A Monetary History of the Ottoman Empire.

• Author: Schultz, Warren C.
• Position: Book Review

A Monetary History of the Ottoman Empire. By SEVKET PAMUK. Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization. Cambridge: CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2000. Pp. xxvi +276. $69.95.

One should best, perhaps, assume the guise of an undergraduate to appreciate fully the scope of this hook. In undertaking to write a monetary history of the Ottoman state, Pamuk addresses a chronological span of more than six centuries and a geographical vastness that stretches from the Balkans to Egypt and from the Caucasus to the Maghrib. Moreover, in terms of monetary developments, Ottoman history stretches from the days of hand-struck coinage in a small Anatolian beylik to those of paper money and machine-made coins mass-produced for an empire closely linked to the wider world. The matters of the availability and biases of source material, the achievements and shortfalls of previous scholarship, and the multiple theoretical issues involved in studying monetary developments across such parameters are truly staggering. That Pamuk succeeds in his goal of placing Ottoman monetary history in wider economic and social spheres while at the same time producing a manageable book of fourteen coherent chapters is t ruly a tribute to his erudition and powers of synthesis.

In an introductory chapter in which he discusses some key definitions and concepts that underpin monetary history, Pamuk divides Ottoman history into five periods: 1300-1477 (discussed in chapters 2-3); 1477-1585 (chs. 4-7); 1585-1690 (chs. 5-9); 1690-1844 (chs. 10-11); and 1844-1918 (chs. 12-13). While this macroperiodization scheme underlies the remainder of the book, Pamuk slides over the divisions when discussing numerous sub-themes and developments. These periods are defined primarily by monetary arrangements, and Pamuk argues they "coincide with broad trends in economic history during these six centuries" (p. 20). A recurrent refrain throughout the book is that there are many mistakes risked by scholars who assume that the characteristics of one period (such as the interventionist policies of Mehmet II) exist in other periods.

In chapter two, Pamuk stresses that the monetary evidence hints at stronger Ilkhanid influence on the early Ottoman state than Ottoman or current historiography admits. Chapter three analyzes the so-called "interventionist" policies of Mehmet II, attributing them primarily to the centralization drive of that monarch, as well as to the recurrent shortage of specie. Pamuk focuses in...