Provincial governance was a very sensitive issue for the Ottomans, particularly during the tumultuous long nineteenth century, with its wars, uprisings and large demographic shifts. While conventional Weberian accounts of ‘Ottoman Modernisation/Westernisation’ continue to associate the provinces with resistance to centralisation or secessionist movements, this book subscribes to a critical view that warns against the urge to frame nineteenth-century Ottoman history in ‘empire vs provinces’ or ‘state vs society’ dichotomies. The tenuous provincial dynamics of the empire in this period were not only sensitive to imperial reforms but also influenced the design of such imperial policies. Many local agents successfully integrated into the post-1864 administrative structure, engaging in political negotiations to protect their interests. Local Governance in Ottoman Bulgaria provides a detailed picture of nineteenth-century provincial administration in the Ottoman Empire by focusing on a prototypical region and utilising untapped sources to reveal the dynamic interaction between imperial regulations and local politics.

Trying to reconstruct a decent understanding of how provincial administration operated in a beautiful but lesser-known corner of the Balkans during the nineteenth century proved to be a lengthy and arduous process. People discussed in this book are not among the known Bulgarian or Ottoman elite with an established estate or family records that might reveal some bits about their lives. Rather, they were relatively insignificant notables who strived to improve their lives through their involvement with organisations that produced generic reports, revealing very little about the concerns and negotiations of their members. Yet, whatever is left from their traces in these reports, reveal a complicated and lively political space with intriguing negotiations and networks.

The research for this dissertation was supported by the Ohio State University, the American Council of Learned Societies, Institute for Turkish Studies, Centre for Advanced Studies in Sofia, Nantes Institute for Advanced Studies and Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania.

I am indebted to many friends and mentors in my struggle to understand the politics of local administration in nineteenth-century Ottoman Vidin. I wish to thank my mentors at Ohio State University – Jane Hathaway, Kenneth Andrien and my adviser Carter V. Findley – for reading and critiquing my graduate work. I believe this project ended up being a bit different, if not more, than what I could argue within the bounds of my dissertation.