Repositioning Agency and the Forces of Change

Abstract

The process by which the Ottoman state successfully marginalized the powerful ayan and eliminated the Janissary garrisons by the 1830s opened up a series of opportunities for an entirely different set of actors. Among those most directly affected was a dedicated group of men just beginning to infiltrate the Ottoman state bureaucracy. As the intellectual force behind some of the most important transformations of the Ottoman state policies toward the western Balkans, this Tanzimat-era generation has been the focus of numerous studies interested in linking classes of people to “modernity” (Mardin 2000). As argued, these men, who formed a crucial part of the ascendant effendiyya class, initiated a new direction of government associated with the larger phenomenon of modernization in the industrializing world.