Россия и Арабский мир: к 200-летию профессора Санкт-Петербургского университета Шейха ат-Тантави (1810–1861)

203 have extensive meanings and implications. The terms “thesis” or “theory,” which are also to be found in the studies of historians when discussing an extensive historical phenomenon, differ from a paradigm in that they are “softer”. They denote a narrower idea, or one that has not yet been accepted as valid by the research community. The present article is devoted to an examination of the formulation of a particular paradigm that to a great extent shaped the way students of the his- tory of the Ottoman Empire perceived the empire’s economic development in the long 19th century. The beginnings of the formulation of the paradigm, which may be termed “the paradigm of the economic predominance of non- Muslim minorities” (hereafter “the economic predominance paradigm”), took place in the first half of the 19th century. At the beginning of the 20th century, and particularly during the First World War, an important element was added to this paradigm, which would later be known as “the paradigm of the ethnic division of labor” (hereafter “the ethnic division of labor paradigm”). Both the paradigm and its variant flourished during the last four or five decades of the 20th century. However, some 120 years after this paradigm began to coalesce, from the 1970s on- ward, new studies began to cast doubt, explicitly or implicitly, on its validity. The Economic Predominance of Non-Muslim Minorities Paradigm The emergence of this paradigm was related to domination over the most dynamic economic branch in the Ottoman Empire ― foreign trade. The perception that gained credence during the first half of the 19th century was that the Ottoman Empire’s Greek and Armenian subjects dominated the in- ternational trade of the entire empire, almost unchallenged. Furthermore, they controlled the financial sector and thus dominated all other branches of the economy. The Muslim subjects, who constituted about 80 percent of the em- pire’s population in the Asiatic provinces, played no real role in these eco- nomic sectors, according to the paradigm. It held that economic entrepreneur- ship and all it entailed was the exclusive domain of the Greeks and Armeni- ans. By contrast, the Muslims, according to this perception, lacked interest in commercial and financial activity and also lacked the ability required in these economic branches. At the basis of the initial paradigm lay a positive appre- ciation of the activity of the Greeks and Armenians, since by their initiative they contributed to the advancement of the Ottoman state and all its subjects. This generalization was formulated and disseminated by European trav- elers, journalists and diplomats, chiefly British, French and German. Among the many works written on this subject I shall cite extracts from four, since each appears to have made an important contribution to the formulation and dissemination of the paradigm in question.