma L’vovna Fadeeva, Osmanskaja imperija i anglo-tureckie otnošenija v seredine XIX v. (Moskva: Nauka, 1982). 166 Pamuk, Osmanlı ekonomisi ve dünya kapitalizmi (Ankara: Yurt, 1984), pp. 42, 46f. 167 Text in Belin, "Étude sur la propriété foncière", pp. 291-358. For an analysis of the new law see Ömer L. Barkan, "Türk toprak

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the cultivation of cash crops, the government granted the producers tax rebates for longer periods.168 In 1867 foreigners were allowed to own farm land as private property in the Ottoman Empire.169

These measures resulted in a remarkable growth in agricultural production. The tithe index, if one takes 100 for the year 1848, shows roughly the following progression: 1857 = 183, 1862 = 223, 1867 = 226, 1981 = 336, 1876 = 381.170 According to another, more cautious calculation, the volume of agricultural output more than doubled between 1860 and 1914.171 Really spectacular was the development of agricultural exports: an elevenfold increase in constant prices between 1840 and 1913.172

In what way did the obvious commercialization affect the social relations of production in the countryside? One would expect underthese circumstances that the çiftlik type of consolidated farms would have dominated the production in agriculture. However, this was not the case. In the Balkans as well as in Anatolia, the part played by the çiftlik estates in the economy remained rather negligible. This is corroborated by the scanty empirical research conducted so far with the purpose of quantifying the amount of land incorporated into, and the number of people associated with, large farms. For example, the districts of Vidin and Kjustendil

hukuku tarihinde Tanzimat ve 1274 (1858) tarihli arazi kanunnamesi", in Maarif Vekâleti, Tanzimat, I. Yüzüncü yıldönümü münasebetiyle (İstanbul: Maarif Basımevi, 1940), pp. 321-421. See also Halil İnalcık, "Tanzimatın uygulanması ve sosyal tepkileri", Belleten 28 (1964): 623-690; Fani Ganeva Milkova, "Razvitie i charakter na osmanskoto pozemleno zakonodatelstvo ot 1839 do 1878 g.", Istoričeski pregled 21:5 (1965): 31-55; Louba Belarbi, "Les mutations dans les structures foncières dans l’Empire ottoman à l’époque du Tanzimat", in Économie et société dans l’Empire ottoman, pp. 251-259. 168 Güran, "Tanzimat döneminde tarım politikası", p. 74f. 169 Fadeeva, Osmanskaja imperija, pp. 75ff.; Orhan Kurmuş, Emperyalismin Türkiye’ye girişi (İstanbul: Bilim Yayınları, 1974), pp. 76ff. 170 Güran, "Tanzimat döneminde tarım politikası", p. 276. 171 Pamuk, Osmanlı ekonomisi ve dünya kapitalizmi, p. 80. 172 Pamuk, Osmanlı ekonomisi ve dünya kapitalizmi, pp. 18-36.

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have been studied and are often quoted as important çiftlik regions inBulgaria.173 But Strašimir Dimitrov has rightly pointed out that these areas were not only too small to permit generalizations on anational scale, but also that the gospodarlık relationship, which characterized the landholding system in both cases, was historically atypical for çiftlik formation.174 Today, one can safely argue that the çiftlik economy, even at its peak, did not encompass more than 10 percent of the agricultural land in Bulgaria and thatthe percentage of people involved in it was in all probability still lower.175

Of course, Bulgaria (or Serbia, for that matter) is not the country that comes to mind first when talking about the çiftliks in

173 Christo Gandev, Zaraždane na kapitalističeski otnošenija v čifliškoto stopanstvo na Severozapadna Bălgarija prez XVIII vek (Sofija: Bălgarska akademija na naukite, 1962); K. Ireček and M. K. Sarafov, Raport na komisijata, izpratena v Kjustendilskija okrug da izuči položenieto na bezzemlenite seljani (Sofija: J. S. Kovaček, 1880). 174 Strašimir Dimitrov, "Kăm văprosa za otmenjavaneto na spachijskata sistema v našite zemi", Istoričeski pregled 12:6 (1956): 27-58, especially 55-58. On gospodarlık see Halil İnalcık, Tanzimat ve Bulgar meselesi (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1943), pp. 90ff. On the juridical aspect of the gospodarlık relationship see also Fani G. Milkova, Pozemlenata sobstvenost v bălgarskite zemi prez XIX vek (Sofija: Nauka i izkustvo, 1970), pp. 214-226. 175 See Strašimir Dimitrov, "Čifliškoto stopanstvo prez 50-70te godini na XX v.", Istoričeski pregled 11:2 (1955): 3-34, and "Za klasovoto razsloenie sred seljanite v severoiztočna Bălgarija prez70-te godini na XIX v.", Izvestija na Instituta za istorija pri Bălgarskata akademija na naukite 8 (1960): 225-271; N. G. Levintov, "Agrarnye otnošenija v Bolgarii nakanune osvoboždenija i agrarnyj perevorot 1877-1879 godov", in L. B. Valeva et al., eds. Osvoboždenie Bolgarii ot tureckogo iga: Sbornik statej (Moskva: Akademii nauk SSR, 1953), pp. 139-221; S. A. Nikitin, "Materialy russkoj agrarnoj perepisi 1879 g. vBolgarii i ich naučnoe značenie", in Ežegodnik po agrarnoj istorii vostočnoj Evropy 1964 god. (Kišinev, 1966), pp. 769-779; R. J. Crampton, "Bulgarian Society in the Early 19th Century", in Balkan Society in the Age of Greek Independence, Richard Clogg, ed. (London: Macmillan, 1981), pp. 157-204; Lampe and Jackson, Balkan Economic History, p. 134f.

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the Balkans. It is Macedonia, along with Thrace and Thessaly, which has become famous (or rather notorious) as the çiftlik region par excellence in Balkan history. Yet here, too, as a careful review of the available material would reveal, the çiftlik was not thedominant institution in agriculture.176 It is generally recognized that many districts in the interior could not play an important role as agricultural surplus areas, not least because of poor transportation facilities. A consular report to the Foreign Officefrom the early 1860s recommended as a profitable mode of capital investment in the Ottoman Empire “above all, as immediately conducive to the extension of the export trade, the improvement ofinland navigation, and the means of land transport.”177 For example, Bruce McGowan’s study on Manastır has shown that western Macedonia, which can be considered as having been rather secluded,was not a leading çiftlik region in the Balkans.178 (For the same reason, Central Anatolia could not assume the role of the grain entrepôt for Istanbul until the construction of the Anatolian Railway in the 1890s.)179 So we are left with the supposedly “better watered and therefore more fertile”180 bottom lands of the coastal plains as the regions with the highest concentration of çiftliks in Ottoman Europe.

But especially the Macedonian lowlands belonged well into the first decades of the twentieth century to the quite inhospitable and infertile areas in the Balkans. They were, and still are, the

176 See Fikret Adanır, Die Makedonische Frage. Ihre Entstehung und Entwicklung bis 1908 (Wiesbaden: F. Steiner, 1979), pp. 24-42, "Zum Verhältnis von Agrarstruktur und nationaler Bewegung in Makedonien 1878-1908", and "The Macedonian Question: The Socio-economic Reality and Problems of Its Historiographic Interpretation", International Journal of Turkish Studies 3:1 (Winter, 1984-1985): 43-64. 177 James Lewis Farley, The Resources of Turkey, considered with especial referenceto the profitable investment of capital in the Ottoman Empire ... (London: Longman,1863), p. 149. 178 McGowan, Economic Life in Ottoman Europe, pp. 121-170. 179 See Donald Quataert, "The Commercialization of Agriculture in Ottoman Turkey, 1800-1914", International Journal of Turkish Studies 1:2 (Autumn, 1980): 38-55. 180 McGowan, Economic Life in Ottoman Europe, p. 165.

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places with the lowest amount of rainfall on the Peninsula.181 Paradoxically, during the nineteenth century they were also the sites of expansive marshes, sustained by annual floods. As late asthe 1930s only a small portion of the Macedonian plains could be cultivated; for example, in 1926 only 900 square kilometers of theplain of Salonika, which had a surface area of 2080 square kilometers, were under cultivation.182 In those parts of the lowlands that were being used agriculturally, the salinity of the soil represented - as it does today - a serious problem.183

In additions, the flatlands in the southern part of the Balkans seem to have been deficient in two agriculturally essential elements, namely, nitrogen and phosphorus. Soil investigations conducted for the Greek government in the 1920s showed that the soils of the lowlands were almost completely lacking in nitrogen.184

(Similar results were obtained in tests carried out after World War II in Yugoslav Macedonia.)185 By contrast, the land on mountain181 The plain of Salonica gets less than 45 centimeters of rain annually; that of Seres 55 centimeters, and that of Skopje 45 centimeters. See Makedonija kako prirodna i edonomska celina (Skopje: Institut za nacionalna istorija, 1978), pp. 60, 108, 172. 182 Edwin Fels, Landgewinnung in Griechenland (Gotha: J. Perthes, 1944), p. 25. The corresponding figures for the plain of Seres in 1933 were 437 sq km out of 1180 sq km; see p. 40. 183 A salt content in the coastal plains of Salonica and Seres even higher than that of sea water was not unusual. See D. S. Catacousinos, "Les sols de Grèce", Science du Sol 1 (mai, 1963), p. 4. On the question of salinity see further Gj. Filipovski, "Resultatiod pedološkite ispituvanja vo Gevgelisko pole", Godišen zbornik na Zemjodelsko-šumarskiot fakultet na Universitetot Skopje: Zemjodelstvo 8-9 (1954/55-1955/56), 209-284; I. M. Kalovoulos and S. A. Paxinos, "ParatēŞrēŞseis epi allouviakõn tipõn edafõn tēŞs Boreiou Ellados", in Aristoteleion PanepistēŞmion ThessalonikēŞs. EpetēŞris tēŞs geõponikēŞskai dasologikēŞs scholēŞs (1962), pp. 123-137. 184 George Bouyoucos, "A Study of the Fertility of the Soils of Greece", Soil Science 13 (1922), 63-79. 185 See Gj. Filipovski, "Počvite na Strumičkoto pole. (Uslovi za počvoobrazuvanje, počvi i melioracija na Strumičkoto pole)", Godišen zbornik na Zemjodelsko-šumarskiot fakultet na Universitetot Skopje: Zemjodelstvo2 (1948-1949), 57-326; Miladin Mickovski, "Azotofiksaciona moš na

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slopes was relatively richer not only in nitrogen, but also in another agriculturally important mineral, phosphorus.186

The sometimes exaggerated importance attributed to the Macedonian çiftliks in the literature can be seen as stemming from an uncriticalinterpretation of the data contained in historical maps and statistics of the nineteenth century. Such sources have a tendencyto juxtapose indiscriminately large villages existing on hill slopes ab antiquo and mezraas turned into çiftliks in modern times and, in most cases, boasting of only a few huts as if they were settlements of comparable size. A few sharecropper families among the inhabitants of a large village would be enough to classify that settlement as “mixed” and thus to deduct it, along with the çiftlik farms, from the total of “independent” rural settlements. The numbers arrived at by this method served as bases for statistics that were originally used as an ideological weapon in the strugglefor national independence.187 In order to illustrate how misleadingthe conclusions drawn from such material can be, I would like to refer the reader to table 5.2 in Lampe and Jackson’s book, Balkan Economic History: the authors claim that about 64 percent of all

nekoi počveni tipovi vo Skopsko", ibid. 5 (1951-1952), pp. 207-232; Angelina Stojkovska, "Agrochemiska karakteristika na skeledoidniotdeluvium vo Polog (Zemjodelsko učilište)", ibid. 12 (1958-1959), pp.201-225. 186 This explained why the peasants left "beautiful valleys and plains [... in order] to farm these rock mountains", as Bouyoucos expressed it. See "A Study of the Fertility of the Soils of Greece", p. 64. 187 A. Šopov, who served as the official agent (de facto general consul) of the Bulgarian Government in Salonica during the first decade of the twentieth century, published a statistic on social relations in Macedonian villages under the jurisdiction of the Bulgarian Exarchate, classifying them into three groups: independent, partly çiftlik, and çiftlik. This statistic showed only about half of the villages as independent. See A. Šopov, "Bălgarskoto kulturno delo v Makedonija v cifri", Bălgarska sbirka 18:5(1911), 307. Šopov’s article has been used by Ch. Christov, Agrarnite otnošenija v Makedonija, p. 121, and by Dančo Zografski, Razvitokot na kapitalističkite elementi vo Makedonija za vreme na turskoto vladeenje (Skopje: Kultura, 1967), pp. 129-130.

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villages in the districts of Salonika, Melnik, Demirhisar, and Petrič in the third quarter of the nineteenth century were çiftliks.188

But their source, the monography of Christo Christov, indicates a few pages further on that the sharecroppers cultivating çiftlik land on the territory of today’s Socialist Republic of Macedonia made up, toward the end of the nineteenth century, less than 10 percent of the peasant population.189

The only period during Ottoman rule, in which çiftlik agriculture in the Macedonian lowlands seemed to have a promising future, was thelast quarter of the eighteenth century, when cotton from the Seresplain and from Thessaly was exported, mainly to France.190 During the Napoleonic Wars, especially at the time of the Continental Blockade, cotton exports via the land route to Central Europe gained importance.191 But very soon the decline of this trade had set in, the prices having shown a downward trend since 1801.192 After the Napoleonic Wars, Ottoman cotton could not compete with the better qualities the industry of Lancashire imported from the

188 Lampe and Jackson, Balkan Economic History, p. 136. The authors quote Christov, Agrarnite otnošenija v Makedonija, p. 86f., as their source. 189 Christov, Agrarnite otnošenija v Makedonija, p. 90. Admittedly, neitherthe geographic area, nor the period serving as the basis of calculation in these different sources are identical. Nevertheless, in view of the fact that the border of the SocialistRepublic of Macedonia runs barely 40 miles north of Salonica and that only a decade or two separate the periods in question, such afantastic divergence between the two sets of data quoted does not seem plausible to me. 190 The Macedonian output was about 9000 tons in 1780, two-thirds ofwhich were exported. See Issawi, The Economic History of Turkey, p. 233. 191 See Traian Stoianovich, "Pour un modèle du commerce du Levant: économie concurrentielle et économie de bazar, 1500-1800", AIESEE Bulletin 12:2 (1974): 61-120, particularly 106-109; Michel Palairet, "Désindustrialisation à la périphérie: études sur la région des Balkans au XIXe siècle", Histoire, Économie et Société 4 (1985): 253-274; see especially 257f. 192 Douglas E. Farnie, The English Cotton Industry and the World Market 1815-1896 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), p. 83.

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United States and India.193 Rising prices during the “cotton famine” caused by the American Civil War stimulated once more the expansion of cotton cultivation in various areas of the Ottoman Empire.194 But the sharp price fall after the Civil War as well as the better and cheaper cotton from India, which reached the Mediterranean ports much more easily after the opening of the SuezCanal, killed the Macedonian cotton trade almost completely.195

Another reason why the çiftlik agriculture in Macedonia was doomed tofailure can be seen in the spectacular upswing in the cultivation of cash crops, such as tobacco or opium, which flourished best on the loose and rather dry soils of the hillsides and required, whatwas even more important, the investment of a comparatively high degree of manpower.196 For example, one hectare of land was the most an average peasant family could cultivate without recourse tohired labor. Even draft animals were dispensable, since plowing the fields could easily be arranged with peasants who specialized in such work. Under these conditions, tobacco became the most valuable export item of Ottoman Europe.197 Its gradual expansion into the traditional grain growing areas in the hinterland, such as the district of Skopje,198 toward the end of the nineteenth

193 The decade after 1812 saw also the decay of the textile manufacturing centers of Thessaly. See M. Palairet, "Déindustrialisation à la périphérie", p. 259. 194 On the "cotton famine" see D. E. Farnie, The English Cotton Industry, pp. 135-170. Ottoman dependence on the world market is stressed byD. Quataert, "The Commercialization of Agriculture", p. 42f. 195 Issawi, The Economic History of Turkey, p. 234. 196 See Davis Trietsch, ed., Levante-Handbuch (Berlin: Gea Verlag, 1914), pp. 271 ff.; Leonhard Schultze, Makedonien. Landschafts- und Kulturbilder (Jena: G. Fischer, 1927), p. 202; D. Iaranoff, La Macédoine économique (Sofia: P. Glouchoff, 1931), p. 69; Zografski, Razvitokot nakapitalističkite elementi, pp. 148-156, 164f. 197 "Tabakanbau und Tabakausfuhr der europäischen Türkei", Österreichische Monatsschrift für den Orient 33 (1907): 43f. See also Issawi, The Economic History of Turkey, pp. 249-257. 198 Jovan Hadži-Vasiljević, Skoplje i njegova okolina. Istoriska, ethografska i kulturno-politička izlaganja (Beograd: Štamparija ‘Sv. Sava’, 1930), p. 214f.

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century contrasted with the crisis of the çiftlik economy in the coastal plains.

The shortage of manpower was apparently the major problem for çiftlikagriculture everywhere. Charles Issawi has pointed out that the wages in the Ottoman Empire during the second half of the nineteenth century in comparison with those in England were relatively high.199 This was caused by the abundance of land as well as the cheapness of draft animals.200 On the basis of British consular reports, Issawi has calculated that in 1863 the price of horses in Turkey varied between £3 and £10. At that time, the average earnings of an agricultural laborer amounted to about £14 a year. He concludes: “This sum could have bought several acres ofland in most parts of the Empire, and two to four draught animals.”201

The çiftlik farms, situated as they were mostly on the malaria-stricken wet bottoms of the coastal plains, could not compete with the intensive cultivation practiced on family holdings. In a consular report on Thrace from the 1860s it is stated that “small farms, varying from 20 to 50 acres in extent, kept by peasant proprietors, are generally better cultivated and comparatively more productive than the farms in which hired labourers are employed.”202 The French consul in Izmir described the situation in 1861 in the following words:

In the neighborhood of Smyrna, many persons have tried to farmwith the help of European labor. Swiss, German, Alsatians, andeven southern Frenchmen specially chosen from among veteran soldiers acclimatized by a long stay in Algeria, have been hired. But in a, so to speak, virgin soil, farming gives forth

199 "Wages in Turkey", in Türkiye’nin sosyal ve ekonomik tarihi, pp. 263-270.200 High wages and cheap land are cited by M. Palairet as causes forthe decline of the manufacturing centers in Thessaly. See "Désindustrialisation à la périphérie", p. 263f. 201 "Wages in Turkey", p. 265. 202 Quoted in Issawi, The Economic History of Turkey, p. 225. See also Draganoff’s calculations from the beginning of the twentieth century, which support the thesis that small holdings were economically more viable than the çiftlik farms, in La Macédoine et les réformes (Paris: Plon-Nourrit, 1906), pp. 48-53.

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miasmas which often engender fevers that soon scatter these colonies. And yet new populations are necessary, to give theselands once more the value they had in ancient times. But wherecan these populations be found? Perhaps among the black peoples of the interior of Africa.203

Presumably, the consul was aware that in antiquity, too, it was slave labor that had made these plains fruitful.

Intensified agriculture in the Macedonian (and Anatolian) lowlandsbecame possible only in the twentieth century. But even then, the peasants did not settle there of their own free will, but of necessity, as a result of tragic events such as deportations or population exchanges in the wake of World War I.204 Today, these plains are among the most fertile in the world. However, present conditions should not be projected onto the historical past.

CONCLUSION

In the Ottoman Empire, then, the land tenure relations in agriculture retained their pattern almost unchanged throughout thenineteenth century. How can we explain this continuing predominance of the small peasant holding as the unit of production in view of the fact that the Empire had become by this time a “periphery” of the world economy? And are we to look for the key to understanding the specificity of this region in an analysis of the internal dynamics of the capitalist world economy,205 or can we find it in the history of Ottoman society itself? This essay stresses the second possibility. This does not mean that great changes in the West such as the emergence of the Atlantic economies or the Industrial Revolution did not influence the Ottoman system profoundly. In fact, Ottoman “decline” since

203 Issawi, The Economic History of Turkey, p. 24. 204 See Jacques Ancel, La Macédoine. Son évolution contemporaine (Paris: Delagrave, 1930); Dimitri Pentzopoulos, The Balkan Exchange of Minorities and Its Impact Upon Greece (Paris-The Hague: Mouton, 1962). 205 "The point is that ‘relations of production’ that define a system are the ‘relations of production’ of the whole system, and the system at this point in time is the European world-economy". Wallerstein, The Modern World-System, p. 127.

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the sixteenth century is intricately connected with them. Yet theydid not affect the relations of production in agriculture, the main sector of the Ottoman economy, significantly. The “transformation” of the Empire during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which entailed many upheavals in the countryside, took place chiefly in the superstructure, exhausting itself in some adjustments and readjustments in the distributive mechanisms of the sociopolitical order.206

Consequently, this essay has focused on factors that seem to have conditioned this result. Attention has been paid, in the first place, to secular fluctuations in population, production, prices, and wages during the late medieval and early modern periods, whichhad an impact on the rural life in Ottoman Europe, as they did in other parts of the continent.207 However, the idea “that social-property systems, once established, tend to set strict limits and impose certain overall patterns upon the course of economic evolution”208 carries great weight in the Ottoman case, too. The social groups which were the supports of the centralist Ottoman state played a crucial role by maintaining the state’s control over land, resources and subjects. Private large estates, even when the owner was a member of the ruling elite, could not attain predominance in agricultural production, chiefly because the working force had to be won over from a relatively free peasant class, whereas the produce would be sold at low prices fixed by the mechanisms of a command economy.

In the decades preceding the Crimean War, the industrialized West achieved a veritable “breakthrough” in opening the Ottoman Empire to economic penetration. For the sake of convenience, we may speak206 "The seventeenth-century crisis was a distribution crisis, not a production crisis". Niels Steensgaard, "The Seventeenth-Century Crisis", in The General Crisis of the Seventeenth Century, p. 42. 207 I do not attribute to the demographic factor a determining role,but I feel obliged to take into account the results of sound scholarship, which seem to me, furthermore, conducive to a comparatistic approach in historical research. Cf. Guy Bois, "Against the Neo-Malthusian Orthodoxy", Past and Present 79 (May 1978):60-69. 208 Robert Brenner, "The Agrarian Roots of European Capitalism", Pastand Present 97 (November 1982): 16.

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in this connection - in the terms of the Wallerstein school - of “incorporation into the world economy” or “transformation into a peripheral structure.” Significantly, however, Ottoman bureaucratswho negotiated the Convention of 1838, which introduced the principle of free trade, were not responding to pressures from a domestic merchant class, but were simply acting out of raison d’état. The fact that the Ottoman state remained formally independent until its dissolution was to exercise a decisive influence on the extent and form of European penetration of the Ottoman territories.209 In my opinion, the Oriental Question cannot be reduced to a mere conflict of commercial interests in a peripheralregion of Europe210

With respect to the introductory theme of this paper, the backwardness of Ottoman Europe in relation to the capitalistic West, one result seems to be certain: The Ottoman system spared the peasantry the so-called second serfdom. In the long run, however, it also proved to be an obstacle to substantial increasesin agricultural productivity and rendered more difficult the transition to the capitalistic mode of production.

209 See Pamuk, Osmanlı ekonomisi ve dünya kapitalizmi, pp. 126ff. 210 With this I do not want to imply that anyone has made such a direct assertion, but I do not know how else to interpret the statement that between 1750 and 1815 "the Ottoman state was also being incorporated into the interstate system, the other importantdimension of the capitalist world-economy". See Wallerstein and Kasaba, "Incorporation into the World-Economy", p. 352.

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