by Dr. Peter Hill (Northumbria)
The Ottoman Political Economies workshop was held in Cambridge on the 14th and 15th October 2022. The event was hosted by CRASSH and supported, in addition, by the Past and Present Society, the Economic History Society, and the Faculty of History, University of Cambridge. Ottoman Political Economies began as an online reading group in 2020, during the Covid-19 lockdowns. It was conceived as a space to bring together scholars, mainly early in their careers, interested in questions of political economy in Ottoman history – an area often dominated by cultural and intellectual approaches. We had run a successful series of online meetings, but this Cambridge workshop was the first time the group had been able to convene in person.
Participants gathered in Cambridge for the Ottoman Political Economy Workshop, image (2022) supplied by Peter Hill
As in most of our previous meetings, the workshop was dedicated to discussing work-in-progress by members of the group. We wanted to keep the focus on collective discussion, and so asked for short papers which were circulated in advance. The authors then presented these only briefly, in 5-10 minutes, followed by brief comments by a discussant, and the floor was then open for general discussion. We also kept notes of this discussion as a record for participants. This format – adapted from past projects, some of them also supported by the Past and Present Society – has proved successful in generating a supportive and collaborative atmosphere for discussion, and we found this to be the case in Cambridge also. In addition, our programme contained two sessions dedicated to planning the next steps for our project.
The first session was dedicated to ‘state finance’. Ellen Nye’s paper highlighted the attempt of Sultan Mustafa II to assert sovereignty over money in the Ottoman empire, after the 1688 fiscal crisis. Naz Yücel’s paper offered a broad-ranging survey of existing work on Ottoman state accounting, alongside her studies of accounting registers used by the Privy Purse administration. We discussed (among other things) the strengths as well as the shortcomings of existing scholarship in Ottoman economic history, and the tensions between quantitative economic history and more cultural questionings of economic categories.
The second session was on ‘finance’. Aviv Derri presented an account of changing practices and discourses of banking in late Ottoman Syria. Elizabeth Williams’s paper discussed the attempts of first Ottoman and then French officials to convert lands on the ‘desert’s edge’ in Syria from pastoral to arable use. Discussion turned on the concepts used to understand economic history, from ‘usury’ to capitalism and economic sovereignty.
Participants gathered in Cambridge for the Ottoman Political Economy Workshop, image (2022) supplied by Peter Hill
After lunch we held the first of two sessions on ‘property’. Antonis Hadjikyriacou presented his work on a state survey of Cyprus in 1832/33, arguing that this showed a crucial shift from recording production to recording property-holding. Tolga Cora’s paper examined a novel financial venture of the 1880s, a real estate development company in Istanbul. Discussion covered the question of a ‘transition to capitalism’ in the Ottoman empire, and the valency of different Ottoman terms used in the registration and definition of property (temettuat, tapu, mülk, waqf).
The final session of the day discussed what we wanted to achieve in the next phase of the Ottoman Political Economies project. There was general agreement over the thematic focus and organisational form of the group, but different possibilities were raised for taking the project further. These included holding further events with a more outward-facing focus, such as a webinar, a panel at a larger conference, or publishing a collection of the group’s work as a special issue of a journal or edited volume. They also included more focussed collaborative work, such as a workshop dedicated to intensive discussion of different types of sources.
The second day began with a session on ‘commodities’. Herman Adney was unfortunately absent due to illness, but we were able to discuss his paper on the tobacco business in late Ottoman Salonica. Dan Stolz’s paper presented the history of the salt mines at Salif in southwest Arabia. The group discussed the question of state monopoly of commodities, present in both these examples, as well as distinctions between the creation and extraction of value.
Participants gathered in Cambridge for the Ottoman Political Economy Workshop, image (2022) supplied by Peter Hill
The second session focussed on ‘violence’. Peter Hill presented a model of the changing organisation of violence in Ottoman Syria over the nineteenth century, and the emergence of new sectarian forms of violence. Anaïs Massot’s paper examined different aspects of the attack on Christians in Damascus in 1860: rebellion, mutiny, and interconfessional violence. The discussion highlighted the interplay between confessional categories and the Ottoman fiscal system, and the contrasts in perspective between the state archive and vernacular sources.
After lunch we held our second session on ‘property’. Nada Moumtaz’s paper examined how the Solidere project in 1990s Beirut handled the alienation of endowed religious property (waqf). Discussion focussed on the diversity of conceptions and forms of property, drawing on examples from many participants’ work within and beyond the Ottoman empire.
The final session discussed practical options for the future of the Ottoman Political Economies project. There was general agreement that further online sessions should be planned from early 2023, and that, if organisational capacity and funding could be found, we should hold further in-person workshops, if possible, annually, over the next three to four years. We discussed ways to expand the membership of the group while maintaining its early-career focus and atmosphere of collective participation. We also agreed to pursue other forms of collaboration, by setting up an online collective working space (Slack) and looking into the possibility of larger grant applications.
Participants gathered in Cambridge for the Ottoman Political Economy Workshop, image (2022) supplied by Peter Hill
The two-day event was highly successful for members of the Ottoman Political Economies group, giving many of us the chance to meet in person for the first time. The discussions of the papers and themes were intellectually generative, and the planning sessions allowed us to create and agree a workable agenda for the next stage of our collective project. We are grateful to the Past and Present Society, and to our other funders, for making this possible through their support.
Past & Present was pleased to support this event and supports other events like it. Applications for event funding are welcomed from scholars working in the field of historical studies at all stages in their careers.