The Problem of Ottoman De/centralization: Scale, Intermediaries, and State Capacity

Choon Hwee Koh, University of California, Los Angeles

Before the advent of steamships or the telegraph, horse-run relay systems were the premier technology for long-distance communication. Everyone had one–– the Romans, the Mongols, the Chinese, the Russians. So did the Ottomans. This paper brings Ottoman historical studies into conversation with comparative historical sociology. My research examines how the Ottoman postal system which once connected Belgrade to Baghdad, Crimea to Cairo, worked across three centuries (ca. 1500-1840) to give a new account of state formation and the changing social order. By weaving together chronicles, sharia court records, fiscal registers, collective petitions, appointment contracts, and imperial decrees from the Ottoman archive, this history of a large-scale communications infrastructure reveals an empire that depended on its diverse imperial subjects as much as they depended on it. The paper highlights the process of "thickening governance" in Ottoman rule and how it co-evolved with the strengthening of trust and collective self-organization capabilities among imperial subjects. It surveys a range of new mechanisms used in collective organization and trust-building, such as multiparty, round-robin petitions, collective oaths and contracts, and a new kind of collective liability mechanism which I call nested suretyships. These experiences of local participation in local governance facilitated the territorial reach and local impact (weight) of the state. At the same time, they engendered among villagers the ability and desire to shape imperial agendas. By the nineteenth century, the social order had changed sufficiently that the once exclusive Ottoman imperial postal system which was only accessible by status transformed into a public service accessible by money. This paper develops a more precise analysis of organizational change in the Ottoman imperial bureaucracy by borrowing social science frameworks and promotes the use of the Ottoman empire as a pre-industrial era case study for comparative historical sociologists.

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 Presented in Session 200. Consolidating and Subverting Authorities in Asian and Eurasian Empires