Bottom-Up Incentives and Collective Action: Petitions for Justice

In Part II of the book, the sustained demand for justice was shown to explain the regularity and institutional fusion that was necessary for institutions to become consolidated and inclusive, but which war­generated fiscal pressures could not generate.

Petitions, however, were far from exclusive to Western polities, as we have seen. Rather, they were and are part of a near universal vocabulary of grievance, encountered across regions and periods. Innumerable peti­tions survive, mostly still unexplored, in the archives of regimes as dispar­ate as not only Russia and the Ottoman Empire, but Iran, China, Japan, India and elsewhere, from the ancient into the colonial, communist, and

modern eras.⁴³ This is why we cannot assume that there was variation between East and West in the demand for rights. Social conflict and the demand for rights are endogenous to intra-societal exchange and are thus endemic to all societies, regardless of geopolitical or economic condi­tions. They may be amplified or transformed under military or economic pressure, but the fundamental demand is always present.

At least, no systematic studies yet exist to demonstrate differential patterns in petition-making across cases; instead, the general themes appear to be remarkably similar to the English petitions that generated parliamentary legislation. The same prosaic concerns, corruption of offi­cials, miscarriage of justice, excessive taxation and local petty crime were raised in radically different social and economic contexts.

However, the difference that did emerge over time was precisely the collective organization of petitions in the West, especially in England.

Non-Western petitions, conversely, exhibited a recurrent pattern: they were narrowly local and ad hoc. Without collective organization, petitions failed to have the systemic and sustained effects they did in England, even though they were fairly consistently responded to and did sometimes lead to legislation. When such collective petition-making occurred in Russia over a few decades, representative activity flourished. But in neither case did supra-local petition-making consolidate to shape regime type over the long term; the question is whether differences in the demands for justice accounted for this.

Next I describe available historical evidence on petitions in these cases to suggest that petitions differed not in demand but in their collective organization.

13.2.1 Ottoman Empire

Karen Barkey begins her revisionist discussion of the Ottoman peasantry with the story of a peasant who walks alone for two days to submit a tax complaint to the regional judge, the kadi.⁴⁴ To striking effect, she shows

43

See note 109 in Chapter 1.

44

Barkey 1994, 85-86.

Petitions, Collective Responsibility, and Representative Practice 283 how the atomistic access to justice helps explain a paradox of Ottoman history: peasants did not rebel as in the West. Together with the organ­ization of production and the lack of patron-client relations between local power-holders and the peasants via land, localized justice provided an outlet for discontent that prevented collective action among the peasantry.^[1410] The comparative context in this book suggests that these patterns would be endogenous to sultanic weakness: we would expect different outcomes only when the ruler could compel his subjects to service and presence at the center on an obligatory and collective basis.

It is certainly not the case that subjects did not seek justice at the center. Following the seminal work by historian Suraiya Faroqhi, Ottoman peti­tions have been attracting the systematic attention they deserve and the evidence is overwhelming.^[1411] Their importance in the administration of justice by the sultan had long roots in Seljuk and Ottoman practice throughout the Middle East, as shown in the panoramic view of justice in the region since antiquity by the historian Linda Darling.^[1412] Petitions were read in the “great divan” four days a week. The divan was the supreme organ of government, but in origin it was a high court of justice. It was housed at Topkapi Palace, designed with open walls to symbolize “free access of the empire’s subjects to imperial justice.”^[1413] The forum of petitions also served as court of appeals against kadi judgments.^[1414]

Sultans performed these duties regularly, as recorded in chronicles already from the 1390s. Mehmed the Conqueror ceased to preside in person over imperial councils after about 1475, but he heard the sessions behind a grated window in the “Mansion of Justice,” where all business was discussed. Procedure was stipulated in his Law Book. Other high officials, especially the Grand Vizier, eventually took over. The Chamber of Petitions was lavishly rebuilt under Suleyman the Magnificent in the 1520s.^[1415]

Petitions were submitted, as in the West, on varied issues either by ordinary individuals (arz-ι hal) or by officials, such as governors or kadis on behalf of communities (arz-ι mahzar'lar). The latter appears as a symptom of a “top-down administration,” typical of absolutism. However, as seen, the English crown also appointed agents to mobilize the county structure throughout the kingdom, the sheriffs. Moreover, as discussed,⁵¹ common petitions were initially produced by the nobility -

collective petitions were not a spontaneous process.

A major theme was corruption of officials, as in England, especially tax collectors or judges.^[1416] The sultans would dispatch inspectors. This was not just a Near Eastern practice, as Inalcik claims, but widespread in the West too, as we have seen, especially England. Some would even perform inspections personally in disguise, as did Suleyman I, Ahmed II, and Murad IV.^[1417] Petitions usually triggered an imperial response, known through a rescript, which typically ordered the kadi to investigate. This could be escalated if a local official had transgressed, as patronage net­works had to be activated to secure restitution.^[1418]

Responsiveness was high; some evidence suggests few requests were rejected.^[1419] Guild petitions from seventeenth-century Istanbul also had their requests “almost always granted.”^[1420] This echoes French evidence, which similarly suggests that individual tax petitions may have been more successful than those by provincial estates.^[1421] Further, petitions, although localized, often shaped the legal system as a whole, as also in England. For instance, the kanunname, consisting of decrees issued in the sultan’s name and distributed to all the judges in the empire, often derived from indi­vidual petitions.⁵⁸ Identifying a regime as “unlimited” or “arbitrary” simply because it lacked a central representative institution, emerges, yet again, as unwarranted.

This is especially salient with taxation disputes, which were widespread.⁵⁹ Darling has shown how sophisticated - albeit beset by inefficiencies - was the process of disputing the tax burden (surviving records start during the sixteenth century).⁶⁰ It was thus not that “bar­gaining over taxation” did not happen in the Ottoman Empire; petitions show it was relentless. It was just more localized, atomized, and judicia- lized.

Petitions, Collective Responsibility, and Representative Practice 285 not lacking; the Palace already served this purpose. Rather, subjects were not summoned there on a systematic, obligatory, and collective basis, as with Parliament, where they had to deliberate in common to present petitions that conveyed more general concerns instead of just local grievances.

Scale is important of course, because it made such central coordination inordinately harder. But it certainly did not preclude the English out­come, where core territories achieved this integration, whilst outlying territories, like Scotland and Ireland and eventually the British Empire itself, were ruled in more “imperial” fashion. Coordinating a highly varied judicial and tax system over 20 to 30 million people in 280 provinces with a permanent staff of maybe 72 and local part-timers, as in the 1620s, may have been impossible;^[1422] that the empire yet became a major power under such terms is even more impressive. But it was not impossible over a smaller core area in an earlier period. The point here is that it was not too much strength that precluded supra-local collective organization, but too little.

In Russia, however, a central focal point was instituted, and this helps explain the representative practice that was observed. One needs to explain rather why it did not endure.

13.2.2 Russia

Petitions were also the major instrument of submitting demands to the tsar and redressing grievance in Russia. Their usual content does not differ from that of English or Ottoman petitions, at least as far as surviving patterns suggest.^[1423] Taxation was a major topic and immunities were extensively granted in response to petitions,^[1424] as were exemptions from judicial and administrative service.

Some Russian petitions had broad social impact, as noted by historians, echoing English dynamics. For instance, the Russian judicial system was reformed in the 1520s after law and order collapsed throughout Muscovy;

following a wave of petitions, Moscow sent agents to the provinces to stop crime in response. This established the state’s intermediary role in crim­inal justice, producing a “triadic” legal process.^[1427] A petition by a group of landholders in 1539 in response to local anarchy and state weakness generated the guba system, mentioned in the previous chapter. The guba elders were established as provincial brigandage-control officers and extended throughout the realm after their local success. They were (s)elected in a manner similar to the selection of Members of Parliament in seventeenth-century England. All estates voted, but not all could hold office; “worthy and prosperous gentrymen” were needed for positions of authority.^{[1428] [1429]}

The “deluge” of petitions in the mid-sixteenth century led to greater institutionalization: a special Chancellery formed to handle submissions to the Grand Prince (the ChelobitnyiPrikaz).¹⁰ Petitions continued to be central into the seventeenth century. They were also crucial in the major reforms announced in the decree of 1619, which emerged “not only as a response to petitions from many people (primarily gentry) but also as the result of extensive consultation.” Petition campaigns also occurred in the 1630s and 1640s. Themes were “corruption, bureaucratism, patron­age and favoritism, banditry and violence, paternalism and protection­ism” - concerns that differed little from recurrent English grievances. Judicial concerns were also central: in 1637, petitioners asked that trials be held in provincial towns and that judges be chosen locally, requests that continued to be presented in later petitions.⁷¹ By the 1640s, a special institution had emerged where “People Petition[ed] Against Strong People.”⁷² The gentry’s main complaint was the one discussed in Chapter 12, that peasants were removed by the “strong people of Moscow,” namely the boyars and high administrators, but also by church authorities and monasteries.⁷³

The seventeenth century, in fact, saw a wave of collective petitions. These had a moral and religious language absent from local ones, showing clear Church influence. Echoing the pattern observed in Magna Carta, which requested greater regularization of the king’s justice, petitions shifted from being against to being in favor of regulation, as Kivelson noted. Early petitions were from the service class, but eventually, by the 1660s, local petitions would even include the higher Moscow nobility. Accordingly, petitioner demands eventually generated broad-based legis­lation, paralleling English developments. The great uprising of 1648 was

Petitions, Collective Responsibility, and Representative Practice 287 fueled by the “national petition campaigns” of the service nobility of the previous decades. These were not individual but collective petitions and they shaped the law code of 1649.^[1430]

Tsars attempted to limit petitioner demands, which may seem to confirm an absolutist interpretation. They would not serve as final arbiter in disputes and the people were punished for even trying to gain access to them.^[1431] But as we’ve seen, English kings also used force to prevent petitioners from thrusting petitions into their hand, which imposed an obligation to address them.⁷⁶ Restrictions everywhere attempted to meet overwhelming demand: when Ivan IV refused to answer petitions he was a “terrified teen”; ten days of “bloodshed and destruction” followed.⁷⁷

Further, the state avoided persistent petitions requesting localized justice, which was extensively, though not always effectively, provided in England. Litigants could go to Moscow three times a year to have their cases heard in the early 1600s, but this conflicted with service obligations. Their demands were further frustrated later in the century, as local peti­tions were mediated through the governor who would not send petitions to the center. This too suggests an “impersonal bureaucratic administra­tion of the centralized state.”⁷⁸ However, as Part I showed, local justice was more available in England in the period of institutional formation because the crown had successfully penetrated the localities to counter the jurisdiction of local lords. Despite the tsar’s impressive displays of power, his capacity did not subordinate local institutions to the center as effectively. Judicial supply was more contested and fragmented in Russia. What appears as an autocratic motion in the Russian case reflects a position of relative institutional weakness.

In terms of social impact, however, petitions in the Russian sixteenth and seventeenth centuries produced outcomes that were closer to those observed in England than Ottoman ones. Common to all these petition drives was the crucial class behind them, the service gentry which owed its land and service to the tsar. As we have seen, the petitioning gentry was also crucial for the assemblies that flourished in this period. But these practices did not shape the regime as a whole and thus in an enduring way.

Why? Two major hypotheses on why East and West diverged institu­tionally could help answer this question and remain to be examined. As noted in the Introduction, they propose different forms of collective organization - collective responsibility and corporate estates - as crucial in shaping political trajectories.

13.3