The Ottoman Empire and the World Around It - Course Information

~ ON SOVEREIGNTY AND SUBJECTS ~ 63
This move may well have resulted in some disaffection, as it meant that pious
foundations dating back to the sixteenth or even the fifteenth century were now
abolished. As a result Muslim families long established in the Peloponnese, who
previously had received income from this source, now were deprived of it. Ottoman
government largely depended on the garrisons placed in a number of small
towns. There were the customs farmers too, who collected the dues paid by merchants,
many of them French, who bought up the local olive crop for use in the
soap manufacture of Marseilles. Otherwise the countryside, mountainous and
difficult of access, was run by Muslim notables (ayan) or their Christian counterparts
(kocabaşı). Given the amount of local discontent that must have resulted
from a double change of regime within less than twenty years, this loosely structured
administration probably was not a very effective guarantor of Ottoman
control.
Olives apart, the Peloponnese, with its small plains and numerous infertile
hills, was known for ‘orchard’ products such as grapes or silk, not for field crops.
When discussing eighteenth-century commercial agriculture, however, what first
comes to mind are products such as grain or cotton, for which there existed a
mass market. Until about twenty years ago, it was assumed that by the eighteenth
century, the so-called çiftliks, large landholdings cultivated by practically – if not
legally – enserfed labour and producing largely for export, had become a major
feature of Ottoman agriculture. More recent studies have shown that çiftliks were
less widespread than had previously been thought and, additionally, that the link
of this phenomenon to export trade had been vastly overestimated: some çiftlik
owners produced not for the market at all, but simply appropriated the limited
quantities of food which the ‘classical’ Ottoman taxation system had left to the
peasant family over and above immediate survival needs. 146 In other cases, such
as the Black Sea coast of what is today Rumania and Bulgaria, before 1774/
1187–8 production was not for export, but merely supplied the needs of Istanbul.
In addition, many çiftliks did not rely on ‘enserfed’ peasants, but on sharecroppers,
easier to supervise because such peasants could be counted upon to ‘exploit
themselves’ in order to feed their children. 147 However even if the link of çiftlik
agriculture to export was thus weaker than had originally been supposed, in certain
places it did exist. A recent study has shown that the notable family known
as the Kara Osmanoğulları possessed large landholdings in the commercially
active Izmir area, and as population density was quite low, they brought in Greek
immigrants from the Aegean islands to work these lands. 148 The same family also
marketed cotton produced by the local peasantry. As typical notables of their
times, the Kara Osmanoğulları collected dues on behalf of absent governors, or
else farmed taxes themselves. They often served as middlemen too, between
peasant sellers and exporting merchants, many of the latter being Frenchmen. 149
These varied links made it possible especially for subjects of the French king to
establish a strong presence on the Aegean coasts of the early eighteenth century.