This article studies how the Cihanbeyli tribe became a crucial economic actor for the meat supply of İstanbul, by focusing on a conflict between the tribe’s leader, Alişan Bey, and the Russian trader David Savalan, which lasted from the 1840s to the 1850s in and around the province of Ankara. Two important processes of the early Tanzimat era had an impact on the Cihanbeyli’s role in animal trade. First, as part of the centralization project of the Tanzimat, the Cihanbeyli tribe was sedentarized in the 1840s and 1850s. Second, although the Ottoman state adopted liberal economic policies during the Tanzimat, the provisioning of meat to the imperial capital continued until 1857. Therefore, the article examines the Cihanbeyli’s role in the animal trade in the light of these administrative and economic changes. Our findings support the argument that tribes were an integral part of the imperial economy, politics, and society. The dependence of the Ottoman state on the supply of meat by the Cihanbeyli increased significantly from the seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth century. This opposes the conventional view that posits tribes as primordial forms hindering economic and social development in the modernization processes of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
different capacities in the development of the historiography of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. Despite all of these positive developments, more work needs to be done in integrating the monumental volumes about the history of Armenians in cities, towns, and villages of the Ottoman Empire into the main stream historiography. Solely relying on Ottoman and European archives will not do justice to the history of Armenians of the Empire. More than 110 Armenian historical volumes include minute details that do not exist in these archives. It is the combination of these books with the Ottoman and European archives as well as the archives of Armenian churches, contemporary newspapers and periodicals, European travelers literature and studies, that will provide a better picture of the history of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. During the last two decades, two important projects brought forth the importance of these volumes. These projects must be applauded. The first is the 13 volumes series (2000-2014) "Historic Armenian Cities and Provinces" edited by Richard Hovannisian from University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA) 18 and the second is the Houshamadyan project based in Berlin and directed by Vahé Tashjian. 19
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