This article examines the transformation of the economic culture and policies of the Ottoman administration in the nineteenth century alongside the business cycles. It reaffirms the importance of local contexts for understanding when and how provincial reformers adopted more favorable attitudes toward foreign trade and its actors. After tracing the institutional framework that oversaw the infusion of new governance principles into administrative practice, the article analyzes the measures implemented to promote the cultivation of industrial crops demanded by exporters. The application of these measures is assessed both in terms of their effects and through the rhetorical strategies employed to construct a public sphere around them. The promotion of agricultural productivity – achieved through the establishment of honors, learned societies, and official semantics – is examined as an additional ritual in the Ottoman authorities’ nation-building efforts during the era of the Reforms.