Governing property, making the modern state - PSI424

Part one | 4
administration required information concerning agriculture, the infrastructure of
communication and exchange, and the forms and distribution of wealth.
From the late 1830s the central state established councils to develop plans to
increase agricultural production and trade. 9 In 1838 an Agricultural and Manufacturing
Council was established in the Foreign Ministry, changed to the Council
of Public Works in 1839 within a Ministry of Trade. In 1843 an agricultural
council was established within the same ministry, 10 and the major reform council
Meclis-i Vala-yı Ahkam-ı Adliye produced a programme for the establishment of
a council for agriculture with three aims: improvement of transport, provision
of credit, and just repartition of taxation among individuals. 11 In 1845 plans
were adopted for consultation with regional councils and for the collection of
information concerning the needs of various sectors of the population. 12 These
proposals were implemented in 1847; in 1848 an agricultural college was opened
in Istanbul, albeit to close only three years later. 13
Proposals wherein the central administration pledged to offer assistance to the
regions were presumably welcomed by many sections of the population. Those
for reform of the entire system of taxation were, by contrast, to encounter the
opposition of vested interests. It is a testimony to the Ottoman tradition of record
keeping that the part of the proposed reform which appears to have gone most
smoothly was the gargantuan task of registering the estates of the population of
Anatolia and Rumeli. This went beyond agriculture to proposals to investigate
and re-register all estates, including those of artisans, traders and men of religion
who enjoyed privileges of tax exemption on the basis of descent from the Prophet
or of an earlier imperial grant (berat). 14 The administration wrote of tahrir-i
nüfus ve emlak, ‘the registration of souls and properties’. 15 Although the village
or urban quarter remained the administrative unit for summation, the 1840s
profits (temettuat) registers took the individual agricultural family estate as a
unit, including its fields, animal capital and other resources. The Arab provinces
were excluded from the outset, but registration was carried through for Anatolia
and Rumeli between 1842 and 1844. 16
Temettuat registration was to provide information for a more equitable distribution
of tax burdens. In fact, a complete reform of the distribution of tax
between provinces, villages and individuals was abandoned. 17 The attempt of the
first three years of the Tanzimat whereby government officials were to collect
taxes on the basis of household evaluation proved beyond the fiscal and technical
means of the administration. 18 Nor were the data generated in the course
of temettuat registration employed for a statistical or cartographical reading of
Ottoman economy and society. 19 Rather, a novel formulation of the sources
of the state’s strength, as arising from its power to tax the myriad estates of its
subjects, was grafted on to a revival of the classical model of rule by registers.
The entries in the registers remained just that. Only much later in the century
do we find statistical representation of the population playing any part in routine
government practices. 20
Thus the first great attempt of 1840–43 to reform the basis of all tax collection
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