ABSTRACT OF PAPER
Title: “State vs. Market” and the Question of Modernization in the Middle East: Comparative Notes on the Ottoman Empire and Iran at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
Author: Kilincoglu Deniz
Non-Western histories of economics have remained marginal in the global historiography of the discipline, despite various separate studies on specific national cases. Especially regarding the modern Middle East, our knowledge is still extremely limited. Obviously, economists from the Middle East (especially of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries) hardly made any original contributions in economic theory. However, this should not entail that economics did not have a history in the region. On the contrary, starting from the late nineteenth century, economic theories and debates provided an important intellectual basis for the discussions on modernization. In this respect, certain great nineteenth-century controversies in economics–particularly the question of state intervention in economic development–not only influenced public intellectual discussions, but also shaped governments’ modernization strategies and economic policies. While some economists and statesmen argued for an active role for state in economic modernization and catching up with the West, some others championed the laissez-faire approach to economics for greater wealth and prosperity in the long run. As for related controversial issues, such as protectionism and economic nationalism, we observe cycles of dominantly liberal and protectionist periods in these two countries–following partly the global trends–in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This paper juxtaposes the reflections of the “state vs. market” dispute and related controversies in economics in the history of economic thought in the Middle East, focusing on the cases of the Ottoman Empire and Iran at the turn of the twentieth century. The main objective of the paper is presenting some initial observations about the role of this great controversy in economics in the modernization processes and in socioeconomic and political change in the region. By focusing on the dynamics of translation and adaptation from Europe, as well as the intellectual interaction between these two countries, it also aims at providing an illuminating analysis on the international transmission of economic ideas both at a regional-historical and global-theoretical levels.
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