Artisan Entrepreneurs in Cairo and Early-Modern Capitalism (1600–1800)

3 A Period of Unprecedented Social Mobility for Nonelites

80 A Period of Unprecedented Social Mobility for Nonelites The Processes In the latter part of the seventeenth century, artisans in general and entrepreneurs in particular confronted two broad trends, both of which affected their lives and their work. Following a period of recession in midcentury, there were more trade and an expansion of economic resources, on the one hand, and more political presence in the economy, on the other. These two interlinked trends were the result of regional and world trading conditions as well as of local social dynamics. They evidently had an impact on merchants, who made great benefits from the rising trade in coffee and Indian textiles, and on members of the power structure, who were in the process of penetrating major economic activities. The issue of concern here is the impact of these two trends on those lower on the social ladder—namely, artisans and small entrepreneurs. On a broader level, the study of these conditions adds a new dimension to our understanding of how commercialization functioned under variable conditions. Retraction Followed by Expansion The economic history of the seventeenth century is still a largely unexplored field of study. It appears nevertheless that the economy may have retracted around midcentury. A couple of factors may have been behind this retraction. First, serious monetary problems made their appearance around then, as Sevket Pamuk’s research has shown and which I discuss in more detail in chapter 6.1 Shortage of money may explain why so many transactions were done on credit not only in Cairo, but in many other cities of the Ottoman Empire, as Ronald Jennings’s work has clearly shown.2 Social Mobility for Nonelites | 81 Second, the “seventeenth-century crisis” occurred, a phenomenon that was caused by numerous factors, touched many parts of Europe, and brought a slow-down of world trade. An important literature exists about this crisis and raises numerous questions as to whether it was a European crisis or a world crisis .3 It has been variously attributed to the transition from feudalism to capitalism in Europe, to global climate change, and to sixteenth-century population growth that was unmatched with agricultural expansion. It manifested itself by a decrease in production and trade and in the retraction of agriculture.4 With regard to the Ottoman Empire, Karen Barkey links this crisis to the rulers’ political problems, which caused peasant rebellions.5 Suraiya Faroqhi notes a certain decline in production and trade, especially of textiles, in the last years of the sixteenth century and the beginning of the seventeenth, especially at the time of the Jelali revolts, but this decline was followed by a recovery of the economy, in some cases to higher levels than before the crisis.6 Although no scholarly literature shows that Egypt was part of this crisis, it may have felt the consequences of the crisis in an indirect way through its trading partners. By the end of the seventeenth century, once the crisis subsided, an expansion of economic resources again occurred, for which a number of explanations have been forwarded. One explanation points to the more intensive global exchanges of the period and the greater demand for goods. Pamuk found that in several parts of the Ottoman Empire, Anatolia, and the Balkans there were more trade and more production.7 Europe was recovering from the crisis it had suffered previously in this century, when civil wars and social conflicts had torn it apart. Several studies have shown a growth of production and consumption in Europe as more and more people looked for and purchased goods and commodities and as markets made these goods available. In Cairo, the most important manifestation of this intense exchange can be seen in the trade in coffee from Yemen, over which merchants in Cairo had a virtual monopoly for more than half a century, and in the trade in Indian textiles, for which there was a growing demand worldwide. Another possible explanation for the expansion of resources may be the change in the yearly remittances sent from Cairo to Istanbul. As mentioned earlier, Egypt had to send a yearly tribute of about half a million gold coins to Istanbul. Its tribute was higher than that of any other Ottoman province. Political developments of the eighteenth century, as studies by Stanford Shaw and 82 | Artisan Entrepreneurs in Cairo and Early-Modern Capitalism André Raymond show, indicate a gradual reduction of these...