Remembering the Tanzimat Reforms

In the mid-1800s, the Ottoman Empire decided to overhaul itself with a wave of reforms known as the Tanzimat. Between 1839 and 1876, officials scrambled to modernize; centralizing governance, standardizing land rights, and promising equality under the law. The goal? Hold the empire, colloquially known as the “sick man of Europe”, together as European powers carved up the map. It all sounded great on paper, as the reforms included roads, railroads, and even religious tolerance. But for a lot of people on the ground, especially peasants, nomadic groups, and minorities, it was the opposite of reform. Remembering the Tanzimat means remembering who got left behind in the name of progress.

Take the Land Code of 1858, for example. It asked every landholder to register their property with the state. The government said this would improve tax collection and reduce land disputes. Sounds decently smart, but most rural folks didn’t have written deeds. They had oral agreements, traditions, and shared land. The new system played right into the hands of the wealthy and well-connected. Illiterate farmers were either intimidated or unaware. And so, large landowners, like urban elites, tribal leaders, or even absentee notables, registered the land under their own names. Entire villages were turned into tenants overnight.

In places like Palestine, Lebanon, and Eastern Anatolia, families who had cultivated land for generations suddenly owed rent to someone with a fancy registration paper. The state called it modernization. The people living through it might’ve called it theft. The Land Code redefined who had legal standing and economic power. And as always, those with the least were hit the hardest.

For minority communities, the impact was brutal. Kurdish and Armenian villagers lost their traditional grazing and farmland. Christian peasants who went to court found the new secular legal system still skewed against them. Yes, the Tanzimat officially promised equality. But when it came down to it, those promises didn’t hold up in front of local power dynamics. The courts, paperwork, and bureaucracy might’ve changed languages—from religious to secular—but the hierarchy stayed put.

Illustration representing a female figure being freed from her chains by the passing of the 1876 Constitution // Courtesy Public Domain

The reforms also targeted nomadic groups. In Iraq and Syria, Bedouin (indigenous nomads of the Middle East and North Africa) tribes were pressured to settle down and register land. But these were huge lifestyle changes to adapt to. The freedom to move, to herd, to adapt with the seasons were all stripped away in favor of state control and taxation. In other words: if your life didn’t fit the state’s idea of civilization, it needed to be “fixed.”

Historians still argue over what Tanzimat actually was: either liberal reform or just another power grab. In reality, it was probably both. Urban minorities in places like Istanbul and Izmir gained some new rights, secular courts were a step forward in theory, and there were flickers of future constitutionalism. But for the people furthest from power, like rural farmers, nomads, ethnic and religious minorities, it mostly meant more oversight, less land, and fewer options.

You can still see the fingerprints of Tanzimat today. Disputes over land in the Middle East often trace back to this period. Communal land turned into property titles, passed to landlords, then corporations, and now sometimes governments. What began as registration led to fragmentation. 

So when we talk about Tanzimat, let’s not just remember the trains and laws and imperial visions, which I certainly remember being the focus in my AP World History class. Let’s make sure to also remember the farmers who lost their land because they couldn’t fill out a form, the herders who had to choose between migration and survival, and the communities that were written out of a future being planned without them. Modernization is always complicated—but when it forgets the people it claims to help, it stops being progress at all.