Shifting State–Society Relations as Perceptible from the Ottoman Tavern

In the mid-nineteenth century, irate taverners petitioned the Ottoman state for repayment of their permit fees and taxes based on the escalating number of unlicensed and unchallenged taverns in the city. The problem stemmed from the empire’s latest commercial treaties with the European powers that demanded free trade. As the pacts included no explicit provisions regarding alcohol, canny foreign merchants discerned a loophole to sell alcohol in measures that the empire had not legislatively specified. Supported by their embassies, the profusion of Europeans’ unlicensed and effectively exempted shops began cutting into locals’ profits. Beyond foreign incursions, fellow Ottomans also began to evade regulation and taxation by opening what were outwardly touted as candy stores, sherbet shops, and similar places but that operated as fronts for illicit alcohol sales. Like the Europeans’ businesses, these fronts did not purchase licenses or pay alcohol taxes. The city’s established taverners thus further insisted that the empire must tax their new competitors or at least limit the operable geographies and sales of these unauthorized operations. To quell this problem, the Ottoman officials formulated and promulgated the 1861 Alcoholic Beverages Act. Ideally easing tensions between the state and licensed taverners, its framers also hoped it would extend the empire’s regulatory reach and pave the way to bring unlicensed taverners into the fold to pay license fees and taxes while increasing state revenues in the process. The Alcoholic Beverages Act’s efficacy was no panacea, and for the remainder of the nineteenth century, it was revised multiple times to make it more effective. Despite these regulatory and fiscal remedies, the experience inflicted irreparable impact upon not only individual taverners but also their traditional guild system that limited tavern numbers and determined all aspects of alcohol procurement and sales.