Coping with famines in Ottoman Anatolia (1650-1850)

Abstract

This chapter attempts to stitch together that sporadic information to construct a longue duree analysis of famines that took place in Ottoman Anatolia for around two centuries defined by crises and reconfiguration. Pioneering studies have offered explanations for the late sixteenth-century political and demographic crisis in Ottoman Anatolia, focusing on the large-scale famines during the 1580–1630 period. Other studies on famines in the Ottoman Empire focus heavily on the later nineteenth century, a time when formal structures and policies of famine relief had been more firmly established by the Ottoman administrators. Historical famine studies seem, over a long period of continuing debates, to have come to an agreement that famines should be identified in connection to whether excessive deaths took place in a region or not. Bread prices in the pre-modern period show substantial short-term fluctuations due to frequent crises related to harvest conditions, transportation difficulties, wars and various other causes.