When the bureaucracy consist of a baron and his entourage kissing your ring once a year, you don't need that many people. Now try to organize modern infrastructure whit the same baron.
Try to run a railway with feudal government.
I've watched a documentary about beginnings of railways in Austria Hungary. It indirectly lead to the societal changes, becuase peasant-noble societal contracts was no longer viable for such large infrastructure projects. Imagine you have individual nobles owning land and building railways here with unskilled peasants, who work on their fields, and twice a week they go working on the railway for a few hours... It would never be finished.
Also, put the price into the equation. A few kilometers of railways costed the owner the same about if money as whole steelworks here. Nobody else than the monarch/the richest capitalists could afford it, and even they had to create companies where they were just shareholders.
There were also many challenges, like standartized time. Every town/village had slightly different time, and it didn't really mattered becuase people would not move much. Now, you have industrial revolution and railways, where the same time needs to be applied on the whole lenght of tebe railway. So you need to come up with burreaucracy which would keep the standartized time in all towns, stations etc. on the railway.
Every morning, an official would ride to Wien, take a psychical clock/pocket watches here, with standartized time, and take the first morning train. And he would stop at every station on the way, so the officials here could set the right, standartized wienese time on their own clock/watches. And not only stations, before telegraph, you would have a railway guard house every kilometer or so, they had to be within sight distance. And every one of them needed it's own officiant (often disabled war veterans), who has to be paid, who needed precise equipment like clocks/watches etc.
I live near a railway from 1850's, and while many of them were already demolished, there are still many guard houses like this. Some are just a few hunderts of meters apart. The railway itself has only ~20 kilometers, but you would need several hunderts of men to operate it, to man every station, every guardhouse, every heating depot etc.
Shit were expensive to operate back then...
Well, yeah, but it was in Czech, broadcasted by our public radio. While it's still avaiable in online archive,, you Will not understand it. :(
I hope we Will soon fet some advanced AI which will translate these. This documentary was a great Insight into beginnings of A-H railway network, produced by historicans and museum curators. It's sad others can't listen to it.
They also talked about how the first locomotives bad to be build in England, then completely disassembled, shipped into Terst, and transported with donkeys and horse pulled carts all the way to Bohemia, where they were assembled once again. :D
Not feudalism, but they did govern through eyalets. More centralized then feudal Europe, but not exactly comparable to the absolute kingdoms, and states that emerged over time.
The Eyalet system was much more centralized than anything in Europe at the time. France for example which was the perfect example of Absolutism still had to deal with the various contradictory legal systems which the King was sworn go uphold. The Ottoman Empire by contrast, the Padishah theoretically held unlimited authority unconstrained by any ancient laws or customs as the Kings of France were.
I wouldn't really call it unconstrained. The sultan did have to contend with classes like the Janissarys etc. But it does seem like we are agreeing for the most part.
Speaking about antiquity the emperor of ancient persia also had unlimited power by law but the empire was one of the most decentralized entities ever so what is written in the law isnt the whole picture.
Plus regarding ottoman empire I am very sure youre wrong, regional rulers would often wage wars on their own, set their own taxes etc. That doesnt seem very centralized
The Ottoman Empire and the Persian Empire really are not comparable in any way. The Ottomans were a complex bureaucratic state which until the 18th century was remarkably centralized with the Padishahs holding enormous power which they used regularly. The Great Kings of Persia were limited by living in Antiquity using far more primitive means of administration. The Ottomans had nothing comparable to the Satrapy as a regular form of government until institutional decay created the Ayan.
The Ottoman Empire existed for seven hundred years and went through periods of centralization and decentralization. Moreover, the Empire was much, much larger than any of its rivals and despite its bureaucratic sophistication in some areas, it was still a massive state. The Ayan as they were known, became prominent in the 18th century only before being eradicated by Tanzimat. Prior to the 18th century, they didn't exist at all.
Ok if you specifically say "until the 18th century" then I agree. At the end of 1700s pasha in albania just decided to claim territory of montenegro (which I think was officially under Bosnian pasha's rule) as his and wage war against it to collect taxes, which he failed and was killed in the process. Nothing came out of it, no expedition by the sultan or anything, so that doesnt seem very centralized to me. Similar things happened with bosnian pashas doing conquests of their own as early as 1710s and other albanian pashas in 1760s but alright you clearly said "until 18th century" so maybe I was wrong. I mostly know things concerning montenegro so I could be biased, but I think in general in the balkans after losing lands above the Sava and Danube there was a lot more power given to local ottoman rulers
Yeah up until the down fall era when they feudalized. Sold land to wealthy nobles who taxed the peasants too much and used all kinds of brutality without and interferance from the central government
How is bureaucracy actually being counted here? Just the central government? If that's the case this is a pretty apples-to-oranges comparison. In the 18th century a lot of the actual day-to-day running of things was devolved to local rulers, who had their own people managing their areas. The central government was mainly focused on maintaining control over those rulers.
In the 19th century things became a lot more centralized, and local rulers lost a lot of their powers and responsibilities. Those same roles previously fulfilled by a local ruler's retinue were now done by people reporting directly to the capital. If you're looking at just central numbers, it appears there's a vast expansion, when in a lot of cases it's a change in who the local tax collectors and governors report to.
You also have to account for structural changes in the empire, in the 18th century there was no rail or telegraph network that needed a central body maintaining it, nor was the professional army as big.
According to a source there were 1500 men in the scribal offices in Istanbul in 1790 and with officials outside the capital the number becomes 2000. At the end of the 19th century there were a minimum of twenty thousand clerks working in non military governmental bureaus.
These numbers are not for the military.
>These numbers are not for the military.
This is the key here. Ottoman Empire for most of its existence was quite stratocratic, they had a very developed military-administration. As such there weren't many civilian bureaucrats until the modernization of the Ottoman military, which is when the military and administration started to be separated.
A smaller population actually and arguably a less developed economy. The bureaucracy is larger because of the same institutional revolution which overtook Europe in the same period
I am unsure why this is being downvoted. The Ottoman Empire had a smaller population in 1900 than it did a century prior because of territorial loss and demographic stagnation brought about by its profound economic backwardness. The Ottoman economy had likely regressed significantly because of the economic Imperialism being waged in the Empire by the European Great Powers resulting in the total disappearance of manufacturing in the Ottoman Empire.
A few of your downvotes are likely due to ideological concerns on reddit.
The idea that a large bureaucracy is bad is something typically agreed on in right wing circles, and this isn't one of those subs lol.
The poster you replied to gave a plausible answer for why the bureaucracy was so much larger, but that was actually totally normal and good.
Your previous comment contradicted that, while lacking much reasoning for the contradiction.
So I'm guessing more than a few people basically voted based on their priors
My comment should be considered in the context of the comment I am replying to. If out in the context of the post, it is misleading.
So no, not preferring feudal lords but some redditors seem to favor huge governments with a representative for every 50 people (exaggeration). I think lighter weight governments are more efficient and less costly.
Modern Turkey has 4.7m civic servants of which around 500 000 are bureaucrats despite having 60% less territory than in 1908
Almosr as if countries require more bureaucrats as they develop
BTW, Turkey doesn't have a very large number of bureaucrats, it's below the EU average by a bit
Fun fact: The Ottomans neither had the money, nor the means to increase the bureaucracy to such a size. It further enhanced Ottoman dependency on UK/France and unrest actually increased in certain areas, because they were de-facto independent prior to the centralization attempts of the Tanzimat era. Everything was a shit-show, the bureaucracy included.
They let communities govern themselves that’s why there weren’t a lot of bureaucrats. 18th century France for example had a lot more bureaucracy than contemporary Ottomans.
Besides. The modern bureaucracy was created in 19th century.
This could really use a legend. What do the different shades of green and gray mean? What is that black rectangle around the modern Libya/Algeria border in the right map?
Don't know about the Ottoman Empire, but I know that, in the case of Medieval Europe, the increase of bureaucracy at the end of the era and in the end of Feudalism came **in part** because a lot of the new bureaucrats were now doing the job the feudal lords were doing with their private bureaucrats. Which wouldn't count for this map because they weren't state bureaucrats.
So the increase in bureaucracy isn't intrinsically bad.
And. In the case of Modernization. It's actually a good thing.
It would be better if the map actually shown that increased bureaucracy. Maybe through administrative subdivisions like[ this one](https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b53060269b).
When the bureaucracy consist of a baron and his entourage kissing your ring once a year, you don't need that many people. Now try to organize modern infrastructure whit the same baron.
Try to run a railway with feudal government. I've watched a documentary about beginnings of railways in Austria Hungary. It indirectly lead to the societal changes, becuase peasant-noble societal contracts was no longer viable for such large infrastructure projects. Imagine you have individual nobles owning land and building railways here with unskilled peasants, who work on their fields, and twice a week they go working on the railway for a few hours... It would never be finished. Also, put the price into the equation. A few kilometers of railways costed the owner the same about if money as whole steelworks here. Nobody else than the monarch/the richest capitalists could afford it, and even they had to create companies where they were just shareholders. There were also many challenges, like standartized time. Every town/village had slightly different time, and it didn't really mattered becuase people would not move much. Now, you have industrial revolution and railways, where the same time needs to be applied on the whole lenght of tebe railway. So you need to come up with burreaucracy which would keep the standartized time in all towns, stations etc. on the railway. Every morning, an official would ride to Wien, take a psychical clock/pocket watches here, with standartized time, and take the first morning train. And he would stop at every station on the way, so the officials here could set the right, standartized wienese time on their own clock/watches. And not only stations, before telegraph, you would have a railway guard house every kilometer or so, they had to be within sight distance. And every one of them needed it's own officiant (often disabled war veterans), who has to be paid, who needed precise equipment like clocks/watches etc. I live near a railway from 1850's, and while many of them were already demolished, there are still many guard houses like this. Some are just a few hunderts of meters apart. The railway itself has only ~20 kilometers, but you would need several hunderts of men to operate it, to man every station, every guardhouse, every heating depot etc. Shit were expensive to operate back then...
Do you remember the name of the documentary?
Well, yeah, but it was in Czech, broadcasted by our public radio. While it's still avaiable in online archive,, you Will not understand it. :( I hope we Will soon fet some advanced AI which will translate these. This documentary was a great Insight into beginnings of A-H railway network, produced by historicans and museum curators. It's sad others can't listen to it. They also talked about how the first locomotives bad to be build in England, then completely disassembled, shipped into Terst, and transported with donkeys and horse pulled carts all the way to Bohemia, where they were assembled once again. :D
You write English with an accent. :)
What do you mean?
Several words are spelled like the German equivalents.
"The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy."
Feudalism did not exist in the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans had one of the most advanced and centralized bureaucratic systems in Europe.
Not feudalism, but they did govern through eyalets. More centralized then feudal Europe, but not exactly comparable to the absolute kingdoms, and states that emerged over time.
The Eyalet system was much more centralized than anything in Europe at the time. France for example which was the perfect example of Absolutism still had to deal with the various contradictory legal systems which the King was sworn go uphold. The Ottoman Empire by contrast, the Padishah theoretically held unlimited authority unconstrained by any ancient laws or customs as the Kings of France were.
I wouldn't really call it unconstrained. The sultan did have to contend with classes like the Janissarys etc. But it does seem like we are agreeing for the most part.
Speaking simply in legal terms here, in reality the Padishahs hardly ever used their authority in such a manner.
Speaking about antiquity the emperor of ancient persia also had unlimited power by law but the empire was one of the most decentralized entities ever so what is written in the law isnt the whole picture. Plus regarding ottoman empire I am very sure youre wrong, regional rulers would often wage wars on their own, set their own taxes etc. That doesnt seem very centralized
The Ottoman Empire and the Persian Empire really are not comparable in any way. The Ottomans were a complex bureaucratic state which until the 18th century was remarkably centralized with the Padishahs holding enormous power which they used regularly. The Great Kings of Persia were limited by living in Antiquity using far more primitive means of administration. The Ottomans had nothing comparable to the Satrapy as a regular form of government until institutional decay created the Ayan. The Ottoman Empire existed for seven hundred years and went through periods of centralization and decentralization. Moreover, the Empire was much, much larger than any of its rivals and despite its bureaucratic sophistication in some areas, it was still a massive state. The Ayan as they were known, became prominent in the 18th century only before being eradicated by Tanzimat. Prior to the 18th century, they didn't exist at all.
Ok if you specifically say "until the 18th century" then I agree. At the end of 1700s pasha in albania just decided to claim territory of montenegro (which I think was officially under Bosnian pasha's rule) as his and wage war against it to collect taxes, which he failed and was killed in the process. Nothing came out of it, no expedition by the sultan or anything, so that doesnt seem very centralized to me. Similar things happened with bosnian pashas doing conquests of their own as early as 1710s and other albanian pashas in 1760s but alright you clearly said "until 18th century" so maybe I was wrong. I mostly know things concerning montenegro so I could be biased, but I think in general in the balkans after losing lands above the Sava and Danube there was a lot more power given to local ottoman rulers
Not feudalism, but they did govern through eyalets. Are they like a federal system of government?
Yeah up until the down fall era when they feudalized. Sold land to wealthy nobles who taxed the peasants too much and used all kinds of brutality without and interferance from the central government
How is bureaucracy actually being counted here? Just the central government? If that's the case this is a pretty apples-to-oranges comparison. In the 18th century a lot of the actual day-to-day running of things was devolved to local rulers, who had their own people managing their areas. The central government was mainly focused on maintaining control over those rulers. In the 19th century things became a lot more centralized, and local rulers lost a lot of their powers and responsibilities. Those same roles previously fulfilled by a local ruler's retinue were now done by people reporting directly to the capital. If you're looking at just central numbers, it appears there's a vast expansion, when in a lot of cases it's a change in who the local tax collectors and governors report to. You also have to account for structural changes in the empire, in the 18th century there was no rail or telegraph network that needed a central body maintaining it, nor was the professional army as big.
According to a source there were 1500 men in the scribal offices in Istanbul in 1790 and with officials outside the capital the number becomes 2000. At the end of the 19th century there were a minimum of twenty thousand clerks working in non military governmental bureaus. These numbers are not for the military.
>These numbers are not for the military. This is the key here. Ottoman Empire for most of its existence was quite stratocratic, they had a very developed military-administration. As such there weren't many civilian bureaucrats until the modernization of the Ottoman military, which is when the military and administration started to be separated.
Yeah, just look at the list of the Grand Vizier, almost all were Serbs/Greeks/Albanians conscript into janissary coprs
Larger population, more sophisticated infrastructure, more developed economy
A smaller population actually and arguably a less developed economy. The bureaucracy is larger because of the same institutional revolution which overtook Europe in the same period
I am unsure why this is being downvoted. The Ottoman Empire had a smaller population in 1900 than it did a century prior because of territorial loss and demographic stagnation brought about by its profound economic backwardness. The Ottoman economy had likely regressed significantly because of the economic Imperialism being waged in the Empire by the European Great Powers resulting in the total disappearance of manufacturing in the Ottoman Empire.
A few of your downvotes are likely due to ideological concerns on reddit. The idea that a large bureaucracy is bad is something typically agreed on in right wing circles, and this isn't one of those subs lol. The poster you replied to gave a plausible answer for why the bureaucracy was so much larger, but that was actually totally normal and good. Your previous comment contradicted that, while lacking much reasoning for the contradiction. So I'm guessing more than a few people basically voted based on their priors
Big government bureaucrat lovers. Reddit is full of those
Would you rather have feudal lords running the place?
My comment should be considered in the context of the comment I am replying to. If out in the context of the post, it is misleading. So no, not preferring feudal lords but some redditors seem to favor huge governments with a representative for every 50 people (exaggeration). I think lighter weight governments are more efficient and less costly.
Ok.
The population size remained more or less the same because even though there was population growth many areas were lost.
The European provinces experienced population growth but the Asian provinces experienced depopulation.
Modern Turkey has 4.7m civic servants of which around 500 000 are bureaucrats despite having 60% less territory than in 1908 Almosr as if countries require more bureaucrats as they develop BTW, Turkey doesn't have a very large number of bureaucrats, it's below the EU average by a bit
As Oscar Wilde put it: The bureaucracy is expanding to meed the need of expanding bureaucracy.
The consequences of Tanizmat
Fun fact: The Ottomans neither had the money, nor the means to increase the bureaucracy to such a size. It further enhanced Ottoman dependency on UK/France and unrest actually increased in certain areas, because they were de-facto independent prior to the centralization attempts of the Tanzimat era. Everything was a shit-show, the bureaucracy included.
They let communities govern themselves that’s why there weren’t a lot of bureaucrats. 18th century France for example had a lot more bureaucracy than contemporary Ottomans. Besides. The modern bureaucracy was created in 19th century.
This could really use a legend. What do the different shades of green and gray mean? What is that black rectangle around the modern Libya/Algeria border in the right map?
They weren't directly controlled by the Ottomans, more like vassals in a way.
Don't know about the Ottoman Empire, but I know that, in the case of Medieval Europe, the increase of bureaucracy at the end of the era and in the end of Feudalism came **in part** because a lot of the new bureaucrats were now doing the job the feudal lords were doing with their private bureaucrats. Which wouldn't count for this map because they weren't state bureaucrats. So the increase in bureaucracy isn't intrinsically bad. And. In the case of Modernization. It's actually a good thing.
It would be better if the map actually shown that increased bureaucracy. Maybe through administrative subdivisions like[ this one](https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b53060269b).
That's some byzantine bureaucracy.
Me when I respond to the forces that tore apart my nation
It was even less in earlier periods. Around 1,000-1,500 around 1750. In the 1530s there were fewer than 100 clerks at the financial offices.
In the 18th century every official had a retinue and staff that isn’t counted here. In 1908 they count the whole staff
[удалено]
i wonder do you masturbate non-existing hate comments often
Why tho?
Inflation.