摘要
Modernization occurs through societies adopting and sustaining reforms that have socio-economic and political implications for individuals of that society. It is impossible for reforms that are ineffective on economic and political lives of large social classes, and that even have negative effects on such lives to achieve a social basis. During the Tanzimat era, although the Ottoman society lacked land ownership, small farmers and agricultural labourers who earned their living from the land served the elite class. In other words, the peasantry was the backbone of the Ottoman society. In this paper, the changes of the socio-economic and political structure of the peasantry were investigated during the modernization of the Tanzimat era during 1839-1876. The research was based on descriptive methods consisting of literature and archive reviews. As a result, although the Tanzimat era has modern civilization characteristics, there were no positive effects on social-economic and political conditions of the peasantry and moreover, the conditions for the peasantry greatly worsened.
