Bandits and bureaucrats : the Ottoman route to state centralization / Karen Barkey.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 255-274) and index.

Ch. 1. Introduction -- Ch. 2. The Context of the Seventeenth Century -- The Legacy of the Classical Age -- The Ottoman Empire in Context -- The Crisis of the Seventeenth Century -- Ch. 3. Ottoman Regional Elites: Divided but Loyal -- The State and Timar Holders -- The State and High-Ranking Provincial Officials -- Ch. 4. Ottoman Peasants: Rational or Indifferent? -- Patron-Client Relations: Fictitious Landholders? -- Peasant Rural Organization -- Ch. 5. Celalis: Bandits without a Cause? -- Peasant Alternatives -- The Manufacturing of Banditry -- Banditry as a Social Type -- Ch. 6. State-Bandit Relations: A Blueprint for State Centralization -- A Political Invitation: May 1606 -- Consolidation through Deal Making with Bandits -- Bargains and Force, 1590-1611 -- The Politicized Rhetoric of Bargaining, 1623-1648. Ch. 7. Conclusion -- Appendix 2 Primary Sources from the Ottoman Archives.

"Why did the main challenge to the Ottoman state come not in peasant or elite rebellions, but in endemic banditry? Karen Barkey shows how Turkish strategies of incorporating peasants and rotating elites kept both groups dependent on the state, unable and unwilling to rebel. Bandits, formerly mercenary soldiers, were not interested in rebellion but concentrated on trying to gain state resources, more as rogue clients than as primitive rebels. The state's ability to control and manipulate bandits - through deals, bargains, and patronage - suggests imperial strength rather than weakness, she maintains." "Bandits and Bureaucrats details, in a rich, archivally based analysis, state-society relations in the Ottoman Empire during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Exploring current eurocentric theories of state building, the author illuminates a period customarily mischaracterized as one in which the state declined in power." "Outlining the processes of imperial rule, Barkey relates the state's political and military institutions to their social foundations. She compares the Ottoman route with state centralization in the Chinese and Russian empires, and contrasts experiences of rebellion in France during the same period. Bandits and Bureaucrats thus develops a theoretical interpretation of imperial state centralization, through incorporation and bargaining with social groups, and at the same time enriches our understanding of the dynamics of Ottoman history."--BOOK JACKET.