A History of Ottoman Economic Thought

Fatih Ermiş

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781134682249
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

The Ottoman Empire (1299-1923) existed at the crossroads of the East and the West. Neither the history of Western Asia, nor that of Eastern Europe, can be fully understood without knowledge of the history of the Ottoman Empire.

The question is often raised of whether or not economic thinking can exist in a non-capitalistic society. In the Ottoman Empire, like in all other pre-capitalistic cultures, the economic sphere was an integral part of social life, and elements of Ottoman economic thought can frequently be found in amongst political, social and religious ideas. Ottoman economic thinking cannot, therefore, be analyzed in isolation; analysis of economic thinking can reveal aspects of the entire world view of the Ottomans.

Based on extensive archival work, this landmark volume examines Ottoman economic thinking in the classical period using three concepts: humorism, circle of justice and household economy. Basing the research upon the writings of the Ottoman elite and bureaucrats, this book explores Ottoman economic thinking starting from its own dynamics, avoiding the temptation to seek modern economic theories and approaches in the Ottoman milieu.

1 Introduction

The claim of the scarcity definition to be the sole legitimate representative of the meaning of economic does not stand scrutiny. It leaves the sociologists, the anthropologists, the economic historian helpless in confronting the task of penetrating the economy of any time or place. For the accomplishment of that task, the social sciences must turn to the substantive meaning of economic.¹

The Ottoman Empire (1299–1923) was a successful synthesis at the crossroads of the East and the West. Neither the history of Western Asia, nor that of Eastern Europe, can be understood without considerable knowledge of the history of the Ottoman Empire. Investigation of the writings of its bureaucrats and scholars gives one the impression that the Ottomans intended to construct a synthesis of East and West using the experience of all previously existing states known to them, as these writings often contained stories about Alexander the Great, Hormizd, Genghis Khan and Harun al-Rashid.

The essence of Ottoman economic thinking should be sought in the details of this specific synthesis. One of the main sources of Ottoman economic thinking was Aristotle, and the framework of the Ottoman household economy concept was taken from Greek philosophy and combined with some Iranian traditions. Generally speaking, Ottoman economic thinking was influenced by Islam, Sufism (the mystical interpretation of Islam), Byzantine, Abbasid, Seljuk, Iranian and Mongolian traditions, etc. Although the Ottomans did not have much difficulty in incorporating elements from non-Islamic cultures into this synthesis, the main framework was determined by the principles of Islam. From my primary sources, I have deduced that in the Ottoman Empire, Islam was not understood to have been a revolutionary change in human history. Instead, it was considered to have represented continuity with the former centuries. In this sense the Ottomans respected the great rulers of previous centuries, and even regarded them as Muslims.

In the Ottoman Empire, like in all other pre-capitalistic cultures, the economic sphere was an integral part of social life. In this respect economic matters were not evaluated and analysed isolated from other aspects of social life. Separate analysis of the economic sphere is indeed a modern phenomenon and only one of the possible approaches to economic matters. The reader should be aware that this work concerns the classical age of the Ottoman Empire, and considering the fact that empires had different parameters to define and explain society, concepts like ‘economics’, ‘nation’ and ‘nation state’ may be misleading.

Since economics was not a separate sphere in the Ottoman Empire, ideas about economic matters should be searched for in its political, social and religious writings. One can find economic ideas in poems, chronicles, siyāsetnāmes, lāyiḥas, sefāretnāmes or in ḫaṭṭ-ı hümāyūns. Economic concepts were interlaced with many other ideas in these texts, and there were often interconnections between them. Therefore, in this work the reader will find not only economic thinking of the Ottomans, but also aspects of the entire world view of the Ottomans, including their political, social, religious, philosophical and moral concepts.

If one wonders about whether or not economic thinking can exist in a non-capitalistic society, the answer reveals itself to be positive when the relationship of human beings with their environment is considered as economics. Correspondingly, Karl Polanyi’s distinction between formal and substantive definitions of economics is a useful instrument for understanding how people interpreted economic events in non-capitalistic societies.

The formal meaning of economics derives from the logical character of the means–ends relationship. It refers to a specific situation of different uses of means induced by an insufficiency of those means, which Polanyi also called ‘formal economics’.² The generally accepted definition of economics as the allocation of scarce means to alternative ends is a reflection of this approach: ‘The first meaning, the formal, springs from the logical character of the means–ends relationship, as in economizing or economical; from this meaning springs the scarcity definition of economic.’³

The substantive meaning of economics, on the other hand, derives from man’s dependence upon his peers and nature in order to survive. It refers to the interaction with his natural and social environment. Substantive economics is not only this relationship with the environment but also the institutionalization of that process.⁴ Polanyi mentions that the substantive meaning ‘points to the elemental fact that human beings, like all other living things, cannot exist for any length of time without a physical environment that sustains them; this is the origin of the substantive definition of economic’.⁵ More specifically, the substantive meaning can be explained as:

The substantive meaning stems, in brief, from man’s patent dependence for his livelihood upon nature and his fellows. He survives by virtue of an institutionalized interaction between himself and his natural surroundings. That process is the economy, which supplies him with the means of satisfying his material wants.⁶ This phrase should not be taken to signify that the wants to be satisfied are exclusively bodily needs, such as food and shelter.⁷

According to Polanyi, the formal and substantive meanings have nothing in common.⁸ However, only the substantive meaning of economics is capable of yielding the concepts required by the social sciences for investigation of all empirical economies of the past and present.⁹

This substantive economics is an instituted process. Polanyi provides many examples to show the instituted character of different economies. For example, he characterizes an interesting reciprocal relationship between the Trobriand Islanders of Western Melanesia. In this relationship, the male members of the community were responsible for the subsistence of their sisters’ families. The subsistence of his own family was to be maintained by the brother of his wife.¹⁰

Polanyi introduces three main concepts to analyse all economies: reciprocity, redistribution and exchange. The concept of reciprocity is connected with the concept of symmetry. Reciprocity implies that the society is divided into symmetrical subgroups, with each group being responsible for its counterpart, with which it stands in an analogous relationship. Another example provided by Polanyi is the following: ‘A number of families, living in huts that form a circle, might then assist their right-hand neighbours and be assisted by their left-hand neighbours in an endless chain of reciprocity without any mutuality among them.’¹¹

The second concept, redistribution, is connected with centricity. Redistribution implies that the goods are collected in one hand and distributed ‘by virtue of custom, law, or ad hoc central decision’.¹² Redistribution existed in primitive hunting tribes and in the vast storage systems of ancient Egypt, Sumeria, Babylon and Peru. Starting from his approach that redistribution may also apply to a group smaller than society, Polanyi introduces the concept of household economy, which is also of utmost importance for this work. Some of the historical examples of householding Polanyi mentions are the Central African Kraal, the Northwest African Kasbas, the Hebrew patriarchal household, the Greek estate of Aristotle’s time, the Roman familia, the medieval manor or the typical peasant household.¹³ Polanyi defined householding in the Greek and the Germanic contexts as catering to one’s own group: Oikonomia in Greek is the etymon of the word economy; Haushaltung in German corresponds strictly to this. The principle of ‘provisioning one’s self’ remains the same, whether the ‘self’ cared for is a family, a city or a manor.¹⁴

The third concept is exchange, which is connected with markets. In contrast to the other two concepts, exchange is ‘a two-way movement of goods between persons oriented towards the gain ensuing for each from the resulting terms’.¹⁵ The natural place for exchange is markets, and its mechanism is barter. Haggling is essential for bartering in order to make sure that one gains as much as possible from the exchange. Some institutional structure is necessary for the effectiveness of markets. Unlike Adam Smith, Polanyi argues that the market pattern is not traceable to ‘human nature’ to ‘truck, barter and exchange’.¹⁶

Polanyi’s emphasis on the instituted character of economics presupposes that the kind of relationship human beings have to their environment should be unique to each society, because each society has its own institutions and these are not identical to those in any other society. Economy in this sense can be defined as an instituted process of interaction serving the satisfaction of material wants: ‘Without an economy in this sense, no society could exist for any length of time.’¹⁷ Therefore, the study of the economy of any historical society is just the study of the manner in which the economic process was instituted at different times and places.¹⁸

Having discussed the Polanyian approach, we can now evaluate the Weberian approach. His work has been particularly influential on two Turkish professors of economic history, Sabri Ülgener and Ahmed Güner Sayar, especially since Weber argued that certain ‘developments’ in history were specific to the West:

If this development took place only in the occident the reason is to be found in the special features of its general cultural evolution which are peculiar to it. Only the occident knows the state in the modern sense, with a professional administration, specialized officialdom, and law based on the concept of citizenship. Beginnings of this institution in antiquity and in the orient were never able to develop. Only the occident knows rational law, made by jurists and rationally interpreted and applied, and only in the occident is found the concept of citizen (civis Romanus, citoyen, bourgeois) because only in the occident again are there cities in the specific sense. Furthermore, only the occident possesses science in the present-day sense of the word. Theology, philosophy, reflection on the ultimate problems of life, were known to the Chinese and the Hindu, perhaps even of a depth unreached by the European; but a rational science and in connection with a rational technology remained unknown to those civilizations. Finally, western civilization is further distinguished from every other by the presence of men with a rational ethic for the conduct of life. Magic and religion are found everywhere; but a religious basis for the ordering of life which consistently followed out must lead to explicit rationalism is again peculiar to western civilization alone.¹⁹

Rational capitalism, on the contrary, is organized with a view to market opportunities, hence to economic objectives in the real sense of the word, and the more rational it is the more closely it relates to mass demand and the provision for mass needs. It was reserved to the modern western development after the close of the middle ages to elevate this capitalism into a system.²⁰

For the state to have an economic policy worthy of the name, that is one which is continuous and consistent, is an institution of exclusively modern origin. The first system which it brought forth is mercantilism, so-called. Before the development of mercantilism there were two widespread commercial policies, namely, the dominance of fiscal interests and of welfare interests, the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Acknowledgements
• Note on transliteration
• List of abbreviations
• 1 Introduction
• 2 A discussion of the concepts and terminology
• 3 Ideas about the formation and functioning of society
• 4 The concept of household economy (‘ilm tadbīr al-manzil)
• 5 Regulation
• 6 Economic thinking at the end of the classical system
• 7 Real economic application
• 8 Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index