On December 11th SAIS Europe hosted Professor Bogdan G. Popescu, who presented two chapters of his newest book "Islam, Sultans and the Printing Press". His seminar was titled ‚ "When Do Imperial Legacies Fade? Bureaucratic Capacity, Social Heterogeneity, and Education at the Habsburg-Ottoman Frontier." and discussed his major findings on the impact of the Habsburg and Ottoman empires' administrations on literacy rates along their frontiers. The goal of this seminar was to identify why there was a divergence in these two regions' trajectories even after the end of both empires.

Popescu started by showing that different institutions, ethno-religious diversity components and governance systems could produce significantly different literacy rates. He illustrated just how different the counties were along the old 1699 Ottoman border adjacent to counties of the Habsburg Empire. In 1931 counties located on the Ottoman side had overall literacy rates that were approximately 40 percentage points lower than those located in the Habsburg Empire, and approximately 58 percentage points lower for women. While the regions in Romania that were a part of the Ottoman Empire quickly converged to nearly universal literacy rates by 1991, large sections of former Yugoslavia continued to demonstrate significant deficits in literacy rates.

To establish the causal effect of Ottoman rule on literacy rates, Popescu used a novel regression discontinuity methodology – GRD2D. He created random, equally spaced points on the border and calculated the local effects along those points. He also emphasized that the border along the Una River and Sava Rivers was low stakes from a geostrategic and commercial point of view and this was likely to yield causally identified effects. For each point, he then tested covariate balance for confounding geographical factors. The author also identified discontinuities when it comes to density of state bureaucracy in the form of a lower number of bureaucrats per capita on the Ottoman side in 1931.

The author argued that the extent to which successor states could overcome the literacy deficits depended on three components: the ability to build state capacity, the level of ethno-religious fractionalization, and the extent of ethno-religious alignment (the ability of citizens to identify themselves with the state). A review of primary and secondary sources enabled him to conclude that direct administration and relatively weak bureaucratic penetration was a defining characteristic of the Ottoman Empire, whereas the Habsburg Empire had created a more highly functional and centralised state as well as educational institutions. These historical administrations played a major role in shaping the starting conditions of successor states to create educational opportunities.

The imperial legacies faded in Romania where literacy rates converged and partially diminished in Yugoslavia. The author showed that Romania's communist government established robust and intensive literacy programs, evening schools, and village outreach efforts. Their efforts were met with compliance because of the largely homogeneous ethno-religious population. By contrast, the communist government's efforts in Yugoslavia were met with greater resistance given the greater ethno-religious heterogeneity. Popescu also showed that other possible explanations for these results, such as migration patterns, geographic variables, and diffusion of printing presses, did not negate the core argument that legacies shape outcomes. The seminar closed with this notion that whilst imperial legacies may shape starting conditions, they fade when states build effective administrative capacity and create social alignment with their citizens.

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hosted by Professor Eugene Finkel


"This study examines the effects of Ottoman imperial rule on long-run development in Europe. Using a novel geographical dataset that tracks territorial changes at the subnational level over six hundred years, we identify a negative effect of Ottoman rule on modern economic performance. Contemporary survey data provides strong support for a causal mechanism involving reduced human capital accumulation. This insight is confirmed by a regression discontinuity analysis using historical data from Romania. We uncover large causal effects of Ottoman rule on literacy rates beginning in the 19th century, which persisted throughout the 20th century. We argue that the late adoption of the printing press in the empire was an important determinant of low human capital accumulation and illustrate this using data on the spread of the printing press."

BOGDAN G. POPESCU

Bogdan G. Popescu is Assistant Professor (tenured) in Political Science at John Cabot University in Rome, Italy.

Previously, he taught at the University of Oxford, and he was a postdoctoral researcher at Bocconi and Princeton. He received his PhD in Political Science from the University of Chicago.

His research and teaching interests focus on state management in peripheral regions and their enduring ramifications. He draws on extensive archival research, and computational methods and employs quantitative analysis of observational data and narrative evidence.

His first book, Imperial Borderlands: Institutions and Legacies of the Habsburg Military Frontier (Cambridge University Press, 2023), focuses on how historical states adopt distinct institutions in border areas and their long-term consequences.

His second book, Islam, Sultans, and the Printing Press scrutinizes the historical disparities between the Middle East and the West. It specifically investigates the long-term legacies of the delay in the adoption of the printing press in the Ottoman Empire.

His research has been published in leading peer-reviewed journals, including Comparative Political Studies, Journal of Conflict Resolution, and Quarterly Journal of Political Science, among others.