Rumeli Ayanlari: The Eighteenth Century

Abstract

Tradition excludes the Ottoman Empire from the dynamic movements of the eighteenth century.' The government was bankrupt, imcompetant, and corrupt; and the governed, confronted with the virtual collapse of civil authority, became increasingly isolated and withdrawn. The relatively open Ottoman social structure of earlier centuries seemed to solidify. Roles became increasingly hereditary on all levels and in all professions; Muslims and Christians began to be differentiated into rigidly defined and separated millets. Yet, internal developments in the Balkan provinces of the Empire during the eighteenth century indicate that this traditional view must be modified. The commercial revolution of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries created severe socioeconomic disequilibrium, and efforts to assimilate and adapt to the external world induced a crisis in values throughout Ottoman Balkan society. By the end of the century, new patterns of social organization had evolved, patterns very similar to those developing elsewhere in eastern Europe. Among the most significant innovations of the late eighteenth century was the emergence of a seigneurial regime in the Balkans, a phenomenon largely associated with the rise to power of a group of