Provincial Elites Research Articles

The End of the Ottoman Empire: A Century after the Fall

A century ago, the Ottoman Empire finally ceased to be after a long reign that stretched back to the late medieval period, and, ostensibly, nobody really missed it. It was once possible to write about the fall of the Ottoman Empire as the overdue culmination of a process that gave rise to independent nation–states. But, increasingly, the empire casts a long shadow on the historiography of the Middle East, and its last days emerge among its most consequential for the future of the region. The same political actors who reshaped late Ottoman politics were integral to the struggle for the post-Ottoman landscape. These individuals included provincial elites from nondominant ethnic groups who, rather than embracing ethnic nationalism, remained Ottomanist in their vision of the region's future until the final moment. Newer scholarship rejects the teleology of the nations that emerged from postwar fracturing, demonstrating that the map was not redrawn by the victors in an instant. It was forged, instead, through armed struggles against European imperial powers and among rival movements that lasted for years. One hundred years after the Ottoman Empire's collapse, historians are still excavating its long-ignored relevance for understanding the modern Middle East, which was buried under the weight of nationalist and Orientalist metanarratives that never questioned the inevitability of its demise.

Shifting Imperial Policies towards Provincial Elites in the Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman Balkans and Asia Minor

Shifting Imperial Policies towards Provincial Elites in the Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman Balkans and Asia Minor

Opportunistic Behavior of Village Economic Development Strategy Plan Program in Manokwari District

Respect as an empowerment program to increase the economic capacity of village communities in Papua and West Papua, its implementation has been going on since 2007 until now. Based on the results of surveys and quantitative research, the pros and cons of its existence state that this program has not been successful without explaining the causes of this failure by exploring community knowledge, especially the problem of the participation of the actors. Based on this, this study attempts to answer the following questions: 1. how is the participation of the regional elite, community elite in the planning and implementation of respect, and 2. how is the participation of the community elite, and the community in utilizing the results of respect.The research objectives were: 1. to analyze the participation of local elites and community elites in the planning and implementation of respect, and 2. to analyze the participation of community elites and the community in utilizing the results of respect, in order to obtain an overview of the implementation of respect and empowerment carried out in the program, then to obtain an overview implementation of empowerment in accordance with the uniqueness or specificity of the community. The research was conducted in four districts namely North Manokwari District, Ransiki District, Sidey District, and Minyambouw District. The research method used is qualitative using a phenomenological perspective with an emic approach.The results of the study show that: 1. provincial elites have not fully participated in improving the welfare of the village community, 2. district elites are not involved in the respect program so they are not fully responsible for improving community welfare, 3. village elites and community elites have not played a role as community motivators in village economic empowerment, and 4. community participation in villages responding to respect is still oriented as a project and not a program.

Two Images of the Young Turk Revolution: Public Reaction in Beirut and Damascus to the Revolutionary Events of 1908 in the Ottoman Empir

In this study, the author examines the reaction of the provincial society to the events of the first stage of the Young Turk Revolution in the Ottoman Empire in 1908 on the example of two large centers of the Syrian provinces of the Ottoman Empire – Beirut and Damascus. The Young Turks' restriction of the power of Sultan-Caliph Abdul-Hamid II caused an ambiguous, sometimes diametrically opposed reaction in the Arab periphery of the Ottoman Empire, the analysis of which is necessary to understand the mechanisms of further relations between the provincial elites and the imperial center. On the basis of consular reports and testimonies of a number of eyewitnesses of the events, two images of the Young Turks and their actions in 1908 are shown through the eyes of the Beirut and Damascus public. While in seaside Beirut, which served as the main “sea gate” of Ottoman Syria, liberal sentiments among local intellectuals and merchant families (both Muslims and Christians) served as a breeding ground for a positive and even enthusiastic perception of the revolution, in a more traditional and conservative Damascus the restoration of the constitution and the limitation of the Sultan's power was perceived with a wary negative. The destruction of the “patron-client” relationship that connected the large landowners and Muslim religious figures of Damascus with the Sultan's court gave rise to protest moods among the townspeople, which, in turn, led to mass riots in Damascus in the fall of 1908. The conducted research refutes the widespread thesis about the unambiguously positive perception of the Young Turk Revolution in the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire.

The Causes of the Emergence of Provincial Elites with Inscribed Monuments in the Late Old Kingdom: Case Studies and Methodology

Abstract The causes and processes that have led to the sudden rise of the provincial elites who had the wherewithal to commission inscribed monuments, especially from the end of the Fifth Dynasty (c.2350 BCE), remain poorly understood. This paper aims to highlight some of the main factors involved in this process, using specific case studies and a global and comparative approach. The results indicate greater levels of complexity than previously thought, and that no single, concurrent cause applied in all provinces. The paper also discusses methodological issues about how to reconstruct a causal system for the emergence and enrichment of provincial elites and, in particular, the need to study this process diachronically to achieve deeper insights into its mechanisms.

Governors and Provincial Elites in Umayyad Egypt

This article focuses on the confrontation that broke out sometime in 709 or 710 CE between a hundred men led by members of the Banū Fahm and the Umayyad governor of Egypt, Qurra b. Sharīk. After presenting the case in question, the article explains who participated in the conflict, what their motives and expectations were, and how the failure of these expectations resulted in the confrontation with the governor and his troops. I suggest that although early Muslim historians depicted the conflict in religious terms, it was also a result of the specific power dynamics between the governor and provincial Arab elites and of competition over the material and social privileges of elite families in Egypt.

Family Ties that Bind: Decentralisation, Local Elites and the Provincial Administrative Organisations in Thailand

AbstractGrowing rapidly before the early 2000s, literature on provincial Thai politics has dwindled in recent years. This article makes a small attempt to redress this trend by highlighting one distinctive yet understudied emerging electoral dynamics in provincial Thailand. Specifically, drawing mainly on Thai-language primary sources, this paper shows that in the majority of Thailand's provinces, the Provincial Administrative Organisation, an electoral institution that has received an unprecedented amount of state funding in the post-1997 age of decentralisation, has enabled influential political families to retain and even increase their power. As political and economic power has been decentralised from Bangkok, it has ironically been centralised in the hands of a limited number of oligarchic provincial elites. This phenomenon is not an historical aberration; rather, it should be viewed as one manifestation or product of Thailand's enduring patrimonial culture, in which public officeholders’ positions are regarded as an extension of their personal or familial property. I conclude by discussing the Thai case theoretically and comparatively.

Trajectories of State Formation across Fifteenth-Century Islamic West-Asia: Eurasian Parallels, Connections and Divergences edited by Jo van Steenbergen

<i>Trajectories of State Formation across Fifteenth-Century Islamic West-Asia: Eurasian Parallels, Connections and Divergences</i> edited by Jo van Steenbergen

Local Legitimacy and Tax Policy: Qaids as Part of a Composite State in Colonial Tunisia

AbstractThe colonial history of Tunisia has long been dictated by colonial sources that made the qaid (an official in charge of fiscal attributions), from the viewpoint of the capital city, a local notable and often a prevaricator. This study proposes to reconsider the relationship between government and regional power in the colonial context by drawing on the recent work of Ottoman studies about provincial elites. The article studies the fiscal reforms of the interwar period in a cereal-growing region of Tunisia, relying on sources in Arabic produced by the qaids, namely the administrative correspondence between local authorities, the prime minister, and colonial controllers. This article describes the role of qaids in the negotiation between national law and local specificities and finally highlights the role of decentralization and a local way of thinking about the state in the 1930s. It contributes to colonial history and the history of taxation by highlighting the territorial fractures in North Africa and the agency of local actors under the protectorate.

The ruler in the "citizen’s garb" or the image of dynasts in Trajan Decius’s coinage (249–251)

The article tackles the promotion of Trajan Decius’s family members in representations featured on medallions and coins (249–251). It focuses on images that feature two or three representatives of the dynasty. Such joint representations manifested the stability of the dynasty’s rule, the collaboration of the members of the dynasty and the resulting benefits for the empire and its inhabitants, which is indicated by the following ideas: concordia, pietas, liberalitas, promoted by the mint in Rome. What links the imperial coinage with the provincial one is the representation of rulers in togae, seated on sellae curules. This image of the dynasty members was utilised on the coins from Anazarbus. This bears testimony to the practical significance of the imperial representations, especially in terms of the rivalry of the provincial elites vying for their position in this region of the empire.

La epigrafía votiva romana de Caldas de Montbui (Vallés Oriental, Barcelona) (ss. I-II d. C.). Un ejemplo de promoción de las élites provinciales de la tarraconensis en centros de aguas minero- medicinales

En el presente artículo estudiamos en profundidad las inscripciones votivas de Caldas de Montbui. Para ello, nos vamos a centrar en el estudio epigráfico con una metodología basada en el registro material consultado de primera mano, las publicaciones científicas relacionadas con nuestra investigación y las fuentes primarias. Según la información recopilada, proponemos la importancia de la segunda mitad del siglo I d. C. e inicios del siglo II d. C. en la manifestación del hábito epigráfico, claro síntoma de una fase de popularidad con la presencia de personajes de las élites provinciales procedentes de ciudades como Barcino, Iluro o Tarraco. Con la investigación realizada, observamos la gran evolución e impulso que adquiere este enclave durante todo el siglo I d. C., siendo un aspecto determinante en este proceso el patrocinio imperial de Tiberio y la dinastía flavia. In this paper we study the votive inscriptions of Caldas de Montbui in depth. To do this we focus, mainly, on epigraphic study following a methodology based on the material record personally consulted, the scientific publications linked to our research and the primary sources. According to the information gathered, we propose the importance of the second half of the 1st century AD and the beginning of the 2nd century AD in the manifestation of the epigraphic habit. It happens as a clear symptom regarding the popularity of relevant figures from provincial elites established in cities like Barcino, Iluro or Tarraco. Along with the research carried out, we observe the great evolution and impulse that this enclave acquires during the 1st century AD, being the imperial patronage of Tiberius a decisive aspect in this process, and later the Flavian dynasty.

Buying Loyalty of Voters Or Local Elites? Political Alignment and Transfers to Provinces in Tutelary Regimes: The Case of Iran

The paper investigates the impact of an electoral support for president for short- and long-term transfers between national and provincial governments in tutelary regimes. The research uses the case of Iran; the database covers 330 observations for 30/31 provinces for 2005-2015. The results show that Iranian presidents target short-term transfers for disloyal provincial elites, while long-term transfers do not show political connection with voting patterns. The results also allow for assuming that the key factor for the logic of distribution is a political competition

Çiftliks, Landed Elites, and Tax Allocation in Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Veroia

This article examines the spread of landed estates (çiftliks) in the rural areas of the Balkan district (kaza) of Veroia (Ott. Karaferye) in the course of the eighteenth century, and its impact on tax-allocation practices. In the light of a thorough analysis of various types of registers of apportionment (tevzi defterleri) of taxes and other communal expenses among the local population, we argue that the expansion of çiftliks held by ayan to the detriment of peasant landholdings had an important impact on tax-allocation processes, which ultimately adopted the çiftlik as the standard taxpaying unit. This development reflected a new social, political, and fiscal reality that is exemplified by the case of Sarıcazade el-Hac Mehmed Ağa and his family, which is discussed in the second part of the article. As our focus is on the interconnection between investment in landed property and involvement in the tax-allocation system, we discuss and contextualise the picture that emerges from the registers of apportionment in regard to the Sarıcazade family’s accumulation of land. In their capacities as landholders and local political actors, the Sarıcazades personify both the empowerment and fluidity of status and wealth of provincial elites in the eighteenth-century Ottoman Empire.

Experiencing Empire: Power, People, and Revolution in Early America ed. by Patrick Griffin

Reviewed by: Experiencing Empire: Power, People, and Revolution in Early America ed. by Patrick Griffin Zach Bates Experiencing Empire: Power, People, and Revolution in Early America. Edited by Patrick Griffin. (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2017. 280 pp. Illustrations, maps, notes, index. $24.95.) Inspired by a 2013 conference at Northwestern University in honor of T. H. Breen, this volume argues that in order to understand the American Revolution, scholars should use an imperial-revolutionary framework, combining the study of empires with that of the American Revolution. In his introduction, Patrick Griffin suggests that this approach should follow Breen's work by focusing on common people and their ideas and behavior during the revolutionary period. According to Griffin, "the issue of identity defines the thirteen years between 1763 and 1776" (2), and the volume is particularly concerned with "people reckoning with the meanings of British empire before revolution and American empire after" (11). This collection, therefore, engages with three concerns at the top of many historical agendas: empire, recovering the voice(s) of common people (taken to mean "non-elites"), and identity—all interpreted through on-the-ground agents rather than metropolitan or provincial elites. Griffin opens the volume with an introduction to the historiographical trends over the last fifty years in the study of the American Revolution. Three sections follow the introduction. The first two, "Empire and Provincials" and "War, Revolution, and Empires," discuss the period before the 1780s, with wide-ranging essays—both chronologically and geographically—that cover topics as diverse as wine-growing in America to imperial schemes in 1720s France. The final section engages with the impact of the American Revolution in the newly formed United States (or, as this collection has it, the "American Empire"). Two essays in particular are of interest to readers of this journal. In the first, Timothy J. Shannon argues that American "baubles" imported into Britain had a cultural footprint through Peter Williamson, a Scot who spent six years as a servant in Pennsylvania and seems to have brought ideas of Pennsylvanian agricultural technology back to Scotland, thus reversing Breen's earlier arguments about the impact of British goods in America. In the second, Seth Cotlar focuses on the career of the Philadelphia antiquarian John Fanning Watson and the importance of nostalgia in the United States during the early nineteenth century. Of the two, Shannon's contribution engages most directly with Breen's work. The collection ends with a conclusion by Breen, which is an essential summary of his interpretative approach to the revolution, and an afterword by Joyce Chaplin, whose overview and synthesis of Breen's scholarly output is magisterial. Both are must-reads for advanced undergraduates and early graduate students. The majority of the contributors to this volume received their PhDs from [End Page 219] Northwestern, and several are former students of Breen; many of the contributions, therefore, are grounded in Breen's approach to the American Revolution or on the study of common persons in imperial settings. The recent work of both Brendan McConville (The King's Three Faces, which is mentioned in a few citations but never directly discussed) and especially Eric Nelson (The Royalist Revolution) are overlooked, but both have argued for the importance of the crown in colonial culture and in interpreting the American Revolution, making important contributions in its social and ideological history. At times, the contributions seem to depart from the focuses in the introduction, making the collection somewhat disjointed; Breen, in his conclusion, directly engages with only a few of the essays. The volume suffers from something of an identity crisis: Is it about the American Revolution; the common person engaging with (any?) empire; or a tribute to Breen and his approach? If the answer is all three, it is too ambitious for an edited collection to accomplish. Nonetheless, this volume will benefit those who admire Breen's work or wish to find recent scholarship that has adopted the imperial-revolutionary approach. Zach Bates University of Calgary Copyright © 2019 The Historical Society of Pennsylvania

The Imagined Empire: Balloon Enlightenments in Revolutionary Europe by Mi Gyung Kim

Reviewed by: The Imagined Empire: Balloon Enlightenments in Revolutionary Europe by Mi Gyung Kim Patrick Luiz Sullivan De Oliveira (bio) The Imagined Empire: Balloon Enlightenments in Revolutionary Europe. By Mi Gyung Kim. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2017. Pp. 456. Hardcover $54.95. The Imagined Empire is a welcome addition to histories of early ballooning that have flourished in the past decade. Drawing from a rich theoretical toolbox, Kim ambitiously "aims at an archaeology of mass silence, a genealogy of the mass public, and a material geography of European Enlightenment to uncover how the flying machine—both imagined and real—stirred utopian visions and patriotic sentiments in revolutionary Europe" (p. 8). In doing so, she presents a survey of early European ascents, a dense analysis of the indeterminacy of scientific artifacts, and something that could cheekily be called the aerostatic origins of the French Revolution. After hearing someone mock the balloon, Benjamin Franklin purportedly quipped: "What is the use of a newborn baby?" Kim's answer to this apocryphal bon mot is that the balloon "weakened the king-machine by opening a liminal zone in which the existing technologies of scientific demonstration, social control, and political machination could no longer contain the audience or the meaning of a mass spectacle" (p. 11). In short, the balloon's advent in 1783 fundamentally shaped the public sphere. The ancien régime was defined by its "king-machine," which molded public culture by controlling the sinews of symbolic capital. The balloon, however, was a "people-machine" that blurred the hierarchies undergirding absolutism. At stake was control over spectacle—the fullest expression of early modern authority. To make her case, Kim sets the balloon against the elitist royal theater, which had lost its capacity to convincingly represent the nation by the 1770s. The analysis unfolds through three parts encompassing ten chapters. Part one is a balloon-centered genealogy of the public sphere. Kim explains the circuitous route the Montgolfier brothers (paper manufacturers outside the realm of official science) took to stabilize the artifact and secure [End Page 628] their status as inventors—something that became more urgent with the appearance of the hydrogen balloon and its champions, led by Jacques Charles. Those in power produced a "public transcript" that minimized the dispute between "Montgolfists" and "Charlists" (each backed by different factions of the royal family), but the dispute signaled the triumph of public opinion over absolutist polity. The idolization of intrepid aeronauts compounded this process, threatening the Old Regime's hierarchical order. Part two shifts to the audiences of balloon spectacles (Parisian crowds surpassed 100,000). Kim unearths "hidden transcripts" that countered the "public transcript," arguing that balloon satires expressed republican virtues and proto-revolutionary fantasies. Pairing the balloon with mesmerism, another natural fluids-based scientific spectacle, she explains how authorities sought to control both fads, since they "multipl[ied] contact zones between the fashionable society and the populace" (p. 149). Meanwhile, provincial elites tried—and often failed—to overcome roadblocks to stage their own spectacles. Riots after failed ascents revealed the fissures in the hegemonic "public transcript," a realization that marked the beginning of the balloon's decline. Part three explores responses to ballooning across Europe. First, we visit London. According to Kim, the city's tepid reaction to the spectacular technology "reveals the importance of gentlemanly scientific culture in moderating royal power, Francophile aristocratic taste, and vulgar enthusiasm" (p. 211). The last chapters focus on Jean-Pierre Blanchard, first to fly across the Channel. His itinerant ballooning enterprise revealed the boundaries of Europe's cultural geographies. Francophile aristocracies brought ballooning to central European states, which in turn prompted patriotic resistances that foreshadowed responses to the Napoleonic Wars. The Imagined Empire covers some familiar territory addressed by works like Marie Thébaud-Sorger's L'Aérostation au temps des Lumières (2009). However, Kim's imaginative framing and meticulous readings underscore the indeterminacy of artifacts—even national symbols. The sections on France are the strongest, since that is where the evidence is richest, but forays into other regions illuminate how an artifact's meanings change as it is translated into different contexts. Kim's effort at integrating the tensions engendered by ballooning...

Subversive skylines: local history and the rise of the Sayyids in Mongol Yazd

AbstractThis article examines the emergence of the Ḥusaynī sayyids as key facilitators of the Mongols’ acculturation to Islamo-Persianate society and traces the expansion of their influence at imperial courts through the seventeenth century. Previous scholarship has emphasized the pivotal role of figures like Rashīduddīn Hamadānī in brokering reciprocal processes of acculturation from the empire's centre. This study builds on such work by shifting the focus to Yazd, a provincial city. It explores the evolving and unique role of Yazdī sayyids in facilitating such processes as they fashioned new patronage networks at court and reconfigured the urban morphology of Yazd. Furthermore, using local histories alongside universal ones, this study explores narrative strategies by which Yazdī authors, writing after the Mongol period, commemorated the sayyids’ emergence. It situates these writings in the context of larger transformations that affected relations between provincial elites and the imperial centre throughout these periods.

Patronage and Seigneurial Authority in Early Modern Alsace

AbstractHistorians have for decades studied how the French monarchy used patronage to increase its influence over newly conquered and distant provinces in the early modern period. However, provincial elites too had access to patronage that they could use to both resist French authority and cement their own. This article examines how the dukes of Pfalz-Zweibrücken-Birkenfeld maintained the primacy of their seigneurial administrations and could thus also use patronage powers to check French authority. Case studies show that the dukes initially suffered from the intervention of French provincial patrons in their seigneurial appointments. After securing their position in Alsace, however, the dukes protected their autonomy by rejecting others' candidates. Having resisted French patronage, the dukes demonstrated their importance further by pushing their own candidates onto the provincial administration.

Theatres of Violence on the Ottoman Periphery: Exploring the Local Roots of Genocidal Policies in Antep

ABSTRACTThis article explores how and why deportation and elimination of the Armenians of Antep were carried out during World War One (WWI). In particular, it scrutinizes the political and social context in which local authorities, provincial elites, and ordinary Muslims radicalized their views and policies against Armenians. It highlights the crucial role played by local elites and actors who prospered through acquisition of Armenian property and wealth. In this respect, the article argues that the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP)’s genocide and deportation decision enjoyed a certain level of social support through the practice of effective power and control mechanism(s) at the local level.

Os espaços e as construções em "Bracara Augusta". Instrumentos para o estudo do quotidian no noroeste peninsular

Archaeological interventions in Braga in the last 40 years provided enough data about private architecture on the roman city of Bracara Augusta between the first century and late antiquity, acknowledging the evolution of several buildings and blocks. Through available database we aim to analyze all the knowing domus, characterizing each space and their functionality, as well as their architectonical evolution. It’s also pretended to realize how provincial elites assimilated italic housing models and managed architectonical solutions. For what, we’ll proceed to analyze Bracara Augusta’s roman domestic architecture as spotlight to everyday life and sociability in roman cities from northwest Iberian. In this way, our purpose is to value roman domus from architectonical but also economic and social perspectives.

Misguided and Misdiagnosed: The Failure of Decentralization Reforms in the DR Congo

Abstract:The DR Congo embarked upon decentralization reforms in 2006 to improve governance and accountability, undermine predation, corruption, and personal rule, bring government closer to the people, and promote local development. As of 2014, despite some regional variations, Congolese decentralization had instead increased the degree to which the state extracts the resources and incomes of its citizens. It had also fostered provincial centralization at the expense of local governments, produced largely unaccountable provinces governing with little transparency, and unleashed self-serving provincial elites. After providing original empirical evidence for these claims, this article suggests that decentralization was thwarted by the failure of formal reforms to affect informal ruling institutions and by an erroneous diagnosis of Congo’s governance failures that singled out the abuse of elites without identifying the generalized nature of the instrumentalization of sovereignty by officeholders at all levels of the state. The article concludes by using Congo’s experience to illustrate important flaws in decentralization reforms in Africa.