Rural Dispossession Project
Rural Economy and Peasant Dispossession in the Ottoman Balkans: Landed Estates (çıftlıks) in Manastir
Dr. E. Burcu Işıl-Sevgener Panteion University
The transition from pre-modern agrarian economies to industrial capitalism was accompanied by changes in landholding patterns and organization of labor in the countryside. In the Ottoman Balkans, this transformation was closely associated with the expansion of large privately-owned estates known as çiftliks. Far from being static institutions, çiftliks were central to processes of rural dispossession and socio-economic differentiation during the long nineteenth century.
Focusing on Manastır, a region characterized by extensive çiftlik formation, this research project draws on Ottoman income, population, and tax surveys, combined with statistical and GIS analysis and supplemented by sources such as court records, petitions, and legal proceedings. It examines the relationship between concentration of land, labor mobility, and economic transformation through the lens of peasant dispossession, with particular attention to the separation between cultivators and owners of agricultural land, the erosion of traditional peasant self-sufficiency, the emergence of market dependence, and the formation of a labor reserve for both the çiftlik economy and non-agricultural sectors.
Methodologically, this study combines Ottoman quantitative and qualitative sources with GIS analysis, while situating its findings within recent debates on commercialization and capitalist development. In doing so, it seeks to illuminate the relationship between agrarian restructuring, rural dispossession, labor mobility, and long-term patterns of capitalist transformation in the countryside.
Dr. E. Burcu Işıl-Sevgener
Dr. E. Burcu Işıl-Sevgener is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences in Athens, where she is conducting a two-year research project on Manastır, focusing on the questions of rural configuration, labor mobility, inequality and dispossession in the 19th century. She holds a PhD and MA in History, and a BA in Sociology, from Boğaziçi University in Istanbul. Her research focuses on the economic and social history of the rural Ottoman Balkans.
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