ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book focuses on the centrality of Tokat's notables in trade and lending networks made them well suited to manage new institutions that required broader outreach to different segments of the community. In the Islahat Phase of the Tanzimat Period, the Ottoman state initiated a series of legal, administrative, and land reforms that acknowledged the supremacy of notables in home regions like Tokat and incorporated them into the body politic as advisors, bureaucrats, and popular leaders. A new type of participatory politics emerged in the provinces from this compact. Throughout the Ottoman political reform period, the provincial Ottoman religious, military, and artisanal elites abetted their traditional informal roles as local leaders by acquiring title deeds to lands and high-paying bureaucratic posts. Dominant ethnic-religious groupings, be they Turkish Muslim, Austrian Catholic, and Russian Orthodox, took precedence in the state bureaucracy.
