10. Negotiating Religion, Moral Economy and Economic Ideas in the Late Ottoman Empire: Perspectives of Peasants and the Intelligentsia

There are various misconceptions about Ottoman economy, economic policies and economic thought for the later period (nineteenth century and early twentieth century) as well as earlier centuries. The most widespread argument about pre-modern Ottoman economy is that the state wanted to control all sectors and actors of the economy and employed various successful (at least until the eighteenth century) measures to that end. The classic formulation of this idea has been put forward by Mehmet Genç who has argued that the Ottoman state followed a comprehensive tripartite economic policy: provisionism (securing a cheap and high-quality supply of goods and services), traditionalism (desire to protect the status quo and the tendency to look to the past for models in case of change) and fiscalism (the systematic efforts to maximize revenue of the treasury) (1994, 60). Genç and his many followers (for example Çizakça 1985; Kuran 2004; for a nuanced formulation, see White 2008, 24–26) have underlined the tight grip of the state over economy through various measures such as market controls, tutelage over guilds and confiscation and stressed that the measures declined in efficacy as the eighteenth century progressed. …