Financing the finance: Muhassıllık in Trikala, 1840-1842
UĞUR BAHADIR BAYRAKTAR
Despite the two-year-implantation period, the establishment of muhassıllık [tax collection] was one of the most challenging institutional reforms within the Ottoman finance and administrative structure. Reform in tax collection structure, compared to other accompanying reforms of the Tanzimat era, has not been studied thoroughly most probably due to its short-term validity. Even though the councils established in the countryside being evolved from the early muhassıllık reforms, has existed for the nineteenth century, the developments concerning the financial sphere has not been studied extensively. Furthermore, it is very necessary to revise the historiographical views on the abolition of the reform in tax collection. Maintaining its scepticism, this study demonstrates the missing points leading to the abolition of the reform in tax collection. The adversaries of the reform comprising of tax collector [mültezim], bankers, and local notables on the one hand and the lack of qualified officers in the Ottoman bureaucracy on the other hand have been noted as the main reasons for the doom of the reform. Thus, this study aims to present a detailed discussion of the reform in tax collection in its short-lived period while offering a financial bill of the new tax collection administration, which might be addressed as another reason for its downfall. Investigating the 'how' question instead of the 'why' question, the present study does not seek a reason concerning the abrogation of the reform and its replacement with the ages-old practice, tax farming. However, it attempts to demonstrate an actual account of the tax reform in practice based on the muhassıllık in Trikala, Greece. By doing so, it attempts to add further discussions on the policies as well as the structures of the Ottoman finance during the nineteenth century.
Keywords: Tax collection, Tanzimat, Trikala, tax collector
* * *
Morality, science and nationalism at the Turkish newspapers for children in the Tanzimat period (1869-1876)
ERAY YILMAZ
The Ottoman statesmen were aware of the Ottoman state was backward and it must be reformed in the Tanzimat period. They took western modernization as a model, tried to achieve the Ottoman identity or Ottoman nationalism. According to the Ottoman statesmen, first of all, it must be strong education system for the Ottoman identity. So, they put up old education system (sıbyan-medrese), and tried to establish new education system. According to new education system, Ottoman nations (millet) will give community education in their community primary schools; but from the high school (idadi), all Ottoman nations' children would unite at public schools. The statesmen were practicing as mentioned policy when they were criticized by the Ottoman writers, such as Namık Kemal, Şinasi, Ziya Paşa. Some Ottoman journalists opposed the government policy and suggested more Islamic policy. Among all discussing, the new newspaper for children was published in 1860's. First Turkish newspaper for children, its name Mümeyyiz, was published in 1869, and totally 6 Turkish newspapers for children until 1876. These newspapers tried to speak to all Ottoman children, Muslims or non-Muslims. And they tried to make more moral, more hardworking, and Ottomanist of all Ottoman children. But they have difficulty to change their Islamic mind and their Islamic speak therefore non-Muslims didn't much interest these Turkish newspapers. As a result, Turkish newspapers for children's sustained line of the Ottomanist education policy; but like that, haven't seemed seriously success.
Keywords: Tanzimat, Turkish newspaper for children, morality, education, nationalism
"Uygunsuz makulesinden kadınlar": Social and moral control on poor and lonely women and prostitution in İstanbul (1900-1914)
MÜGE TELCİ ÖZBEK
This study focuses on the police efforts to control the street prostitutes in late Ottoman Istanbul. It examines the approaches to the issue by varying governmental offices, mostly in conflict with each other, the legal disputes emerged among them. From the second half of the nineteenth century on, there appeared a female population in Istanbul who was free of any control by male relatives. These women, who started to be conceived as a threat to the social and moral order, were tried to be excluded from the urban space. At the center of this exclusion laid the figure of "street prostitute," who had been one of the most powerful symbols of the uncontrolled female sexuality and spatial transgression.
Keywords: Ottoman Empire, female population, prostitution, social control
State and Peasantry in Second World War Era: Soil Product Tax and Peasant Resistance
MURAT METiNSOY
Historical accounts have barely touched on both the impact of the economic policies of the Turkish single-party regime on the peasantry and the peasants' response to them. Particularly peasants' experiences of burdensome agricultural taxes imposed by the single-party regime and their responses to these taxes have not been examined in detail. Turkish peasants have conventionally been regarded as politically unconscious and ineffective masses due to the lack of their own political organizations and movements. Especially the narrow conception of politics as formal, organized, and legal political action performed exclusively by the elites and middle classes has led the scholars to postulate that the peasants did by no means participate in the political life and affect it. This paper, examining the small and middle peasants' daily resistance to the agricultural purchases at low prices and the Soil Product Tax by the Turkish single-party regime during World War II, uncovers the everyday and informal means and forms by which the peasants influenced, albeit indirectly, the political life even under an authoritarian system.
Keywords: Second World War, Soil Product Tax, peasants, resistance
The Ottoman Age in South-Central Europe through Secondary Schools' History Textbooks in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia
GABRIEL PIRICKY
In historical retrospective local populations in Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, and to a much lesser degree in the Czech Republic, have had experiences of massive interaction with Muslims throughout the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth century when the Ottomans, as well as the Crimean Tatars, invaded the Kingdom of Hungary and waged numerous wars against the Polish-Lithuanian state and Habsburg Hereditary Lands. The Age of the Ottomans has been reflected in the history textbooks of the four countries usually under the headings "Turkish wars" or "Ottoman expansion." Since the collapse of the Iron Curtain in 1989, all four ex-communist states have been involved in an intense effort to re-write textbooks, although the perception of the Ottomans and Muslims did not change automatically. Without claiming to map the entire historical presentation of the Ottomans, this contribution aims to demonstrate the polyphony found in the textbook sources in the region. By analyzing high-school level educational materials in all four languages, it is possible to identify stereotypes, prejudicies and distortions concerning the perception of the Ottoman Turks.
Keywords: Ottomans, Turks, Central Europe, history, Islam, perception, stereotypes, secondary schools
