The Ottoman capitulations were commercial and legal privileges that Ottoman sultans granted by ahidname (a sultan’s charter of pledges) to the merchants of states they regarded as friends. According to the TDV Encyclopedia of Islam, these privileges posed no threat to the economy until the 18th century. Dependence on foreign powers, however, was deepened by protection that spread through merchants holding berats (sultan’s patents), by low customs duties fixed in place and by the Treaty of Balta Liman of 1838. The privileges were finally abolished only in 1923, at Lausanne.
Quick Summary
- A capitulation originated as an ahidname granted unilaterally by the sultan on the basis of eman (a guarantee of safety).
- According to Halil İnalcık, the first Ottoman capitulation was granted to the Genoese in 1352; the date 1536 cited for France is disputed.
- The damage grew with the fixing of the customs duty at 3% and with the protection spread through dragoman berats.
- The Treaty of Balta Liman (1838) confirmed the existing privileges indefinitely.
- The capitulations were abolished unilaterally on 8 September 1914; the Treaty of Lausanne made this final in 1923.
Contents
- What were the Ottoman capitulations?
- Why were they granted?
- Who received the first capitulation?
- How did they become harmful?
- The Treaty of Balta Liman (1838)
- How they differ from the foreign debts
- How were they abolished?
- Historians’ views
- Frequently asked questions
What Were the Ottoman Capitulations?
The Ottomans granted these privileges through documents called ahidnames, which were drawn up in the form of a berat. Mübahat Kütükoğlu defines the ahidname as a document containing commercial privileges granted to foreign states, or peace treaties. The documents were issued after a fatwa had been obtained from the shaykh al-islam, on the basis of eman, that is, the guarantee of safety in Islamic law. A foreign merchant who came under eman was called a müste’men.
According to Halil İnalcık, until the 18th century all capitulations had the character of a unilateral grant by the sultan. The most important condition of eman was that the requesting state should apply with a promise of friendship and loyalty. An ahidname was bound to the person of the sultan who granted it; its validity continued if the next sultan performed tecdid, that is, renewed it.
What Rights Did the Capitulations Grant?
According to the articles cited by Kütükoğlu, no haraç (kharaj, a tax levied on non-Muslims) was collected from a müste’men. His house could be entered only in compelling cases, such as harbouring a criminal or a captive, or keeping contraband goods. A dispute between two people of the same nation was heard by the consul or the ambassador. Cases involving Ottoman subjects, however, were heard in the qadi’s court, and those exceeding 4,000 akçe could be heard only in Istanbul.
At customs, however, foreign merchants were not privileged at first. According to Kütükoğlu, in the 16th century the rates were generally as follows: 3% from Muslims, 4% from non-Muslim subjects and 5% from foreigners known as harbi (non-Muslims from lands outside Islamic rule). According to İnalcık, müste’mens normally lived in particular quarters and hans (merchant inns) of certain ports; we described these buildings in our article on places of trade in the Ottoman Empire.
Why Did the Ottoman State Grant These Privileges?
According to İnalcık, when granting an ahidname the sultan took into account both the principles of Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh) and political expectations. Gaining allies in the Christian world, raw materials that were hard to obtain, customs revenue and cash for the treasury were also weighed. In the development of commercial relations with England, for example, political calculations against Spain and the tin and steel needed for making weapons played a part.
Kütükoğlu, by contrast, emphasizes the economic motive. In her view, the state wanted to keep the Near East on the route of the Far East–Europe trade, as it had been before the geographical discoveries. Developing trade within its own lands was another aim. For this reason, from the 14th century onward it renewed the privileges that the Seljuks, Byzantium and the Mamluks had granted to the Genoese and the Venetians. We discussed the effect of the discoveries in our article on the impact of the geographical discoveries on the Ottomans.
Something was also expected in return for a privilege. According to İnalcık, if mutual benefit did not materialize, the sultan could annul the ahidname, declaring that the friendship had been broken. When an ahidname conflicted with a law (kanun) or an imperial decree (ferman), however, the ahidname prevailed.
To Whom and When Was the First Capitulation Granted?
According to İnalcık, the Anatolian Seljuk sultans had granted commercial privileges to the Kingdom of Cyprus and to the Venetians as early as 1207. The Ottomans, for their part, gave the first Ottoman capitulation in 1352, when they first crossed into Rumelia, to the Genoese, who were then at war with Venice. This text is lost, but an ahidname dated 7 June 1387 has survived. Venice’s privileges were renewed by Selim I in 1513 and by Suleiman the Magnificent in 1521.
Did the Capitulations Begin under Suleiman the Magnificent?
In the popular account, the first capitulation is said to have been granted to France in 1536, in the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent. The TDV Encyclopedia of Islam contains two approaches to this question. Kütükoğlu, in the entry “Ahidnâme”, refers to the ahidname granted to France with the date 1536. İnalcık, by contrast, states in the entry “İmtiyâzât” that the 1536 text was an unratified draft.
According to İnalcık, the French ambassador Jean de la Forest wrote a draft while negotiating with İbrahim Pasha. The draft remained unratified because of İbrahim Pasha’s execution, and it took the form of a bilateral treaty. The privileges of the period, however, were unilateral grants by the sultan. In his view, the capitulation attributed to the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent was in fact a renewed form of the Mamluk capitulations.
İnalcık dates the first ratified general capitulation with France to 18 October 1569. When Selim II came to the throne, a new ahidname was needed, and the ambassador Claude du Bourg obtained it without difficulty. At that time the state was preparing a campaign against Cyprus, which was in Venetian hands. We told the story of this campaign in our article on the conquest of Cyprus.
According to Kütükoğlu, after France, England received an ahidname in 1580, the Netherlands in 1612 and Austria in 1616. In the 18th century Sweden, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, Denmark, Prussia and Spain obtained similar ones.
How Did the Capitulations Become Harmful?
The damage grew not from a single decision but from three mechanisms piling up on top of one another. These were the fixing of customs duties, the ahidnames becoming permanent and the extension of protection to Ottoman subjects.
How Were the Customs Rates Fixed?
According to İnalcık, the first ahidnames stated that customs duty would be collected “according to custom and law”, without specifying a percentage. Thus Mehmed the Conqueror had no difficulty raising the rate from 2% to 4%, and to 5% at the end of his reign. In the end, however, the foreign states succeeded in fixing the tariff and having it written into the ahidnames. According to Kütükoğlu, the English were the first to obtain the 3% rate. This right, which they received by a berat at the end of the 16th century, was extended by the ahidname of 1601 to places such as Aleppo and Egypt.
This led merchants of other states, who paid 5%, to trade under the English flag. The Dutch obtained the same rate in 1612 and the Austrians in 1616, while the French reached it only in the 1670s. In the 18th century, the states that gained the status of “most-favoured nation” also acquired the same right.
How Did the Ahidnames Become Permanent?
According to İnalcık, after 1683 the Sublime Porte was in need of diplomatic support in Europe. It therefore began to grant new privileges as a token of political assistance. The French ambassador Villeneuve acted as mediator in the Treaty of Belgrade of 1739 and won the broadest privileges for France. In İnalcık’s words, these privileges were confirmed “on behalf of his successors as well”. Yet the rule had been that important ahidnames were reviewed again whenever the throne changed hands.
In the popular account, the capitulations are said to have become “perpetual” with this ahidname of 1740. İnalcık, however, names the Treaty of Balta Liman (1838) as the text that confirmed the privileges “indefinitely”. On the other hand, the rights Russia obtained at Küçük Kaynarca (1774) were not a unilateral grant. They rested on a treaty binding both parties. That is why, when the government wanted to stop the grain ships five years later, Russia regarded this as “nakz-ı ahd”, that is, a breach of the covenant.
Why Did the Berat-Holding Merchants Become a Problem?
According to İnalcık, what really weakened the state was the extension of the privileges to non-Muslim Ottoman subjects as well. The dragomans (interpreters) employed by ambassadors and consuls were exempt, thanks to their berats, from the jizya and other taxes. Over time these berats were obtained even for non-Muslims who did not so much as claim to be dragomans. Thus the berat holders gained financial and legal advantages like the müste’mens and paid very low customs duties.
As İnalcık reports, in 1793 in Aleppo alone some 1,500 non-Muslim merchants had obtained dragoman berats. An inspection revealed that only six of them were genuine dragomans. Around 1808 Russia, too, enrolled 120,000 Ottoman Greeks in the class of the “mahmi”, that is, protected persons.
In the reign of Selim III, statesmen took measures to save their own subjects from remaining an unprivileged class. Non-Muslim merchants trading with Europe were given berats of privilege and exemption under the name “Avrupa tüccarı” (“Europe merchants”). According to Kütükoğlu, non-Muslim subjects were thus granted more rights than Muslims. Later the same rights were granted to Muslim merchants as well, under the name “hayriye tüccarı” (“auspicious merchants”).
What Did the Treaty of Balta Liman (1838) Change?
From the reign of Selim III onward, governors from the ayan (provincial notables), such as Cezzar Ahmed Pasha and Muhammad Ali Pasha of Kavala, also took action. They fought the European merchants by banning exports and imposing monopolies. The central government, too, resorted to monopoly through the yed-i vahid (literally “single hand”) and iltizam (tax-farming) methods. According to İnalcık, domestic trade taxes were in any case outside the scope of the capitulations.
Britain, for its part, wanted a safer and more stable Ottoman market in the 1830s, driven by the need for expansion that the Industrial Revolution had brought. According to İnalcık, it achieved this with the Treaty of Balta Liman, taking advantage of the state’s internal political crises. According to Kemal Beydilli, the Foreign Minister Mustafa Reşid Pasha played an important role in the treaty, which was signed on 16 August 1838. The aim was to secure Britain’s military and political support against Muhammad Ali Pasha.
The treaty provided for the abolition of the state monopoly. According to İnalcık, it confirmed the existing capitulation privileges indefinitely, abolished internal duties and introduced customs duties of 3% on imports and 9% on exports. In his view, this 9% duty was a blow to independence in customs policy. Kütükoğlu, on the other hand, writes that a 9% âmediye and a 3% reftiye were set on exports, and 3% plus a 2% additional (munzam) duty on imports. In her view, the 9% and the 2% were in fact internal duties; there was no increase in external customs.
Why Did Local Producers Struggle?
According to Kütükoğlu, foreign merchants did not always pay these internal duties. They paid them when they bought export goods at the place of production or took imported goods into the interior. After the Tanzimat, the 1838 rates were applied to internal customs as well. As a result, a total duty of 12% began to be collected on goods carried from one port to another for the domestic market.
With the Kanlıca treaties (1861), customs partly moved to a protectionist system. The import duty was raised from 3% to 8%, and the export duty was gradually reduced to 1%. In the 1880s, ways were sought to protect local products, which paid several times more in duties than European goods. The negotiations, however, produced no result.
Kütükoğlu writes that local industry grew steadily weaker after European factory goods had “occupied” Ottoman markets. For this reason the state allowed agricultural implements and factory machinery to enter duty-free. The duty on some local industrial products was also temporarily abolished.
Are the Capitulations and the Foreign Debts the Same Thing?
The two subjects are often confused, but they are separate processes. According to the entry “Düyûn-ı Umûmiyye”, statesmen strongly avoided foreign borrowing for a long time. The first loan agreement was signed during the Crimean War, on 24 August 1854. The number of loan agreements reached fifteen by 1874, and in the end the treasury went bankrupt.
The Decree of Muharrem (20 December 1881) established the Ottoman Public Debt Administration (Düyûn-ı Umûmiyye), run by representatives of the creditors. In short, the capitulations restricted the spheres of customs and jurisdiction. Borrowing, on the other hand, placed some sources of revenue under the control of the creditors. The two processes nevertheless intersected: the revenues of the Syrian and Izmir customs were also pledged as security for the loans of 1854 and 1855.
When and How Were the Ottoman Capitulations Abolished?
Among the causes of the Crimean War was also a claim based on the capitulations. According to İnalcık, Russia asserted that an old privilege had been violated. At the Paris peace conference (1856) it was decided that the abolition of these privileges would be discussed at a separate conference in Istanbul. That conference, however, never met. When the commercial treaties were renewed in 1861–1862, the privileges were confirmed again in their entirety.
The statesmen of the Tanzimat believed that the first and fundamental step towards recovery was to get rid of the capitulations. According to İnalcık, by the end of the 19th century the state had come to a position “no different from semi-colonial status”. Public services such as banks, shipping lines, mines, the port, the post and the telephone were in the hands of privileged European companies.
From 1908 onward, every government put the abolition of the capitulations at the top of its programme. When the First World War broke out, the Ottoman state put this forward as its main principle while defining its stance of neutrality. Britain, France and Russia made no clear promise. Thereupon the financial, economic, legal and administrative privileges were abolished by an imperial decree (ferman) dated 8 September 1914.
The capitulatory powers protested against this unilateral decision. According to Kütükoğlu, the government also raised the customs rate to 15% on 30 September 1914. According to İnalcık, the Treaty of Sèvres restored the privileges unchanged and extended them to the other victorious states as well.
What Was Decided at Lausanne?
According to Şerafettin Turan, in the first phase of the conference no agreement could be reached on the islands, Mosul, the capitulations and the war reparations demanded from Greece. The treaty was signed on 24 July 1923, and under Article 28 the parties accepted the “complete abolition” of the capitulations in Turkey. A few foreign experts would serve the judiciary for five years, but their recommendations would not be binding on the Turkish government.
How Do Historians Assess the Capitulations?
According to Halil İnalcık, until the 18th century these privileges posed no threat to the Ottoman state and its economy. The administration was in a position to prevent abuses. In his view, growing abuse made the state politically and economically dependent on Western Europe in the late 18th century. The French ambassador Choiseul-Gouffier, too, regarded the Ottoman state in 1788 as “a very rich colony” of France.
According to Mübahat Kütükoğlu, some Ottoman officials did not know the terms well or knowingly failed to apply them. Smuggling by foreign merchants, the abuse of dragoman status and the backing of the embassies also led to violations. Even so, the administration took great care to apply the ahidnames. In 1729, for example, an order was issued approving the collection of excess customs duty from French merchants in Basra. When the error was noticed, this record was deleted two years later on the application of the French ambassador.
Cengiz Kallek, looking at the Islamic world as a whole, reaches a more critical conclusion. In his view, the privileges often reflected the slow but steady colonization policies of the European states. They served the interests of the beneficiary country more than those of the granting country and gave rise to unfair competition. Local merchants taking refuge under foreign protection also weakened national sovereignty.
Frequently Asked Questions
What Does Capitulation Mean?
It is a commercial and legal privilege that the sultan granted by ahidname to the merchants of a friendly state.
Who Received the First Capitulation?
According to İnalcık, it was granted to the Genoese in 1352. For France, Kütükoğlu gives 1536, while İnalcık gives 1569 as the first ratified general text.
When Were the Capitulations Abolished?
The Ottoman state abolished them unilaterally on 8 September 1914; international acceptance came with the Treaty of Lausanne of 24 July 1923.
What Harm Did the Ottoman Capitulations Do?
The main harms were the fixing of customs duties at a low rate and the financial and legal privileges that spread to berat holders. According to Kütükoğlu, in the 1880s local products were paying several times more in duties than European goods.
Conclusion
The Ottoman capitulations originated as privileges granted unilaterally in return for friendship. According to İnalcık, they did not threaten the economy until the 18th century because the administration was able to prevent abuses. Once the balance of power shifted, the low customs duties fixed in place, the ahidnames confirmed on behalf of successors and the protection spread through berat holders became a lasting burden. According to İnalcık, the ever-growing abuse made the state dependent on Western Europe in the late 18th century, and the Treaty of Balta Liman (1838) confirmed the existing privileges indefinitely. Kallek, meanwhile, generally regards the privileges as a reflection of colonization policies.
Sources
- TDV Encyclopedia of Islam, entry “İmtiyâzât” (Capitulations)
- TDV Encyclopedia of Islam, entry “Ahidnâme” (Ahidname)
- TDV Encyclopedia of Islam, entry “Gümrük” (Customs)
- TDV Encyclopedia of Islam, entry “Mustafa Reşid Paşa” (Mustafa Reşid Pasha)
- TDV Encyclopedia of Islam, entry “Düyûn-ı Umûmiyye” (Ottoman Public Debt Administration)
- TDV Encyclopedia of Islam, entry “Lozan Antlaşması” (Treaty of Lausanne)
