Studying Economics as War Effort: The First Economic Treatise in the Ottoman Empire and its Militaristic Motivations

Abstract

The introduction of post-Smithian economics into the Ottoman Empire in the early nineteenth century was primarily militaristically motivated. The first known treatise of economics in Ottoman-Turkish is a manuscript, entitled Risâle-i Tedbîr-i Ûmrân-ı Mülkî (A Treatise on the Administration of the Prosperity of the Country/State, c.1835), written exclusively for the Ottoman political-military elite. The manuscript is based mostly on Jean-Baptiste Say’s Cours complet d'économie politique pratique (1828-29). The anonymous author of this 84-page manuscript begins the text with the argument that military technologies and institutions got more sophisticated in modern times and the necessary institutional upgrading to catch up with these changes created a heavy burden on central state finances. This new discipline, i.e. economics, according to the author, provides statesmen with new scientific principles for organizing an effective war economy. Focusing on the militaristic objectives and content of the first known example of the Ottoman-Turkish economic literature, this paper examines the relationship between war and economics in the early nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire. It also sheds light on the linguistic and cultural dynamics of the transmission of economic ideas into the Ottoman Empire.