Ottoman De-Industrialization 1800-1913: Assessing the Shock, Its Impact and the Response

India and Britain were much bigger players in the 18th century world market for textiles than was Egypt, the Levant and the core of the Ottoman Empire, but these eastern Mediterranean regions did export carpets, silks and other textiles to Europe and the East. By the middle of the 19th century, they had lost most of their export market and much of their domestic market to globalization forces and rapid productivity growth in European manufacturing. Other local industries also suffered decline, and these regions underwent de-industrialization as a consequence. How different was Ottoman experience from the rest of the poor periphery? Was de-industrialization more or less pronounced? Was the terms of trade shock bigger or smaller? How much of Ottoman de-industrialization was due to falling world trade barriers -- ocean transport revolutions and European liberal trade policy, how much due to factory-based productivity advance in Europe, how much to declining Ottoman competitiveness in manufacturing, how much to Ottoman railroads penetrating the interior, and how much to Ottoman policy? The paper uses a price-dual approach to seek the answers. It documents trends in export and import prices, relative to each other and to non-tradables, as well as to the unskilled wage. The impact of globalization, European productivity advance, Ottoman wage costs and policy are assessed by using a simple neo-Ricardian three sector model, and by comparison with what was taking place in the rest of the poor periphery.

Different paths to the modern state in Europe: the interaction between domestic political economy and interstate competition

Theoretical work on state formation and capacity has focused mostly on early modern Europe and on the experience of western European states during this period. While a number of European states monopolized domestic tax collection and achieved gains in state capacity during the early modern era, for others revenues stagnated or even declined, and these variations motivated alternative hypotheses for determinants of fiscal and state capacity. In this study we test the basic hypotheses in the existing literature making use of the large date set we have compiled for all of the leading states across the continent. We find strong empirical support for two prevailing threads in the literature, arguing respectively that interstate wars and changes in economic structure towards an urbanized economy had positive fiscal impact. Regarding the main point of contention in the theoretical literature, whether it was representative or authoritarian political regimes that facilitated the gains in fiscal capacity, we do not find conclusive evidence that one performed better than the other. Instead, the empirical evidence we have gathered lends supports to the hypothesis that when under pressure of war, the fiscal performance of representative regimes was better in the more urbanized-commercial economies and the fiscal performance of authoritarian regimes was better in rural-agrarian economie

A Wedding Gone Wrong The Rather Worldly Woes of a Rather Wealthy Qādirī Sufi Shaykh. Two 18th Century Documents from the Ottoman Court Records of Ḥamā and Aleppo

A rather intricate legal case took place first in Ḥamā’s and then in Aleppo’s Ottoman Islamic courts around the middle of the 18th century. The setting, the social standing of the individuals involved, and the alleged circumstances of the case all contribute to make clear that this was not just another routine court case. Altogether, the two documents are a good example of the scope and quality of the information preserved in the archives of local courts and they both demonstrate the extent and modes of implementation of Islamic law in a specific Ottoman milieu. The long inventory of personal property in the Aleppo document gives us a good idea of the social status and affluence enjoyed by the plaintiff – a member of the Jīlānī/Qādirī family - and an interesting insight into material culture and what constituted wealth and affluence at the time.

Turkey's Response to the Great Depression in Comparative Perspective, 1929-1939

Digitised version produced by the EUI Library and made available online in 2020.Many developing countries around the world experienced a turning point during the 1930s. The contrast between before and after 1929' may often be exaggerated, but there is little doubt that in many parts of the developing world the decade witnessed a closing towards international trade and capital flows and a relative rise in import-substituting activities. The crisis also changed the nature of political power with a weakening of the large landowners and export oriented interests and the commitment to the liberal order that prevailed until World War I. In many countries control fell into more populist hands. with nationalist leanings towards autarchy and import substituting industrialization

Editor's introduction: Turkey's experience with neoliberal policies and globalization since 1980

The six interesting papers in this Special Issue offer new insights on and aim at an overall evaluation of Turkey’s experience with neoliberal policies and globalization since 1980. The first four of these were presented and discussed in a conference organized by the Chair for Contemporary Turkish Studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science and New Perspectives on Turkey in October 2011. Asaf Savaş Akat, Çağlar Keyder, Dani Rodrik, Zafer Yenal and Deniz Yükseker also contributed to that conference and the lively discussion for which we thank them. The shift to neoliberal policies around the world began in the 1970s as the Bretton Woods system was disintegrating and the developed economies on the two sides of the Atlantic Ocean were searching for policies to deal with the combination of stagnation and inflation. The Thatcher government in the UK and the Reagan administration in the US led the movement away from Keynesian interventionism and towards a greater emphasis on markets in both macro and micro economic policy. In the international economy, neoliberal policies began to reduce the barriers in the way of trade and, even more importantly, the controls on international capital flows. These changes ushered in a new era known as the second wave of globalization, after the first wave that prevailed during the century before World War I

Finance in the Ottoman Empire, 1453–1854

For most of its six-century existence, the Ottoman Empire is best characterized as a bureaucratic, agrarian empire. The economic institutions and policies of this entity were shaped to a large degree by the priorities and interests of a central bureaucracy. This central bureaucracy managed successfully to face a series of external and internal challenges through pragmatism and a habit of negotiation. This chapter examines the long-term changes in the Ottoman institutions of private and public finance from such a perspective of pragmatism, flexibility, and adaptiveness