Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-p9bg8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T08:38:41.041Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Politics of Poor Relief in the Late Ottoman Empire 1876-19141

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 July 2015

Nadir Özbek
Nadir Özbek*
Affiliation:
History Department, State University of New York at Binghamton
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

This article examines the Ottoman state's increasing involvement in caring for the poor and the needy and the emergence of modern relief institutions and hospitals throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The particular focus will be on the reign of Sultan Abdülhamid II (1876-1909) and the second constitutional period (1908-14) up until World War I.

Rather than presenting the emergence of poor-relief institutions in the Ottoman Empire as a function of increasing poverty and need, or as a function of the state's desire to control and regulate the urban population for various concerns, I concentrate on the dynamics of the political sphere. I will focus particularly on the political conflict between the sultan and the new political elite, whose identity was defined in relation to newly structured state functions and services.

Type
Articles
Information
New Perspectives on Turkey , Volume 21 , Fall 1999 , pp. 1 - 33
Copyright
Copyright © New Perspectives on Turkey 1999

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

1

I would like to thank Jean Quataert for guiding my studies in the history of poverty and politics in Europe, and for reading an earlier version of this paper. I am also grateful to Donald Quataert, Kathryn Kish Sklar, Jennifer Pierce, and Cengiz Kırlı, who have read the drafts and offered useful advice. Thanks are also due to the editors of this journal for their valuable comments.

References

Akalın, Besim Ömer. 1330/1914. Hanım Efendilere Hilal-i Ahmer'e Dair Konferans. Istanbul.Google Scholar
Arikan, Zeki. 1994. “Tanzimat Döneminde Eğin ve Yöresinden İstanbul'a Gòçler,” in Tanzimat'ın 150. Yıldönümü Uluslararası Sempozyumu, Ankara, 31 Ekim–3 Kasım 1989. Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, pp. 467–81.Google Scholar
Barnes, John Robert. 1986. An Introduction to Religious Foundations in the Ottoman Empire. Leiden: E.J. Brill.Google Scholar
Barry, Jonathan, and Jones, Colin, eds. 1991. Medicine and Charity Before the Welfare State. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Cantor, David. 1991. “The Aches of Industry: Philanthropy and Rheumatism in Inter-War Britain,” in Medicine and Charity Before the Welfare State, ed. Barry, Jonathan and Jones, Colin. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 224-45.Google Scholar
Cavallo, Sandra. 1989. “Charity, Power, and Patronage in Eighteenth-Century Italian Hospitals: The Case of Turin,” in The Hospital in History, ed. Granshaw, Lindsay and Porter, Roy. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 63–92.Google Scholar
Crane, Howard. 1991. “The Ottoman Sultan's Mosques: Icons of Imperial Legitimacy,” in The Ottoman City and Its Parts, ed. Bierman, Irene A., Abou-El-Haj, Rifa'at A., and Preziosi, Donald. New York: Aristide D. Caratzas, Publisher, pp. 173–245.Google Scholar
Çadırcı, Musa. 1993. “Tanzimat Döneminde Çıkarılan Men'-i Mürur ve Pasaport Nizamnameleri,” Belgeler 15/19, pp. 169–81.Google Scholar
Deringil, Selim. 1998. The Well-Protected Domains: Ideology and the Legitimation of Power in the Ottoman Empire 1876-1909. London and New York: I.B. Tauris.Google Scholar
De Swaan, Abram. 1988. In Care of the State: Health Care, Education and Welfare in Europe and the USA in the Modern Era. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Doumani, Beshara. 1998. “Endowing Family: Waqf, Property Devolution, and Gender in Greater Syria, 1800-1860” in Comparative Studies in Society and History 40, no. 1, pp. 3–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Engelstein, Laura. 1992. The Keys to Happiness: Sex and the Search for Modernity in Fin-de-Siecle Russia. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Ergin, Osman Nuri. 1331/1915. Mecelle-i Umur-ı Belediye. 5 vols. Dersaadet.Google Scholar
Fraser, Derek. 1976. “The Poor Law as a Political Institution,” The New Poor Law in the Nineteenth Century, ed. Fraser, Derek. London, pp. 111-27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gouda, Frances. 1995. Poverty and Political Culture: The Rhetoric of Social Welfare in the Netherlands and France, 1815-1854. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar
Haimson, Leopold H. 1964–1965. “Dual Polarization in Urban Russia,” Slavic Review 23, no. 4 (December 1964), and 24, no. 1 (March 1965).Google Scholar
Hicaz Sıhhiye İdaresi Senevi Rapor (1330 Senesi). 1331/1915. Istanbul.Google Scholar
Hoexter, Miriam. 1998. “Waqf Studies in the Twentieth Century: The State of the Art,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 41, no. 4, pp. 474-95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hutchinson, John F. 1996. Champions of Charity: War and the Rise of the Red Cross. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press.Google Scholar
İpek, Nedim. 1994. Rumeli'den Anadolu'ya Türk Gòçleri (1877-1890), Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi.Google Scholar
Jones, Colin. 1996. “Some Recent Trends in the History of Charity,” in Charity, Self-Interest and Welfare in the English Past, ed. Daunton, Martin. New York: St. Martin's Press, pp. 51–63.Google Scholar
Karpat, Kemal. 1972. “The Transformation of the Ottoman State, 1789-1908,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 3, pp. 243-81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Karpat, Kemal. 1986. “Population Movements in the Ottoman State in the Nineteenth Century,” in Karpat, Kemal, Ottoman Population, 1830-1914: Demographic and Social Characteristics, ed. Karpat, Kemal. Madison, Wis.: The University of Wisconsin Press, pp. 60–86.Google Scholar
Koçu, Reşat Ekrem. n.d. Darülaceze (1895–1974). İstanbul: Darülaceze Yardım Derneği.Google Scholar
Krieger, J. 1987. “Social Policy in the Age of Reagan and Thatcher,” Socialist Register, pp. 177-98.Google Scholar
Mandler, Peter, ed. 1990. The Uses of Charity: The Poor on Relief in the Nineteenth-Century Metropolis. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marcus, Abraham. 1989. The Middle East on the Eve of Modernity. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
McGowan, Bruce. 1997. “The Age of the Ayans, 1699-1812,” in An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, vol. 2, ed. İnalcik, Halil and Quataert, Donald. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Müessesat-İ Hayriye-i Sİhhiye Müdüriyeti, Senevi Rapor (1326). 1327/1911. İstanbul.Google Scholar
Oded, Peri. 1991. “Waqf and Ottoman Welfare Policy: The Poor Kitchen of Hasseki Sultan in Eighteenth-Century Jerusalem,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 35, pp. 167-86.Google Scholar
Olson, Robert. 1976. “The Esnaf and the Patrona Halil Rebellion of 1730: A Realignment in Ottoman Politics?” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 20, pp. 329-44.Google Scholar
Olson, Robert. 1978. “Jews, Janissaries, Esnaf and the Revolt of 1740 in Istanbul,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 22, pp. 185–207.Google Scholar
Osmanlı Hilal-i Ahmer Cemiyeti, 1329-1331 Salnamesi. n.d. Istanbul.Google Scholar
Özbek, Nadir. 1999. “II. Abdülhamid ve Kimsesiz Çocuklar,” Tarih ve Toplum 31, no. 182 (Şubat), pp. 11–20.Google Scholar
Öztürk, Nazif. 1995. Türk Yenileşme Tarihi Çerçevesinde Vakıf Müessesesi. Ankara: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfİ Yayınlarİ.Google Scholar
Peirce, Leslie. 1993. The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Porter, Roy. 1989. “The Gift Relation: Philanthropy and Provincial Hospitals in Eighteenth-Century England,” in The Hospital in History, ed. Granshaw, Lindsay and Porter, Roy. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 149-78.Google Scholar
Quataert, Donald. 1993. “Janissaries, Artisans and the Question of Ottoman Decline, 1730-1826,” Paper presented to the 17th Internati¬onal Congress of Historical Sciences, Madrid, 1990, in Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire, 1730-1914, ed. Donald Quataert. Istanbul: The Isis Press, pp. 197–203.Google Scholar
Quataert, Donald. 1997. “The Age of Reforms, 1812-1914,” in An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, vol. 2, ed. İnalcık, Halil and Quataert, Donald. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 765-66.Google Scholar
Rubin, Miri. 1991. “Imagining Medieval Hospitals, Consideration on the Cultural Meaning of Institutional Change,” in Medicine and Charity Before the Welfare State, ed. Barry, Jonathan and Jones, Colin. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 14–25.Google Scholar
Sarıyıldız, Gülden. 1996. Hicaz Karantina Teşkilatı (1865–1914). Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu.Google Scholar
Timberlake, Charles E. 1991. “The Zemstvo and the Development of a Russian Middle Class,” in Between Tsar and People: Educated Society and the Quest for Public Identity in Late Imperial Russia, ed. Clowes, Edith W., Kassow, Samuel D., and West, James L.. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, pp. 164-79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Todorova, Maria. 1986. “The Reactions of the Poor to Poverty: The Case of Bulgaria (15th-19th centuries),” in Aspects of Poverty in Early Modern Europe II, ed. Riis, Thomas. Odense, Denmark: Odense University Press, pp. 51–58.Google Scholar
Türkiye Kızılay Derneği, 73 Yıllık Hayatı, 1877-1949. 1950. Ankara.Google Scholar
Yan, Yunxiang. 1996. The Flow of Gifts, Reciprocity and Social Networks in a Chinese Village, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
[Yearbook] Etfal Hastahane-i Âlisinin İstatistik Mecmua-i Tıbbiyesi. 1900–1908. 8 vols. Istanbul.Google Scholar
Yediyıldız, Bahaeddin. 1982. “Türk Vakıf Kurucularının Sosyal Tabakalaşmadaki Yeri, 1700–1800,” Osmanlı Araştırmaları III. The Journal of Ottoman Studies III.Google Scholar
Yediyıldız, Bahaeddin. 1985. Institution du Vaqf au XVIIIe Siècle en Turquie: Etudes Socio-historique. Ankara: Kültür Bakanlığı Yayınları.Google Scholar
Yıldırım, Nuran. 1997. ူstanbul Darülaceze Müessesesi Tarihi. Istanbul: Darülaceze Vakfı Yayını.Google Scholar
Yüksel, Hasan. 1998. Osmanlı Sosyal ve Ekonomik Hayatında Vakıfların Rolü (1585-1683). Sivas.Google Scholar
Zilfi, Madeleine C. 1998. The Politics of Piety: The Ottoman Ulema in the Postclassical Age (1600–1800). Minneapolis: Bibliotheca Islamica.Google Scholar