In her latest book, Aysel Yıldız invites the reader to approach the uprising of May 1807 and the consequent dethronement of Sultan Selim III—“the last of the typical Ottoman uprisings in which the rebellious forces were victorious against the decision makers” (p. 2)—within its sociopolitical as well as wider international historical context. Employing multifaceted perspectives, the author refutes the prevalent historiographical claims presenting the May 1807 uprising as a reactionary movement against a modernizing and reforming elite and the introduction by the latter of a Western-style military system in 1793. The book comprises an introduction, six chapters, and a conclusion. The introduction sets the general frame of the book, arguing that “the May uprising of 1807 was a popular-military uprising engendered by the socio-economic and political problems of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries,” (p. 4) with the latter including fiscal crisis, economic recession, political decentralization, and social discontent, in addition to mounting international tension and warfare. Equally importantly, the uprising formed part of the “Age of Revolution,” as “its roots have much in common with other parts of the world” (pp. 4–5).
The first chapter offers a vivid illustration of the five days of the May 1807 uprising, which was initiated by the yamaks (auxiliary troops) stationed in the fortresses of the Bosphorus and soon diffused to other troops, as well as to civilians. Here, Yıldız argues that the dethronement of Selim III on the fourth day of the uprising, despite his decision one day before to abolish the Nizam-ı Cedid (New Order) army, betokens a more general crisis of legitimacy from which the sultan’s regime had been suffering. The second chapter discusses the conditions that formed the breeding ground for the uprising; namely, a serious economic recession, which had set in both globally and within the Ottoman Empire during the 1760s due mainly to harsh weather conditions resulting in famines, agricultural crises, inflation, diseases, migration to cities, population unrest, and revolts. The author also underlines how, besides the economic crisis and spatial mobility, social mobility had also changed the fabric of the janissary corps itself, with both commoners and dignitaries having acquired a significant number of janissary payroll tickets. In this way, a large group of people with a vested interest in the survival of the old military system had come into existence. Yıldız resumes this observation at a later point, in the third chapter, where she argues that the selling of payroll tickets and the esnafization process, whereby the janissaries increasingly became guildsmen and craftsmen, led to the proletarization of the corps and the militarization of the urban poor or middle classes—in turn providing the corps with great influence over public opinion.
The third chapter, entitled “Does Modernization Breed Revolution?,” demonstrates how financing Selim’s reforms meant repossessing the missing surplus in the countryside through indirect taxation, the recontracting of lifetime taxes (malikane) on shorter-term leases, and the selling of fiefs (tımar) as emanets (trusteeship) or iltizams (tax farms). Accordingly, four instances of popular discontent that had taken place in Istanbul, Anatolia, and the Balkans between 1793 and 1805 are interpreted by Yıldız less as anti-modernization efforts directly targeting the new army and more as uprisings based on a number of overlapping factors: the violation of the privileges of the established corps; rivalries among local magnates over land, reinforced by the redistributive role of the Porte; efforts by the local magnates to gain janissary support for the seizure of tımar lands; the reaction of the masses to the new conscription strategies; and the fears of the Balkan notables (ayans) regarding the political, military, and fiscal recentralization that the newly established Nizam-ı Cedid soldiery would bring about in the provinces.
In the fourth chapter, Yıldız turns to the international arena, arguing that intense international rivalries and increasing interimperial belligerence, combined with the inability of the Porte to cope with foreign interventions, had led to resentment on the part of Ottoman commoners. Wars with the Russians and Austrians, the French invasion of Egypt, and the 1807 “British Expedition” to the Sea of Marmara had a deep psychological impact on the people, resulting in disappointment regarding Selim’s rule as well as alienation, especially on the part of the janissaries. The fifth chapter brings us back to the Ottoman capital and to the rivalries and power structures within the Selimian elite, as well as between this elite and what Yıldız calls the “coalition of outs.” The author carefully portrays the mixed profile of each front—both of which consisted of different numbers of bureaucrats, ulema, and courtiers—and the faction-ridden character of the Selimian elite as well as its ideological profile, which reveals the strong influence of the Naqshbandi-Mujaddidi order. Yet Yıldız also admits that the opposition’s ideological stance is difficult to construct from the relevant sources. Overall, the author here proposes that “evaluating the power struggles of the period through the wider framework of factions and the international conjunctures offers a better and more realistic picture of the period […] than the reformist vs. conservatist schema” (p. 145).
In the final chapter, which the reader might in fact have expected much earlier, Yıldız seeks to demonstrate the rebels’ agency, and in so doing elaborates upon their identities as well as on the ways in which they conceived Ottoman rule. Here the author warns against drawing a clear-cut distinction between the military and civilian groups: while the rebellion was instigated by auxiliaries, most of them extremely poor and with very low salaries, other military groups—including janissaries, artillerymen, and armorers—also lent their support, soon to be joined by civilians and a mixed group of janissary-artisans and janissary-affiliated urbanites. The civilians included some of the ulema and some bystanders as well, although the guildsmen refrained from participating, mainly because of the repercussions with which they were faced in the Patrona Halil rebellion of 1730. While “the 1807 insurgents saw the relation between the sultan and themselves […] as being more contractual and mutualist” (p. 173), Yıldız admits that “the scanty evidence available to us is not sufficient to hear the voices of the rebellious crowds; at best, we can discern that their grievances reflected economic hardships” (p. 185). Finally, the book’s conclusion provides a perspective on events that followed the 1807 uprising as well as on the role of the military up to the establishment of the modern Turkish state. In the end, it is argued that “the rebellion can be seen as a reaction by the urban masses to top-down efforts at social engineering prosecuted by a small ruling elite which desired to transform society in spite of the people” (p. 199).
Overall, the book is a fascinating and meticulously researched account of the May 1807 uprising, leaving no perspective untouched and utilizing a wide variety of archival material stemming from the French and English foreign offices, foreign travelers, memoirs, Ottoman bureaucratic correspondence, and Ottoman chronicles and monographs. Among the book’s strongest assets are how it lends agency to the masses, challenges the simplistic dichotomy between reforming/modernizing and conservative forces via an emphasis on socioeconomic factors, and connects the May 1807 uprising with the contemporary global situation.
On the other hand, Yıldız’s claim to incorporate this uprising into the “Age of Revolution,” as is suggested by the second part of the book’s title, represents an intriguing assertion that nevertheless is not fully supported by the book and indeed at times seems rather far-fetched. While economic crisis was a common parameter between the late eighteenth-century Ottoman Empire and the world at large, this was not a period marked by numerous janissary revolutions, which is a contrast from the tumultuous European situation. Most of the typical eighteenth-century Ottoman uprisings, as provided in a table by Yıldız (p. 2), occurred during the first half of the century (viz., 1703, 1717, 1718, 1719, 1730, 1731, and 1740), which was a time of economic prosperity for most of the empire as compared to the second half of the same century (p. 47). This fact seems to weaken the explanatory power of Yıldız’s claim and urges us to seek out additional explanatory dynamics for the janissary revolts in general, including the May 1807 uprising. In a similar vein, in order to further substantiate (or not) one of the book’s main arguments, one would expect a more direct comparison of the various—i.e., European, Ottoman, and other—contemporary insurgencies’ claims, which are all subsumed under the same “Age of Revolution.”
Regarding the May 1807 uprising and the motives behind it, Yıldız often gives the impression of going back and forth between the combination of the perspectives that she adopts and a more economically deterministic one. Additionally, the reader would have hoped for a more thorough engagement by Yıldız with the theoretical background provided by the literature on social movements. Admittedly, the prevailing economic crisis of the late eighteenth century is satisfactorily portrayed—yet nonetheless, this is accompanied by few incidents in which the rebels actually expressed economic claims; namely, complaints of poor-quality bread (p. 56); the public mockery and execution of Ibrahim Efendi, the former majordomo of the grand vizier (sadaret kethüda), for his ruining of the poor (p. 185); and some more general statements by the insurgents in favor of the “poor people [who] were dying” (p. 187). Moreover, the author oscillates between a repeated motto (“It was hunger, and anger, which prepared the ground for the uprisings” [pp. 44, 45, 66]) and a more complex evaluation of sociopolitical factors. As a result, questions such as to what extent the janissaries actually expressed discontent caused by economic hardship, especially given the fact that the guilds abstained from the uprising, remain largely unanswered. Finally, regarding the text itself, the reader sometimes must struggle with too dense prose characterized by a thick presentation of information and recurring names that are not always easy to follow. Nevertheless, despite such shortcomings, I strongly recommend the book to anyone interested not only in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, but also in insurgencies in general and Ottoman insurgencies in particular.
