Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 May 2017
This article studies how the emergence of new political elites and changes in land tenure relationships shaped the socio-economic profile of local credit markets in the Ottoman Balkans between the late seventeenth and early nineteenth centuries. By using probate inventories and court records for the cities of Salonika (including Karaferye), Vidin and Ruse, I compare how the expansion of tax-farming institutions and the concentration of land ownership influenced the social characteristics of lending activities. I find that, in spite of institutional and political similarities, the evolution of local credit markets did not follow a homogeneous pattern. Contrary to the consensus view in the existing literature, local political and military elites, which most tax farmers and large landowners belonged to, did not play a dominant role as moneylenders. Civilians (such as merchants and artisans) together with other social groups, including janissaries and religious functionaries, provided the bulk of informal credit to local communities (including elites) in the three urban areas.
This article is partially based on the findings of my PhD dissertation. I gratefully acknowledge the generous support of the State University of New York at Binghamton, Leibniz-Institut für Europäische Geschichte-Mainz and Forschungsbibliothek Erfurt/Gotha for my research project. I am also grateful to two anonymous referees and the guest editors of this special issue for their helpful comments and suggestions on previous drafts of this paper. The usual disclaimer applies.
To send this article to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Dropbox account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Google Drive account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.