Isa Blumi [International Journal of Turkish Studies, Vol 9. Nos. 1 and 2, Summer 2003]. THWARTING THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE: SMUGGLING THROUGH THE EMPIRE’S NEW FRONTIERS IN YEMEN AND ALBANIA, 1878-1910 ∗ Introduction At the end of the nineteenth century the Ottoman state was embroiled in a desperate process of redefining the role of its society, its economic relationship with the rest of the world and the level of integration between its state institutions and subject populations. Continuous warfare, ecological disasters, massive demographic shifts due to territorial loses in the Balkans and mounting budgetary problems all inspired a generation of Ottoman policy makers to institute sweeping reforms. 1 Located at the edges of this increasingly impoverished empire, Northern Albania and Yemen marked the physical, logistical and political limitations of these reforms. As a result, the actual governance of the vilayets of Yemen, Ishkodra (Scutari or Shkodër) and Kosova constituted socio-cultural and economic regimes that often looked far different from what had been envisioned by Istanbul in this period of "modernization." It is in this relational field of administrative ideals and local realities, the contradictions of imperial ambitions as it were, that I wish to direct my attention. Most studies on the formation of modern states, or on the fall of multi-national empires that precipitated the creation of new states, look to how reforms were imagined from the imperial center. Almost all of these works judge the imperial modernization projects to have failed or succeeded by the extent to which reforms were implemented. 2 Although such analyses play an important foundational role in the study of empires, imperial decline and the creation of successor nation-states ∗ The author would like to thank the staffs at the state archives in Albania (AQSH), Austria (HHStA), the Public Records Office in London (PRO), and the Prime Minister's Archives in Istanbul (BBA). Special thanks are reserved for Ebru Sönmez for her years of support and friendship. Funding for research has been provided by the SSRC IDRF and Near and Middle East Dissertation Fellowship programs. 1 I outline this process regarding education on the Southern Albanian frontiers during the same period in Isa Blumi, “Teaching Loyalty in the Late Ottoman Balkans: Educational Reform in the Vilayets of Manastir and Yanya, 1878-1912,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 21:1-2 (2001): 15-23. 2 Caglar Keyder, "The Ottoman Empire," in After Empire: Multiethnic Societies and Nation- Building. The Soviet Union and the Russian, Ottoman and Habsburg Empires, eds. Karen Barkey and Mark von Hagen (Boulder, 1997), pp. 30-44 and specifically for Yemen, Ihsan Süreyya Sirma, Osmanlı Devletinin Yikilisinda Yemen Isyanları (Konya, nd).