Download PDF | (Library of Ottoman Studies) Evguenia Davidova - Wealth in the Ottoman and Post-Ottoman Balkans-I.B.Tauris (2016).
337 Pages
Evguenia Davidova is Associate Professor of International Studies at Portland State University, Oregon. She has published extensively on the nineteenth-century socio-economic history of the Ottoman Balkans. Davidova is the author of Balkan Transitions to Modernity and NationStates: Through the Eyes of Three Generations of Merchants (1780s–1890s) (2013).
“This collection of articles on wealth and poverty in the late Ottoman and early post-Ottoman Balkans offers a refreshingly multifaceted and often intriguing panorama of Balkan society in a crucial era of transition. Covering most of the Balkan countries, the volume pays attention not only to economic and social factors, but also to institutional and cultural aspects of wealth and poverty, dealing with often unexplored but highly relevant case studies. Written by a group of renowned historians of the Balkans, the book represents a thought-provoking addition to mainstream Balkan historiography on the topic.” Raymond Detrez, University of Ghent “This volume is a truly original intervention into both Balkan and Ottoman history. Dispensing with the tired old frame of nationalism, it repeatedly crosses local, regional, national and imperial boundaries to bring us a set of deeply researched articles on wealth and poverty from Athens to Istanbul, and many places in between, during the long and dramatic nineteenth century. The perspectives are fresh and the attention to locales which are usually ignored in grand narratives is very welcome.” Molly Greene, Princeton University
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Nikolay Aretov is a professor (Dr. habil., 2006) at the Institute for Literature, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Editor-in-chief of Literaturna misal journal, and lecturer at Sofia University. He has published several books in Bulgarian, among them The Bulgarian Murder: Plots with Crimes in Bulgarian Literature (1994, 2007); The Bulgarian National Revival and Europe (1995; 2001); and National Mythology and National Literature (2006). He has edited several collections on Bulgarian and Balkan culture. Aretov is also a coordinator of interdisciplinary projects on collective identities and their representations in culture; and President of the Bulgarian Academic Circle of Comparative Literature. His research interests include: Bulgarian literature (eighteenth – twentieth century), comparative literature, cultural studies, nationalism and national mythology, and crime literature.
Evguenia Davidova is Associate Professor of International Studies at Portland State University, Oregon. She completed her PhD in history at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (1998) and held a post-doctorate at Oxford University (1999–2000). Her research interests focus on the Ottoman and post-Ottoman Balkans: commerce, modernization, nationalism, and medical practices (nineteenth– twentieth century). She has published several articles in various journals, including Turcica, Balkanologie, and New Perspectives on Turkey. Davidova is the author of Balkan Transitions to Modernity and Nation-States: Through the Eyes of Three Generations of Merchants (1780s–1890s) (2013).
Evdoxios Doxiadis completed his PhD at the University of California, Berkeley (2007). He was the Ted and Elaine Athanassiades post-doctoral fellow at Princeton University (2007–8), and has since worked at the International Center for Hellenic and Mediterranean Studies in Athens and at San Francisco State University before moving to Simon Fraser University. His research is on Greek, Balkan and Mediterranean history with a focus in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and a particular interest in gender, law, state formation, and minorities. He has published one book, The Shackles of Modernity: Women, Property, and the Transition from the Ottoman Empire to the Greek State, 1750–1850 (2011), and several articles in various journals, including Past and Present, Journal of Modern Greek Studies, and Journal of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies.
Gergana Georgieva is Associate Professor at the Faculty of History, University of Veliko Turnovo. She has a PhD in history from the Institute of Balkan Studies, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (2006) and several doctoral and post-doctoral fellowships at the Center for Advanced Studies, Berlin; New Europe College, Bucharest; and the American Research Institute in Turkey. Her research focuses on the Ottoman Balkans: eighteenth- to nineteenth-century urban history; imperial governing; provincial administration systems; heterodox Muslim communities and Muslim mystical orders. Her recent publications include a contribution to Encyclopedia of Islam, 3rd edn (2015), and the book Arbanasi in the Fifteenth–Nineteenth Centuries: A Socio-Economic Profile (in Bulgarian).
Eyal Ginio is the former Chair of the Department of Islam and Middle Eastern Studies, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (2009–12). He is also a coordinator of the Forum of Turkish Studies at the Institute of Asian and African Studies, the Hebrew University. He completed his PhD at the Hebrew University in Middle East Studies (1999) and held a post-doctorate at Oxford University (1999– 2000). His research and publications in English, French, Hebrew, and Turkish focused on the social history of the Ottoman Empire with an emphasis on eighteenthcentury Salonica and its region.
Andreea-Roxana Iancu is an independent scholar who lives in France. She was a research fellow at the “Nicolae Iorga” Institute of History in Bucharest (2000– 13). She holds a PhD in history from the E´cole des LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS xiii Hautes E´tudes en Sciences Sociales. Her research interests include social history and juridical anthropology of property, inheritance, and legal plural systems in Walachia and Moldavia (eighteenth– nineteenth century). Iancu has published several articles in Romanian and French journals.
Dalibor Jovanovski is Associate Professor of Modern Balkan History at the Faculty of Philosophy and Institute for History in Skopje. His main academic interest is the history of the Balkan states, especially their political, economic and social developments. Aside from his books Greek Balkan Policy and Macedonia 1830– 1881 and Balkans 1826– 1913 (both in Macedonian), he has published numerous articles. He is a member of the editorial board of Macedonian Historical Review.
Efi Kanner is Lecturer of Turkish Culture and Society in the Department of Turkish and Modern Asian Studies at the University of Athens. She holds a DEA from the E´cole des Hautes E´tudes en Sciences Sociales and a PhD from the University of Athens. She has researched various aspects of embourgeoisement among Orthodox and Muslim populations in the late Ottoman period and early Turkish Republic, i.e. national identities, politics towards poverty, concepts of childhood, privacy. Her more recent interests relate to micro-history as a field of investigation of the construction of bourgeois subjectivities, transcultural encounters and the formation of gender patterns in various ethno-religious environments. She has authored two books in Greek: Gender-based Social Demands from the Ottoman Empire to Greece and Turkey: The World of a Greek-Orthodox Female Teacher (2012); and Poverty and Philanthropy in the Istanbul Orthodox Communities (1753– 1912) (2004).
Eleonora Naxidou is Assistant Professor of Modern History of Southeastern Europe at the Department of History and Ethnology at Democritus University of Thrace, Komotini. Her research area is the Balkans and her publications focus on nationalism, national identity, church and national ideology, and ethnic minorities. She is currently working on a book about the Bulgarian national movement during the nineteenth century. Among her morerecent publicationsare:“Nationalism versus multiculturalism: the minority issue in twenty-first-century Bulgaria”, Nationalities Papers 40 (2012), and “Traditional Aspects of Modernity in the Nineteenth-Century Balkans: The Ecclesiastical xiv WEALTH IN THE OTTOMAN AND POST-OTTOMAN BALKANS Dimensions of the Bulgarian National Movement”, in Power and Influence in South-Eastern Europe: 16th –19th Century (2013).
Evelina Razhdavichka-Kiessling is a research associate at the Institute of Balkan Studies, Sofia. She devotes her scholarly work to nineteenthcentury Balkan socio-economic and cultural history. She has been a scholarship holder at the Eo¨tvo¨s Lora´nd University, Europa Institut Budapest, Institute for Advanced Study Berlin, Bielefeld Graduate School in History and Sociology, and Leibniz Institute of European History, Mainz. She is the author of numerous articles and chapters in specialized journals and books
Andrew Robarts is Assistant Professor of History at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). He is a published scholar on labor migration, Ottoman Bulgaria, Ottoman–Russian relations, and the Black Sea region. Between his MA in international relations and PhD in history (both from Georgetown University), Robarts worked for seven years in the field of humanitarian and refugee relief with the International Rescue Committee and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. His research languages include Bulgarian, Ottoman Turkish, and Russian.
Momir Samardzˇic´ is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Novi Sad. He received his PhD in history from the University of Novi Sad. He is the author of Roads to Europe: Serbian Politics and the Railway Issue, 1878– 1881 (2010). Until recently, his main field of research has been international relations in the nineteenth century and the Eastern Question within the context of the Serbian foreign policy and inter-Balkan relations of the newly emerging nationstates. Recently, he has focused more on foreign influences in Balkan politics and society and their impact on the economy and the development of infrastructure.
Dimitris Stamatopoulos is Associate Professor of Balkan and Late Ottoman History in the Department of Balkan, Slavic and Oriental Studies at the University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki. He has received many fellowships and was a member of the School of Historical Studies in the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton (2010– 11). He is the author of many articles concerning the history of the Christian populations in the Ottoman Balkans and two books in Greek – Reform and Secularization: Towards a Reconstruction of the History of the Ecumenical LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS xv Patriarchate in the Nineteenth Century (2003); and The Byzantium after the Nation: the Problem of Continuity in the Balkan Historiographies (2009) – and has co-edited (in Greek) Orientalism at the Limits: From the Ottoman Balkans to the Contemporary Middle East (2008).
INTRODUCTION
The victims [of fever and ague] are principally from the poorer classes, whose scanty, unwholesome food, and habits of intemperance, render them perpetually liable to the attacks of the malady, but yet, amongst the highest society, the sallow cheek and bloodless lip are a constant proof that even the most careful diet and regular living will not ensure safety ...1 This commentary on social disparities in Salonika belongs to the seasoned British traveler Mary Walker, who visited the city in 1860. Whereas diseases and lifestyle affected health and status, as she aptly noted, socio-economic causes and factors, which she casually omitted, impacted chances for economic survival, social mobility, and political and cultural aspirations.
This volume seeks to flesh out the complex socio-economic, cultural, political, and institutional framework within which wealth was accumulated and poverty was maintained in the Ottoman and post-Ottoman Balkans. Who was wealthy and how in its assorted incarnations was fortune represented? What were the distinctions between the deserving and undeserving poor? How were concepts of prosperity and progress and poverty and failure socially produced in various contexts? This collection examines the intersection between diverse practices and discourses entailing social and civic inclusion/exclusion through the lenses of ethnic, religious, class, and gender-sensitive approaches. The markers of wealth accumulation and corresponding pauperization, and the ways they were experienced elucidate the relationships among state, economy, society, modernity, and national identity against the backdrop of Balkan, Ottoman, and European developments.
The contributors add neglected dimensions to a major historiographical theme of socioeconomic transformations and, more specifically, the disaggregating and remixing of emerging middle classes, the daily negotiations between old and new elites, the secularization and commodification of social standing and values, and the debates about the Ottoman Empire and its heritage in the Balkans. Employing different social categories as a tool for historical analysis, this inquiry into social, economic, cultural, and political interactions is informed by the following guiding questions: How did state, society, market, religious, and various other institutions influence each other’s concepts of wealth/poverty and success/failure? In what ways did diverse social actors employ such key categories for maintaining social cohesion? How was social status negotiated between traditional values and modern sensibility? What were the ethnic and gender configurations? How did discourses of modernization conceptualize wealth as a social category of progress? What were the exchanges, differences, and similarities between East and West? Such examination of historical experiences is implicitly based on Henry Lefebvre’s conceptualization of socially produced relations: “(Social) space is a (social) product” (emphasis in original).2
Therefore, the social practices, discourses, and actors under investigation are located within contested physical and symbolic social space wherein relations of power (re)production are historically bound. Thus, the collection examines multiple levels of social transformations: rural/urban, illiterate/literate, pre-industrial/industrial, empire/nationstates, subjects/citizens, pre-modern/modern. But these binary oppositions are not and should not be seen as mutually exclusive. The volume is grounded in original empirical research and comprises both a qualitative and quantitative analysis, including some in-depth case studies. Methodological approaches vary from microhistory to multiscopique to alltagsgeschichte to histoire croise´e; it is the latter with its emphasis on “multiplicity of possible viewpoints and the divergences resulting from languages, terminologies, categorizations and conceptualizations, traditions, and disciplinary usages” that allows for a richer contextualization of the shared Balkan past.3 Primary sources 2 in various languages frame the comparative analysis, which reconstructs social hierarchies rooted in real or symbolic ownership of scarce (and cherished) resources. This collection is intended as a multi-dimensional interpretation of social order and re-ordering. The contributing 13 scholars also address major discourses in various national historiographies with regard to social transformations, nationalism, modernity, and the Ottoman legacy. The chronological period spans from the late eighteenth to early twentieth century and comprises broader processes of the economic incorporation of the Ottoman Empire, the Tanzimat institutional reforms, the outburst of successful (and not so) nationalist movements, the escalation of the Eastern Question, and the emergence of nationstates.
Nationalism and market expansion brought up into existence unprecedented levels of competitiveness, mobility, hierarchies of power, and burgeoning inequalities. These social reconfigurations were taking on new social meanings and attendant diverse forms of expression that transgressed ethnic, religious, and gender boundaries. Concurrently, the secularization of social status, nationalization of discourses, and commodification of values both reflected and constituted modernity. The latter is conceived in plural as continually evolving “multiple modernities”,4 where borrowing from the West was resourcefully embraced within a rich and fluid social tapestry, and often conceived as a weapon against dependence on the West. The volume explores both discourses about wealth (and success) in the broadest sense and the practices of its accumulation, material manifestations, and representations. The book also examines the antipode – poverty (and failure) – society’s revised ideas about poverty as fate, social evil, philanthropy, welfare, and the language of social exclusion. It also interprets these fundamental social identities as abstract categories (ethnic/national) and as material embodiments (property, fortune, consumption, status, occupation and/or the lack thereof). What makes the topic intrinsically interesting is its focus on social values (as tacitly understood) that were redefined and then normalized under new conditions: incorporation into a world economy, the system of nation-states, secular worldviews, and modern sensibilities. Some caveats are in order. First, the geographic scope reflects the contributors’ research interests and expertise and does not include all parts of the Balkans. Second, due to space limitations, some themes are 3 only broached without elaboration.
Third, as the authors come from various national historical schools, the terminology and transliteration of some terms vary and are left in their original form. The contributions are organized in four sections with the intention to emphasize the common themes and intercrossings that emerge. Part One, “Wealth, Property, and Social Status”, focuses on the intersection of social standing and its measurability within expanding commercialization and state centralization. The fundamental category of property, ownership, and patterns of investment are examined from different angles. In Chapter 1, Evdoxios Doxiadis suggests that the legal status of women in the early independent Greece demonstrated continuity from the late Ottoman period with regards to property rights. It was the very establishment of the modern state and the concomitant social transformations in Greece that gradually hindered the control women exercised over their property (and status) in practice. Evelina Razhdavichka-Kiessling, in Chapter 2, examines the history of a prosperous multigenerational business. The Khadzhitoshev family serves as an example of strategies for accumulation of economic, social, and cultural capital and its inter-generational transmission and transformation. Andreea-Roxana Iancu, in Chapter 3, discusses the boyars’ inheritance practices within the context of state bureaucratization and synthesis of plural law system in Wallachia. As a result, a new relationship between the individual as legal subject and land property was established, which created new possibilities to legitimate aristocratic genealogies. Section Two, “Institutional and Social Practices”, explores forms of state regulation and their impact on various institutional contexts within new market practices. In Chapter 4, Andrew Robarts focuses on the revitalization of social and economic exchanges in pre-Tanzimat Ottoman Bulgaria. The Russo –Ottoman War of 1828– 9 acted as catalyst for both material destruction and demographic and economic recovery, facilitated by judicious local administration and cooperation of non-Muslim elites.
Dimitris Stamatopoulos, in Chapter 5, explores the Patriarchate’s financial and institutional restructuring that was linked to increased secular interventions that ultimately undermined its ecumenical legitimacy, financial viability, and political autonomy. In another context, Evguenia Davidova, in Chapter 6, suggests that commodification of medical services and social 4 stratification were mutually constitutive. Doctors, as part of the new professionally educated elites, were not only dependent on the expanding modern state but were also involved in economic entrepreneurship and innovative marketing practices, which engendered a host of new modern sensibilities. In pursuit of social cohesion and dominance, as Efi Kanner demonstrates in Chapter 7, secular elites, among other means, exercised control over poverty through philanthropy. This was true not only in the case of both non-Muslims and Muslims who adopted middle-class liberal values but also the Ottoman government that embraced philanthropy as a means of political integration and legitimization. Furthermore, philanthropy had strong gender dimensions with both negative and positive ramifications. Part Three, “Transnational Networks and Exchanges”, shifts the geographic scope to the broader and shrinking map of the Ottoman Empire and its neighbors.
In Chapter 8, Gergana Georgieva traces the expanding commercial and social interethnic networks from their starting point – the prosperous village of Arbanasi – in various directions: Istanbul, Wallachia, Moldavia, and Transylvania. By contrast, as Dalibor Jovanovski in Chapter 9 shows, the Balkan Wars brought about impoverishment to Bitola, a prosperous center of an Ottoman vilayet. The city’s inclusion in the nation-state system and subsequent geographic marginalization as a result of the new border regime led to economic and cultural decline as well as the loss of Ottoman cosmopolitanism. Eyal Ginio in Chapter 10 situates another Ottoman city, also affected by the Balkan Wars, within a broader Mediterranean context. He examines Kavala’s transformation from a lieu de naissance of Mehmed Ali into a lieu de me´moire of Egypt’s khedivial dynasty through a re-articulation of the notion “deserving poor” in the context of philanthropy during wartime. The last Section, Four, “Discourses of Social and National Values”, comprises three chapters. The process of growing economic incorporation, urbanization, nationalism, and the attendant social restratifications brought with it contested national, social, ideological, and moral dimensions. Those dynamic changes were expressed in a variety of discursive contexts.
In Chapter 11, Eleonora Naxidou explores how the use of binary metaphors of wealth/poverty was employed among the nineteenth-century Bulgarian political elites within and without the Ottoman Empire. The assertion of national 5 self-determination intertwined with ideas of classical liberalism, in pursuing both political and ecclesiastical independence, emerged as one of the major discourses in the 1860s and 1870s. Momir Samardzˇic´, in Chapter 12, interprets another discursive theme – the concept of “people’s welfare” – also shaped by a combination of nationalism and liberalism. In pre-independence Serbia, although some of the debates took on an economic meaning, the elites were seeking political solutions rather than a comprehensive economic modernization. Nikolay Aretov, in Chapter 13, analyzes how the idealization of poverty occupied crucial position in Bulgarian literature, while the amassing of wealth was often demonized. Such critical interpretations derived not only from Christian (and later socialist) contexts, but also reflected deeper social disparities and modern sensibilities. In appreciation of this truly collaborative work, I wish to extend my thanks to all contributors for generously sharing with me their vast knowledge, keen wit, and warm collegiality. It goes without saying that all shortcomings in the organization and editing of this text rest with me
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