The Ottoman Empire and the World Around It - Course Information

~ ON SOVEREIGNTY AND SUBJECTS ~ 55
in my view, we have not as yet determined the exact chronology of the ‘incorporation’
process on Ottoman territory; this means that a major problem, once
posed by Immanuel Wallerstein and his associates, has not been solved but
merely pushed aside. 112 But neither has it been proved insoluble or irrelevant. We
still need to discuss whether, by the mid-seventeenth century, a region of the kind
that then surrounded Izmir can be regarded as having become part of a Europeandominated
‘world economy’. 113 By the standards once proposed by Wallerstein,
separate ‘world economies’ are supposed to exchange but a limited amount of
goods, mainly luxuries. But if we accept this definition, the Ottoman Empire
even in the mid-sixteenth century should have been ‘incorporated’, a claim
which to my knowledge, has never been made by any Ottomanist historian. Yet
Venice in this period was undeniably able to obtain numerous special permissions
to import wheat from Ottoman territories, and the survival of its population
depended to an appreciable degree on grains purchased in the Balkan
coastlands. 114
To avoid this difficulty, I would suggest a different criterion for ‘incorporation’:
namely we might consider a region as ‘incorporated’ if its products for the
most part were destined for the European-dominated ‘world market’. This was
not true of any Ottoman region in the sixteenth century, and as far as we can tell
from the limited number of primary sources and secondary studies currently
available, no such regions as yet existed in the 1630s/1039–49 or 1640s/1049–59
either. Aleppo certainly, and Izmir probably, were at this time still firmly
anchored in the Ottoman economic system. But at least in the case of Izmir, by
the later seventeenth century we encounter some indications that this situation
was about to change.
~ Before 1718/1130–1
Wars on all fronts
By the 1720s/1132–42, the Ottoman position on the map of world politics had
changed appreciably. On the eastern frontier, the most dramatic event was the
collapse of the Safavid dynasty: a relatively small Ghalzay force took Is. fahān
after a terrifying siege, and forced the current shah Sult. ān H. usayn to abdicate in
favour of their leader (1722/1134–5). Central government by the Safavids thus
came to an end, even though princes from this dynasty, with varying degrees of
success, continued to rule greater or lesser portions of the country for several further
decades. Ottoman troups occupied Georgia and Tabrīz in 1723/1135–6,
replacing the Safavid prince T. ahmāsp II, who had been pushed northwards by
the Afghan invaders. However, when the Ottoman and Russian empires divided
up northern Iran into ‘spheres of influence’ (1724/1136–7), T.
ahmāsp II was able
to ingratiate himself with both sides, and the Ottoman commander now justified
his campaign by claiming to defend the rights of the legitimate Safavid ruler. The