For most of its 600-year existence, the economic institutions and policies of the Ottoman Empire were shaped to a large degree by the priorities and interests of a central bureaucracy. The influence of landowners, merchants and moneychangers remained limited. The central bureaucracy managed to contain the many challenges it faced with pragmatism, flexibility and negotiation. This study examines long-term changes in Ottoman fiscal, monetary and financial institutions from this perspective of pragmatism, flexibility and adaptiveness. Ottoman institutions of private and public finance retained their Islamic lineage until the end of the seventeenth century. European financial institutions began to grow in influence during the eighteenth century. With the onset of the Ottoman reform movement and greater economic interaction with Europe during the nineteenth century, institutional change accelerated. Ultimately, however, Ottoman pragmatism and flexibility remained selective and was utilised for the defence of a traditional order led by the central bureaucracy. Many of the key institutions of the traditional order such as state ownership of land, urban guilds and restrictions on private capital accumulation remained intact until the nineteenth century.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Contact details of provider: Postal: The Edinburgh Building, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 2RU UK Fax: +44 (0)1223 325150 Email: Web page: http://journals.cambridge.org/jid_FHR
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (Mike Eden).
Related research
Keywords:
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)