Campaign Economy and Austerity Measures: Crisis Management in Ottoman Fiscal Policy During the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

Abstract

Throughout history, states’ ability to sustain military power has depended on their capacity to absorb the costs of war. In the early modern period, the growing scale and continuity of warfare placed increasing strain on fiscal structures in both Europe and the Ottoman Empire. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Ottoman state faced mounting fiscal pressures arising from rising military expenditures, expanding troop numbers and constrained resources. This article examines the economic and administrative strategies adopted by the Ottoman administration during campaign periods to manage these pressures. It focuses on troop inspections, limits on recruitment, regulation of military pay, austerity measures, the redirection of provincial revenues and the use of monetary instruments such as copper coinage, mint policies and exchange-rate interventions. The article argues that, rather than relying on institutionalized public debt, Ottoman campaign finance operated through a flexible crisis-management model based on fiscal restraint and extraordinary resource mobilization under centralized supervision.