Bandits and Bureaucrats: The Ottoman Route to State Centralization

The cover design of Karen Barkey's book, a bandit launching a spear (seemingly into the unknown) is emblematic of the work itself. Barkey's project is an ambitious if not an audacious one. It is both comparative and theoretical, two adjectives seldom associated with work on the Ottomans. Placing the Ottoman Empire in a world context of evolving agrarian empires, the author tests it against theoretical models of state formation, rural organization, and political bargaining developed by scholars working on Western European, Russian, or Chinese political and social formations. Barkey combines the theoretical modeling of the social scientific approach with documentary materials drawn from Ottoman archives in Istanbul and Manisa, i.e., muhimme (important affairs registers), umar ruznamce (military fief daybooks), and kadi sicilleri (court records). The work is composed of an introduction, conclusion, five intermediary content chapters and two appendices (describing respectively the provinces of Aydin and Saruhan upon which much of the discussion is centered, and the registers that provide supplementary evidence for this study). Chapter 1 lays out Barkey's analytical paradigm. Chapter 2 sets the stage in time and in space, discussing the organization of the Ottoman Empire and interpretations of the "crisis" of the 17th century. Chapters 3 and 4 attempt to analyze respectively the Ottoman regional elites (umar holders and governors) and the Ottoman peasants, in the context of analytical models developed for other areas of the world (especially France and China). The real meat of Barkey's argument lies in Chapter 5, which discusses the creation and "social type" of Ottoman bandits (organized armed bands of men who preyed on the countryside), and Chapter 6, which analyzes the negotiations that went on between the state and the bandits. Barkey's main thesis, employing Charles Tilly's model of state formation, is that "the state invented and manufactured banditry, and when it was no longer useful, the state disposed of it" (p. 141). (1) This may be a somewhat extravagant statement, but its implications are significant. That is, the author, arguing against Eric Hobsbawm's "romanticization" of bandits, is trying to place banditry in its broader political and economic contexts. (2) In so doing, Barkey is taking on Ottoman decline theory, the notion that the empire experienced a period of inexorable and continuous decline and stagnation from the late 16th century onward. She argues that the international crisis of the 17th century prompted the Ottoman state to creative adaptation, and that its adaptations were different from those taken in Europe in response to the same crisis. Ottoman adaptations and military innovations helped produce a bandit class of men alienated from their previous rural identities; the state then used the threat of banditry in the countryside to legitimize its centralization efforts. The main dilemma in this study is the characterization of the Ottoman state and its success in structuring society in such a way that rebellion was impossible or undesirable. While it is the case that the Ottoman military and administrative structure was impressive, the author's assertion that "the allegiance of members of the military and administrative apparatuses was practically unchallenged" (p. 25), is debatable. Ottoman historiography has only begun to explore the extent of insubordination within the system. The center was not so "omnipotent" (p. 44) as suggested here, and there was more unease, more autonomy than indicated in the assertion that, "the complex compact between state and society gradually incorporated all potentially autonomous elites and organizations into the state" (p. 26). Nor is it clear that the state always subjugated economic activity to political considerations (pp. …