Providing Services and Bargaining Over Loyalty

The Crimean War and the Armenian Elite in the Ottoman Empire

Abstract

Legislative developments concerning the civic and religious rights of the Christian and Jewish communities in the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century have been examined widely. The focus has been on the developments following the Crimean War, and particularly the Reform Edict (Islahat Fermanı) of 1856 and the role European powers’ demands directed at the Ottoman Empire – their wartime ally and the new member of the “Concert of Europe” – played in these developments. This article questions this Eurocentric view by shifting the focus from European pressure as the main moving force behind the changing relations between Christian subjects and the Empire to the domestic dynamics of the Empire by examining the Armenian elite’s participation in Ottoman war efforts. It argues that the role the elite played in the borderlands throughout the war period, including provisioning of the army and ensuring the loyalty of local communities, provided them with the political leverage to negotiate and eventually enhance their position in the imperial hierarchy in the years following the war. The article highlights the wartime developments as crucial factors behind political and legislative changes and the construction of the modern Ottoman state in the second half of the nineteenth century.