Bandits and Bureaucrats: The Ottoman Route to State Centralization

Karen Barkey

Published by Cornell University Press 1996

Bandits and Bureaucrats

The Ottoman Route to State Centralization

Karen Barkey

In the series The Wilder House series in politics, history, and culture

https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501720871

Overview
Contents

About this book

Why did the main challenge to the Ottoman state come not in peasant or elite rebellions, but in endemic banditry? Karen Barkey shows how Turkish strategies of incorporating peasants and rotating elites kept both groups dependent on the state, unable and unwilling to rebel. Bandits, formerly mercenary soldiers, were not interested in rebellion but concentrated on trying to gain state resources, more as rogue clients than as primitive rebels. The state's ability to control and manipulate bandits—through deals, bargains and patronage—suggests imperial strength rather than weakness, she maintains.

Author / Editor information

Karen Barkey is Associate Professor of Sociology at Columbia University.

Reviews

L.T. Youssef and H. Aboul-Einein:

This book is interesting because it offers a glimpse as to how the ruling class, Janissary Corps, peasants, ulama (religious body) and judges related to one another.... Middle-East FAOs will nonetheless find this an interesting read, and devoting time to the study of the Ottoman system is always important in gaining a truer insight into the religion.

Karen Barkey, steeped in the intricacies of Ottoman linguistics as well as... new techniques of social theorization, brings her special talents to a perennial debate among early modernists who study the Middle East—how to explain the decline of the Ottoman Empire in the decades after Sulayman the Great.... She turns the question inside out stating the Ottoman Empire did not decline at all. Instead, she argues, it found new strategies of central control to meet destabilizing military, economic, and social changes.... Original, challenging, and written in crystalline prose, Barkey's book stimulates debate and encourages further research and studies.

This is a rich book that skillfully blends primary archival material with an intelligent reading of the secondary sources.

An important contribution to Ottoman studies.... Barkey is persuasive in showing how the structure of the Ottoman state and the mechanisms it employed deterred rebellions from various sources and bargained away potentially fatal internal conflicts.

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Maps Publicly Available Download PDF	viii
Preface Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
1. Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
2. The Context of the Seventeenth Century Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	24
3. Ottoman Regional Elites: Divided but Loyal Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	55
4. Ottoman Peasants: Rational or Indifferent? Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	85
5. Celalis: Bandits without a Cause? Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	141
6. State-Bandit Relations: A Blueprint for State Centralization Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	189
7. Conclusion Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	229
Appendix 1. The Study Area Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	243
Appendix 2. Primary Sources from the Ottoman Archives Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	250
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	255
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	275

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Audience: General/trade;
Pages
- Main content: 304
Illustrations
- Other: 2 maps
Keywords: Middle East Studies; History

eBook

Published: October 18, 2018
ISBN: 9781501720871