Writing Politics: Ottoman Governmentality and the Language of Reports

This chapter focuses on the official correspondence between Vidin’s administrative council and the provincial capital, Ruse. These reports pertaining to events in Vidin County were a part of the political procedures of the local judicio-administrative sphere. As such, politics of local administration influenced the official correspondence and our understanding of the events in Vidin County. The writing of reports and petitions and other provincial administrative/judicial practices (such as interrogations) constituted a significant part of Ottoman governmentality. Those who could shape how the official correspondence was constructed gained advantage in local political economy. Such correspondence was an essential component of how provincial Ottoman government functioned; therefore, reports, petitions, false accusations, and interrogations became important tools for agents and groups who were engaged in hegemonic negotiations. Both elite and non-elite agents were able to utilize Ottoman governance to pursue their own strategies against other local agents or imperial government. People who refused to use these bureaucratic tools in making claims and negotiating were presented in this correspondence as defiant stubborn and violent. This perspective is critical of the state–society divide, as the case studies reveal a more complex singular government of state and society.

Introduction

This chapter explains the primary focus and the theoretical devices for the book, introduces Vidin region and provides a brief outline for the chapters. Provincial councils were key offices of Ottoman governance from 1840s onward. In the broader context of Ottoman liberal-capitalist social formation during the long 19th century (1789-1922), local councils provided a venue for local agents pursue competing political and economic strategies. Conventional historiography on 19th century Ottoman state-society relations puts a lot of emphasis on an imperial regulation from 1864 in explaining provincial councils as an extension of imperial centralization policies. This study shifts the focus of research on provincial documents produced by such councils to reveal how these offices and practices of Ottoman governance served as a platform for the political and economic negotiations of provincial agents pursuing their interests. The documents produced by the provincial councils in Vidin County in Ottoman-administered Bulgaria provide a rich source to explore the dynamics of 19th century Ottoman governance in its full richness focusing on property rights, security matters, market order and population management.

Conclusion

This chapter presents the general conclusion of this book: Although the highest tier of Vidin’s local dynasties gradually lost their power vis-à-vis the imperial administration by the beginning of the nineteenth century, the lower-tier elite benefited from cooperation with the Ottoman administration. The Ottoman transformation during the long nineteenth century focused on legitimating the imperial order by establishing limits to governance. Part of this change was the establishment of provincial councils by 1840 as part of an Ottoman governance, which aimed to protect the ‘natural’ market order through civil law. The 1864 and 1871 regulations organised the provincial administrative and judicial councils as separate bodies where the elite’s influence was restrained with term-limits. Yet the notables dominated Vidin’s councils by moving between offices. This led to a connected judicio-adminisrative sphere, dominated by the local elite and reflecting the political dynamics among them. Different agents/groups problematized issues pertaining to security, territory and population within this sphere using technologies of Ottoman governance to pursue their strategies. These councils and Ottoman governance was not serving the elite alone but provided a negotiation platform for different people and alliances in Vidin county in conjunction with economic liberalization of the long-nineteenth century.

‘Cattle Thieves’: Refugee Settlement, Ottoman Governmentality and Biopolitics

This chapter explores the narrative function of the debates and correspondence associated with provincial governance around a particular problem: refugees. During the second half of the 19th century, more than a hundred thousand refugees came to Ottoman Bulgaria because of Russian expansion to the Caucasus. A great majority of these refugees were Circassians. This wave was contemporaneous with other demographic movements: over ten thousand Bulgarian Christians who had left for Russia as part of a population exchange between Ottomans and Russians returned back and had to be re-settled, several thousand Muslim families left a recently independent Serbia for Ottoman Empire. The refugees came at a point of economic growth in Ottoman Bulgaria and many were settled in the Vidin County. By examining how the local agents problematised the refugee settlement process in provincial correspondence, this chapter analyses the parallels between provincial politics and the imperial transformation into a liberal-capitalist social formation, where a presumably autonomous market order determined the limits of governance. This perspective is essential in looking at the empire from the provincial level and challenges the presumed path of reforms as unidirectional from the imperial centre to the provinces.

Once Inside the Chamber … Participation in the Politics of Local Administration

This chapter explores the members’ involvement with the provincial councils to identify the patterns in member participation. These councils handled majority of the local administrative and judiciary issues, yet they did not keep meeting minutes. Their copy registers, where they kept a copy of their correspondence, serve as the single most important source on the members’ participation in the politics of Ottoman administration. When read against the provincial yearbooks that provided a detailed account of the composition of Vidin’s judicio-administrative sphere, the changes and irregularities in the local record keeping procedures and the structure of the written entries reveal details of council members’ attendance and participation. The main argument of the chapter is that council members did not participate in the meetings regularly and equally. Rather, political groupings among the members, reflective of the provincial dynamics among notable families, affected the members’ level of participation, occasionally resulting in irregularities. Furthermore, higher-ranking officials at the provincial administration seem to be aware of these dynamics and irregularities at the county level.

Sitting Together: Local Councils and the Politics of Election in the County of Vidin

This chapter focuses on the organizational structure of a key provincial administrative unit, the county (liva or sancak) and the politics of administering this unit. It includes a general summary of its organizational structure, including the offices within Vidin County and people associated with those offices. By exploring the connection between the offices and the people who occupy them, the chapter defines the judicio-administrative sphere of provincial governance in Vidin: the space occupied by people and offices associated with provincial judiciary and administration. The main argument is that counties were key units of provincial administration and local notables dominated their councils, which were central to the larger provincial judicio-administrative sphere. The chapter provides a summary of how the county and its key judiciary and administrative councils were structured by two key regulations (issued in 1864 and 1871), relates these councils to the earlier provincial councils and explains how he election and appointment of council members took place. The election process in the local judicio-administrative sphere was a charged process that was impossible to untangle from the provincial power dynamics. Local notables maintained their prominence by consistently remaining as members of this judicio-administrative sphere, which was key to Ottoman governance.

Contextualising the Nineteenth Century

This chapter focuses on the Ottoman imperial transformation during the long 19th century (1789-1922) and provides a context for the politics of local administration in Vidin. The conventional historiography emphasizes the Tanzimat era (1839–76) in setting the chronological boundaries for Ottoman imperial transformation in the 19th century. This chapter argues that the long 19th century, including but not limited to the Tanzimat era, was part of a larger transformation that began with the crisis of the traditional social formation (starting in the seventeenth century) and culminated in a liberal-capitalist social formation. This chapter focuses on the broader changes in Ottoman political economy with an emphasis on control over the means of production as it explores the transformation of property regimes and tax collection methods. After outlining this larger transformation at the imperial and provincial level, the chapter analyses its reflection in the Ottoman official print by examining yearbooks (Salnames) and legal corpora (Düstur).