Tobuken Seminar “Commercial Courts in the Ottoman Legal Reforms: The Case of Selanik (Thessaloniki)”

Report

On April 4, 2024, the Tobunken Seminar "Commercial Courts in the Ottoman Legal Reforms: The Case of Selanik (Thessaloniki)" was held in the IASA. In this seminar, Dr. Veysel Çolaker, a visiting fellow of the IASA, gave a lecture on the commercial court of Selanik (Thessaloniki) in the late Ottoman Empire based on the archival sources of the commercial court.
Dr. Çolaker began by outlining the history leading to the establishment of the commercial court, before introducing the sources available for study. He noted that the archives of Selanik contain several types of commercial court registers, including those pertaining to petitions, bonds, decisions, judgments, minutes, attorneys, and protests. The petition registers show that the number of lawsuits increased significantly after 1907 reflecting the growth of commerce in Selanik. The commercial court primarily handled cases involving debts secured by promissory notes, along with other matters such as seizures, bankruptcies, and on rare occasions, disputes over the compensation of foreign employers' domestic employees. Dr. Çolaker posited that these registers offer invaluable insights into the commercial activities in Salonika during the late Ottoman period.
During the Q&A session, Dr. Çolaker replying to a question concerning the jurisdiction of the commercial court, explained that it dealt with cases between foreign merchants and Ottoman subjects, as well as cases between Ottoman subjects when the bills of exchange included a clause specifying the jurisdiction of the commercial court. Various other questions were posed about the functions and activities of the commercial court. There were five in-person and 12 online participants.

 

 

Event Details

Date: April 4, 2024, Thu, 3pm–5pm

Venue: Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, the University of Tokyo, 3rd floor, Second Meeting Room / Zoom

Speaker: Veysel Çolaker (Pamukkale University/IASA Visiting Researcher)

Title: Commercial Courts in the Ottoman Legal Reforms: The Case of Selanik (Thessaloniki)

Chair: Jun Akiba (IASA)

ABSTRACT:
One of the first judicial reforms implemented in the Ottoman Empire after the Tanzimat was the establishment of commercial courts. The 1856 Reform Edict (Islahat Fermanı) also envisioned the establishment of mixed courts for the resolution of disputes arising between Muslims, non-Muslims, and foreigners. Within this framework, commercial courts were established with the Addendum to the Commercial Code (Zeyl-i Kanunname-i Ticaret) issued in 1860. Hence, the commercial laws would be implemented by the relevant courts and the deficiencies of the laws would be corrected by the decisions rendered by the courts. With the 1864 Provincial Law (Vilayet Nizamnamesi), commercial courts were established in the provinces, and in the same year, a commercial court was also set up in Thessaloniki with a president, an assistant and two permanent members appointed by the governor. Although the number of members changed over time, the Thessaloniki commercial court functioned without interruption until 1912, when Greece occupied the city.
Studies on commercial courts are rather scarce. A significant part of the studies is based on provincial yearbooks and some archival records and documents. The reason for this is the lack of registers of the commercial courts. This lecture deals with the Thessaloniki commercial court records in the Historical Archives of Macedonia in Thessaloniki. The purpose of the presentation is to illustrate the structure and functioning of the Thessaloniki commercial court and the types of cases it heard.