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British Credit and the Provincial Economy of Aleppo in the Eighteenth Century
Abstract
Modern scholarship has taken great interest in exploring new structures and processes of public finance that emerged in the Ottoman Empire both as a result of, and as a parallel development to, the developments in provincial administration and methods of revenue collection over the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The growing body of work demonstrated so convincingly the critical role of centrally appointed officials, local notables (aʿyān, singular), merchant-creditors (ṣarrāf, singular), and provincial communities in these complex administrative and financial mechanisms of revenue assignment, collection, and remittance. Notwithstanding these insights, exclusive focus on the role of, and the interplay between, local notables and Ottoman merchant-creditors in these processes overlooked the involvement of foreign merchants in provincial financial structures. On the other hand, the credit activities of European merchants in the Ottoman Empire have been analyzed with respect to commercial aspects, which obscured diverse functions and implications of cross-cultural credit activities. This presentation therefore explores the multiple functions of British merchant capital and financial networks in the provincial economic structure of Aleppo through a close reading of the commercial correspondence of British merchants active in Aleppo and the Ottoman registers that contain cases regarding British credit/debt nexus. British merchants constituted one of the most dynamic trading communities in the empire who were engaged in credit activities as much out of necessity as a lucrative investment method. The emergence of new fiscal mechanisms of Ottoman public finance and a negative balance of British trade in the provinces and other local commercial dynamics resulted in the integration of British credit networks into provincial economic structures. British merchants provided local Ottoman merchants, provincial communities and officeholders with credit in the forms of cash, bills of exchange, and promissory notes. The relations the British built with different segments of Ottoman society helped the Ottomans meet their tax burdens or other expenses and acquire public offices. British merchants, in return, ensured access to Ottoman exports and nurtured personal/business connections with the Ottomans. In this context, such relations display diverse economic and social implications of cross-cultural credit, allowing us to view the complex relationships between trade, diplomacy, and finance.
Discipline
History
Geographic Area
Ottoman Empire
The Levant
Sub Area
None