Lecture:(Re)Thinking Ottoman Provincial History Taxation and Politics at the Margins of an Empire

Ottoman economic historians often subscribed to a narrative which pictures the nineteenth century history as unfolding through a conflict over taxable resources between central political elite and provincial power-holders. In this paper I aim to provide a critique of this approach and find alternative ways of interpreting post-Tanzimat fiscal history. As an alternative to this dichotomous conception of center vs province, I propose a conception of local and central as co-constitutive of each other as if they are in the same Mobius strip, a surface with only one side. I argue that a focus on the everyday actuality of tax collection, this very particular and singular quotidian relationship at district, sub-district or at village level would help us overcome this dichotomous conception and enable us to concentrate on the germinal kernel of Ottoman exploitative system and political coalitions that it is founded upon.