Between Empire and Nation-State
and confessional communities—the new municipality was to be based on
new social classes, a liberalized economy, and equality between individu-
als of different religions. As Kemal Karpat argues, with the penetration of
European capitalism, steps toward the legalization of private landowner-
ship, and the commercialization of agriculture, the old regime of wealthy
landowners, especially foreigners, Christians, and Jews, and urban guilds
and merchants had to face the fact of new rivals in the economy, a new
Muslim middle class.^9 This was accompanied by laws passed in 1871 and
1878 for the equal participation of Christians, Jews, and Muslims in ad-
ministrative councils and municipalities, further opening up local rule to
new upwardly mobile elites.
The Salonika municipality, new seat of the governor, and new civil
society committees and associations created a new structure, allocating
power to locals, allowing them local autonomy and the ability to make
changes.^10 Thus the creation of municipalities allowed broader and greater
participation in politics and of the middle to upper classes, including the
new rising merchants, literary elites, journalists, and professionals.^11 The
bourgeoisie’s new status and manipulation of new municipal structures
enabled them to impact the city.^12 In Salonika, the new bourgeoisie in-
cluded the Dönme.
The rise of the Dönme as a whole occurred in tandem with the reforms
of the second half of the nineteenth century that introduced the locally
selected mayorality, municipal council, and other local political bodies, as
well as the introduction of the latest form of western European capitalism.
A different politico-economic regime gave rise to a new elite. From the
fifteenth century to the mid-seventeenth century, Salonika was the center
of the Ottoman Empire’s woolen cloth and textile industry, and Jews,
who had founded the industry, predominated in it, both supplying the
market and the elite Ottoman infantry Janissaries, receiving a monopoly
to furnish their uniforms.^13 Leading sixteenth-century rabbis confirmed
that “the main means of livelihood of the Jews of this city is the produc-
tion of fabric.”^14 The inflation in the ranks of the Janissary corps over
the sixteenth century also benefited Salonikan Jews. In the seventeenth
century, treaty clauses allowed western Europeans to export their textiles
to the Ottoman Empire. Competition from English, Dutch, and French
suppliers, rising prices for raw materials, and fiscal crises depressed the
textile industry. One of those affected was Shabbatai Tzevi’s father, Mor-
decai, who like many other Salonikan Jews, sought his fortunes instead