This paper analyzes an under-explored avenue of imperial exploitation that targeted the Ottoman Empire during the Tanzimat Reforms: The Ottoman Commercial Tribunals. These tribunals operated in nearly every corner of the Ottoman Empire to solve commercial disputes among foreigners and Ottoman subjects. This provides a unique window into rural Ottoman areas to analyze imperial interactions among European and Ottoman bureaucrats, as well as interactions among local and imperial actors of various nationalities and ethnicities. This paper demonstrates how attempts by foreign empires to increase their hegemonic influence in the Ottoman Empire led to clashes in the commercial tribunals between Europeans, non-Muslim Ottoman subjects backed by Europeans, local Muslim Ottoman subjects, and Ottoman imperial bureaucrats. The proceedings of these disputes uniquely display the local repercussions of imperial contests over economy and culture, as well as the consequences of hegemonic rivalries that stymied and ultimately undermined the Tanzimat Reforms of the Ottomans. Archival documents (court documents, bureaucratic and administrative correspondences) from The Ottoman Archives of the Prime Minister’s Office (Istanbul, Turkey) and from The National Archives (Kew, UK) were analyzed to form the arguments and conclusions. Two strategic outcomes of the imperial rivalries in these tribunals will be emphasized: increased tensions between European actors and the diminished authority of imperial Ottoman bureaucracy at the local level. Both of these outcomes played a role in ruining the Ottoman Empire’s relations with their European allies and the Ottoman reform efforts. A note on the reasons why Ottoman Commercial Tribunals are an under-explored area of research: most of the documents pertaining to the tribunals were destroyed during fires in the Department of Justice of the Ottoman Empire in 1875, and in British efforts to make space in their archives in early-twentieth century. Fortunately, many records of the tribunals were scattered throughout different departments of the Ottoman Empire due to clerical procedures and logistic circumstances. This has made it extremely time consuming to research the tribunal cases, as they are quite literally scattered across thousands of folders and documents in various archives, without any hints at how they are related. This surely adds additional value to this research as one that most historians would (correctly) dismiss as too time consuming for a sane person to engage.