Tribes, Peasants and Merchants: Social Transformation in the Eastern Provinces of the Ottoman Empire in the Nineteenth Century
Panel 076, 2013 Annual Meeting
On Friday, October 11 at 2:00 pm
Panel Description
Tribes, Peasants and Merchants: Social Transformation in the Eastern Provinces of the Ottoman Empire in the Nineteenth Century
The number and depth of studies on the nineteenth century social and economic history of the eastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire have increased substantially over the last decades.
This has been a result of couple of developments in the Ottoman historiography. First it is a part of the broader trend in the Ottoman historiography that re-evaluates state-society relations, particularly the center-focused historiography on the long nineteenth century (1780-1915) of the Ottoman Empire. Historians of this approach, reevaluated to role of the Ottoman state, the limits of its power, implication of its reforms in the provinces, hence underlined the flows of the center-focused Ottoman historiography.
Second, there has been another critique of the center-focused historiography which was voiced by the historians of the provincial areas of the empire, namely Arab and Balkan provinces. First began as a nationalist critique of the Ottoman rule, later evolved into a scholarly tradition that aims to understand the peculiarities of the latter in the periphery by paying more credit to the interaction between the state and provincial society.
Thirdly, in terms of historical evidences, the opening up of various classifications in the Ottoman state archives shed substantial light on the history of the peripheries of the empire had a positive impact on this development. On the other hand, certain political developments in the contemporary Turkey, such as the politicization of Kurdish population triggered reflection of some essential critiques to the nation-state and ‘official’ historiography which places ‘Turks’ into the center of its inquiry.
These developments in the historiography of the Ottoman Empire were also accompanied by a new generation of scholars, who are motivated to study non-centered regions of the empire and their actors. Unlike the previous generations, these scholars focus on women, peasants and tribes those have been arrogated by historians and try to put these on the table of history. Thus the number and scope of the works that focus on the regions of Anatolia which were inhabited by Kurds and Armenians in the nineteenth century increased.
In this panel, the panelists will contribute to this historiographical development by discussing different aspects of the history of the region; particularly state-society relations including but not limited to the inter- and intra-ethnic relations, urban-tribal confrontation, land question, and religion in the broader context of changes that took place in the nineteenth-century Ottoman world, and its peripheries.
The historiography on the ethnic relations in the Ottoman Empire’s eastern provinces in the nineteenth century carries the burden of the later history of the region: ethnic-cleansing, counter-massacres, and its (de-) nationalization. The projection of its later history into the past which is shaped by various nationalist and nation-state bounded perspectives, in many cases obscures idiosyncratic characteristics of the ethnic relations in the region, which are more complex than what our modern concepts of co-existence and multi-culturalism imply. Besides these omnipresent historiographical and ideological obstacles, there is also a problem of sources on the history of the region; the seemingly little use of documentation outside the archives of the Ottoman or other states, limits the researchers’ efforts to reconstruct the history of the region from different perspectives.
This paper aims to tackle these problems, and make contribution to the field by introducing and analyzing excerpts from the diary of Simeon of Sasun, an Ottoman Armenian from the region in the mid-nineteenth century. Besides its uniqueness as a part of a self-narrative source that give us hints about the inner world of its author, the texts also throws substantial light on the social world that surrounded him. The fact that Simeon of Sasun was a convert to Protestantism and preached as a native pastor in the same region after having received his early education as an Orthodox priest renders his writings even more valuable and at times biased and controversial. The biases and controversial statements have a value on their own in understanding the mentality of period.
The sections of the diary that will be presented in the panel cover the period between 1852 and 1864 with substantial information on his childhood and youth experiences before his conversion to Protestantism under opaque circumstances. In these sections, Simeon of Sasun’s matrix of relations with Orthodox Armenians, Protestants, members of different communities, other missionaries and state officials lead us to rethink about the inter-ethnic and intra-ethnic relations in the region in the mid-nineteenth century, and more mundane reflections of larger transformations of the Ottoman society.
An examination of Derova case: The politics of land-grabbing in Dersim Sandjak in the beginning of the twentieth century
In the nineteenth century changes in the power structure and land tenure in the Eastern provinces resulted in the expulsion and seizure of the lands by Kurdish tribes. A general trend of land grabbing – an important source of tension between Armenian peasents and Kurdish tribes – was becoming clear to foreign observers by the beginning of the twentieth century. Following the reinstatement of the constitutional regime in 1908 Armenian community leaders and peasants emboldened by the initial positive measures pushed for the returned of the lands in Eastern provinces in general and in Dersim particular. On 21 February 1910, members of the Armenian Mirakian tribe of Dersim, Bedros and Giragos, submitted a petition to the governor of Mamüretülaziz and demanded the restitution of the lands to their original possessors in Derova that were grabbed by the leaders of the Arilli and Karsanan tribes. Upon this petition the government began to make an official inquiry regarding the former owners of the lands in question. However, the returning of the lands in Dereova to their Armenians possessors would be a complicated issue for the government, who would like to preserve and empower its power base in the region via tribal networks. This paper, by looking at land grabbing issue in Derova and its aftermath, seeks to investigate the economy and politics of the land grabbing in Dersim, the relations between the central state and the tribes in the beginning of the twentieth century.
State-Tribe relations and the ihtilal of 1819 in Diyarbekir
During the first decades of the nineteenth century social, political and demographic atmosphere of Diyarbekir has changed dramatically. This was reflected in both political position of local urban elites and economic patterns of urban society. In this paper, the reforms of Mahmud II and his policy towards reconstructing state authority/mechanism throughout the empire will be analyzed in the context of the 1819 events in Diyarbekir, where people, gentry and local elites rebelled against the authority of new governor, Behram Pasha, a member of Milli tribe of Viran?ehir. Interestingly enough from the beginning of rebellion, July 18, till its end, Diyarbekir was governed by the consensus of the inhabitants and gentry and the city was defended for three months against both Ottoman military power and armed forces of Milli tribe who supported Behram Pasha in order to eliminate the defence. In October 26, 1819, rebellion was suppressed and the majority of local elite and influential Muslim urban inhabitants were exiled. By the end of the rebellion, Ottoman State eliminated the political and economic authority of local `Ayan families in Diyarbekir and reconstructed its authority. Taking this rebellion as a departure point, this paper will examine city-tribe relations as well as will attempt to answer one of the essential questions, why tribes oppose to city in the nineteenth century Diyarbekir. I will also illustrate the unknown/undefined role of Mahmud II’s politics of city-tribe relations and show the continuities or changes of state policies on this central issue in the context of the early nineteenth century.
Mamasogullar?: A Nineteenth Century Armenian Entrepreneur Family in Arapkir
The economy of Ottoman Empire began to recover itself in the first decades of the nineteenth century thanks to the long peace with Russia and foremost trade networks over the globe. By the end of the first quarter of the nineteenth century, the impacts of growing economy have been observed in the provincial areas of the empire. Imported cheap yarn from British Empire has been processing in the hands of Arapkirli women/men and then offered not only to local market but also exported to main trade centres namely to Aleppo, Damascus, Erzeroum and Baghdad. Cheap raw materials and women labour triggered the rise of manufacturing industry and the birth of a profitable domestic and inter-regional market economy. Such developments in the global commercial networks and availabilities (accessibilities) in the low-cost resources promoted (initiated) the emergence of local entrepreneurs in the provincial regions of the empire. Mamasogullari, was one of the Armenian families that rented looms to the Arapkirlis in the early nineteenth century and then established a local-based manufacturing industry. The aim of this paper is to delineate the successful story of an Armenian entrepreneur family, the Mamasogullari in Arapkir.
By analyzing this transition process from 1830 to 1850 in Arapkir, a mid-sized town of the eastern Anatolia, I will attempt to explain the position and role of local entrepreneurs, who were vital actors in this commercial and industrial booming of the nineteenth century. In this regard, the aim of the presentation is to examine the social and economic transformation of Arapkir, with reference to the activities of Mamasogullar? engaged in sponsorship, cloth production, and export in a period when the Ottoman economy was considered to be dominated by European goods.
Following questions will be discussed: What was the main source of their capital? Can we describe them as bankers because of their advantageous official title, beratli tuccar? What was the nature of their relationship with British and Ottoman Empire? How did they establish their commercial networks with India, Persia and Russia? Such these questions would be major problematic points of this paper.
