Ottoman History Podcast - Social Networks in Ottoman Reform

Episode Date: September 17, 2019

Episode 427 with Yonca Köksal hosted by Matthew Ghazarian Download the podcast Feed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloud How do social networks determine the results of government reform? In this episode we examine this quesiton during the Tanzimat reform era (1839-76) with historical sociologist Yonca Köksal. Her research focuses on the differing outcomes of the Tanzimat in two core provinces of the Ottoman Empire, Ankara and Edirne. Applying social network analysis to imperial correspondence and provincial petitions, Köksal shows how differing network structures could lead to different outcomes in government reforms, empowering local dynasties in some areas and giving rise to cross-confessional coalitions in others. « Click for More »

This is Ottoman History Podcast. Matt Kazarian here. Next, we'll speak with Yonca Köksal about political reform in the late Ottoman Empire. In 1839, Sultan Abd al-Nijid I issued a proclamation that would transform the empire forever. It inaugurated the period known as the Tanzimat, or reorganization, that gave rise to the first Ottoman constitution in 1876. During this period, the Ottoman Empire transformed into something closer to the states we live under today. It obtained a larger bureaucracy, a centralized army, and saw attempts to apply uniform laws across the land. But the empire stretched across three continents and contained tens of millions

of people with multiple religions, languages, and cultures. So how did they implement these reforms across the empire? We'll discuss new approaches to studying the Tanzimat that show how differing structures of social networks determined the different outcomes of government reforms. The social networks that connected state actors with other actors at the local level differed in Edirne and Ankara. We'll also talk about the impetus behind these reforms and how the government wanted to show

that it could build a system to serve all Ottoman subjects. For the Tansi mass state, it was very important to prove that the Ottomans were capable of ruling over non-Muslim communities. In closing, we'll look at how reforms in some areas brought the opposite effects. They were gaining their own distinct ethnic or let's say proto-nationalist identity. Makazarian here. This is Ottoman History Podcast. We're recording in Istanbul with Professor Yonca Koksal. Thank you very much for joining us on the podcast today. Thank you.

So in this episode, we will look at what determined the outcomes of the Tanzimat reforms as they were implemented in different areas of the empire. And we'll address this question by drawing on Professor Koksal's recent book, The Ottoman Empire in the Tanzimat Era, which is out from Rutledge in 2019. I wanted to start with a broader question for listeners who may not be so familiar with late Ottoman history. What is Tanzimat and why study it? What is so important about these few decades of government reform in the 19th century? Tanzimat, I think, is an important period in Ottoman history. The time period was also important to understand a general transformation that was taking place in the Ottoman Empire,

but also in the whole world context. 19th century is usually considered as transformation from empires to nation-states. In this sense, I think Tansimat is quite important and in fact in the literature there are kind of two broad readings of Tansimat and one of them emphasized Tansimat as a top-down project. This was a view that was quite popular in Ottoman studies until the last couple of decades, by the way.

And in this reading, the idea was that the Ottoman statesmen were influenced by the European statesmen, and they adapted these reforms without consulting to the local forces, to the social actors. And because of that, Tanzimat became a failed project. In the last couple of decades, actually, we see a growing literature that challenged, criticized this viewpoint and they emphasize more on the bottom-up perspective. How different local actors, different social groups,

including local intermediaries, the merchants, tax farmers, let's say, tribal leaders, how they responded to the reforms, but also lay people, right? The workers, for example, women, how the response of this, you know, underrepresented communities took place. The major contribution I try to do in this book is to introduce a new approach to the study of state and social group relations in the Ottoman Empire. Instead of talking about the relations between state and society as a zero-sum game, what I argue here is that, you know, we can talk about the interaction between state and social actors.

In my understanding, we need to see it as a dance between two partners. So one of the partners would try to impose his or her moves in the dance. The outcome of this dance depends on the interaction between these two parties. This is what I try to do in this research actually. So your work focuses on two provinces in the Ottoman Empire so we get a sort of comparative perspective on what's going on Edirne and Ankara. How did you come to decide that these would be the two provinces for studying the Tanzimat. Okay, thank you. So what I wanted to do is to look at how the Ottomans managed reform in the core regions of the Ottoman Empire. Core regions meaning that they were part of this Ottoman administrative system from the earlier period onwards.

And close to Istanbul too, right? They were almost in the same proximity to Istanbul, but one of them was located in the, you know, in the European lands of the Ottoman Empire, and the other one was located in central Anatolia, Ankara, yes. So, you know, I wanted to look at core regions, but I also wanted to pay attention to this European versus Anatolian lands. And of course, when I look at Anatolia, to which province to choose, I could have picked Izmir, Smyrna. But then it would be very much like Edirne in terms of commercialization. So I was looking for a province that was kind of away from this global connections and economic developments. So I pick up Ankara.

Edirne emerged as a good option because it was the former imperial capital and there were lots of archival documents that I can use. Ankara also had lots of archival documentation that was available in the Ottoman archives. What exactly were the sources you used to pull out stories about these local social actors that helped determine the outcomes of Tanzimat in different areas? So in the Ottoman archives, there are various registers that you can follow the stories of local intermediaries.

They petitioned to the Ottoman state quite frequently. They sent both individual petitions and collective petitions. So, for example, one thing I did in this book is to check the comparison of this collective petitioning in Edirne and Ankara. While in Edirne, I was able to see collective petitions that were signed by both Muslims and non-Muslims. In the case of Ankara, separate petitioning based on this communal identification was much common. But for my quantitative social network analysis, what I did was to look at the Ayniyat defterleri of Meclis-i Vala.

Meclis-i Vala being? It's the Supreme Council, basically. Supreme Council at first was responsible for both making the regulations for the Tansi Imat and handling case of complaints. Okay. So especially in the earlier time period until 1860s, you could find both the regulations that were made in Meclis-i Vala and sent to the provinces and the cases, complaints and how they

were processed in the Supreme Council, a case of complaints, both of them are available. And so your research was studying the sets of the petitions that are being sent by locals, either individuals or groups, to this supreme council, the Meclis-i Vala. And they would then review the case and give an opinion about it. Exactly. And ayiniyat defters are quite interesting in the suspect. Of course, I looked at the original petitions that were available in other catalogs like irades, mektubu, umumi, kalemi, and any other kinds of catalogs. But ayniyat defteris

are the summaries, very detailed summaries of these petitions and how they were responded by Meclis Vala. So I have a standardized information, right? Because all of them were written in the same style. And of course, you know, the details were different for Edirne, for Ankara. You could see different cases of complaints. But the methods of writing were quite standardized. There's a form to the data that you're looking at. There's a summary of the issue and our opinion kind of thing, right? summary of the issue and our opinion kind of thing, right? Okay. And this was very helpful for me because I was doing quantitative social network analysis.

I needed this type of standardized data. Therefore, for my quantitative analysis, I used the data set I created from these summaries that I found in the Aynia defter. So I was actually planning to ask about this as well. How, in your work, you combine historical methods with sociological approaches. And part of this was pulling out quantitative data from these Ayniyat defteris and the sources that you look at. What exactly is social network analysis? How does it work? Why did you decide to draw on these methods for your

work on the tanzimat the basic social network analysis is about defining and explaining relations among different nodes meaning actors that were located in a network. And this is important because once you look at these relations among these actors, you can understand different characteristics related to these interactions. And one thing you can get is the density of network, whether there are dense relations among social actors in the network or not, tells you something about the social structure, let's say local structure in my case. And you can also identify centrality, right? So who's like in the center of the network, well-connected,

and who's sort of floating out on the periphery, maybe one or two connections. The outliers, or you can see central actors but also actors who act like brokers right or bridge that connect unconnected actors to each other and that's important because when we think about this you know transform state transformation story right we talk about central, elimination of local intermediaries. Local intermediaries are actually brokers, right? They broker the relationship between the state and social actors located in a certain region. And this is called vertical brokerage, by the way, right? And there's also something called horizontal brokerage in which

this local intermediary is also mediated relations between various local actors so it's kind of within community brokerage so vertical is like kind of connecting the state to local areas yes and then horizontal is connecting a lot of different local actors together. Yes. And in the case of Endirne and Ankara, what I noticed is that local intermediaries, notables, ayans, chorbacis, kocabasis, mültesims, tribal leaders, right? Local intermediaries who were both vertical and horizontal brokers were incorporated into this new administrative system. They weren't thrown out. They were tried to bring them into the system as a way to kind of carry the reforms into

local areas, using their existing connections. Exactly. So these brokers became the means for state centralization, but it also had implications for the Ottoman state, right? The brokers benefited from this positioning because they became council members, they became local administrators, but at the same time the Ottoman state had to give up some of its power, right? Because those people when they entered into local councils, which were responsible for distributing taxes at the local level, course they use their own advantages right

so through their own alliances they accumulated wealth right so you were studying the different relationships that you could among all these different social actors who are mentioned in the petitions you know this merchant is allying with this other notable and sending a complaint about these other guys or whatever and so you went through and you recorded all of these and then took that data and kind of compared what's going on in Edirne during the Tanzimat, what's going on in Ankara during the

Tanzimat. So what social structures did you find? Okay so I did it both in terms of narrative analysis and quantitative analysis since we are talking about social network analysis let me first complete this part. Social network analysis is very helpful because they give you a kind of a broad perspective to see who was connected to whom who was in the you know central position who was disconnected and what type of you know map right what's the kind of shape that we have from these local networks?

But social network analysis could be really problematic when they are applied to historical cases, right? Because in social network analysis, you need to have continuous data, okay? Over a long time period. But once you work with archives, with all this historical documentation,

you don't have this data, okay? You don't have the continuous interaction. So you can grasp maps for certain limited time periods. So this is why I did block modeling analysis. I tried to get an overall map of the connections in both Edirne and Ankara but then I divided into four different time periods because I don't have the continuous data so I took slices of interaction and try to look at how it changed over time especially in terms of the density of connections and centrality of local actors over time and I also checked the most central actors over time because these people change over time.

The change in these individuals were also important. For example, some very strong local families who were very central in the earlier time periods in Ankara, like the Jabbarsade family, started to lose their significance towards 1870s. So social network analysis are just good representations to get the broad picture, but I needed to support them with the stories

that I got from the archives because I was able to follow these major social actors that occupied crucial positions in both Edirne and Ankara networks over time. So I supported my quantitative analysis with qualitative analysis of the historical documents that I have. So you did both. You had this going through and counting and measuring the best you could and using block modeling, which is this method of just taking slices for periods of time and that gave you sort of an overall view exactly but then you went in and

then you said okay there are some people who are really sticking out here as either being very central or having lots of dense relations with many others and so you you kind of used it almost as a guide and said let me zoom in on these characters and i'll go and read them myself yes see what's going on yes exactly so what what did i find right this is the yeah so between adirne and ankara okay but let me first i mean the local structures were different and my argument is that this different in this local structures that's the social networks that connected you know state actors with other actors at the local level differed in Edirne and Ankara, and this difference had implications for the reform application. But this wasn't the only factor that was effective to understand the reform period in both provinces.

In fact, there were some important differences between these two provinces at the beginning of the Tansimat reforms. Both of them were located in the core regions of the Ottoman Empire, as I mentioned to you. Both Edirne and Ankara were directly subject to the first reform policies, and that's, I think, crucial to understand how the state and these different social actors interacted with each other. So, in terms of economy, in Edirne I'm talking about quite a developed commercialized economy. There was both commercial agriculture and well-established trade connections. You know, Edirne was not a port city per se, but it had an access to the Tekirdağ port, Rodosto, right, an important port in the region.

the Tekirdağ port, Rodosto, right? An important port in the region. It was a plodive, a major center for Bulgarian revival, okay? A major trade center was also located in the city of Edirne. So there we are talking about a province that was well connected to the trade networks of Europe. In Ankara, however, we are talking about limited economic development. Ankara used to be a major textile center because of this mohair, tiftik, okay? Famous Ankara goats, right?

The famous Ankara goats and the wool, right? But starting with the 17th century, this textile production decreased significantly. When we came to the 19th century this textile production decreased significantly when we came to the 19th century there was limited textile production compared to edina it was economically less developed so edina was more of a rising economic star whereas ankara had had more trade in the past but then by the 19th century yeah by the 19th century it was not doing as well as it had been. Exactly. The ethnic composition, the demographic composition was also different.

You know, Ankara was located in central Anatolia, in a very secure location for the Ottoman state, and around 80% of population were Muslims, so there were Muslim majority. But in the cities, cities of Ankara, Kayseri, there were considerable groups of Armenians, Greeks, and in some cases, Jewish communities. So both cities were multi-ethnic, multi-religious, but Muslim majority was dominant in Ankara. Meaning that for the Ottoman state, especially during the Tansi Matira, in the age of all of these rising nationalisms, Ankara did not really represent a big challenge with the Muslim majority and secure central Anatolian location. Whereas Edirne, of course, had a non-Muslim majority, around 50 to 60% of population were non-Muslims.

There was great diversity. There were Bulgarians, Greeks, Armenians, Jews, Muslims, Turks, but also other Muslim groups living in the province. And in fact, for the Tansi mass state, it was very important to prove that the Ottomans were capable of ruling over non-Muslim communities, right? This whole Ottoman citizenship project, equal rights. So therefore, because of this, you know, ethnic composition and also the differences in geopolitical location, the Ottomans invested more in the province of Edirne. Edirne, by the way, was the former imperial capital. It was the starting point of any kind of the military campaigns to Europe. So Edirne was symbolically very important. Because of all these factors,

the Ottomans had more integrationist policies in Edirne, meaning that they were not only concerned with taxation and military conscription, but they invested a lot in socio-economic development of the province. They were concerned about gaining the approval of Namaz, the majority who lived in the province. Trying really to integrate the province into its new project very wholeheartedly and then in Ankara Ankara was in central Anatolia they were already ruling it with this Muslim majority so in Ankara extraction right in terms of taxation military conscription was more dominant compared to the integrationist policies in Edirne. So these are the differences. And the local structures based on these differences in socioeconomic development,

geopolitical location, demographic composition were also important. In Ankara, there was one strong family that was very influential in the whole province. And this family was the Cabbarzade family, who were also known as the Capanoğlu family. So this family, actually, Cabbarzade's, were very influential since the 17th century. In fact, there are books, works written on this topic a lot. You know, very recently Ali Yaycıoğlu's book, Partners of Empire, also talks about Capparza Des, Cappanoğlu's. So we are really talking about a major Ayan dynasty. In fact, more than an influential local family. They are like a dynasty that survived more than two centuries. So this family lived in the

Bosok district. They exercised influence over the whole province of Ankara. During the Tansimat era, many members of the administrative council, the local council of the city of Ankara, came from Cappar Sade family. Similarly, the Bosok local council had many representatives from the Jabbarzade family. One of the members of Jabbarzade was appointed as the administrator who was responsible for sedentarization of tribes. So they were located at the very central positions of the Ottoman administration.

So there's, in Ankara, we have this extremely powerful local dynasty, really, the Cabbarzates. What about in Edirne? How does it compare? And in Ankara, by the way, let me complete that part, there were also smaller families who were kind of strong in their own localities. An example was the Zennecizade family in Kayseri. They were

influential in the city of Kayseri, but whenever they had some issues, they were dependent on the mediation of the Capparsade family. So we are really talking about a local structure in which a local dynasty overall controlled both vertical and horizontal brokerage. And in the smaller cities, urban centers, there were local families who brokered community relations at the local level. This was a kind of a disconnected structure in which the local intermediaries, the dynasty, Jab, Jabbarzade family was very powerful. So the Ottoman state, when it was centralizing, it was dependent on the cooperation of the Jabbarzade family. In Edirne, however, there were no such dynasty. The legacies of the reforms of Mahmud II

was very visible in the city of Edirne. The powerful Ayyans who lived in the Balkan lands of the Ottoman Empire were eliminated. There was Dağdevirenzade family in the city of Edirne, which was a very strong Ayan, but he was killed during Mahmud II's centralizing reforms. So what was left was that there were many middle-range local intermediaries. There were local ayans, of course, in many parts of Edirne. In fact, in the city of Edirne, there was a clique of ayans. But these groups of ayans didn't have the power of the Jabbarzade family. They were plural intermediaries.

And many of them were tax farmers, okay? So they had some kind of state connection. But at the same time, many of these intermediaries were also connected to the European trade. They were connected to European merchants. We could see in the archival documents that they borrowed money heavily from Russian merchants, from the British merchants. So they had all the straight connections well established. So they had another option, right?

Whereas in the case of Jabbarzadeh family, both state and Jabbarzadehs needed each other. Because it was more self-contained in Ankara. Exactly. There were no international connections. And less international. Got it. Whereas in Edirne, it's more, they're plural intermediaries, and they also have the option of forging more connections with outside groups, whether outside governments or outside commercial connections or whatever.

Yes. Since there were so many intermediaries in Edirne, there was high competition among them, both for state favors and also for international connections with European merchants. So what I saw in Edirne was the formation of coalitions among these groups of local intermediaries. For example, mültezims, tax farmers, got together and formed a company to get the tax collection rights from the state. Once they got these tax connections, they subleased it to other smaller local intermediaries in different parts of the province. Or they formed trade companies to trade their rice or cotton that were produced in the region to European merchants.

So in order to survive in this competition, they needed to form these coalitions. And these coalitions, very interestingly, surpassed ethnic or religious boundaries. So Muslim tax farmers formed tax farming companies with non-Muslim tax farmers. They worked together. Merchants worked together. I call these coalitions as bubble coalitions, by the way. Why? Bubble coalitions because they were very fragile, okay? They were not durable.

They were formed for the issues at stake to get, for example, tax farming privileges from the state. They got together, they formed it. But they were fragile because there was competition among these local intermediaries. So they could pop or collapse at any moment. Exactly, exactly. So in Italy, there was a very interesting situation. On one hand, there's this capacity to form coalitions that surpass religious and ethnic boundaries. And this is something very important. In fact, when there were discussions about implementing some socioeconomic development projects

in Edirne, we have several examples that this local intermediaries, this locally powerful and wealthy people got together, formed coalitions. They organized a donation campaign for example to build a hospital in the state of edirne they were able to get together there was the sense of urban good right people lived together they needed new roads transportation networks telegraphs you know transportation networks okay so for needs, they were able to come together,

organize campaigns, and participate to the development of their own provinces. That's something crucial. But very interestingly, this common interest, right, in public good, that crossover religious and ethnic boundaries, in public good, that cross over religious and ethnic boundaries, were not represented in the realm of political ideologies or ideas. Because in the same time period, in the province of Edirne, we also see the rise of this, I don't want to call it nationalism, it's kind of an earlier phrase, perhaps proto-nationalist identities, right?

Bulgarians, for example, became more aware of their Bulgarian identity. They started to, the leaders of Bulgarian community, for example, started to invest education in Bulgarian, okay? They formed reading clubs, newspapers. Greeks did the same thing, okay? Muslims started to become aware of their own identities, their Turkishness for the first time so we are talking about two simultaneous developments in the province that seem almost

opposite in a way at once there's these cross-confessional coalitions um but then at the at the same time there's this tension of people kind of self-forming into communities with stricter boundaries and some so i just want to make sure what i'm hearing is what what you're saying which is the the form of the social world in ankara and a dna shaped very different outcomes that for tanzimant in ankara actually served to sort of empower one family that was already quite powerful and kind of set its role even more firmly in the tanzimat process these jabbarzates were able to position themselves as key brokers and kind of played a key role in kind of carrying out these tanzimat reforms whereas in a dna there wasn't

this one dominant family there were many different families for historical reasons the old dominant families had been eliminated earlier and so the result was at once coalitions that were cross-confessional based on raising money for public goods or getting particular tax farming rights or particular other rights. They were fragile coalitions, but they were forming on all sorts of levels. But then there were also these proto-nationalistic, as you say, undercurrents that were going on as well. Yes.

these proto-nationalistic, as you say, undercurrents that were going on as well. Yes. Yes. But in Ankara, Cabbar Sade family was the crucial actor. They were the key family in, you know, implementing Tansi Mat reforms. But in the long run, they became part of the Ottoman state. That's the crucial difference. They got assimilated into the state itself. They were assimilated into the state because they became the bureaucrats,

local administrators. They became the members of local councils. So from dynasty to bureaucrats kind of over a number of generations. Exactly. That was an important transformation. So that they became loyal to the Ottoman state. They were loyal anyway. But yet in this new situation, they became state officials completely.

situation they became state officials completely so by the 1870s the bulgarian national movement is is really heating up and it's one of the main reasons that the ottomans are brought into this war with the russians the russo-ottoman war of 1877 to 1878 which results in an independent Bulgaria. Edirne is right in this neighborhood where all of this is going on. So was reform kind of nurturing these proto-nationalistic attitudes, or was reform also creating a sort of Ottoman sense of pride and an Ottoman sort of citizenship that would kind of supplant these nationalistic tendencies? What was going on here? I think it was going all together.

I mean, on the one hand, there's this Ottoman nation identity that was kind of epilite as a discourse and adapted by these local intermediaries. But at the same time, the development of these communities meant that they were gaining their own distinct ethnic or let's say proto-nationalist identity. And this is most visible in the case of the Gümüşgerdan family, one of the examples in my book. Gümüşgerdan family in fact was a major family during the Tansi Matira in Bulgaria. Nikolai Todorov calls Gümüşgerdans

as the first capitalist entrepreneurs in Bulgaria. You know, they mediated the Aba trade, the cloth trade between Istanbul and, you know, parts of Bulgaria. They were both connected to the Ottoman Empire and they started to trade clothes with the Europeans, textiles with the European merchants. Gümüşgerdan's became so much connected that the Austrian Empire gave a medal to Gümüşgerdan. The Ottomans did the same thing by the way. So the Gümüşgerdan family had these battles given by both Ottomans and Habsburgs, let's say. So we are talking about

a time period when identities were in flux and in fact there's this growing literature in Ottoman studies that there were all this you know multiple identities that people utilize in their interactions. Really in the same family you see it, like this Gümüşkerdan you're saying on one hand. Yeah, I mean, Christophilos' work on Samos, right, has the same argument, you know, the rulers of Samos were both loyal Ottoman subjects, they communicated with the Ottoman state, but on the other hand, they became

symbols of Greek national identity. The same with the Gümüşkerdan family, depending on their interactions, they were shifting their identities. I don't call it as pragmatism okay this is something else because 19 centuries a time period when all these identities were in flux what seems contradictory from contemporary perspective because we live in a world where national identities are so fixed and stagnant right it doesn't make sense

for us, right? But when we look back into this time period with its own dynamics, the national identities were in the stage of formation. It was a long process. So shifting between Ottoman imperial identity and Bulgarian identity was something kind of natural for these people. My understanding of this is like that.

Professor Koksal, I want to thank you very much again for joining us on the podcast today. Thank you. So we've discussed key moments in the Ottoman reform process known as the Tanzimat between 1839 and 1876, focusing on the provinces of Edirne and Ankara, drawing on Professor Coxell's recent book, The Ottoman Empire in the Tanzimat Era, which is out for bootlage in 2019. For those of you who'd like to find out more, I encourage you to go pick up the book and have a read for yourselves

we'll also have an annotated bibliography available on our website ottomanhistorypodcast.com where you can find out about our latest episodes stay up to date with news about the podcast and join our community of over 30,000 listeners that's all for this episode until next time

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