Conflict Between Defendants and Victims and State Intervention in Late Ottoman Crete

This article explores the late nineteenth-century transformation in Cretan law and interprets it as a strengthening of the criminal justice system. I argue that this interpretation clarifies the relationship between the Cretan state, on which the law was built, and interpersonal conflict between Cretans, while showing how Tanzimat reforms worked in practice. The violence involved in such interpersonal conflict is seen as a precursor to the violence that occurred in a society that valued mechanisms of communal justice as alternatives to weak state-sponsored justice. Closer societal analysis in fact shows the inaccuracy of labeling Cretan criminal justice institutions in this period as weak. While there was the understanding that responses to threat were symbolically necessary, they were part of the private realm and thus not technically considered criminal activities. However, retaliation in relation to an occurrence perceived to have taken place in the private realm was combined with methods of adjudication from state structures. This combination shows a tension between self-administered and state justice at this moment in Cretan history.