14 - 17

TULASOĞLU, Gülay
Faking Good Governance: The Restoration of the Bridge across the Vardar (Axiós) Near
Salonica in 1837
In 1837, the district government of Salonica began repairs on the bridge across the river Vardar near this important
port-city. The corresponding entry in the relevant court register appears utterly unremarkable. Reading this entry, one
cannot help but regard this entry as evidence of the normal and efficient working of the Ottoman provincial government.
However, it was not. In fact, other evidence suggests that the renovation works for which tax levies were authorized and
collected were never carried out.
Exploring the case of the Vardar Bridge, the present paper asks why the Ottoman provincial government felt it
necessary to falsify records, all the more so at a time when fiscal efficiency had become the watchword of the hour. Was
this act only the result of the criminal potential of individual provincial officials? Or is this instance connected to the larger
problem of the collapsing of the provincial government’s financial system in this period? After all, the provincial governments’
financial distress increased constantly in the wake of Sultan Mahmud II’s policy of fiscal centralization. I will suggest
that this particular episode of official fraud was indeed closely connected to the new principles of government imposed
in the early Tanzimat, as provincial authorities not only struggled to find new sources of income to make up for the taxes
now diverted to the imperial treasury, but also needed to be seen to commit to the ideal of good governance.
|249