Expropriation

Claims about Ottoman weakness conflict with common narratives about the arbitrary confiscations of various sultans, however. Expropriations are considered to inhibit both economic change and the political openness that is necessary to generate it, in most economic studies,¹³⁷ but also in conventional Ottoman historiography.

A claimed example of the arbitrary exercise of sultanic power was when the sultan Mehmed II (1444-46 and 1451-81), the conqueror of Constantinople, “decided to abolish private and vakf properties.”¹³⁸ However, more recent studies show that Mehmed did not alter existing land arrangements, only those concerning land revenues. Further, the state appropriated revenues only where owners were missing - and it redistrib­uted some as tιmars to new holders.¹³⁹ The “reform” was even later reversed. Nonetheless, its basis was a state claim that differed little from England’s.¹⁴⁰ As is typical, late developers are classified as arbitrary or interventionist for taking similar action to England, only with less power.¹⁴¹

In another instance, Selim II (1566-74) abrogated the trusts of Orthodox monasteries in 1568. But he too drew on legal principle, a fatwa of jurist Ebu’s-su'ud. Two legal grounds were invoked: first, the trusts were formed on rural land, which remained royal demesne absent a sultanic grant, and second, Hanafi law forbade individuals to “create trusts directly for the benefit of churches and monasteries”; they could only be for the benefit of the poor. If the grant was not specified correctly,

¹³⁵ Caution is required with all premodern data. Tlmar-holders collected taxes locally, so Ottoman extractive capacity is probably under-reported, though local expenditures also occurred in Europe; Hoffman 1994,226-40.

¹³⁶ Barkey 1994. ¹³⁷ Kuran 2011; Acemoglu et al. 20 04. ¹³⁸ Inalcik 1994, 106.

¹³⁹ Ozel 199 9, 242, 238-39. ¹⁴⁰ Itnalcik 1973, 109-10.

¹⁴¹ Gerschenkron 1962; Chang 2002.

it was void. The aim was not to dispossess the monks, however. It made the trusts legal and raised cash for the sultan. The monks retained the right of occupation by paying an entry fine, raised from a tax on the Orthodox; only the land was returned to the Treasury.^[1274] Expropriations by “absolutist” rulers, thus, though easily seen as symp­toms of unchecked power, were regulated.

Expropriations in England, by contrast, showed in fact greater state capacity to confiscate extensive property and to reallocate it at will - occasionally with thinner basis in law. Henry VIII from the 1530s sold two thirds of monastic lands to private buyers within ten years. This involved about 20-25 percent of English land:¹⁴³ it was the most exten­sive reallocation of land since the Norman Conquest. The initial pretext, moreover, was not legal title but religious conformity, pursued through Cromwell’s “visitations” from 1535. To prevent the lands from reverting to the founders’ heirs, Parliament was even enlisted to pass the “Suppression of Religious Houses Act” of 1535, which expropriated lesser religious houses.¹⁴⁴ The English state did not respect property rights more; it was comparatively far more effective in surgically suppress­ing them, according to need - not least by employing Parliament to do so.

11.4