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302 BOOK REVIEWS Karen Barkey, Bandits and Bureaucrats: The Ottoman Route to State Centralization. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994. Pp. xii + 282, $35.00 (cloth). For the past three hundred years much of the world, east and west, has moved in several distinct ways towards centralized national governments. Empires, including the Ottoman, held people together, and kept social conflict in check. The study by Karen Barkey fol- lows the Ottoman Empire, essentially within the seventeenth century, through its struggle to establish and to maintain centralized control. Strategically, the Ottoman avoided both peasant and elite revolts, and to the extent necessary, it utilized bandits (armed and unprin- cipled gangs) to its own purposes, essentially to establish state strength and to consolidate power. The rise of nationalism is mirrored in many ways by the Ottoman: separation of peasant and landholder; migrant population movement to cities; establishment of regional officials tied to the state and to state objectives by economic and social interests; mercenary armies; widespread unemployment; and militarization of the countryside. And, as inevitably hap- pens with all states, federal or feudal, eventual deterioration sets in. Wherever societies are established, no matter how noble or self-serving the intentions of leaders, their greed, intrigue, cruelty, and self seeking become a way of life. Bandits were seen as heroes to some, fighting both the central state and local oppression, but brigands to most, serving only their own interests to the detriment of any form of opposition. And bandits were used by the state to its own political ends: negotiations were held with bandit leaders to control peasants. There are ways in which the Ottoman mirrored that which was happening elsewhere: rise of population, power revolts, use of land to reward returning musketeers, development of regional elites, increased use of and sophistication of firearms, and domination of warfare. And there were ways in which the Ottoman may be considered fairly unique: the provincial system, governed by officials with short terms of office; the provision of peasants with escape mechanisms other than revolt; and otherwise the avoidance of both peasant and elite solidarity. It was a state effectively flexible rather than brittle. The study, then, is that of state centralization, and of concomitant social movements, involving peasants, governors, the elite, and bandits. It is a story of the use of bandits to consolidate territory and to centralize control. It illustrates the methods used to manipulate social classes and to inhibit rebellions. It is, in brief, intended to illuminate a generally neglected era of Ottoman history, to assess state strengths and methods of consolidation, and to analyze the actualities and abuses of banditry. In all of these things it succeeds: the scholarship is meticulous; the weaving of the Ottoman with social and political happenings in parts of Europe is intricate; and the presentation of the workings of the Ottoman Empire clear, precise, and complete. Administration & Policy Studies, Emeritus ROBERT NOSSEN The University of Pittsburgh Pittsburgh, PA, U.S.A.
International Journal of Comparative Sociology (in 2002 continued as Comparative Sociology) – Brill
Published: Jan 1, 1996
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