Kent ve Devlet Arasında: 18. Yüzyıl Selanik Kırsalında Güç ve Sermaye Dinamikleri
Between City and State: Power and Capital Relations in the Eighteenth-Century Salonikan Countryside

Summary/Abstract: By challenging Mediterranean port-city narratives, this study analyzes the changing nature of Salonikan society from the perspective of economic transformation, political hierarchy, and the workings of the early modern Ottoman provincial system. The eighteenth-century metamorphosis of provincial society was set by the interaction of several coexisting and complex dynamics: the extensive peasant mobility, the rise of local powers in the countryside, the spread of large agricultural estates in the countryside, and the rising power of local paramilitaries. A reconceptualization of power and property relations in the rural areas adjacent to Salonikan towns would not only provide a new perspective into city-country connections in the early modern era, but also help us to rethink the concepts of hinterland, urban domination and portfolio capitalists in the Ottoman provincial setting. This study thus suggests that rather than the activities of European merchants and comprador bourgeoisie, the emerging alliances between landed elite, peasants, and the imperial center shaped the contours of early modern growth and political structures in Salonika.

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