Disputes over pastures in the nineteenth-century Balkans

Abstract

This research aims to contribute to the literature on Ottoman common and by analysing how mid-nineteenth century land codes influenced conflicts regarding common pastures in the Balkans. To accomplish this goal, two sets of primary sources are analysed: legal documents (Land Code of 1858 and Title Deed Regulation of 1859) as well as petition records from the Ottoman Imperial Archives. Case studies of land disputes occurring between commoners and large estate (çiftlik) holders in the Balkans are selected from the years following the enactment of these land codes. This selection enables an examination of the impact of these codes on the arguments presented by the conflicting parties. The central argument of this study points out that the Ottoman Empire’s efforts to codify land laws played a crucial role in shaping the disputes over communal pastures. However, it is equally important to underline that these legal changes did not signify an unqualified victory for private property rights over commons. Instead, the rural population countered landholders’ efforts by employing petitioning as a proactive strategy.

Keywords:

• Pasture
• commons
• Balkans
• çiftlik (large estate)
• land code
• Title Deed Regulation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Y. Terzibaşoğlu and Alp Yücel Kaya, ‘19. Yüzyılda Balkanlar’da Toprak Rejimi ve Emek İlişkileri’ [Land Regime and Labour Relations in the Balkans in the Nineteenth Century] in Ulaş Karakoç and Alp Yücel Kaya (eds), İktisat Tarihinin Dönüşü: Yeni Yaklaşımlar ve Tartışmalar [The Return of Economic History: New Approaches and Discussions] (Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2021), p.50.

2 For a discussion about how legal ambiguities and administrative arbitrariness are needed to create the private property regime, see Tuna Kuyucu, ‘Law, Property and Ambiguity: The Uses and Abuses of Legal Ambiguity in Remaking Istanbul’s Informal Settlements’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Vol. 38.2 (2014), pp.609–27.

3 Huri İslamoğlu, ‘Towards a Political Economy of Legal and Administrative Constitutions of Individual Property’, in Huri İslamoğlu (ed.), Constituting Modernity: Private Property in the East and West (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2004), p.4.

4 Huri İslamoğlu, ‘Politics of Administering Property: Law and Statistics in the Nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire’, in Huri İslamoğlu (ed.), Constituting Modernity: Private Property in the East and West (London, New York: I.B. Tauris, 2004), pp.279–81.

5 İslamoğlu, ‘Towards a political economy’, pp.4–11.

6 E. Attila Aytekin, ‘Agrarian Relations, Property and Law: An Analysis of the Land Code of 1858 in the Ottoman Empire’, Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 45.6 (2009), pp.935–36. For the approaches supporting state centrism and legal formalism, see Michael Mann, ‘The Autonomous Power of the State: Its Origins, Mechanisms and Results’, in Michael Mann (ed.), States, War and Capitalism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988), pp.1–12.

7 Nora Barakat, ‘Regulating Land Rights in Late Nineteenth-Century Salt: The Limits of Legal Pluralism in Ottoman Property Law’, Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association, Vol. 2.1 (2015), pp.101–19.

8 For a discussion of state-peasant relations in modern Europe, see Clive Emsley, ‘The Nation State, The Law and the Peasant in Nineteenth Century Europe’, in Xavier Rousseaux and René Lévy (eds), Le Pénal dans tous ses états: Justice, états et sociétés en Europe (XIIe-XXe siecles) [Penal Systems in All Their States: Justice, States, and Societies in Europe (12th-20th Centuries)] (Brussels: Facultés Universitaires Saint-Louis, 1997), pp.158–64. For the Ottoman Empire, see Ali Yaycıoğlu, Partners of the Empire: The Crisis of the Ottoman Order in the Age of Revolutions (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2016), pp.117–56.

9 For an analysis of this process, see Fatma Öncel, ‘Land, Tax and Power in the Ottoman Provinces: The Malikane-Mukataa of Esma Sultan in Alasonya (c. 1780–1825)’, Turkish Historical Review, Vol. 8.1 (2017), pp.54–74.

10 For the coalition between the local elite of the Balkans and the Ottoman central authority and how it excluded the small-scale rural groups, see Fatma Öncel, ‘Transhumants and Rural Change in Northern Greece Throughout the Nineteenth Century’, International Review of Social History, Vol. 66.1 (2021), pp.49–83.

11 Zozan Pehlivan, ‘El Niño and the Nomads: Global Climate, Local Environment, and the Crisis of Pastoralism in Late Ottoman Kurdistan’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, Vol. 63.3 (2020), pp.316–56.

12 Aysel Yıldız and İrfan Kökdaş, ‘Peasantry in a Well-protected Domain: Wallachian Peasantry and Muslim Çiftlik/Kışlaks under the Ottoman Rule’, Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies, Vol. 22.1 (2020), pp.175–90.

13 Selçuk Dursun, ‘Dispossession by Concession: Forest Commons in the Ottoman Empire and Early Turkish Republic’, in Onur İnal and Yavuz Köse (eds), Seeds of Power: Explorations in Ottoman Environmental History (Cambridgeshire: White Horse Press, 2019), pp.260–84.

14 Özkan Akpınar, ‘Making Property of a Marsh: Environment, Property, and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Ioannina’, Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 58.4 (2022), pp.487–503.

15 Ömer Lütfi Barkan, ‘Türk Toprak Hukuku Tarihinde Tanzimat ve 1274 (1858) Tarihli Arazi Kanunnamesi’ [Land Legislation in Turkish Legal History: The Tanzimat and the Land Code of 1274 (1858)], in Ömer Lütfi Barkan (ed.), Türkiye’de Toprak Meselesi [The Land Question in Turkey] (Istanbul: Gözlem Yayınları, 1980), p.328.

16 Arazi Kanunnamesi ve Zeyli [Land Code and Supplement], Düstur [Body of Laws], Series 1, Vol. 1, pp.165–99. Hereafter, this document will be referred as the Land Code.

17 Tapu Nizamnamesi [Title Deed Regulation], Düstur, Series 1, Vol. 1, pp. 200–08. Hereafter, this document will be referred as the Title Deed Regulation.

18 Article 1 of the Land Code.

19 Barkan, ‘Arazi Kanunnamesi’, p.335.

20 Ibid.

21 Ibid., p.337.

22 İslamoğlu, ‘Politics of Administering Property’, p.279.

23 Eugene Rogan, Frontiers of the State in the Late Ottoman Empire: Transjordan, 1850-1921 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p.83.

24 Article 24 of the Land Code.

25 Article 84 of Land Code.

26 Article 99 of the Land Code.

27 Barkan, ‘Arazi Kanunnamesi’, p.338.

28 Ibid.

29 Article 97 of the Land Code.

30 Article 98 of the Land Code.

31 Article 101 of the Land Code.

32 Article 5 of the Land Code.

33 M. Erdem Özgür and Şule Gündüz, ‘Legitimizing Private Land Ownership in the Ottoman Empire: State Policy vs Economic Thought’, Economic Alternatives, Vol. 1 (2023), p.73.

34 Rogan, p.90.

35 Aytekin, p.938.

36 Article 1 of the Title Deed Regulation.

37 İslamoğlu, ‘Politics of Administering Property’, p.290.

38 Article 3 of the Title Deed Regulation.

39 Article 4 of the Title Deed Regulation.

40 Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi (BOA) Meclis-i Vâlâ Evrakı (MVL), 402–10.

41 BOA, MVL, 403–2.

42 For further information about sheep-breeding in mid-nineteenth century Ahiçelebi, see Andreas Lyberatos, ‘Men of the Sultan: The ‘Beğlik’ Sheep Tax Collection System and the Rise of a Bulgarian National Bourgeoisie in Nineteenth-Century Plovdiv’, Turkish Historical Review, Vol. 1.1 (2010), pp.55–85.

43 BOA, MVL, 402–91; BOA, MVL, 403–2.

44 BOA, MVL, 958–68.

45 BOA, MVL, 958–68.

46 BOA, MVL, 958–68.

47 BOA, Sadâret Mektubî Kalemi Deâvî Yazışmalarına Ait Belgeler (A.MKT.DV.), 152–19.

48 BOA, A.MKT.DV., 395-85.

49 There is also an unrelated case in the archives about another çiftlik of Deruhi’s at Ahyolu Bergosu, which shows she was a prominent landowner of the period who held at least three çiftliks.

50 BOA, Sadâret Mektubî Kalemi Umum Vilayet Yazışmalarına Ait Belgeler (A.MKT.UM), 421–43.

51 BOA, A.MKT.UM, 421–43.

52 BOA. A.MKT.UM, 421–43.

53 BOA. MVL, 1067–130.