The article takes issue with two hypotheses often claimed in the literature-that the Ottoman centuries extending from the sixteenth to the nineteenth evince a progressive development from a centralized to a quasi-feudal polity, and that during the course of the nineteenth century progress had been made toward a constitutional government. It is noted that throughout the period in question, in fact, two types of relationship existed between the center and the periphery: power politics and a degenerated form of patron- client relationship. The change that took place has been no more than a segregative change. Change in the periphery itself was not evolutionary, let alone revolutionary. At times it showed signs of involution; any weakening of the central control led to maximum legal irresponsibility.
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