| This dissertation focuses on the construction of the Trabzon-Bayezid road in northeastern Anatolia during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. On a micro-level, this work focuses on the social history of the road and narrates the stories of various actors (such as forced laborers, highway robbers, migrants, smugglers, engineers, merchants, landowners, and contractors) whose lives had an impact on and were affected by the road. On a macro-level, this dissertation also explores ways to develop a more nuanced understanding of the modernization paradigm, which dominates the historiography of the late Ottoman world. Within this framework, the aim of this dissertation is to rethink the socio-economic and politico-cultural changes which the empire went through in its last few decades. In that context, many of the cases analyzed in this dissertation underline the local, fragmented, dynamic, inconsistent, and social nature of modern state formation in the Ottoman Empire, thereby challenging the paradigm that defines the modern state as an omnipresent entity, capable of totally controlling society. One of the goals in renovating the Trabzon-Bayezid road was to facilitate trade and agriculture. However, during famines, authorities could not send food supplies to the affected regions due to harsh weather conditions, whereas the local population was able to migrate to other parts of the empire using the same road. The case of highway robbery also presents a paradoxical aspect of the road's history. While officials intended to increase their military power and security in the region, and make the eastern frontier more accessible to the capital, the road also became a space used by robbers who attacked travelers and challenged the state's authority. There were many other conflicts and dilemmas that the construction of the road generated, including resistance to the use of forced labor and the collection of the road tax, inexperience of engineers, geographic conditions of the region, corruption of contractors, and rivalries between various regional actors. Thus, the road was not necessarily an instrument of the Ottoman state to change the socio-economic and political environment of the region, but the product of multiple local factors. |
