A Response to Linda Darling's Review of Formation of the Modern State: The Ottoman Empire Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries Author(s):

Peter Gran Reviewed work(s): Source: International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 26, No. 3 (Aug., 1994), pp. 553-554 Published by: Cambridge University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/163731 . Accessed: 16/11/2012 06:58
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Int. J. Middle East Stud. 26 (1994), 553-556. Printed in the United States of America

NOTES

AND

COMMENTS

A RESPONSE STATE:

TO LINDA

DARLING'S EMPIRE

REVIEW

OF FORMATION TO EIGHTEENTH

OF THE MODERN CENTURIES

THE OTTOMAN

SIXTEENTH

PETER GRAN

On occasion a book serves several audiences at once and possibly deserves more than one type
of review. When Rifacat 'Ali Abou-El-Haj's, Formation of the Modern State: The Ottoman Empire Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries, was reviewed by Linda Darling in IJMES (25:118-

20), the implied audience was the Ottoman specialist. As I read the book, it appears to have many implications for students of the 19th and 20th centuries in the Middle East as well. Abou-El-Haj argues several interrelatedpoints, which could be summed up as follows: if the contemporary nation-state is possibly being superseded by common markets and global alliances, would we not do well to study the antecedent multinational arrangements,such as the Ottoman Empire, for the sake of gaining perspective on ourselves-that is, rather than looking at the Ottomans as a kind of negative identity to the modern state, could we not see it as embodying other versions of modernity? Abou-El-Haj believes this is the case. Second, is it useful or necessary to understandthe broad outline of Ottoman history simply in terms of rise and decline, a model, which grew out of the study not of Ottoman history but of Western history? Professor Abou-El-Haj believes history as a discipline has outgrown rise and decline models and over the past generation historians in most fields-Ottoman history excepted-emphasize social change. What would a paradigm shift in the direction of social change and away from rise and decline mean for Ottoman history? This is the subject which occupies much of the seventy pages of the text. Put very briefly, it would mean that Ottomanists would stop stressing the putative uniqueness and incompatibility of their subject and would switch to the common language of comparative studies; second, they would work out an internalist logic adjusted to the reality that the empire was predominantly agrarian, that currently fashionable themes, such as trade history, the impact of foreign silver, or the role of the commercial groups, can not be given priority over the subject of land tenure. Abou-El-Haj suggests that for the timeframe of his study, there were three phases in the history of land tenure, each one underlying a distinctive socioeconomic formation. First, there was a centralist phase based on a royal monopoly of ownership, land being distributed as usufructs to the high functionaries to cover their needs and to support the feudal cavalry and ulama. This phase was on the wane in the late 1500s due to the rivalry of the sons of Suleiman the Magnificent (d. 1566), and it led to a second phase, one dominated by taxfarming, a phase lasting through the 17th century. During this phase, those with wealth could buy the right to tax certain lands and the peasants on them. This led to peasant upheavals and crisis in the Ottoman lands as elsewhere in the world-the so-called crisis of the 17th century. This phase was also marked by the power of the grandees and by an eclipse in the power of the throne. Court favorites or nudamac had undue influence as did the new rich. The military caste was no longer so separate from the peasants or reaya

? 1994 Cambridge University Press 0020-7438/94 $5.00 + .00

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554

Notes and Comments

population as it had been in the first phase, the standing army gaining in power in relation to the feudal cavalry. Here an important historiographical note comes in. It is the change to this second phase that has provided the influential source material for the dominant modern scholarly paradigm. Most notably in the mirrors for princes or nasihatname literature of Kocu and Mustafa Ali modem scholars have found evidence for the position they are disposed to accept. Thus, the complaints about the decline of the first phase found in this writing have been taken as proof by the leading modern Ottoman specialists for the decline of the Ottoman Empire. It has apparently not occurred to modern scholars to examine these works as the ideological production of certain individuals and factions, who or which may have lost out in the new order and thus had grounds for attacking it: hence the nasihatname writers used a nostalgic view of "the" true legitimate Ottoman past, a view of history that was a quite self-serving one and not true in any absolute sense. In addition, one notes that modem scholars have not exploited the contrast provided by later Ottoman writers, such as Naima, who celebrate the new order of the 17th century; rather, they stick with the older ones. A third historiographical observation, much related to the first two, is that the bulk of the research by Ottomanists these days is in property documents-that is, documents that raise no larger questions that would force scholars to think about their choice of paradigm. Abou-El-Haj finds a third phase beginning in the 18th century and continuing to the present, one that witnessed the transformation of the tax-farms into private property, a phase correlating with the further solidification of local power structuresaround the empire, which became essentially states in their own right. But how does one do comparative history for the early modem period, to returnto an earlier strand of his argument? This is not well-laid-out terrain even for European historians. Seemingly, major debates pit some, who find that with the development of capitalism there arises the state as its handmaiden, against others, who find that the emergence of a state above the fray-the state of Hegel as opposed to Marx-is more credible. Abou-El-Haj finds this debate among Europeanhistorians useful, as both approaches have some utility for the study of the Ottomans. Neither position in its present form is totally adequate; nor is the teleology implied in both positions-that the eventual outcome has to be the state as we know it, a kind of end-of-history history-adequate either. Ultimately, in a comparative study, the author hopes to find some specificities distinguishing the items compared. This work suggests that within what seem like a shared set of economic possibilities (noted as royal absolutes and usufruct, tax-farming, and private property), the Ottomans appear to move toward a somewhat more decentralized state over time than do the French, the Germans, or the English. Probably the apt comparison for the Ottomans would be Spain, an example referred to in passing, and the Austro-Hungarianor the Russian empires. One might consider these latter three examples as possibly being the ones most similar to that of the Ottomans. Such studies, however, have not been done enough to influence the debate up to now about the nature of the modern state; that debate is locked into German, French, and English examples. In sum, a reconsideration of Ottoman history in light of this book may help explain the considerable interest in the Arab world in the 19th century in Ottoman books written from the 16th to the 18th century, the interest of the turath school in many individual figures from the so-called Ottoman period, and the contemporary interest shown by some of the Islamic trend scholars for the Ottoman period. In this country, probably most scholars are aware that the early modern period in our field has long been underratedand the "coming of the West" has been greatly overrated in our interpretationsof the modern Middle East; here is a work that suggests a corrective approach.

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