Osmanli Imparatorlugu’nda Paranin Tarihi

by Şevket Pamuk, Unknown (Editor)

This volume examines the monetary history of a large empire located at the crossroads of intercontinental trade from the fourteenth century until the end of World War I. It covers all regions of the empire from the Balkans through Anatolia, Syria, Egypt and the Gulf to the Maghrib. The implications of monetary developments for social and political history are also discussed throughout the volume. This is an important and pathbreaking book by one of the most distinguished economic historians in the field.

Genres: History, Economics

373 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2017

About the author

Şevket Pamuk, born in 1950, is an internationally recognized professor of economics and economic history.
Pamuk is also the older brother of Nobel Prize-winning Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk.

Reviews

[Zeynep T. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Aldığı tüm övgüleri sonuna kadar hak eden mükemmel bir çalışma. Metodolojisi, kaynakları, atıfları, dizini, içinde bulunan grafik ve resimleri, herkesin anlayabileceği anlatım diliyle büyük emek verildiği belli olan bu eserde "imparatorluk içindeki parasal düzenlemelerin karmaşıklığı, çeşitliliği ve bunların hem yerel gelişmelere hem de küresel güçlere bağlı olarak evrimi" anlatılıyor. Çok öğretici bir kitap oldu benim için. Günümüz ekonomik sorunlarıyla epeyce bağlantı kurmamı sağlayan ayrıntılar vardı. Bilimsel çalışma nasıl olmalının bir örneği olarak da okunabilir ayrıca. Gerçekten hayran kaldım. Bu kitaba ulaşabilen herkesin okumasını dilerim.

[Derek · Rating 2 out of 5]

Painful to read. Did you know you have to place the metal in between two casts and then hit them with a hammer to make the coins? What kind of conditions do you think the workers worked in? Was it hot, did they suffer? Were they paid well? Did their bodies ache at the end of each shift? Did their tendons and ligaments in their shoulders and elbows wear down from the hammering? Did their muscles ache? Did they have access to enough protein for their muscles to recover from the strenuous days of minting? Where did they go home at night? What was the average coin-hammerers life expectancy? Did slaves mint the coins? Free laborers? Did they ever go on strike? Demand higher wages? Did they ever steal the coins? Or did they have overseers keeping a strict watch on them every step of the way? We will never know. Because instead of using coins to reveal a web of social relations, numismatics remains an academic discipline designed for no one but the most useless of all academics.

I wanted to give it one star because of how utterly boring the book was. But I gave it two because of the EP Thompson reference in chapter 12 and also the fact that I pretended Pamuk and Balkan were in a historiographical boxing match during Chapter 7:

Nobody wants to mess with Omar Lutfi Barkan: examined the price
increases of the sixteenth century in the Ottoman context.21 After estab-
lishing that large increases in food and raw materials prices did take place,
Barkan argued that these trends were imported into the Ottoman economy
through trade with Europe across the Mediterranean… Even though Barkan's arguments were widely read, they have generated only a modest amount of debate and his conclusions have remained mostly
unchallenged

UNTIL PAMUK (the author) COMES AROUND – young kid on the block, going for the throat:

Who will win the fight??
== The challenger? PAMUK

OR the elder == O. L. BARKAN?

LET’S SEE


ROUND 1 IS a BANGER: “My own calculations based on the available
prices indicate that the value of Barkan's index in 1555 and 1573 should
stand close to 125 and 145 respectively; not 142.26 and 179.97.” PAMUK!

ROUND 2, THE ELDER TAKES HIS CLASSIC STANCE: “Barkan's calculations indicated a 79.97 percent increase in nominal food prices until 1573, his food price index expressed in grams of silver rose
by 62 percent during the interval 1489 to 1573. On the basis of this result, Barkan argued that the impact of the Price Revolution was being felt strongly in the Ottoman economy before the last quarter of the sixteenth century.” CAN PAMUK WITHSTAND THE FURY??

ROUND 3 PAMUK’S CORRECTIVE FIST: “After my correction of
Barkan's price index for the year 1573, however, the price increases
between 1489 and 1573 expressed in grams of silver is reduced to 31
percent, indicating a much more modest rate of silver infation. With this
correction, it becomes more diffcult to explain Ottoman fiscal diffculties
primarily in terms of the Price Revolution or imported infation, following
Barkan.” BARKAN TAKES A BEATING! BUT CAN HE MAKE A COME BACK IN ROUND FOUR!?

ROUND 4: “When he constructed his price
index a quarter of a century ago, Barkan was unaware that the akcËe often
deteriorated below its of®cial standard after 1586. As a result, for most of
the years that the silver content of the akcËe remained below of®cial
standards, his calculations overstate the extent of silver in¯ation even more
than the indices I have constructed… After making crude adjustments for the de®ciency cited above…” OWWWWW HE HIT HIM WITH THAT “DEFICIENCY” --- BARKAN WAS UNAWARE!!!! His camp DEFINITELY did not prepare him for Pamuk’s HEAT! IS Barkan out for the count!?!?!

ROUND 5 The OG Barkan Recovers a bit: “Overall, then, my findings agree with those of Barkan regarding the extent of nominal price increases in Istanbul from the end of the fifteenth to
the middle of the seventeenth century.”

ROUND 6: “As for the breakdown of this overall increase, however, my series based on a greater variety of sources and more realistic estimates for the silver content of the akcËe diverge from those of
Barkan. They show that silver inflation accounted for a smaller part and
Ottoman debasements accounted for a larger part of these increases than
Barkan suggested quarter of a century ago.” Boring round, but both fighters needed the rest….

ROUND 7 PAMUK COMES AGAIN WITH THE HEAT: “One section of that article, however, was titled ``Other Causes of the Price Increases'' and there Barkan showed that he was aware of the debates
regarding the causes of the Price Revolution. Stating that ``it would not be
correct to link price increases solely to the accumulation of large stocks of
gold and silver from Africa and America and to rely only on the quantity
theory of money in the explanation of price formation and in¯ation,'' he
went on to produce a long list of other possible causes which included
debasements, population growth, changes in the velocity of circulation of
money, and the emergence of other forms of money such as letters of credit
and bills of exchange. Aside from a detailed discussion of debasements,
however, Barkan did not offer a critical examination of these explanations
coming from very different theoretical origins.” OH MY GOD!!!! DAAAAYYYYUMMM WE’VE NOT SEEN ANYTHING LIKE THIS IS TWO AND A HALF DECADES!!!

ROUND 8 – WHO’S ON THE DECLINE? BARKAN IS! “One important reason for the latter was Barkan's
thesis that the price increases constituted a negative turning point and a leading cause of the ``Ottoman decline'' at the end of the sixteenth century. These arguments also deserve closer scrutiny.” PAMUK HITS HIM WITH THAT DECLINE THEORY SCRUTINY!!

ROUND 9 WE SEE PAMUK’S NUANCED FOOTWORK ON DISPLAY: “Regarding the consequences on Ottoman industry, Barkan argued that the exportation to Europe of the basic raw materials arising from west±east price differentials created severe shortages for Ottoman guilds…. Nonetheless this line of reasoning, however, can not explain why Euro-pean manufacturers, which faced similar price movements, did much better than their Ottoman counterparts.” WILL THIS FIGHT MAKE IT THE FULL 12!?!?!

ROUND 10 PAMUK is looking to END THE FIGHT and comes out swinging -- “In retrospect, however, Barkan's as well as Hamilton's claims and the attempt to single out the Price Revolution as a key event appear exaggerated. The Ottoman system undoubtedly faced severe fiscal and economic diffculties at the end of the sixteenth century. These dif®culties related more to other causes than to the impact of silver in¯ation per se, however.” THE ELDER BARKAN IS DOWN FOR THE COUNT… 1.. 2.. 3.. 4.. OH HE’s UP ON ONE KNEE.. 5.. 6.. HE STUMBLES 7… 8… HE’S BACK DOWN!!!!

AND THAT’S IT BOYS, THE GOLD/SILVER/COPPER GLOVES (COINS) AWARDED TO THE NEWCOMER PAMUK!!!! BARKAN’S QUARTER CENTURY OF DOMINANCE IN THE BOXING… errr, Ottoman economic world… IS OVER!!! PAMUK IS THE NEW WORLD CHAMPION!!!! What a fight… Both men deserve a round of applause. Oh holy shit there are still six more chapters to go....? Why isn't this book over yet?

[Avempace · Rating 5 out of 5]

In 1584, at its peak of power, the Ottoman Empire suffered a catastrophic economic collapse that took it two generations to steady itself from. Its repercussions however reverberated long thereafter. What was the cause of the 1584 collapse, and can we learn something about it from the prices of food staples bought for the Imperial kitchen at the Topkapi palace? Why did Esther, the character in Orhan Pamuk's My Name is Red test the strength of the metal currency with her teeth (hint, Orhan must have picked this tidbit from Sevket, his brother). What does this clever trick of Esther tell us about currency debasement and how it was used by the Ottoman treasury as means of managing budget deficits by induced inflation? Does an empire need a currency of its own or can it manage with a currency minted by Florentine banksters, who made a killing in the process? The Ottomans did manage for a while, but that was a costly mistake on their part. And what happens when your creditors force you to peg your currency to a fixed standard so you could not do the shtick of currency debasement mentioned above (and escape paying what you owe them in full)? Why, this is what happened in the 19th century, giving the Ottomans a taste of what the IMF did to third world countries in the 20th century. It is amazing what one can learn from a book on monetary policies and practices of a defunct empire, and much of it is still relevant today. Highly recommended for economists and political and social historians and aficionados alike.

[Muhammet Okumuş · Rating 4 out of 5]

Okuyucu bu kitabı okuyarak, Osmanlı imparatorluğu'nun özellikle Fatih Sultan Mehmet devrinden itibaren genel olarak finansal, özelinde ise kamu finansmanı olgusuna yaklaşımı ve bu yaklaşımın tarihsel olarak geçirdiği evreleri anlayabilir.
Hernekadar osmanlı devleti'nin Fatih devrinden Sokullu'nun ölümüne kadar süren dönemi yükselme devri olarak adlandırılıyor olsa da, bu yükselmenin finansal alan dışında, askeri alanda olduğunu düşünmekteyim. Zira osmanlı'nın en güçlü olduğu dönemde bile avrupa ve özellikle doğu akdenizde geçerli para birimi venedik dukası idi.
Osmanlı'nın gerileme döneminde uzun süren ve kaybedilen savaşlar sonucu mali sistemin bozulması,tımar sistemini bozulması vb nedenlerle para sistemi bozulmuş ve bu durum cumhuriyetin kurulmasına kadar devam etmiştir. Cumhuriyet dönemimde ikinci dünya savaşı ile başlayan uygulamalar, osmanlı dönemi ile paralellik göstermekte olup,kamu maliyesi ve vergi sistemine olan yaklaşımda 500 yılda pek bir değişiklik olmadığı görülmektedir.
Devletin transfer harcamaları için ne pahasına olursa olsun kaynak bulması ihtiyacı, uygulanan politkaların niteliğini belirlemektedir.
Kanaatimce, yazarın kapitülasyon konusuna değinmemiş olması önemli bir eksiklik olup, incelediği konu ile ilgili vardığı kanaatleri etkileyecek önemdedir.

[EDM · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extremely good scholarship and authorship. An academic work that reads like a popular history of things.