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The Politics of Taxation and the “Armenian Question” during the Late Ottoman Empire, 1876–1908

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 September 2012

Nadır Özbek
Nadır Özbek*
Affiliation:
Atatürk Institute, Boğaziçi University, Istanbul
*
ozbekn@boun.edu.tr
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Abstract

This article explores the social and political context of the Ottoman Armenian massacres during the reign of Sultan Abdülhamid II focusing on the empire's tax regime. Although important research has been done on the massacres of 1894–1897, little has been written on the role the tax regime and collection practices played in preparing the context for increased state and communal violence in the “six provinces” (vilayat-ı sitte)—Erzurum, Van, Bitlis, Mamretülaziz, Sivas, and Diyarbekir—where the great majority of Ottoman Armenians lived. Political and social historians have paid little attention to the Ottoman state's administrative practices in Eastern Anatolia, particularly its tax collection practices, as part of the larger context of the “Armenian Question.” Perhaps Ottoman economic and financial historians have been reluctant to consider tax collection as politics. In any case, key linkages between the tax regime and the social and political catastrophe it helped to create have been missed. In this paper I establish a bridge between social and political history and fiscal history. I analyze tax collection as everyday politics to offer a new window into the political disturbances in the empire's six provinces populated mostly by Armenians and Kurds. The study of the Ottoman tax system as an instance of state administrative practices at the quotidian level, rather than as merely a legal and institutional apparatus, illuminates the complicated realities of the late Ottoman state and society, and the “Armenian Question.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 54 , Issue 4 , October 2012 , pp. 770 - 797
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 2012

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23 BOA, A.MKT.MHM, 262/100, 1279.11.21 (10 Mayıs 1863).

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25 BOA, A.MKT.MHM, 277/15, 1280.04.03 (17 Eylül 1863). For the details of this experiment in Niş, see Özbek, Nadir, “Abdülhamid Rejimi, Vergi Tahsildarlığı ve Siyaset, 1876–1908,” Doğu Batı 52 (2010): 159–97Google Scholar.

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32 For a study on these regulations, see Özbek, “Abdülhamid Rejimi,” 159–97.

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37 BOA, A.MKT.MHM, 679/25, 1314.06.07 (13 Kasım 1896).

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41 BOA, DH.TMIK.S, 7/42, 1314.09.25 (27 Şubat 1897); BOA, A.MKT.MHM, 681/3, 1314.09.30 (4 Mart 1897).

42 The situation was no different in the provinces of Baghdad, Mosul, and Basra, where Arab tribal forces had complete control over local politics. For details on these provinces, see Özbek, Nadir, “Abdülhamid Rejimi, Vergi Tahsildarlığı ve Siyaset, 1876–1908,” Doğu Batı 52 (2010): 159–97Google Scholar.

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53 Ibid.

54 FO, 424/106, no. 78, encl. 1, Major Trotter to the Marquis of Salisbury, Diarbekir, 7 Jan. 1880: 167–70.

55 FO, 424/202, no. 41, encl. 1, Vice-Consul Satow to Sir N. O'Conor, Van, 10 June 1901: 39–41.

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72 FO, 424/91, no. 171, encl. 2, Lt. Chermside to Sir A. H. Layard, 2. Adana, 29 Nov. 1879: 219–24, 222.

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77 FO, 424/203, no. 141, encl. 1, Vice-Consul Tyrrell to Sir N. O'Conor, Van, 7 Oct. 1902: 136–45, 141.

78 Ibid., 144.

79 FO, 424/203, no. 20, encl. 1, Report by Vice-Consul Anderson on the Vilayet of Diarbekir. Diarbekir, December quarter, 1901: 38.

80 FO, 424/206, no. 218, encl. 1, Consul Barnham to Sir N. O'Conor, Ourfa, 1 Oct. 1904: 206–9, 207.

81 FO, 424/206, no. 39, encl. 1, Vice-Consul Heathcote to Sir N. O'Conor, Bitlis, 19 Mar. 1904: 35–36, 35.

82 FO, 424/203, no. 141, encl. 1, Vice-Consul Tyrrell to Sir N. O'Conor, Van, 7 Oct. 1902: 136–45, 136.

83 FO, 424/200, no. 17, encl. 1, Consul Longworth to Sir N. O'Conor, Trebizond, 1 Feb. 1900: 14–17, 14.

84 FO, 424/206, no. 173, encl. 2, Sir N. O'Conor to Vice-Consul Tyrrelli, Therapia, 30 Aug. 1904: 161.

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87 Ibid., 105.

88 Philip Abrams, “Notes on the Difficulty,” 125.

89 On the relationship between order and chaos, see Zygmunt Bauman, “Fate of Humanity,” quoted in Alonso, “Sovereignty,” 31.