Christians in the Late Ottoman Bureaucracy
Christians in the Late Ottoman Bureaucracy

Summary/Abstract: During the nineteenth century, the Ottoman Empire underwent a massive process of state-building and expansion of state functions, creating tens of thousands of new government jobs. In this period of state reconstruction and bureaucratization, the employment of Christian officials was an essential feature of the expanding modern Ottoman bureaucracy. My project examined Christian civil servants by using quantitative methods. I first present the methodology and source base of the project, after an overview of prosopographical studies on the Ottoman bureaucracy and its Christian officials. The study then inquires whether the modern practice of employing Christians in the late Ottoman bureaucracy had roots in Islamic and premodern Ottoman history. I examine the employment of non-Muslims in earlier Muslim states and the classical era of the Ottoman Empire. That should provide insight into the discussion, in the next part, on the Tanzimat era, when Ottoman modern officialdom began to flourish and include Christians in its new ranks. The last part focuses on the scale of Christian employment in the late Ottoman bureaucracy, where I present some outcomes of my prosopographical study.

• Details
• Contents