The role of telegraph in the centralization of Ottoman State: 1855-1909

The administrative modernization process, which manifested itself in the Ottoman State with the Tanzimat period, continued to mature in the period of Abdulhamit II. The most important aim of this administrative modernization process is to achieve centralization. Achieving centralization requires the state to develop its infrastructural power. Telegraph communication supported the modernization initiatives of the Ottoman State as a logistic mean by supporting the infrastructural power. However, the development of infrastructural power at the same time provided societal actors with opportunities for power across the central state. The Ottoman State, which has a wide geography and a mosaic population with different ethnic and religious affiliations, could not be expected to successfully perform administrative modernization initiatives as much as a state with a homogeneous population and smaller lands. Therefore, the power of the central state for the Tanzimat and Abdülhamit II periods is disaggregate state power and manifested as dispersed domination instead of integrated domination in the peripheric regions. This dispersed power emerges as a result of the power struggles that take place in multiple arenas of domination and opposition, in which different social actors play a role with the central state. Telegraph communication's administrative functions became necessarily prominent in the Ottoman State which is struggling against other actors. For this reason, addressing the Ottoman administrative modernization period with reference to telegraphic communication will enable us to analyze the conditions of this period from a different perspective. The aim of this dissertation is to create a synthesis that evaluates the centralization efforts between the years of 1855-1909 in the Ottoman Empire, using theoretical frameworks that explain administrative modernization and based on the state-society approach, on the case studies in which telegraph communication takes place and in the context of center-periphery relations. In this way, how the complex modernization process of the long 19th century resonated in the Ottoman state and society will be revealed from a different perspective. Keywords: Modern state, center-periphery relations, infrastructural power, state-in-society, telegraph communication, multiple arenas of domination and opposition, dispersed domination