Rules of the provincial empire: |Ottoman governors and the administration of provinces, 1895-1908

Abstract

This study is a portrayal of the operation of provincial government in the last thirteen years of the first Ottoman constitutional period, from 1895 to 1908. The aim of this study is to contribute to the understanding of the mentality of the high officialdom of the late Ottoman Empire, to display the soul of the Ottoman fin de siécle, as well as the mechanisms of the provincial government apparatus, and the power struggle between the center and the provinces. This is a study of the functioning of the state from a provincial perspective that, while giving no privilege to the perspective of the imperial capital, tries to locate the interdependence of province and center in the question of state centralization. To focus on the provincial government will help understand the nature of Hamidian autocracy as a system of government and late Ottoman bureaucratic culture. I discuss how governors interacted within and influenced the decision making system of the Ottoman empire. I do this by analyzing who the governors were, how they functioned, and why they acted as they did and presenting them in light of ordinary events, coping with a wide range of problems, dealing with institutions, groups, and individuals at both the imperial and local level. The relationship between social and educational background and official career patterns is investigated to measure the success of the bureaucratic reforms.