Locating an Ottoman Port-City in the Early Modern Mediterranean: Izmir 1580-1780
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Locating an Ottoman Port-City in the Early Modern Mediterranean: Izmir 1580-1780 by Mehmet Kuru A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Department of History University of Toronto ©Mehmet Kuru, 2017 Locating an Ottoman Port-City in the Early Modern Mediterranean: Izmir 1580-1780 Mehmet Kuru Doctor of Philosophy Department of History University of Toronto 2017 ABSTRACT Extant historiography considers Izmir as a case of early modern “boom town.” Its transformation from a mere pier for the provisions of Istanbul into a bustling trans-regional port-city, so the standard narrative goes, was due to mercantilist penetration by English and Dutch chartered companies at a time of Ottoman economic and political crisis and social dislocation. This formulation gives little credit to the city’s regional setting as an agent of change. This dissertation, in contrast, addresses the question of Izmir’s rise from the vantage point of Western Anatolia’s environmental outlook, hydrogeological features, and crop rotation patterns. It suggests that the city was forged not out of some in-built characteristics, but of how the inhabitants met the environmental challenges, and how this socio-environmental outlook contrasted with other regions in the long run and was articulated with economic and demographic factors. Using a composite methodology that combines environmental and economic historical approaches, and shifting the scale of observation to situate the environmental trends for sixteenth-century Izmir in a millennial perspective, this dissertation reconstructs the infrastructure of Ottoman socio-economic transformation. It rethinks the periodization and causal linkages between environment and fiscality by means of geography, and argues for ii understanding Izmir through a continuous monetary process that amplified commercial flows on a Eurasian scale. The first two chapters of this dissertation revisit the Little Ice Age argument concerning seventeenth-century socio-economic transformations. These chapters show the geographical limits of the argument, i.e. how the cumulative impact of regional climactic differentiation distinguished Western Anatolia, and Izmir’s hinterland in particular, allowing the development of local agricultural production and the region’s simultaneous demographic growth, distinguishing it from the rest of Anatolia. In the following two chapters, this work draws inspiration from the way that the question of the birth of the Atlantic has been cut down to size and reoriented, inter alia, through an Indian Ocean perspective. Here I similarly emphasize how trade flows running through Ottoman domains were inherently interlocked with Eurasian trade. I suggest that the bi-zonal Ottoman currency acted as a switch mechanism via the marginal utility of arbitrage, discontinuous in the long run but catalyzing a quintessential economic shift from the established portfolio of Eastern goods to the greater salience and integration of local products and markets. It was this shift, I argue, not a mercantilist penetration, which set the process in place. Focusing on the rise of Izmir also allows us to better understand the superstructure of Ottoman socio-economic transformation not only at the stage of Ottoman capital, but also of endemic commercial flows diffused throughout the empire. Finally, in the fifth and the last chapter, I demonstrate how Izmir became the conduit for wider economic flows not for environmental and economic reasons alone, but also fiscal ones. Specifically, Izmir’s covert taxation policy and taxpayers’ responses shaped its urban demographics in tandem with environmental and monetary processes. Ottoman environmental, iii economic, and political aspects of socio-economic change were thus connected to Eurasian flows of goods and people. iv Table of Contents Introduction ……………………………………………………………………………………....1 Chapter 1: Mapping People and Produce: Ecological Change and the Shift in Tax-Base in Sixteenth-Century Ottoman Anatolia…………………………………………....21 1.1. Demographic Change in Sixteenth-Century Anatolia and Regional Climatic Discrepancy ……………………………………………………………………..26 1.2. A “Magnificent” Climate: Age of Rainfall……………………………………....35 1.3. Climatic Impact on Agricultural Production in Sixteenth-Century Ottoman Anatolia…………………………………………………………………………..40 1.4. Transition from the “Magnificent Days” to the “Age of Crisis” ………………..53 Chapter 2: The Rise of Western Anatolia in the Midst of a Social and Climatic Crisis…….56 2.1. A Balance Sheet of Celali Era: Reversal of Fortune…………………………….59 2.2. An Oasis in the Midst of the Little Ice Age: The Rise of the Western Anatolia…68 2.3. Hydrogeological Characteristics of Western Anatolia as Determinant Factor Behind Economic Growth …………....................................................................72 2.4. Agricultural Production of Western Anatolia during the Little Ice Age………...78 2.5. Conclusion………………………….....................................................................81 Chapter 3: Monetization Process of Ottoman Markets………………………………………84 3.1. Ottoman Currency Zones and the Ottoman Monetary Policy in the Sixteenth Century…………………………………………………………………………...86 3.2. “Gresham’s Law” at Work………………………………….................................94 3.3. The Monetary Crisis and Great Debasement in Late Sixteenth Century (1580–1589) ……………………………………………………………………..97 3.4. The Beylerbeyi Incident and the Ottoman Monetary Reform (1589-1600) ……109 3.5. Conclusion.…………..………………………………………………………....117 Chapter 4: Commercialization Process and the Long-Term Patterns of Ottoman Foreign Trade……………………………………………………………………………119 4.1. The Eurasian Monetary Integration and the Expansion of Interregional Trade..121 4.2. The Long-term Commercial Pattern of Izmir…………………………………..125 4.3. The Foreign Trade of the Ottoman Empire as a Eurasian Empire……………..138 4.4. The “Myth” of the European Mercantilist Penetration in Early Modern Mediterranean…………………………………………………………………..143 4.5. Conclusion……………………………………………………………………...148 v Chapter 5: Taxation and Population in Izmir from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century…………………………………………………………………………151 5.1 The Demographic Evolution of Izmir according to the Travellers’ Estimates and the Ottoman Tax Registers until the End of Seventeenth Century……………..155 5.2. The Tax Burden on the Inhabitants of Early Modern Izmir……………………164 5.3. Long-term Demographic Pattern of Izmir in Early Modern Period……………177 5.4. Conclusion……………………………………………………………………...187 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………...190 Appendix I: Urban Demographic Change in Sixteenth-Century Anatolia.......................…...196 Appendix II: Rural Demographic Change in Sixteenth-Century Anatolia…….......................199 Appendix III: Nüzul Taxes Imposed on the Provinces of Anatolia in 1590 and 1637/38…………………………………………………………...………..…...201 Appendix IV: Revenues of Izmir Customs, Erzurum Customs and Imperıal Treasury from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century ……………………..……………..….208 Appendıx V: Index of Izmir Customs Revenues, Erzurum Customs Revenues and Imperial Treasury Revenues from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century…...221 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………………230 vi List of Tables Table 1.1 The Distribution of Crops Harvested in the District of Manisa according to the Tahrir registers of 1531 and 1575 ………………………………………...…….46 Table 1.2: Cotton Production in Adana according to Sixteenth-Century Tahrir Registers ...48 Table 1.3: The Tax Returns of Agricultural Produce and Their Share in Aggregate Tax Revenue for Çubuk District……………………………………………………...51 Table 2.1: A Comparison of the Taxpayer Populations of Rural Areas and the Number of Villages based on the Tahrir and Mufassal Avarız registers, 1570s-1650s ……………………………………………………………...…….. 61 Table 2.2: A Comparison of Taxes Imposed in kind (as barley) on the Provinces of Anatolia in 1590 and 1637/38 (in kile)…………………………………………..65 Table 2.3: Regional Fluctuations according to Mufassal surveys (tahrir and avarız) and Nüzul registers. …………………………………………………..………………67 Table 3.1: Annual Mukataa Revenues of Several Sixteenth-Century Mints …………….....92 Table 3.2: Monetary Composition of the Tributes of Moldavia and Wallachia in the Second Half of the Sixteenth Century…………………………………………..........…104 Table 3.3: Monetary composition of the annual revenues of the Ottoman Imperial Treasury, as reported in the budgets of 1547-48, 1567-68, 1582-83, and1589- 90………..107 Table 3.4: Monetary composition of the annual revenues of the Ottoman Imperial Treasury, based on the budgets of 1589-90, 1591-92, 1592-93, and 1602-03………...…..113 Table 4.1: Gold to Silver Prices Ratios in Eurasian Markets in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth centuries……………………………………………………………..………….123 Table 5.5: Taxpayers in Rural and Urban Parts of Izmir in the Sixteenth Century……..…157 Table 5.2: Taxpayers, Hamams, and Mosques in select western Anatolian Towns of the Late Sixteenth Century…...…………………………………………………………..158 Table 5.3: Travellers’ Estimates on the Population Size of Izmir in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries…...……………………………………………………….160 Table 5.4: Izmir’s Seventeenth-century Taxpayers, by Ethno-religious Communities, according to Cizye Registers ……………...……………………………….......161 Table 5.5: The Number of Non-Muslim Taxpayers in Izmir After the 1691 Poll-tax reform …………………………………………………166 vii Table 5.7: Tax Burden Shouldered by Rural and Urban Parts of several Ottoman Districts in the Seventeenth Century……………………………………………………..…168 Table 5.8: Non-Muslim