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Slavery and Decline of Slave-Ownership in Ottoman Bursa 1460–1880

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 June 2020

Hülya Canbakal  and
Alpay Filiztekin
Hülya Canbakal
Affiliation:
Sabanci University
Alpay Filiztekin
Affiliation:
Sabanci University
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Abstract

The most widely accepted narrative about the long-term history of slavery in Ottoman lands rests on a supply-side story. According to this, military and diplomatic factors reduced the inflow of slaves from the seventeenth century onwards and, consequently, exorbitant prices turned slaveholding into a luxury inaccessible to all but the top elite. Using evidence from probate inventories of the city of Bursa and its hinterland from 1460 to 1880, the present study examines this narrative in light of the incidence of slave-ownership and prices. We observe substantial decline in slaveholding already before the beginning of the government reforms concerning slavery and slave trade in the nineteenth century. We also find a decline in slave prices, both absolute and relative to wages. This is unexpected. Further analysis suggests, on the one hand, that a different supply factor, relative increase in the African slave population due to changes in the global traffic may have been instrumental in these trends, which links Bursa's non-colonial market to world slavery. On the other hand, examination of the consumption/investment preferences of the wealthy suggests that demand for slaves, too, may have declined, we surmise, in response to demographic and social change affecting alternative labor costs as well as cultural change affecting the meaning of slaveholding.

Type
Changing Labor Relations in the Ottoman Empire and Turkey
Information
International Labor and Working-Class History , Volume 97: Changing Labor Relations in the Ottoman Empire and Turkey / Oral History and Indian Labor History , Spring 2020 , pp. 57 - 80
Copyright
Copyright © International Labor and Working-Class History, Inc., 2020

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Footnotes

We thank Terrence Walz and Ehud R. Toledano for generously sharing their extensive knowledge on the topic and Y. Hakan Erdem for his contribution to an early version of this study. We also thank our anonymous readers for very valuable suggestions.

References

NOTES

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61. Faroqhi, “Guildsmen and handicraft producers,” 336–54; Pamuk, İstanbul ve Diğer Kentlerde 500 Yıllık Fiyatlar ve Ücretler (Ankara, 2000), 77–82.

62. Stanziani, “Introduction,” 1–26.

63. Blumenthal, Enemies and Familiars, 154–93; Johnson, Soul by Soul, 109–15.

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