Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of Contributors
- Introduction
- 1 Debt Bondage and Chattel Slavery in Early Rome
- 2 Slavery, Debt and Bondage: The Mediterranean and the Eurasia Connection from the Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Century
- 3 Clientship, Social Indebtedness and State-Controlled Emancipation of Africans in the Late Ottoman Empire
- 4 Pawnship and Seizure for Debt in the Process of Enslavement in West Africa
- 5 The Business of ‘Trust’ and the Enslavement of Yoruba Women and Children for Debt
- 6 The Africanization of the Workforce in English America
- 7 Credit, Captives, Collateral and Currencies: Debt, Slavery and the Financing of the Atlantic World
- 8 Unpayable Debts: Reinventing Bonded Labour through Legal Freedom in Nineteenth-Century Brazil
- 9 Indigenous Debt and the Spirit of Colonial Capitalism: Debt, Taxes and the Cash-Crop Economy in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, 1898–1956
- Notes
- Index
3 - Clientship, Social Indebtedness and State-Controlled Emancipation of Africans in the Late Ottoman Empire
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of Contributors
- Introduction
- 1 Debt Bondage and Chattel Slavery in Early Rome
- 2 Slavery, Debt and Bondage: The Mediterranean and the Eurasia Connection from the Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Century
- 3 Clientship, Social Indebtedness and State-Controlled Emancipation of Africans in the Late Ottoman Empire
- 4 Pawnship and Seizure for Debt in the Process of Enslavement in West Africa
- 5 The Business of ‘Trust’ and the Enslavement of Yoruba Women and Children for Debt
- 6 The Africanization of the Workforce in English America
- 7 Credit, Captives, Collateral and Currencies: Debt, Slavery and the Financing of the Atlantic World
- 8 Unpayable Debts: Reinventing Bonded Labour through Legal Freedom in Nineteenth-Century Brazil
- 9 Indigenous Debt and the Spirit of Colonial Capitalism: Debt, Taxes and the Cash-Crop Economy in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, 1898–1956
- Notes
- Index
Summary
In the nineteenth century, the Ottoman state began a process of reform and reorganization that involved a dramatic intervention into hitherto unregulated aspects of the lives of all people under its authority. By mid-century, it had also become involved in the regulation of the slave trade and the fate of emancipated slaves. Indeed, although private owners were, and continued to be, responsible for most emancipations, state-initiated emancipations reached unparalleled levels from the third quarter of the nineteenth century. This essay examines why and how at this time the Ottoman state intervened and shaped the lives of many emancipated African slaves under its auspices. I argue that, while all aspects of Ottoman life were coming under greater official surveillance and regulation at this time, state intervention and its influence on the lives of emancipated slaves was unique in that it was legitimized through the concept of social indebtedness; upon emancipation, a former slave was obliged through social and religious traditions to become a client of its emancipator cum patron. These incursions into previously private social relationships were justified by the Ottoman state through a discourse of benevolence. When examining this intervention in the context of the broader changes in the nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire, it becomes clear that the discourse of benevolence was used, as in other aspects of Ottoman life, to justify and fulfil the objectives of maintaining order, expanding the army, creating a large tax base, solving labour shortages and removing other potential loci of power.
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- Publisher: Pickering & ChattoFirst published in: 2014