Factors in the Decline of Ottoman Society

7/27/2019 Factors in the Decline of Ottoman Society

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Factors in the Decline of Ottoman Society in the BalkansAuthor(s): Traian StoianovichReviewed work(s):Source: Slavic Review, Vol. 21, No. 4 (Dec., 1962), pp. 623-632Published by:Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3000577 .

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FACTORS IN THEDECLINE OF OTTOMAN SOCIETY

IN THE BALKANSBY TRAIAN STOIANOVICH

Drawing upon his enviable fund of knowledge, ProfessorVucinichprovides us with a meaningful image of Ottoman society, a highlyintricate structure of systems and subsystems. It is a tribute to thehigh quality of the ideas he has so skillfully nterwoven that I feel ina position to suggesta modificationof his analytical framework nd onthat basis to probe the factors that undermined the Ottoman socialstructure nd led to its demise.I. THE HOUSE OF GOD

According to Vucinich, Ottoman societywas a class society. His owncarefuldescriptionof this"class society," however, compels me to thinkit may have been otherwise. I should therefore ike to make some ob-servations of my own in defense of the thesis that it was not a classsociety, but what I would prefer to call an imperial and estate society.A class societyshould be able to fulfillthree conditions: It shouldallow real and fictivepersons to alter their social, economic, and politi-cal roles on the basis of competitiveability. In order to avert anarchy,it should be able to limit competition by favoring already existingwealth, power, authority, or influence. It should, nonetheless, honorthe principle of equality before the law and neither permit nor obligeany group to constitute itself as a multipurpose body with power to-regulate he behavior of every member in very diverse spheres of life.A class society must, by definition,be organized horizontally. It maynot have a vertical or corporativestructure.Every societyhas an image or several images of itself. One of theOttoman self-imageswas a view of society,theirs as well as the widersocietyof human kind, as a vertically structured social order of fourpillars or estates: the men of the pen, the men of the sword, the menofbusiness,and thehusbandmen. Of Arab origin,1 he concept of fourpillars was adopted by Ottoman political thinkers, among them theMR. ST 0 IAN OVI CH is associateprofessor fhistory t RutgersUniversity.

1 SherifMardin,"The Mind of the Turkish Reformer, 700-1900,"WesternHum,anitiesReview,XIV, No. 4 (Autumn,1960),420-21.


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624 Slavic Reviewseventeenth-centuryistorianHacci HJalife, hose four pillars wverehe'ulema (men of thepen), the asker (men of the sword), the tiiccar mer-chantsand craftsmen), nd theraya (husbandmen).2 Writingmore thana century ater, a well-informedEuropean, Ignatius Mouradgea d'Ohs-son, gave a similardescription of Ottoman society.3One might also regard Ottoman society as being divided into sixestates excluding slaves,who were not legally persons): the 'ulemad orMuslim Institution); the asker (or Ruling Institution),manyof whosemembers engaged in trade and were thus closely associated, even inte-grated,with the "thirdestate"of businessmenof thenon-Muslimmilletsor confessions; the fourth estate of the privileged raya (or auxiliary'asker of Orthodox Christians); the pseudo-estateof the oppressed raya;and the collection of estatesof self-governing oreigncommunities (andtheir Ottoman proteges),who were protected by international agree-ments.4The Ottoman social orderpossessed,however,an even more coinplexstructure,especially since it assumed two different orms,one confes-sional and theother functional. The firstwas the social embodiment ofthe various value cultures; the second was the social embodimentof thediverserealitycultures.5In terms f thevalue cultures,Ottoman societywas ostensiblydividedinto fourmillets: Muslims, Orthodox Christians,Jews, and Gregorian(Monophysite) Armenians. But the Muslims were further ubdividedinto two broad confessionalgroups, the heretical Shiah and the "ortho-dox" Sunni, the latter organized into a multitude of brotherhoodsofvaryingorthodoxy. Though the Orthodox Christianswere all theore-ticallysubject to the Patriarchof Constantinople, theywere subdividedduring some periods into at least two autocephalous churches (Greekand Serbian), each enjoying administrative urisdiction over differentcombinations of ethnic groups and subcultures. As for the Jews,theywere separated into four main confessional and cultural groups untilthe second half of the seventeenthcentury,when some of the followersof themillenarian sect ofShabbethai Zebi (Zevi), following theexampleoftheir eader,espoused Islam but retaineda substantialportionof theirJudaic millenarian heritage. The Armenian millet embraced not onlyMonophysites but Roman Catholics, Nestorians, and Jacobites. Thelatter churches,however, were sometimesable to acquire special char-

2 Erwin I. J. Rosenthal, Political Thought in Medieval Islam (Cambridge, Eng., 1958),.pp. 229-33.3 [Ignatius Mouradgea] d'Ohsson, Tableau gedne'rale l'Empire othoman (4 vols. in 5books; Paris,1788-1820), V, Part 2, pp. 483-613.4 This is the interpretation emphasize in a paper on Balkan social structure, tpresentwiththe University f CaliforniaPress.5 For a discussionof value cultureand reality culture,see A. L. Kroeber,"Reality Cul-ture and Value Culture," The Nature of Culture (Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press,.1952),pp. 152-66.


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Factors n theDecline of OttomanSociety 625tersconstituting hem as quasi-millets.6 In actuality,therefore, he totalnumber of Ottoman millets was closer to three or four times theofficially ecognizednumber.In terms of the reality cultures,Ottoman societywas organized intoa pseudo-orderof the men of the pen and book, separated into as manyreal ordersas there were millets; an order of the sword, separated intotwo orders, the regular militaryand political order of the dominantMuslims and the auxiliary orderof the dependent but privilegedOrtho-dox Christian voynuks, armatoloi, martolosi,and derbend guards; thebusiness order of Muslims, Jews,Orthodox Christians,and GregorianArmenians,whose members derived a sense of communion throughtheexercise, frequently, f a common craft n a common guild with a com-mon patronsaintor prophet; the pariah raya of Christian peasants,whohad little hope of improving their status save by apostasy; and theforeign ommunities.At the head of the Ottoman House of God ofmany millets and othercorporate units was the vicar of God, the padishah. Above him wasonlyGod himself.But the house was an imperfecthouse, in which each collectivitystrove desperatelyto improve its own position,generally at the expenseofother collectivities. The incapacityof the stateto resolve theconflictsamong the various rival corporate entities finally ulminated in revolu-tion, n the transformationf theOttoman social order from n imperialand estate society nto a societyof classes and non-Ottomannation states.Other factors ided thisprocess.

II. WAGES AND PRICESA very mportantfactor n the demise of the Ottoman social order wasthe continuing disparity between prices and wages. Understandablyenough,since there re no priceor wage studiesfor the Ottoman Empirecomparable to those forSpain, England, France, Germany, taly,Poland,or Czechoslovakia, ProfessorVucinich makes no mention of thissubject.In recentyears,however, some significant padeworkhas been achievedin thishithertomuch neglectedfield.From certain price (the movementof pricesof several different raincommodities in Dubrovnik, Istanbul, and Salonika)7 and wage (the

6 On the 'ulemd and the non-Muslim orders,see H. A. R. Gibb and Harold Bowen,Islamic Society and thle West: A Study of the Impact of Western Civilization on MoslemCulture n thleNear East, Vol. I: Islamic Society n the Eighteenth Century, art 2 (London,New York,Toronto: Oxford University ress, 1957),pp. 70-113, 07-61.7 I have obtained the data forgrain prices n Dubrovnik n the sixteenth nd seventeenthcenturiesfromJorjo Tadic, "Organizacija dubrovackogpomorstva u XVI veku," Istoriskicasopis, I, No. 1-2 (Belgrade, 1948), 95-96; for grain prices in Dubrovnik in the eighteenthcentury romVuk Vinaver, "Cene i nadnice u Dubrovniku XVIII veka," Istoriskicasopis,IX-X, 1959 (Belgrade, 1960), p. 323; for wheat prices in Salonika from N. G. Svoronos,Le commercede Salonique au XVIIIe siecle (Paris: Presses Universitaires e France, 1956),pp. 87-88; for grain prices in Istanbul in the sixteenth and seventeenthcenturiesfrom


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626 SlavicReviewmovement of wages for skilled and unskilled labor in the buildingtrades of Dubrovnik and Istanbul)" statisticsunearthed by Jorjo Tadic',Vuk Vinaver, Nicolas G. Svoronos,Robert Mantran, and Walther Hinz,supplemented by some additional data, we have deduced several plaus-ible, although necessarilytentative, onclusions. In drawing these con-clusions,we have used the data forSalonika and Dubrovnik as a checkupon the reliability of the more fragmentarystanbul data.Our statistics how a notable secular rise in grain prices at Istanbulonlyafter 1550. Between thelatterdate and 1587, however,grain pricesincreased by more than 50 per cent. Our information s insufficient oallow us to determine the precise role of American silver imports uponthe rise of prices in the eastern Mediterranean, especially since anotherfactor-the growth of urban population-no doubt exerted a similarinfluence upon prices. For an illuminating account of both factors nthe frameworkof the total Mediterranean, students of Balkan andOttoman historywvill ave to learn to add to their bibliographieswhat iscertainlyone of the most significanthistorical works of our century,Fernand Braudel's Mediterranee.9While grain and certain other prices increased between 1550 and1587, wages in Istanbul-at least in the building trades-did not budge.Moreover, while the price inflationantedated the importantmonetarydevaluation of 158410 by thirtyyears,wage increases were made onlyafter the devaluation. For a brief period, 1587 to 1600 or 1605, almostcoinciding with the FifteenYears' War of 1592-1606 against the HolyRoman Empire (Austria), wages held their own with prices; in fact, heyincreased two or three times as fastas prices. After 1600 a distinctionhas to be made between the wage scales of skilled workerson the oneWalther Hinz, "Lebensmittelpreise m mittelalterlichenVorderen Orient," Die W4"eltesOrients, I (Gbttingen,1954), 52-70; and for wheat prices in Istanbul in the eighteenthcentury from the Archives Nationales, Paris, Af. Etr. Bi 407, June 2, 1733, and Bi 448,April 23, 1789. For furtherdetails on price movements n Dubrovnik, Ljubljana, EastCentral Europe, and the Near East, see Stanislas Hoszowski, "L'Europe centraledevant larevolutiondes prix: XVIe et XVIIe si&les," Annales (Economies, Soci&tts,Civilisations),XVI, No. 3 (May-June, 1961), 441-56, and Alfred Dieck, "Lebensmittelpreise n Mittel-europa und im Vorderen Orient vom 12. bis 17. Jahrhundert," eitschrift iir Agrarge-schichteund Agrarsoziologie,II, No. 2 (Oct., 1955), 157-60.8 1 have obtained the wage data from Hinz, "Lebensmittelpreise,"Welt des Orients, I,70,and Robert Mantran,"Reglementsfiscauxottomans: la police des marches de Stamboulau d6but du XVIeme si&le," Les Cahiers de Tunisie, IV, No. 2 (1956), 233, for wages inIstanbul during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; Archives Nationales (Paris),Af. Etr. B' 438, Apr. 11, 1763, and B' 905, Apr. 27, 1774, for wages in Istanbul in theeighteenthcentury; nd Vuk Vinaver, "Monetarna kriza u Turskoj (1575-1650)," storiskiglasnik (1958), No. 3-4, p. 147, n. 160, forwages in Dubrovnik during the sixteenth andseventeenth enturies, nd Vinaver, "Cene i nadnice," Istoriski casopis, IX-X, 316-22, forwages in Dubrovnik during the seventeenth nd eighteenthcenturies. Spatial limitationsdo not permitme to include a graphic presentationof the price and wage curves.9Fernand Braudel, La Mefditerranefet le monde mnediterrandenl'epoque de PhilippeII (Paris: ArmandColin, 1949),pp. 268-93,347-420.10 bid., pp. 418-19.


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Factors n the Decline of OttomanSociety 627hand and of unskilled labor on the other. The wages of skilled workersmore or less kept up with the movement of prices. The wages of un-skilled labor lagged steadily behind.Giving mathematicalexpression to our data, we obtain the followingpicture of price and wage fluctuations n the Ottoman capital duringa period of two and a half centuries:

Percentage of Percentage fRise in WagesofYears Rise in Grain Prices Skilled Labor UnskilledLabor1550-1585 50 or more 0 01585-1605 33 100 801605-1700 250 100 401700-1790 100 100 501550-1790 700 or more 800 350The price of some commodities, notably of meat, did not surgeupward to the same degree. The disparitybetween prices and wagesmay be therefore somewhat less acute than is suggested by the dataabove. We may safely conclude, nonetheless, that the real wages andprofits f skilled workers kept up with prices and even moved upwardat a fasterrate than prices. The real wages of unskilled labor, on theother hand, were continuously depressed.Ottomanguilds used twomethods to maintain orraise thepurchasingpower of theirmembers (master craftsmen). First of all, they acquiredthe customaryright, despite the opposition of the state, to limit thenumber of shops in a given communityor ward." Secondly, they helddown the wages of their assistants nd apprentices.As the price of raw materials went up, many artisans apparentlyresorted to trickery, iolence, and political maneuvering in order torealize a profit r to avoid bankruptcy. Fortuneswere made and lost inthe political arena, rather than in the economic market, and insteadof being invested in new economic enterprisewere often hoarded orused for sumptuary and political purposes. The man of power andpolitical influence gained new ascendancy as a preferredpersonalitytype, to the detrimentof the producer.12The order ofmerchants nd artisans thus lost therespectof the othermembers of the House of God. Especially critical of their behaviorand ethos were the men of the pen. At the close of the eighteenthcentury,when the reputation of the order reached its lowest ebb, a11Afet mnan, per9cu ene'ral ur l'histoireeconomique de EiEmpireurc-ottornan,Pub-lications de la Societed'histoireturque," Ser. VIII, No. 6 (Istanbul: MaarifMatbaasi, 1941),pp. 59-60.12 Except for the emphasis on price inflation, he above interpretations derived fromSabri F. Vlgener, ktisadz inhitat tarihimizin hlldkve zihniyetmeseleleri (Moral Conceptsand Mentality n the Economic Decline of the Ottoman Empire), "Publ. de la Facultedes SciencesEconomiques," No. 55 (Istanbul, 1951), as reviewedby Omer L'utfiBarkan, inRevue de la Faculte des Sciences J?conorniques e l'Universite d'Istanbul, XI (1949-50),189-95.


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628 Slavic Reviewfamous poet, Stimbiilzabe Vehdi, scathinglydenounced the artisan forbeing "without shame, without a loyal heart, a tricksterwith thespirit of a Jew."13

III. POPULAR DISORDERS AND (;IFTLIK ESTATESOne of the usual responses of the Ottoman soldiery and corps ofmerchants and artisans to monetarydevaluation and economic crisiswas to conspire againstpersons suspected of introducing thecurrent lls.When successful,theybrought down one or more ministersand some-times even obtained the involuntaryabdication (and murder) of themonarch.

When threatened by such movements, the government put intoforce various sumptuary laws. On several different ccasions it pro-hibited the smoking of tobacco, the drinkingof wine or coffee, nd theuse of harnesses and saddles embellished with silver, or of velvet gar-ments embroidered with threads of gold. Prohibitive or restrictivemeasures were directed against taverns, coffeehouses, tobacco shops,baths, and "other idle places of concourse," such as barbershops,where,in one period at least, no more than one person "was suffered o enterat a time; for these being places of resort, reason was frequentlyventedthere,men of that profession being notorious through the world fortheir talk and intemperance of language."14Simultaneously,the governmentwould organize a relentlessdrive inthe capital against the social group identifiedby contemporaryFrenchobservers s the "useless and unemployed people"-gens inutiles tsansaveu. In the fulfillment of almost every such undertaking, severalthousands of persons were murdered or summarily executed, and tensof thousandswere deported to the Asian shores of the Bosporus or tosubject European lands.15 The periodic exportation of trouble fromthe capital created trouble for the provinces. The provincial capitalsand towns thereupon reacted in like fashion. Unable, however, toforce the return of the "useless and unemployed people" to Istanbul,they allowed them to rove the countryside.

13Sabri F. tlgener, "La morale des metiersdepuis le XIVeme siele et les critiquesqui leur ont et6adress6es,"bid., XI, 59-66.14 JoSevvon Hammer-Purgstall, Histoire de l'Empire ottoman depuis son originejusqu'a nos jours, trans. from the German by J. J. Hellert (Paris, 1835-43), VII, 235-38;VIII, 47-48,287-306; IX, 208-10. See also Sir Paul Rycaut, The History of the TurkishEmpire from the Year 1623 to the Year 1677 (London, 1687), pp. 28, 32, 38; HamdijaKresevljakovic, "Gradska privreda i esnafi u Bosni i Hercegovini (od 1463 do 1851),"Godis'njakIstoriskog Dru'tva Bosne i Hercegovine, I (Sarajevo, 1949), 194-95.15ArchivesNationales (Paris), Af. Etr. B, 402, lettersfrom Villeneuve, dated Sept. 15,Oct. 7, Nov. 13,and Nov. 29, 1730; Af. Etr. B' 403, lettersfromVilleneuve,dated Feb. 18,Mar. 28, Apr. 15, and Aug. 10, 1731; Af. Etr. B' 407, letter from Villeneuve, Jan. 21, 1733;Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv Vienna), St. A. Tiirkei V/9, pp. 131-34,unsigned letters nFrench,June 26 and June 30, 1740; Mary Lucille Shay,The OttomanEmpire from1720 to1734 as Revealed in Despatches of the VenetianBaili (Urbana: Universityof IllinoisPress,1944),pp. 27-37.


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Factors n the Decline of OttomanSociety 629Vagabondage plagued all medieval and preindustrial European and

Mediterranean societies-hence also the Ottoman Empire. It was par-ticularly prevalent in the more highly urbanized states and areas-thusagain in the Ottoman dominions.16 The continued abundance of un-skilled labor and resultantdepression n wages were sufficientonditionsto assure the continuance and intensification f many different ormsofvagabondage for more than two centuries.Rural adventurers, brigands, homeless vagabonds who belongedneither to town nor country,wage earners seeking to augment meagerrevenues from a stagnating trade or craft, and ambitious men of allsocial conditions made periodic forays nto the country, eizing land andother properties,offering rotection to the terrified easantry n returnfor a stipulated portion of their crop. This is one of the ways in whichthere rose the giftlik egime (a colonial regime of casa-grande senzala),an architectural and social complex of manor and manorial buildings(often surrounded by stone wall enclosures with towersand observationposts) and of pitiful huts of a submerged peasantry.The peasants of the more fertile owland and more easily accessiblegrasslandareas of the Balkans and of certain portions of Anatolia thusacquired a second lord and protector. In addition to the absenteelord who lived in the city and had a right to a portion of the ruralproduct in return for certain feudal obligations he supposedly renderedto the state, the peasant was now forced to acknowledge a de factolandlord. The second landlord, or his overseer, ived on the land andsaw to it that as much as possible of the production of the peasant wasdiverted to the manor. He also compelled the peasant to performvarious formsof corve'efor the manor, prevented him fromrunningaway,and stopped rival lords and overseersfromraiding his newly wonenergy resources of men, women, children, cattle, and water.One of the consequences of the giftlikregime, slowly established inone area after another between the end of the sixteenth and the be-ginning of the nineteenth century,was the wider diffusion of gardencultivation and of an irrigation or hydraulic economy, including themore widespread planting of rice and cotton and the introductionof anew crop, maize.17

16 On the growth of towns in the Ottoman Empire during the sixteenthcentury, eeOmer LuitfiBarkan, "La 'Mediterran&e' de Fernand Braudel vue d'Istamboul," Annales(Economnies,ocie&tes,ivilisations), X, No. 2 (Apr.-June, 954), 192-93; Omer Lfitfi arkan,"Quelques observations ur l'organisationeconomique et sociale des villes ottomanesdesXVIe et XVIIe siecles," Recueils de la Societe Jean Bodin, Vol. VII: La Ville, Part 2:Institutions cononmiquest socidte~Brussels,1955), pp. 292-93.

17 On the ciftlikregimeand maize cultivation, ee Traian Stoianovich,"Land Tenureand Related Sectors of the Balkan Economy, 1600-1800,"Journal of Economic History,XIII (Fall, 1953), 398-411;for a further iscussion of the diffusion f maize to the Balkans,see Traian Stoianovichand GeorgesC. Haupt, "Le mais arrivedans les Balkans," Annales(Economnies,ocietes, Civilisations),XVII, No. 1 (Jan.-Feb.,1962), 84-93.


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630 SlavicReviewIV. BIOLOGY AND PSYCHOLOGY

The upward attack against persons in authority and the downwardassault upon the peasantry by merchants,artisans, soldiers, brigands,officials, nd vagabonds were paralleled by action of another nature onthe part of the Muslim townswoman. We allude, in particular, to theadoption by Muslim women of birth-controlmeasures about whichwve now unfortunately ext to nothing. A French traveler, onsul, andchronicler of Greek and Balkan history,Pouqueville, was convinced,however, that the fertility ate of Muslim women, at the end of theeighteenth century,did not equal the fertility ate of Orthodox Chris-tian women. He accounted for the apparently lower rate of fertilityamong the former y the disastrouseffects f the institutionof polygamyand of the ravages of abortion and venereal disease. Writing of theMoreote women of Muslim faith nd of Muslim sexual habits in general,Pouqueville made the following observations:Although they theMuslim Moreotewomen] are oftenGreeks themselves,unlike the latter hey arelyhave a largenumberof children.This may beexplained,on theone hand, by the nstitutionf polygamynd, on the other,by the frightfulrtof abortion,which s familiar o them.Nowherehave theeffectsf abortion been so harmful as among the Turks],nor so solemnlyconsecrated. Avowedpublicly n the family f the Sultan,who condemnshis sisters nd niecesto sterility, hesehorriblemeans of depopulation passon to thedifferenttrataof society.When suspected f infidelity,he wivesof a Turk do not hesitate to commit the crime. They even resortto it,and withoutremorse,with the sole object of conserving heirattractivenessand protectinghebeautythatgivestheman empireovertheirrivals,withwhom theynevercease to be at war.18

Pouqueville explains the spread of birth-controlpractices in termsof domestic and state politics and of aesthetics. We should like to sug-gesta thirdexplanation: Muslim, and perhaps also non-Muslim, towns-women had recourse to abortion and other formsof birth control as away of coping with the price inflation nd wage depression.Our knowledge of the Muslim family,whether urban or rural, isvery meager. We presume indeed that therewere not onlyrural-urbanbut also regional differencesn family size, structure, nd values. Weare disposed, nonetheless,to accept Pouqueville's affirmations a usefulworking hypothesis.Among thesubject populations of the Balkans, as ProfessorVucinichhas well emphasized,the trend was quite different: oward the extensionof kinship and quasi-kinship relationships and the revival of the ex-tended family. We may take exception to some of his statementsregarding the zadruga or extended family,namely, that it was "demo-

18F. C. H. Pouqueville, Voyageen Mor&e,d Constantinople, n Albanie, et dans plusieursautres parties de l'Empire othoman, pendant les annees 1798, 1799, 1800- t 1801 (Paris,1805), , 265.


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Factors in the Decline of Ottoman Society 631cratic" or exclusively Serbian, but we agree with his general analysisthat it gave the Balkan peasantry a certain amount of autonomy anda feeling of power.We should consequently like to reformulateour hypothesis: Afterthe Ottoman conquest the Balkan family grew larger and stronger.The Muslim Ottoman family (the Albanian Muslim family perhapsexcepted), on thecontrary, ecame both psychologically nd biologicallyweaker after the close of the sixteenth century.

V. REVOLUTIONThe strengthening f the non-Muslim and of the rural Balkan familywas accompanied by the strengtheningof certain other non-Muslimfolkways, specially behavior patterns designed to compensate for thelack of security of life and property under Ottoman rule or to aid inthe performanceof certain more precise economic functions.19Amongthe former were the following: (1) kumstvo (compaternitas), or god-fatherhood, ffiliations f several different inds; (2) pobratimstvo,oradelfopoiia, and posestrimstvo:foster-brothernd foster-sister atternsof behavior; (3) brother-of-the-crossstavraderfoi) affiliations; (4)prijateljstvo, or friendship, associations; (5) katun, or pastoral com-munities,and tselingata,or associations of shepherds bound by kinshipor quasi-kinship as well as economic ties; and (6) rod, bratstvo,andpleme (kin, phratry, nd clan) associations.The economic associations that grew in strength, specially duringthe eighteenth century, were the companiae (kompaniai, kumpanije),or merchant companies, and the Greek and Greco-Albanian syn-trofondftai, r associations of seamen. The members of these groupsspent much time abroad, in various parts of the Mediterranean, in west-ern Europe, in Germany, Hungary, and Austria, and in Russia. In theexercise of their economic functions,merchantsand seamen acquiredsome degree ofwealth and established useful political connectionswithinfluential foreigners.In the meantime, the military associations of the Balkan Christianswere radically transformed. n the sixteenthcentury, hese associationshad been comprised of privileged families and communities that wereresigned and, in some measure, even dedicated to the inevitabilityofcollaboration with the conqueror. They then constituteda substantialportion of the total population, perhaps as much as 15 per cent of allBalkan Christians.20At theend of thecentury,however,manymembers

19 For a very ble treatment f this subject,see N. Pantazopoulos, "Offentlich-rechtlicheInstitutionen der Griechen wahrend der tiirkischenHerrschaft" Sonderdruck, nterna-tionalrechtliche und StaatsrechtlicheAushandlungen, Festschriftfur Walter Schdtzel)(n.p., n.d.), pp. 1-10 in theFestschrift,he pages are 363-72).20 Omer LfitfiBarkan, "Les D6portationscomme methode de peuplement et de coloni-sation dans l'Empire ottoman,"Revue de la Factilte' des SciencesA'conomniquese l'Uni-versite' 'Istanbul,XI (1949-50), 28, 131.


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632 SlavicReviewof the auxiliary 'asker ebelled against Ottoman authority. In reprisal,the government, r its agents, deprived them of some of their privilegesand reduced the number of familieshaving a right to such immunities.The process continued throughout the seventeenth and most of theeighteenth century.Many Christians probably turned to banditry when bereft of theirancient rights. Other Christians turned bandit in order to retaliateagainst Muslim brigandage. There was constituted in this fashion asociety of hajduk bands, Christian brigands unable to find employmentin theserviceof the Ottoman state. Some hajduks, uskoks,klephts, ndcorsairs succeeded in enteringthe service of Venice, Austria, or Russia.Other rovers of the sea and land remained without attachmentsto anysovereignstate.By the end of the eighteenth or beginning of the nineteenth century,perhaps 10 per cent or more of the Balkan Christian population, atleast in some of the frontierareas,21was organized militarilyfor thepurpose oftransforming r abolishing rather than defendingthe empire.The Serbian and Greek revolutions,22r wars of national independence,were thusno mere accidents. They were rather the direct and logicalresult of the failure of the Ottoman government to maintain intact theauxiliary Christian asker.Confrontedwith the task of bringing the various kinship and eco-nomic associations under some formof centralized control,merchantsand hajduks sought the advice of certain secular-oriented ntellectuals.The latterwere few in number and most of them did not even residein the territorieswhere the insurrectionswere successful. They suc-ceeded, however, in giving the revolutions a new ideological goal: thereorganization of society upon a class and national rather than acorporate and imperial basis and the espousal of the principle ofindividual as against collective responsibility. In this manner, theBalkan revolutions were fatefully inked to the French, or Western,Revolution.

21 In any event, this was apparently true in Serbia. Cf. D. J. Popovic, 0 haiduci?na(Belgrade: Narodna gtamparija,1930-31), I, 129.22 For an excellent brief survey of the Serbian revolution, see Wayne S. Vucinich,"Marxian Interpretations f the First Serbian Revolution," Journal of Central EuropeanAffairs, XI, No. 1 (Apr.,1961), 3-14.

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Factors in the Decline of Ottoman Society