CLASHES OF IMPERIAL AUTHORITY: COMMERCIAL TRIBUNALS IN THE OTTOMAN PROVINCES AND ISTANBUL, 1847-1880 by Ahmet Izmirlioglu BA, Economics, Duquesne University, 1995 MBA, Duquesne University, 1996 BS, Mathematics, University of Pittsburgh, 2005 MS, Mathematics, University of Pittsburgh, 2009 MA, History, University of Pittsburgh, 2011 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2015 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH DIETRICH SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Ahmet Izmirlioglu It was defended on April 8, 2015 and approved by Louise Comfort, Professor, Graduate School of Public and International Administration William Chase, Professor, Department of History Seymour Drescher, Distinguished University Professor, Department of History Dissertation Director: Patrick Manning, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of World History, Department of History ii Copyright © by Ahmet Izmirlioglu 2015 iii CLASHES OF IMPERIAL AUTHORITY: COMMERCIAL TRIBUNALS IN THE OTTOMAN PROVINCES AND ISTANBUL, 1847-1880 Ahmet Izmirlioglu, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2015 The impact of the Ottoman Commercial Tribunals on the Tanzimat remains an enigma for historians. This branch of the Ottoman legal system uniquely accepted European merchants as judges, and existed throughout the Ottoman Empire for several decades as an institution of the Tanzimat reforms. This dissertation contains a thorough account of the form and function of these tribunals during the Tanzimat reforms (c. 1839-1880). The imperial interactions in these tribunals provide novel analytical opportunities to clarify the nature of Ottoman resistance against European incursions. Similarly, the research investigates the sources of the discordant interactions in these tribunals that justified counterproductive imperial policies at every level of diplomacy and governance. Along these lines, this research augments the current understanding of Tanzimat in Ottoman history by presenting a previously unavailable perspective of provincial imperial interactions. Simultaneously, the intermutual analysis of local and global imperial interactions in the Ottoman Empire advances efforts in world history to explain the role of local imperial interactions in shaping the dynamics of global change in the nineteenth century. Beside textual modes, the analysis subjected Ottoman and British archival evidence to quantitative methods, such as correspondence analysis, to identify variances in the outcomes of cases for different nationalities and locales, and to identify brokerage opportunities available to historical actors. These progressive analytical approaches demanded a methodological iv commitment to the treatment of interactions among individuals and groups as network interactions. The analysis yielded several results. At the local level, commercial tribunals created previously unavailable brokerage opportunities for European and Ottoman actors by diluting the legal authority of the Ottoman center. At the imperial level, the frictions and clashes of authority in the commercial tribunals dealt a significant blow to the Tanzimat reforms by sowing discord between the Ottoman reformers and their European allies, by magnifying the uncertainties perceived by the public, and by causing bottlenecks in the Ottoman bureaucratic system. The analysis also uncovers aggressive British and Ottoman strategies that distinguished Anglo- Ottoman interactions from Franco-Ottoman interactions, especially during the second half of the Tanzimat. v TABLE OF CONTENTS 1.0 TOO BIG TO FAIL, TOO DIVERSE TO BAIL ...................................................... 1 1.1 WHY TANZIMAT? ............................................................................................ 1 1.2 WHAT WENT WRONG WITH TANZIMAT? ............................................... 3 1.3 WHY THE OTTOMAN COMMERCIAL TRIBUNALS? ........................... 10 1.4 THE ARGUMENT ............................................................................................ 14 1.5 A BRIEF HISTORIOGRAPHY OF THE TANZIMAT ................................ 19 2.0 OTTOMAN LEGAL SYSTEM AND THE KÂDÎ .................................................. 30 2.1 THE TIMAR SYSTEM AND THE KÂDÎ ...................................................... 34 2.2 SOCIAL ROLE AND IMPACT OF THE KÂDÎ ........................................... 39 2.3 TIMAR TO İLTİZAM ...................................................................................... 42 2.4 SHIFTING AUTHORITY AND THE AYAN ................................................ 45 3.0 BUREAUCRATIC ELITES OF ISTANBUL DURING TANZIMAT ................. 56 3.1 THE ORIGINS OF THE TANZIMAT............................................................ 59 3.2 SOCIAL CHANGES IN ISTANBUL, 1855-1865 ........................................... 74 3.3 INCREASING TURBULENCE 1865-1876 ..................................................... 79 3.4 TANZIMAT’S END IN ISTANBUL ............................................................... 90 4.0 TANZIMAT-ERA COMMERCIAL TRIBUNALS: INSTITUTIONS, DATA AND METHODOLOGY ........................................................................................... 94 vi 4.1 HISTORY AND PROCEDURES ..................................................................... 95 4.2 INFORMATION FLOW AND MORE PROCEDURES ............................. 103 4.3 DATA: PRIMARY AND SECONDARY SOURCES .................................. 106 4.4 SOURCES OF CONFUSION IN THE SOURCES ...................................... 108 4.5 METHODOLOGY: QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS ...................................... 111 4.6 METHODOLOGY: QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS ................................... 115 5.0 A TEXTUAL ANALYSIS OF IMPERIAL INTERACTIONS DURING TANZIMAT .............................................................................................................. 119 5.1 BRITISH MISCONCEPTIONS? ................................................................... 119 5.2 TWO BRITISH CONSULAR REPORTS..................................................... 121 5.3 AN ANALYSIS OF THE BRITISH PERCEPTIONS ................................. 125 5.4 REASSESSMENT: CONTESTED SPACES OF AUTHORITY ................ 128 5.5 NATURE AND SCOPE OF RURAL CLASHES ......................................... 132 5.6 EARLY CONTESTS (1847-1856) .................................................................. 133 5.7 LOCAL IMPERIAL INTERACTIONS UNTIL 1856 ................................. 137 5.8 UNRELIABILITY OF THE OTTOMAN CENTER ................................... 145 5.9 IMPERIAL AVENUES AND LOCAL SOLUTIONS (1856-1876) ............. 150 5.10 IMPERIAL ACTION AND INACTION AS LOCAL STRATEGIES ....... 155 5.11 DIGGING IN AND MOVING OUT .............................................................. 160 5.12 DIGGING IN .................................................................................................... 163 5.13 FULL DIVERGENCE..................................................................................... 170 6.0 CORRESPONDENCE ANALYSIS USING THE COMMERCIAL TRIBUNAL CASES ....................................................................................................................... 173 vii 6.1 INTERROGATING ARCHIVAL DATA ..................................................... 173 6.2 DATA AND APPLICATION ......................................................................... 174 6.3 RESULTS ......................................................................................................... 175 6.4 A NETWORK MODEL FOR EXTENDING THE ANALYSIS ................. 187 7.0 TRUST AND THE LIMITS OF FLEXIBILITY .................................................. 190 APPENDIX A. SOME NOTES ON CORRESPONDENCE ANALYSIS .......................... 196 APPENDIX B. LIST OF COMMERCIAL TRIBUNAL CASES ....................................... 199 BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................................................................................................... 202 viii LIST OF TABLES 6.1 Merchant experiences in the Tanzimat-era Ottoman Commercial Tribunals. ..................... 177 6.2 Bureaucratic interactions in the Tanzimat-era Ottoman Commercial Tribunals. ................ 178 6.3 Experiences of British merchants in the Tanzimat-era Ottoman Commercial Tribunals .... 183 6.4 Bureaucratic activities within the Tanzimat-era Ottoman Commercial Tribunals (British cases) ........................................................................................................................................... 184 B.1 The list of commercial tribunal cases used in the correspondence analysis. ...................... 200 B.2 The list of commercial tribunal cases used in the correspondence analysis (continued). ... 201 ix LIST OF FIGURES 3.1 As a result of the Tanzimat reforms the autocratic rule of the Sultan is replaced by a more autonomous bureaucracy under a powerful Sadrazam ................................................................. 61 3.2 Ottoman Structural Experiments (Consultative) .................................................................... 62 6.1 The CA projects 93.6% of the variance between the row (black) and column (red) variables into two dimensions .................................................................................................................... 177 6.2 The CA projects 86.2% of the variance among the row and column variables onto two dimensions .................................................................................................................................