The institutional history of the Ottoman Public Debt Administration (1881-1914)

By focusing on the Ottoman Public Debt Administration (OPDA) this dis-sertation provides an original and comprehensive account of the Ottoman Empire and how it navigated one of its most turbulent and eventually de-structive financial periods in the late 19th century. Starting from the pre-OPDA context and navigating the institution's fifty-year-old existence, the dissertation shows the complex and contingent nature of this institution co-constituted by various key actors such as international bondholders, foreign governments, and Ottoman bureaucracy. The dissertation shows this com-plex and context-bound structure of OPDA in two main ways. First it focus-es on the pre-Muharrem context and the developments that lead to the es-tablishment of OPDA. Constituting the first two chapters, this section argues how OPDA was neither a unilinear imposition of foreign powers or financial elites nor a historical inevitability. The dissertation then goes on to detail the semi-autonomous structure and functioning of the institution to show how it was integrated into the Ottoman governmental structure as opposed to being an external institution with complete control by international bond-holders. Lastly, the salt monopoly is examined as a key revenue generating institution as part of OPDA's key mission; it is also examined as a flawed and limited institution with implications for the empire and its financial depend-ency and sovereignty.