Modernities Compared: State Transformations and Constitutions of Property in the Qing and Ottoman Empires

Abstract

Modernity has long been the preserve of Europe. Social science perspectives on modernization that have shaped the categories of historical analysis since the nineteenth century have excluded the Ottoman and the Chinese empires from mappings of modernity.' Instead, the two empires are designated as part of an undifferentiated and ahistorical domain of the East, characterized by what it lacks: individual ownership of property, rational organization of market activity, and rational bureaucratic forms of government. This construct of the East provides a contrast to an equally abstract domain of the West (including western Europe and its extensions in the United States) privileged with the presence of modern forms. This high drama of absences and presences of idealized properties has been instrumental in legitimating European domination of the East. The notion of oriental despotism has been a central feature of that legitimation.' In Asia it facilitated the setting up of colonial administrations that could be identified as rational and bureau-