Ottoman Civil Officialdom

In this sequel to his highly acclaimed Bureaucratic Reform in the Ottoman Empire, Carter Findley shifts focus from the organizational aspects of administrative reform and development to the officials themselves. A study in social history and its cultural and economic ramifications, Findley's new book critically reassesses Ottoman accomplishments and failures in turning an archaic scribal corps into an effective civil service. Combining scrutiny of well-documented individuals with analyses of large groups of officials, Findley considers how much the development of civil officialdom benefited Ottoman efforts to revitalize the state and protect its interests in an increasingly competitive world. Did reformers' initiatives in elite formation significantly broaden the social bases of officialdom and its capacity to represent Ottoman society? Did prospective officials profit from educational reform so as to achieve higher levels of qualification over the generations? How did cultural tensions of the reform era affect civil officials? To what extent did impersonal procedure and new ideas of professionalism supplant patronage and old scribal role concepts? How well did the state succeed in rewarding good service and protecting its officials against shifting economic conditions? The answers to such questions illuminate major issues of social integration and cultural change and clarify links between economic conditions and changing forms of political activism. Originally published in 1989. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Traces the Turkic peoples' trajectory from steppe, to empire, to nation-state. Unifying cultural, economic, social, and political history, this work illuminates the projection of Turkic identity across space and time and the profound transformations marked successively by the Turks' entry into Islam and into modernity.

From the author's preface: Sublime Porte--there must be few terms more redolent, even today, of the fascination that the Islamic Middle East has long exercised over Western imaginations. Yet there must also be few Western minds that now know what this term refers to, or why it has any claim to attention. One present-day Middle East expert admits to having long interpreted the expression as a reference to Istambul's splendid natural harbor. This individual is probably not unique and could perhaps claim to be relatively well informed. When the Sublime Porte still existed, Westerners who spent time in Istanbul knew the term as a designation for the Ottoman government, but few knew why the name was used, or what aspect of the Ottoman government it properly designated. What was the real Sublime Porte? Was it an organization? A building? No more, literally, than a door or gateway? What about it was important enough to cause the name to be remembered? In one sense, the purpose of this book is to answer these questions. Of course, it will also do much more and will, in the process, move quickly onto a plane quite different from the exoticism just invoked. For to study the bureaucratic complex properly known as the Sublime Porte, and to analyze its evolution and that of the body of men who staffed it, is to explore a problem of tremendous significance for the development of the administrative institutions of the Ottoman Empire, the Islamic lands in general, and in some senses the entire non-Westerrn world.

"A feast of thoughtful and informative essays, this timely collection explores an age-old issue: the impact of the past on the present. Contributors . . . consider . . . influences of the Ottoman Empire on its successor states in the Balkans and in the Arab world. . . . They provide substance enough for thorough lessons in historical influence.--CHOICE.

Building on the work of a new generation of historians, this volume presents twelve papers from all parts of the former Ottoman space, from the Middle East to the Balkans, showing new approaches to Ottoman provincial history.

Today's "clash of civilizations" between the Islamic world and the West are in many ways rooted in 19th-century resistance to Western hegemony. This compellingly argued and carefully researched transnational study details the ways in which Japan served as a model for Ottomans in attaining "non-Western" modernity in a Western-dominated global order.

A theoretically informed account of how the Ottoman state redefined itself during the last decades of empire.