Doctoral student explores the early history of Ottoman tax-collecting practices

In the 15th-century Ottoman Empire, the taxman wasn’t always employed by the central government.

Instead, certain taxes and revenues were collected by a kind of entrepreneur, often referred to as tax farmers. They contracted with the government to collect a specific amount of taxes, keeping the overage in payment — a lucrative business, and also one that could land them in prison or worse.

While tax farming persisted until the middle of the 19th century, scholars rarely look at its early manifestations. Furkan Taşpınar, a doctoral student in history, is working with archival sources largely overlooked by current scholarship to fill in the gaps.

“In my field, this is a bit exceptional; the focus today is more on the later periods of the empire,” he said. 

Before coming to Binghamton University, Taşpınar completed his undergraduate studies at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul and his master’s at Bilkent University in Ankara, both in his native Turkey. He appreciates the opportunity to work with his advisor, Assistant Professor Aleksandar Shopov, who has similar interests in the Ottoman period.  

“Binghamton’s History Department is well known in Turkey, thanks to the work of late faculty members Rifa’at Ali Abou-El-Haj and Donald Quataert, their students, and affiliated scholars, who made significant contributions to studies and debates on the social and economic history of the Ottoman Empire,” Taşpınar explained. “Those studies were influenced by Immanuel Wallerstein in the ‘70s and ‘80s.”

His doctoral research continues the work he began in his master’s thesis, focusing on the fiscal foundations of the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans during the 15th and early 16th centuries. For the next year, he’ll be abroad, conducting research in Turkey and southeastern Europe.

“I’m interested in understanding how those tax farmers mobilized capital, managed risk, built their economic networks, and employed strategies to deal with sanctions against them,” he said.

In the archives

Tax farmers were private agents with a certain amount of cash at hand. They entered into contracts with the central treasury to collect tax revenue on a variety of resources, from mines and saltworks to agricultural production. In return for collecting a guaranteed amount of taxes over a designated time period, these entrepreneurs kept the surplus income as payment. Privatized tax collection services of this type were common throughout history, including Europe and China. 

“In the 17th and 18th centuries, tax farmers became local notables who held a certain amount of wealth, and even political and military power against the central authority,” Taşpınar explained.

In the 15th century, however, the central state had greater control over the practice than in later periods, in which the empire was more decentralized. Through his archival research, Taşpınar discovered that the early empire’s central administration closely monitored tax farmers and could intervene aggressively — with penalties that included sanctions, asset confiscations, imprisonment, and even execution. 

But the situation revealed by archival documents is complex, he cautioned.

“Archival materials can show something, but depending on other materials and our perspective, it could also mean something else. For this reason, I believe that the relationship between the state and tax farmers cannot be simply reduced to a one-sided dynamic, where the state merely appropriated private capital to its core power,” he explained.

The archival documents consist of debt registers; successful tax farmers probably wouldn’t have been included. And for the business to exist, there had to be some sort of benefit for those who participated, whether financial, social or political.

The registers produced by the central treasury are preserved in Turkey’s state archives, located in Istanbul. Some are available online, but others are not. Records from Balkan countries that were once part of the empire — Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina — may also prove helpful, but few have survived to the present day. 

Taşpınar will spend the next year in Turkey and the Balkans, poring over archived records. 

The History Department and Harpur College have provided essential academic and financial support. As a result, Taşpınar was able to present at the Middle East Studies Association’s 59th annual meeting last fall in Washington, D.C. Last summer, he spent a month in Sarajevo for language study; this summer, he’ll head to Belgrade for the same purpose. 

From his arrival on campus, Taşpınar has also worked as a teaching assistant — something he never did at his previous universities. At Binghamton, he taught a variety of courses in partnership with faculty members, ranging from environmental history to German and Middle Eastern history.

Overall, he is grateful for the department’s continuing support, which has enabled him to pursue his research and discover new talents in the classroom. 

“Maybe not every PhD student enjoys teaching because the general tendency is to focus on their own research, and a teaching assistantship can be a lot of work,” he reflected. “That’s true; it’s quite a lot of work and can be challenging, but I enjoy it. It’s just nice to have this communication with both faculty and undergraduate students, working together and having these experiences.”